My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.

Flavia Dzodan

I suppose there are worse things to be than a middle-class feminist. I could be one of those working-class-background-but-now-I-write-for-national-newspapers feminists who spend an awful lot of time pointlessly undermining the aspects of the feminist movement which are simply too bourgeois to be given the time of day.

Some bullshit feminist

Bags packed, one last post before I go. Because I can’t stop thinking about this and I want it out of my head before I get away.

You know that New Statesman piece by the Vagenda editors, In defence of Caitlin Moran and populist feminist? The rubbish one in which middle-class, educated, big-word-using feminists are played off against working-class, non-educated, “real”-issues feminists, and all of them are white, and black women are just some token thing the posh feminists refer to when they want to “keep feminism for themselves”? Yes, that one. It’s really got to me – both the piece and the unapologetic response to the hurt that’s been caused. It’s got to me because I have been a tosser in much the same way and I’d like to make it clear that privileged feminist bullshit can still be turned, if not to feminist gold, then to something slightly more palatable (snot, perhaps, or spit. Maybe even bullwee).

That second of the above quotations is of course from me (you didn’t think I was just not going to attribute it, did you?). It’s from years and years ago. Well, actually, it isn’t. It’s from this blog in April of this year (I’ve since deleted the post itself, out of shame). It’s a smug, entitled statement, wheeling out the classic excuse for failing to engage with the lives and needs of other feminists, since that would be  “pointlessly undermining aspects of the feminist movement”. To be fair it was written mainly out of annoyance at Julie Burchill and the way she sneers at supposedly “middle-class” diseases such as anorexia – and she still pisses me off for that – but it remains a ridiculous thing to have written. I am sorry I wrote it. I hope not to write, or indeed think, similar things again.

Even though I’m embarrassed by this, I wanted to highlight it because it seems to me it’s all too easy to claim “I check my privilege” without referring to concrete examples of the times when you’ve fucked up. I can’t help thinking this makes things harder for the person who’s being called out – they’re being named and shamed, whereas you can airily refer back to some vague time when you were bad, too, but now it’s okay because you’re more vigilant. I don’t think calling out privilege should be a case of making people feel bad (even if, like me, they’re being total tossers). It should be about enabling people to self-correct. As a white, middle-class feminist, I don’t think I can vent righteous fury at the Vagenda editors without being more specific about where I’ve gone wrong, too. I get the impression they’re not listening to anyone right now, but I still admire the fact that other feminists – especially those most slighted – are giving them the chance to learn.

The way I feel about feminism has changed even in the last few months. Partly it’s to do with my own awareness of how experiences of sexism differ within the context of my own life; as an older person and a mother, the sexism I encounter now is not the same as the sexism I experienced ten years ago. More than that, however, it’s to do with communicating with people I wouldn’t normally meet (alas, I don’t tend to meet any other feminists in “real” life, middle-class or otherwise). This might sound trite, but twitter has broken down many of my fears about the areas of feminism that I found threatening. For me, class was always an issue as I felt one of the things that has harmed me the most (anorexia) is often dismissed by working-class feminists as a pathetic, middle-class non-issue (“who worries about body image if they can’t afford to eat?”). It’s through dialogue with a broad range of feminists that I’ve realised this was my own prejudice based on past trauma and the magnification of a very small number of adverse comments. I let it turn me into someone who saw a specific focus on working-class concerns as a threat (even though I’m conscious from my own encounters that anorexia can be a working-class concern, too). I am ashamed of that, but thanks to discussions with some very patient people, I don’t think it any more (and I am hoping these people don’t feel too let down by me now).

I can’t imagine the hurt caused to WoC by the way the Vagenda editors have responded to their complaints. I don’t wish to defend the behaviour, but I do wish to say that self-correction is absolutely possible and perhaps one of the most valuable things there is to feminism. It’s not a betrayal of principles, it’s an endorsement of them. How can we persuade others to correct themselves if we’re unable to engage with them in a similar way? How believable is change if we see our own values set in stone, with no possibility of improvement? If you experience feminism changing you it becomes much more real and valid – and the idea of change in others is far more plausible.

Anyhow, that’s what I think. And it wasn’t meant to sound sanctimonious. How could it, when I am so obviously in possession of complete and utter tosser potential?

Right, I’m definitely going now. And most definitely not to a somewhere sunny with disturbingly colonialist overtones for someone of my race and class, like, say, a Caribbean island. Oh no …*

* If you haven’t read the previous post, I am about to set off for the Caribbean. It is a work trip but yes, I feel pretty fucking privileged right now.