Fiona McGarry is a freelance journalist and radio producer. Her radio documentaries have been funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) and the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund. She is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and The Irish Daily Mirror and happiest when well caffeinated in front of a good box set.
Feminism. Is there a more loaded term in the English language? Or, in my case, one more likely to bring on a sudden and severe case of writer’s block? When tasked with writing an article on the nature of Feminism in 2015, the ideas certainly flowed.
2014 was a bumper year for examples of feminist issues entering the public consciousness. From Kim Kardashian’s attempt to ‘break the internet’ with the sheer girth of her rear end, to the breastfeeding woman at Claridge’s Hotel in London who was instructed to ‘cover up’, the year gone by has given us plenty of reasons to reflect on the position of women in the modern world. So, I duly wrote my ideas down, thrashed them about a bit, gave them a little breathing space, and poured over them to see if a considered and measured column on modern feminism might emerge. Dear reader, it did not. And I couldn’t understand why. Surely, a woman writing a column on feminism is as natural as… hmm. The first stumbling block.
So, I took to Twitter for inspiration. And that’s when I had a light-bulb moment. Even a cursory social media search for the term ‘feminism’ reveals the deep divisions that exist. The entrenched views, negativity and general vitriol on all sides are enough to make a girl close up her keyboard and head back to the 1970s (think Ron Burgundy, Veronica Corningstone and the open gender warfare in the Channel 6 newsroom). It’s tame by comparison.
The fact of the matter is that in 2015, when a woman publically expresses a view on gender – or on any other matter, she is likely to be met with a barrage of criticism that ranges from online ridicule to real-life death threats. Just ask Anita Sarkeesian (@femfreq), the feminist video games critic who was forced, last October, to cancel a public talk at a US university when threatened with ‘the deadliest school shooting in American history’.
Compared with courage of someone like Sarkeesian, who is determined to keep on calling out the sexism and misogyny of certain video games, or of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, who puts her life at risk to demand education for girls and women; putting down a few words on women’s issues didn’t seem s difficult. But, nonetheless, it was.
And then I realised that, even in 2015, self-censorship is a mechanism that most women learn along with language itself. By the time we reach adulthood, we’ve learned that speaking up on issues like gender equality can get us labelled as ‘whiny’, ‘frigid’ or ‘man hating’. And, if we forget the lesson, there’s social media to remind us. So, instead of openly expressing difficult or controversial views, many women continue to squeeze themselves into roles that constrict just as tightly as the notorious whalebone corsets of the Victorian era ever did.
And while we do that, opportunities for greater gender equality continue to be lost and the social media shouting match rumbles, depressingly, on and on. Depressingly, because gender equality is an issue for men, just as much as it is for women.
Last September, actress Emma Watson told the UN that by deciding she was a feminist, she’d inadvertently joined the ranks of ‘women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unattractive’. In doing so, she struck out at the misogynistic labels that stop so many women from speaking up about the sexism they routinely experience.
Crucially, Watson also asked men and boys to join the UN’s HeforShe campaign – a solidarity movement for gender equality. And while the initiative must achieve more than signatures on a petition and viral video, it gives hope that we can set the stifling labels and stereotypes to one side. Maybe then more women will find the confidence to speak up on gender issues, and to invite the men in their lives into the conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXqtjhTsa3g
