‘Is Taylor’s shirt really as problematic as an entire clothing label named Porn Star?
The scientist of Rosetta mission fame, Matt Taylor, is arguably better known at the moment for a shirt he wore, depicting scantily clad womenthan his extraordinary scientific breakthrough. After a massive kerfuffle, led by feminists, Taylor broke down in tears at a briefing recently and said: “I made a big mistake and I offended many people, and I am very sorry about this.”
Many would hail this as a feminist victory: a big-name scientist apologising on TV and being reduced to tears for his apparent sexism. We must have come a long way to wield so much influence. But there’s another way of seeing it. As less of a victory, more of a sign of a shift in feminist tactics. Instead of attacking the root cause of women’s inequality, we’ve moved towards the vilification of individuals.
Daniel O’Reilly, a comedian who created the misogynistic Dapper Laughs,has had his TV programme axed, and there is pressure on those who do not publicly condemn him to do so. The Canadian broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi has been convicted by the kangaroo court of social media. CBC, the radio station where Ghomeshi worked, terminated his employment in October 2014 after several sexual abuse allegations were made against him, despite his denials.
The US “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc has been forced to leave Australia, after receiving a barrage of criticism over his “dating seminars”; these suggested that men deploy tactics of harassment and abuse to attract women. Britain and Canada are also considering a ban. He is described as “the most hated man in the world”, but rather than using racist and sexist immigration laws to keep Blanc out of the country we should be looking at using the criminal law against him. The petition to deny him a UK visa so far has more than 156,000 signatures. Would we get anything like so many signatures on a petition pressuring David Cameron to fund rape crisis centres, or to close down Yarl’s Wood – the immigration detention centre for women that has been widely criticised for its treatment of vulnerable inmates? I bet not. In fact, a petition to close Yarl’s Wood was set up earlier this year, and has attracted fewer than 50,000 signatures.
Feminism, a great social movement, is in danger of becoming toxic and repressive. The focus on individuals, however vile they may be, signifies a shift away from the more difficult, long-term work of making institutions such as the Crown Prosecution Service and other governmental departments accountable. Justice for Women, a feminist campaigning group I co-founded, managed to change the law to prevent men claiming that “nagging” was a justifiable reason to kill female partners; Southall Black Sisters successfully challenged Ealing council when it proposed cutting women’s services. The CPS, badgered for decades by anti-FGM campaigners, ended up changing its policy and began to proactively seek prosecutions. Feminists campaigned all through the 1970s and 1980s to make rape in marriage a crime – and in 1992 the goal was achieved.
Rather than spending so much energy piling on a man for wearing a sexist shirt, is it not better to focus on the manufacturer? Is Taylor’s shirt really as problematic as an entire clothing label named Porn Star?
The current climate of McCarthyism within some segments of feminism and the left is so ingrained and toxic that there are active attempts to outlaw some views because they cause offence. Petitions against individuals appear to be a recent substitute for political action towards the root causes of misogyny and other social ills. Petitions have taken over politics.
Read the rest of the article here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/18/feminism-rosetta-sc...