What’s the most important article/video of the year, and why do you think it’s important?
My nomination:
About a week ago on Fugitivus, Harriet J called out Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Susan Brownmiller, and others. Today her article was reposted on RHRealityCheck, a feminist blog.
The post is long, and parts of it may feel like flamebait to those ideologically aligned with “older” feminism, but I hope you will read past that. Get to the part about people who don’t identify with feminism because of the movement’s racefail, etc. And then keep going to the pith of this article, which I am of course quoting below.
(Boldface emphasis is mine.)
We have already begun creating the framework for this. There is a great conversation happening across… the internet. We are creating theory. We are creating terminology…
I fear that, a generation from now, there will be a new history for the new generation. It will say that the fourth, fifth, sixth wave of feminism broke away because [their forerunners] did not believe that a “yes” was necessary for sex…
I ask that you denounce Naomi Wolf’s comments on Assange’s rape charges…
I ask that you acknowledge that “enthusiastic consent” is a theory highly worth pursuing.
I ask you to do this because you have names that people recognize as part of feminism. So does Naomi Wolf. And now we are all experiencing, en masse, the old phenomenon: “I know somebody who is a feminist, and they think this is fine.” A big-name feminist has said, publicly, that …ripping a woman’s clothes off …is not violence…
You [famous feminists] have names. You have voices. Please give us somebody else to point to when we are told that we can be raped in the ways Naomi Wolf has decreed are acceptable. Please let us know that we are not on our own, that we have not already broken away, and did not hear the crack until Naomi Wolf “agreed to disagree” about our bodily autonomy, our safety…
If you do not speak up now, I will have trouble believing you do not agree; certainly, so will those who are far less interested, far less dedicated, and far less informed about feminism than I am.
…I do not wish to grow older and point to a time at which I broke with feminism, because it was not interested in preserving my body from attack. Because it was not different enough from that which it opposed.
[...]
The Sexual Revolution was, unfortunately and inevitably, enacted by people who had not been raised in a culture that welcomed– that even accommodated the existence of– female sexual desire. (Simplification and exaggeration for rhetorical effect.) No Means No was challenge enough to the patriarchy, was hard enough to advocate for, and I congratulate the many women (and men) who have done heavy lifting in this area.
This Assange controversy has brought to light the fact that feminists are not united behind the ethical standard of mutual enthusiastic consent. And this standard matters– where you stand on it matters. And I don’t think that second-wavers who are ignorant of this standard should be tarred as rape apologists, but I do think that they need to recognize that we have lived No Means No, and it isn’t enough. It isn’t nearly enough.
Most feminists are not legislators, judges, or legal scholars. We don’t need to agree about the exact definition of rape from the perspective of a potential rapist or prosecutor. We do need a much better consensus about what, in the eyes of a decent human who does not want to hurt anybody, defines sex. Because advocating for mutual desire is the other side of the anti-rape coin.
The The Most Important Pro-Woman Statement You’ve Seen All Year by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.