Keir Starmer’s attempts to clamp down on woman-hating could do more harm than good
“One of the elements of male chauvinism is the refusal or inability to see women as total, separate human beings,” wrote Anne Koedt in 1973’s The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. “Rather, men have chosen to define women only in terms of how they benefited men’s lives.”
Well, perhaps #NotAllMen. But as a summary of how gender is constructed and functions — positioning women as the not-men, the passive in relation to the active, the givers in relation to the takers, the hollowed-out bimbos in relation to the fully ensouled thinkers — one could do a lot worse. It picks up on earlier feminist observations about woman-as-other (Virginia Woolf’s woman as looking-glass, Simone de Beauvoir’s “inessential in front of the essential”) while pre-empting modern-day manifestations of woman-hating (Andrea Long Chu’s “getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is”).
Will such feminist analyses form part of the government’s proposed lessons for boys to stop them becoming misogynists? Somehow I doubt it. Explaining gender on those terms might seem a bit much when all you really want to do is ask boys not to take the hollowed-out bimbos in porn all that seriously. Keir Starmer isn’t wrong to point out that “too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged”. But where do such ideas originate? Could there be a connection between the dehumanisation of women and girls in “deepfakes, image-based abuse and online harassment” and gender as a means of casting them as feminine objects as opposed to female humans with boundaries of their own?
I’m conscious that it could seem a cheap shot to point out that if Labour wants boys to learn about misogyny, perhaps Labour should be clear about what women are. It’s easy to imagine the likes of David Lammy asking themselves whether all this is really necessary. Can’t you just rustle up the odd Guardian article on how boys being mean to girls makes you sad, while maintaining there’s no need for older women, those rights-hoarding dinosaurs, to think the word “girl” should mean anything? Can’t you do both things at once — critique the logical conclusion of reducing women to porn-infused gender stereotypes and critique the harridans who don’t want “woman” to be a porn-infused stereotype?
I guess you can. I’m just not sure what you’d achieve by it, other than making boys feel bad and/or confused. If girls matter so much — and boys too, for that matter — wouldn’t it be more helpful to attack the problem at the root? Any serious attempt to understand the power of online pornography and anti-feminist influencers has to consider broader misconceptions about sex and gender. This cannot be achieved as long as the government — along with teachers, academics and the media — are complicit in promoting misunderstandings in the name of “inclusion”.
It is not as though the feminist distinction between sex and gender is difficult to understand. Sex distinctions are real and politically salient, but biology is not destiny insofar as, as Koedt wrote, “male and female roles are learned […] Thus the biological male is the oppressor not by virtue of his male biology, but by virtue of his rationalizing his supremacy on the basis of that biological difference”. Children — and indeed the rest of us — should know there is nothing inherently wrong, oppressive or submissive about being male or female. True, there have been several “feminist” academics who have found lucrative careers in deliberately muddying the waters, suggesting that it’s just too hard to say whether “having a vagina” is more or less a quality of womanhood than “getting off at the thought of oneself as a feminine object”. Nonetheless, for such a crass misconception to have gained such traction requires the suppression of reams of feminist thought, thought that could be used to help children navigate their relationships with their own bodies and with the opposite sex.
If you are a politician, you can shake your head sadly and say you’d rather be out there tacking misogyny every time someone asks you the “gotcha” question “what is a woman?”. This doesn’t change the fact that misogyny is rooted in beliefs about what women are and what we are for. Do we exist for men — are we, in fact, masochists who like nothing more than existing for men — or are we definable in our own right? Are we a gender identity or a sex class?
If you are not prepared to choose — if you are too fearful of the wrath of those who took their misogyny to the streets following the For Women Scotland judgement — then you are in no position to judge the teenage boy who won’t stand up to his sexist mates. If you want young, vulnerable boys to risk losing status by challenging misogyny in their own peer group, why not lead by example? (Anyone can point the finger at Adolescence.) The problem is not that government-approved trans activism is worse as a form of sexism, but that it short circuits all analyses of all sexism (it’s Beauvoir’s “he is the Absolute. She is the Other”, only with “some men get off on imagining themselves the Other, so best not spoil their fun”).
I see little benefit — and a great deal of risk — in half-hearted, surface-level lessons on “how not to be like the incels”
When I think of my own sons, I know that they do not feel particularly powerful over anyone (what teenager does?). I see little benefit — and a great deal of risk — in half-hearted, surface-level lessons on “how not to be like the incels”. There’s nothing for them in a showy, “grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man” feminism that feeds male grievance while asking nothing of men in practical terms. Nor can they learn from “gender inclusivity” messages which encourage them to ignore female boundaries and sneer at older women in the name of ‘progress’.
All such sidestep a fundamental truth, one which the left is as loath to articulate as the right: that women and girls are simply female human beings, as opposed to feminine constructs. No boy deserves a medal for not being Andrew Tate, but no boy deserves to be shamed for his “entitlement” by adults who don’t see fit to grant female humans their own words, spaces or politics.
Amongst boys my sons’ age I already see a split between those who believe they are pro-feminist simply because they are left-wing (regardless of what they think of actual female people), and those who are happily anti-feminist because they see a movement that lies about sex (so it must be lying about everything else). Neither position deigns to recognise female humans mattering in their own right, but who would dare to teach that these days?
Sure, there are plenty of women who’d be willing to do so, but I’d imagine they fall into David Lammy’s rights-hoarding dinosaur camp. Maybe one day they’ll be able to teach some genuine feminism. In the meantime you’re still allowed to hate those ladies, lads. Just make sure your misogyny’s government-approved.
