THE 21st CENTURY BACKLASH AGAINST FEMINISTS IN PUBLIC SPACES
by rubyfruit2
In landmark UK cases, successful criminal prosecutions have taken place against those who menacingly threatened feminists on the internet for daring to have an opinion and expressing it in the public domain. Today, a man was jailed for 18 weeks for making violent threats: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29411031
Social media has become male supremacy’s modern way of finding witches; the women who won’t conform, the women who speak out and try and help other women. The feminists of today. It’s absolutely no coincidence that today’s convicted abuser referred to ‘witches’ and used the violent imagery of drowning.
Both women involved powerfully describe how they feel on the day the sentence is known:
http://weekwoman.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/a-brief-comment-on-peter-nunn/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11127782/Stella-Creasy-Twitter-
Their success in getting as far as prosecutions, let alone convictions, is incredible in a world where attacks on women are trivialised, dismissed and deliberately ignored. The success means that ALL feminists are a step closer to being able to express our opinions in public spaces without being subsequently personally threatened with violence and harassment.
As is made horrifically clear from Caroline’s account, this man didn’t ‘just’ send menacing tweets (that’s enough by itself), he systematically terrorized her. “I felt he was a clear and present threat to me. He made me scared to go outside, to appear in public. He seemed obsessed enough to carry out his threats.” (quote from first link)
Just as I was feeling proud of these brave sisters and their strong words, I glanced down at the comments section of the Telegraph (second link containing an article by Stella Creasy). There, was a cesspit of misogyny and stereotypes about women and our motives for daring to speak in the public domain alongside men and daring to say we have a right to do this without harassment.
Even in the face of successful convictions, men cluster around the individual women. The male commentators reinforce, over and over, that feminists expressing their right to be unintimidated in public spaces, will be punished. Punished by character assassinations and punished by anonymous male supremacists dismantling the seriousness of their lived experiences.
Feminism has long recognised the importance of the public/private split in the way women, as a caste, are controlled. In days gone by, it was more obvious that men viewed women speaking in the public domain as a direct threat to patriarchy. The domestic/private domain has been set aside for us so we can carry out unpaid labour and serve men. Only until relatively recently have we been allowed to be politicians at all. There aren’t many of us and what we wear, say and do, are scrutinized according to socially constructed standards of ‘femininity’ in a way male counterparts are absolutely not. This undermines any positions of power women hold, even if, by some miracle, we get there in the first place.
These comments running alongside the article are a continuum of men’s past historical attempts to silence us in public spaces. Attempts which began centuries ago. Attempts which morph into new shapes as quickly as changes to popular forms of cultural communication manifest themselves. By targeting feminists, like witches before us, all women are taught a lesson. “STFU and you will be rewarded with scraps from our table. If you don’t, we will come for you next. Be compliant and support men’s position of superiority or the anger and the tyranny will be directed at YOU.” This is an overtly deliberate silencing tactic of individual ‘uppity’ women.
The absolute anger and hatred male posters have for these women is plain for all feminists to read in the comments section of the article. The women’s temerity for daring to say they have the right not to be abused outrages patriarchs. They mill together, using male supremacist tactics, to get us out of public spaces and back into the private domain. Many feminists have been driven off the internet by being doxxed, harassed and abused. It’s OK if we’re in public spaces and support men. That’s fine. To be expected. Plenty of women around willing to do that for the scraps off the table. It’s the women who are in public spaces talking about women’s rights who are real threats. However mildly, however ‘respectfully’, we frame our resistance, men will lash out (Emma Watson, taunted with anonymous men revealing her naked photos – public humiliation and shame, for example). We are a threat to patriarchy’s social order. The witches of the 21st century. In the internet world where anyone can say anything, women can name our truths under patriarchy in a way we could never have done before. We have the potential to reach out to millions of other women. We have to be silenced and discredited any time any of us gains any ground. We are dangerous.
No wonder the comments on the Telegraph story are coming quick and fast like someone rushing to put a cork back on a bottle before all the wine spills out. The overwhelming message underpinning the comments, said boringly in hundreds of different ways, is: ‘if you can’t handle the heat get out of the kitchen’ an ironic reversal by which men mean ‘get out of public discourse’. One even stated that he thought Stella Creasy is ‘in the wrong career’ if she couldn’t just brush off a physically violent threat or two. Popular forms of the argument among the comments were: it’s just the internet, don’t take it seriously, you’ve brought it on yourself by being on the same social media as the abusers (oh where have we heard THAT one before?), feminists are getting special treatment and no one ever says anything about the well-known violence from radical feminists towards…well, anyone they can think of really. They don’t let facts get in their way.
As I was reading these comments, I was reminded of my own experience on the internet when I spent a few years on a male-dominated gay site, soaking up the same levels of misogyny and having it all pouring out at me constantly. I wrote about it a couple of years ago:
The personal attacks just flow and flow. For not acting as men act, for not having the same understandings about threats which men have because we have different lived experiences in relation to male violence, we are constantly found to have numerous character flaws. Uncoincidentally, those ‘character flaws” all happen to be criticisms men typically make of women. We’re ‘attention seeking’, drama queens’, have ‘no self awareness’, are ‘passive-aggressive’ when we refuse to laugh off abuse as silly ‘boys being boys’, playing the ‘victim card’ and so on. Most of this was said about me on the misogynistic site and most of this is said about Stella and Caroline. The abusive behaviour is trivialised and dismissed – leaving only criticisms of the individual feminists in its place. And that’s how patriarchy survives on the internet.
Here is a direct quote from one of the misogynists in the comments section on Stella’s article, saying what I say here, in his own, woman-hating, delusional way:
“The difference now is that the internet is being stalked by a cohort of self-regarding fussy matrons with a malicious Feminist agenda who demand the right to speak and not be spoken back to, who want to promote their endless class hatred without getting any kind of reaction from the people they are attacking. It would be a whole lot better if these women had never decided to colonise the internet, and stuck to writing impenetrable post-Marxist screeds in journals”
In other words, feminists are ‘demanding’ to have a voice in public spaces and, when men don’t like what we say, we demand ‘not to be spoken back to’ (be abused, stalked and receive death/rape threats). If only we’d go away, out of public spaces, and into obscurity, life would be peaceful for these woman-haters. He’s said outright what some of the others parroted more conspiciously.
We see you. We see your attempts to stop feminists taking up public space and naming our truths and we say ‘no’. No. No, we won’t stop, no matter what you do or say.
Reblogged this on winterdominatrix and commented:
Witch hunts, yep.
Reblogged this on GenderTrender.
[…] The Twenty First Centurey Backlash Against Women in Public Spaces by @RubyFruit2 […]
ALL. OF. THIS!
Thank you so very much. I got chills twice from reading this: first because of the misogyny from these doodz [those were the bad chills] and second because of your uplifting and powerful words towards the end.
FabFro, I really liked your reply on GT to het privilege. I don’t want to say anything more on that site because I have heard it all before, so many times. This is a lot of what tore the women’s movement apart in the 1970s, and it saddens and frustrates me. I see people who understand misogyny in a broad context, and then I see people who have huge chips on their shoulders, paranoid that others are smirking at them (one of life’s first lessons: no one’s looking, no one’s thinking about you, and no one cares, and so what if someone is smirking).
That said, what do people think about Sarah Ditum’s call for martial feminism? I am absolutely appalled at what these two women (and many others) went through; no one should live fearfully, though so many do. In this day and age, women can easily equal men through self-defense techniques and tools; perhaps we need to stop thinking in individualistic terms and think of defending one another. Perhaps it needs to be made clear to a stalker creep such as Nunn that HE is being watched and HE may end up regretting his threats.
Yes, exactly everything you said! And thank you!
What’s martial feminism? Like violence?
［goes off to google)
Okay, I saw her blog. What I think is: well let’s be honest, peaceful means have got us nowhere have they…
We could start by publicizing women who have “snapped”. I can think of quite a few who have been in the news over the past few years who retaliated in spectacular, memorable ways against their own or their daughters’ rapists.
cherryblossomlife, I think martial feminism is something that needs to be discussed. What do we mean by it? What actions could be taken? I think monkey wrenching is a good place to start for those who are physically fit; I’m thinking of those horrible rent-a-vans in Australia with their nauseating slogans. What do we do about men who threaten women? Number one, we support that woman in Florida who shot a gun INTO THE CEILING to warn her abusive husband and is now being prosecuted.
The telegraph article has been removed. Patriarchal cencorship. Luckily, the first link seems to be a screenshot of somesort. That’s the other tool they use: misogynistic hate crimes and words followed by elaborate cover-ups, enabled by the bros who own the newspapers.
Seems to be back up again now – haven’t checked the comments section yet to see whether ALL the misogynistic comments are still there or merely the dismissive, trivialising ones. I can’t bear to re-look and get back in touch with the anger which prompted me to write this blog post
“censorship”
Reblogged this on Cherryblossomlife and commented:
I regard this as a small victory. However the Telegrall article which was apparently followed by a lot of misogynistic comments has been removed. Men commit crimes and spew hate against women, then cover it up. The cover ups, lies and denial of their behavior is their modus operandi.
These SCUM do women a favor by revealing their hatred. The ‘nice guy” masks have slipped.
Men claim they don’t virulently hate women and girls despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Why aren’t those women- hating males spewing their hateful insults at non-white men who dare to publicly state they have been subjected to white men’s racist insults/white mens’ threat of violence?
Answer is because racism and its brother homophobia is real according to mens’ (ir)rational logic since the victims are male and male victims have rights including right not to be subjected to male violence.
However, men continue to proclaim/enact their male right to threaten women with violence because women despite mens’ efforts aren’t robots but are autonomous human beings. Neither are women males so therefore according to male irrational thinking this means women aren’t human since default human is always male.
Nunn’s Male Supremacist Legal System gave him a ‘slap on the wrist’ because Nunn’s crime was trivial since he threatened non-human females rather than real male human beings!! Men continue to claim their Male Supremacist Legal System is ‘gender neutral.’ Sure it is ‘gender neutral’ because mens’ legal system operates from the stance that mens’ lived experiences are the generic human ones which neatly erases womens’ lived experiences!
I totally agree with you and am glad to hear about the outcome of this case. It confounds me that threats sent over the internet should be treated differently than any other type of threat made against a person.
Reblogged this on FeistyAmazon and commented:
We all know about the silencing men do to us all the time: trying to talk over us, being the ‘experts’ on EVERYTHING all the time, being the religious “authorities”, the newsman’s voice, and if we get insistent, shouting us down and threatening us with violence or entirely dismissing our pain and experiences, implying we are hysterical or mentally ill(and they and their point of view so sane and rational). While THEY continue with their greed, rapaciousness and lust for power to destroy the Planet..
Its interesting that men think that us radfems are “attacking” them. I have read countless, wonderful radfem and feminist blogs that just speak OUR TRUTH; our stories and experiences and feelings the way we see fit to express them. Men inherently know that they are guilty of oppressing women. They wouldn’t have such a problem with us having all-female meetings if they weren’t guilty of something. Us radfems and feminists are incredibly threatening to them. That’s why they loathe, and to try to silence us by using many lowbrow tactics, like you mentioned. The most threatened group against us are the MRA’S. They see we are liberating both ourselves and other women from oppression, and are afraid. That’s why the MRA’S started their twisted little group in the first place, I believe…Fear.