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Victoria Smith Profile picture
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Mar 8 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This casual pretence of not knowing robs women of the intellectual framework with which to analyse our oppression - and trashes all the centuries of work female thinkers and activists have put into developing it
It's in itself a demonstration of how gender functions - to invisibilise women's work, deny us a history, treat our contributions to politics and philosophy as transient and unimportant because there's no defining thread that connects us
This is a lot of what I'm trying to say here. You cannot take female experience seriously unless you treat it as interconnected - both within an individual lifetime (not as a series of menstruator / gestator etc. 'episodes') and across time
thecritic.co.uk/whose-day-is-i…
Women's marginalisation is intimately connected to lifecycle, which we have decided is too "essentialist" to mention. And it's intimately connected to our isolation from one another, which is reinforced every time we pretend we don't know of anything we might all have in common
The more early feminist work I read, the angrier I get at the arrogant "obviously, they did their bit, but *now* I'm going to correct their stupid ideas on what women were" postures taken by so many women in positions of influence today
It's like saying "you built a nice house, but I'm just going to improve on it by ripping out the foundations, because foundations are so basic compared to the fixtures and fittings"

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More from @glosswitch

Victoria Smith Profile picture
Mar 6
In The Beauty Myth (1990), Wolf describes how plastic surgery is not a real choice if the alternative is another form of mistreatment for women. She compares it to an animal gnawing off its own leg to get out of a trap. >
Thirty years on, I don't doubt the need many feel to have surgery so that the world might come a little closer to seeing them as they truly are. I still think the problem is the world and how it reads the body, not the body itself. >
30 years ago, I didn't want breasts, either, but wasn't allowed to disappear or have surgery. Instead I was force-fed. I don't consider force-feeding - forcing someone to live in a body they don't want - a good solution. It still distresses me. >
Read 5 tweets
Victoria Smith Profile picture
Mar 6
This is funny because I always thought gender stereotypes were maintained, & patriarchy consolidated, by men talking over women, misrepresenting their arguments and thinking dressing up is more groundbreakingly non-conformist than shutting up & listening
theguardian.com/fashion/2022/m… Image
When my older boys were little, I used to write a lot about the need to end gender stereotyping in clothing and toys - letting my sons were dresses etc. The men currently lecturing feminists on our alleged attachment to gender stereotypes had no interest in such issues.
Letting your kids wear what they like = boring mumsy stuff. Using "wearing what you like" as a substitute for actually changing your behaviour and examining your entitlement = bring it on!
Read 4 tweets
Victoria Smith Profile picture
Feb 5
One of the reasons I know I get so angry about men policing women's speech is because I grew up trying so hard to "crack the code" of avoiding violence. My teenage diaries are full of this obsession with "getting it right next time". >
When I look now, I can see there was never any "right answer". Perfectly sane behaviour could be deemed crazy one day, normal the next. The instability and changing rules were kind of the point, but I still felt such a failure for not finding the magic key. >
I see echoes of this in the way women twist their phrases, rephrase, concede parts of language, politely ask to keep hold of others, but no, the rules always change - because the central rule is, you will always end up in the wrong. >
Read 4 tweets
Victoria Smith Profile picture
Feb 5
How should women talk about competing rights, female bodies, legitimate concerns, male violence etc. now that all of these phrases are deemed "dogwhistles" for whatever personal prejudices 'progressive' men are busy priding themselves on swallowing down?
They'd listen to us, obviously, if we had legitimate concerns. It's just that when we use the phrase "legitimate concerns" it's a red flag that we don't have any legitimate concerns.
It's the next level of the "talk about women's rights without mentioning the word 'woman'" game. You're allowed to talk politics as long as you don't use *any* of the vocabulary you require. Mime is also not permitted.
Read 4 tweets
Victoria Smith Profile picture
Feb 4
Whenever people declare there needs to be "less heat, more light" in debates on sex and gender I think of JK Rowling's very carefully worded essay and the response she got. How much more "light" are women meant to offer? I suspect the only acceptable "light" is total silence.
Rowling is now viewed in the context, not of what she wrote, but the response she received. Like an abuse victim might be viewed as being damaged, troubled, in a "volatile" relationship - tainted by what is done to her, so ultimately complicit in it.
That aura of "well, she must have done something" - women know that however reasonable, rational, careful, compassionate they are, they cannot control other people's responses so are always at risk of becoming someone "involved" in a "heated" debate, "lacking in nuance"
Read 4 tweets
Victoria Smith Profile picture
Feb 2
I honestly think a lot of female MPs and journalists see women on Mumsnet as the plebs who'll get their hands dirty with all the campaigns they don't want to sully themselves with, then they'll breeze in afterwards and say "see? There was never any problem"
Members of the "waffling pretentiously about Judith Butler" class see risking being called certain names as beneath them. There are the lower orders who can deal with than.
Feminism's cannon fodder, who can be denigrated for being so uncouth as to fight when they could have stayed home and postured
Read 4 tweets

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