Feminists

Some of you may be aware of the new Lily Allen video, which has kicked up a bit of controversy because of its message about the way women are portrayed in music videos. This is by no means the first time a pop star has sparked controversy and it won’t be the last, but it has certainly inspired me to write this blog post because I keep hearing the old argument about women who don’t make the right feminist statements, or make them in the right way. There are a lot of ideas about what constitutes feminism and what politics you should or do conscribe to when you decide to call yourself feminist. The idea that it’s the same for everyone is laughable, or that, in defining ourselves in this fashion, we are upholding the whole great sweeping umbrella of women’s inequality in order to bring about radical change.

For most women, being feminist means having an opinion about the situations they have seen around them in which they have witnessed oppression and inequality and have been, in some way, personally angered or otherwise inspired to act. For women who have not witnessed these things then, or simply not noticed them, feminism will not mean very much and, unless you really study it, as a subject, the wider scope of it will probably be a mystery to you. It certainly was for me before I went to university – where, as an MA and PhD student, I was treated to the overbearing and, apparently, better trained opinions of tenured professors whose business it was to write and study the developing phenomenon of feminist and post-feminist culture.

I was an abysmal student of feminism – although I did get better over time - but I was, I discovered along the way, a feminist of a sort. I have, and have always had, opinions on gender politics and the unfair divisions of responsibility and rewards between men and women. I was brought up by a single mother, whose attitude to my father was always bitter because, as she said, he shirked his responsibility and did not pay nearly enough child support while, at the same time, he expected to be hero-worshipped for the little help he gave us.

I have probably made everyone aware of the problems I have with both my parents, and I’m not going to get back into that here, but, in this, I can see my mum’s point. My dad did shirk a lot of his responsibilities and was able, by the privilege of being male, to avoid having to take most of them because, let’s face it, in most families (and I am saying most, because I know it’s not always this way) it’s the women who raise the kids. So, I was brought up to see the inequality of the sexes in an implicit and obvious sort of way, and, as such, I thought I was pretty qualified to talk about women and inequality because, hey, my view was as valid about that as anything else.

But, as I quickly discovered when I attempted to write about feminist criticism for my PhD supervisors, this is not enough. Because one person’s feminism is another person’s segregation; or so I was informed. If you describe any issue to do with women from your own perspective, there will always be someone else with another perspective who thinks you’ve excluded someone and, as a rule, there will always be someone who wants to make a fuss about it.
This is what’s happening with Lily Allen now. She’s being criticized because her video, which does make a good point about the images of women in music videos and does hit back very well against all the stuff in the media about her looks after she had two babies, is not good enough for some of the hardcore feminists who’ve watched it. They reckon it’s too much concerned with the images of white women and their particular experience of objectification, while the video itself features Lily surrounded by black female dancers who are performing a dance routine of the same style seen in a lot of the misogynistic videos that the song comments on. All of this is ironic, of course, and meant to show how shocking those images are and should be. And she has got people talking about it by doing it, hasn’t she? Because her point is that men should not be allowed to make those videos and sing those sort of lyrics and get away with it and that if a woman makes a video like that it makes her look like a slut. Hence the references to Miley Cyrus and whoever else it is she comments on.

She’s not defending or supporting any part of that world, she’s pointing out a double-standard, and doing it in a really strong way that will get attention.

Unfortunately though, this is easy enough to misconstrue and, despite the obviousness of the message and the plainness of the lyrics, people are still debating what her video and song actually say about the problem.

On the UK radio programme, “Woman’s Hour”, this week, there was a discussion, featuring several feminist women, about the impact of the video and the overall achievement (if any) that it made for women. Things about Lily’s own double standards, and her ignorance about racial inequalities as well as a part of feminist debates, were thrown around on this programme and one of the guest speakers became quite aggressive in her dismissal of the video as a whole, saying that it didn’t send any sort of good message simply because it did not support certain groups of women and seemed to be providing only a very narrow viewpoint.

Well, ok, this is the thing that bothers me. Actually, it’s several things.

As I said above, there will always be something that an individual opinion does not cover, and the whole point of “feminism”, as a term, is that it covers a broad and ever growing range of issues, people and opinions. It is an umbrella term. So, to talk about what kind of feminism a person subscribes to and then criticize them for being too narrow or lacking in support of other women, seems overly harsh to me.

Lily Allen is a singer, a woman, and, most importantly, an individual who possesses both a brain and a valid opinion. Her music video is her way of expressing that, as all her music has been – if you refer to her other albums, you will see that she has always had something to say on the issue of feminism and social hypocrisy as a whole. She makes good points usually. But she’s not a professor with a lot of degrees in this stuff; she probably hasn’t read every single feminist text since Simone de Beauvoir and she probably hasn’t seen everything there is to see of women’s inequality across the world. Who has??

This is my point:

Feminists who are well versed in feminism, who call themselves feminists publicly, who maybe even write on the subject regularly and have strong, political views that go with it, are always very quick to judge women who do not define themselves in this way and who are not similarly versed. There is a type of snobbery among these people, as though they believe that, by having a much broader knowledge, they are more qualified to make the necessary points and that, if other people are going to do it, they should at least get it “right”.

But there is no right. Feminism is not an academic subject – or, at least, it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be about political factions and the careful wording of every statement so as not to offend and exclude other people. Just like in politics, everyone has an opinion and has the right to an opinion, but not everyone wants to be a politician do they, and many would say that that was a good thing! For most people, feminism is something that comes out of life experience. You say what you’ve seen and, hopefully, you keep an open mind that there are things in the world that you haven’t seen and know nothing about. But that’s it. That’s my kind of feminism: the things I notice in my day-to-day life and the things that directly affect me or other people I know go into my general stream of consciousness about feminism and women in society. But I don’t know much about anything beyond that and I don’t feel especially obligated to go and discover it all.

I don’t have strong views on porn for example, or its removal from certain national newspapers (neither do I support it, I should add, it’s just that I generally ignore it and it’s not a part of my life), but, if I see an advert for Spearmint Rhino on the side of a bus shelter right outside a school full of impressionable kids (featuring a woman with her tits out no less) then I see a problem and become worried. I pay little attention to gyrating women in music videos and have no real interest in the impact that they have on younger people, because that’s not part of my consciousness. But if someone points it out to me I’ll think it’s in poor taste, of course. Some people might call me ignorant based on this, but it’s just that these things are not in my sphere of notice; it’s not that I ignore it I just can’t be expected to pay attention to everything. I have a life.

And so, as we all know, thanks to the popular press, does Lily Allen. She has a life, and two children and a busy career and she can’t be expected to pay attention to everything either, she’s just making a point about something she’s seen that has made her angry. She’s expressing an opinion, which we are then allowed to take or leave or argue with/about if we choose to. That’s the whole point. We’re not supposed to criticize her for what some people perceive to be her narrow-mindedness, or lack of broader understanding, or overall thoughtlessness in constructing the video (which, incidentally, probably wasn’t down to her anyway), or . . . well, whatever the hell it is that people have a problem with here. Because how does that help?

The radio show I listened to was asking the question, “Does the video mark a feminist triumph or does it just fall a bit flat?” But I think that’s a stupid question because it’s not up to Lily Allen, solely, to score a feminist point or triumph over the male dominated music industry that makes women look like hookers. It’s up to all of us to change that and it’s up to all of us to have opinions about what we see. So who exactly has been left out here? Everyone whose interested has now seen this video, they’re all talking about it, and they’ve all formed an opinion because, crucially, we are all allowed to say what we think. So it’s opened it up, hasn’t it? What’s the problem?

If black women find the video offensive that’s a valid view and I don’t want to take that away from anybody. But it’s important to realize that it’s not Lily Allen they have to take issue with here, it’s the producers and directors who make the decision to have half-naked and gyrating women in their videos and who, for whatever reason, have not chosen white women to fill those roles. Again that’s a comment on the industry, not an offensive, segregating statement about black women. And it gives all types of women across the world a chance to put their view. If you hate the video and find it offensive then good, that’s the point. If you then say so then great, that’s also the point. You are being given a chance to speak right there.

Really, for me, the feminist sniping and constant bickering about what types of feminism people subscribe to, and what kind of feminists individual people profess to be, really gets me down sometimes, because that’s just in-fighting and it doesn’t help to solve any of the real problems. That’s if the real problems are, in any way, solvable. While we’re all bickering about this shit, there are men standing around with their arms folded laughing at all the ruckus we’re making while, simultaneously, planning to carry on with the age old misogyny and double standards that we’re all saying we want to get rid of. Women everywhere have a voice, if you’ve got something to say stand up and say it but don’t bitch (yes I used the word in a non-offensive sense!) about the fact that other women in other walks of life and other parts of the world are leaving you out, because they’re not, they just don’t know you’re there. Either that or they don’t have the time available to point you out. They expect you to stand up for yourself and join the fight.

Feminism isn’t going to work unless we realize that we are all parts in the machine, no one stands up for everyone, we all have to chip in if we want to get anywhere. We’re all on the same side, right?