„Feminismus, was ist mit dir passiert?“

Der Artikel „Feminismus, was ist mit dir passiert?“ startet mit einem interessanten Vergleich:

You must make women count as much as men; you must have an equal standard of morals; and the only way to enforce that is through giving women political power so that you can get that equal moral standard registered in the laws of the country’ – Emmeline Pankhurst, 1913.

Eighty years later…

‘You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs’ – Catharine MacKinnon, 1993.

Es ist schon ein interessanter Vergleich, weil es einmal um Gleichberechtigung geht und einmal um das Feindbild Mann. Natürlich ist mit MacKinnon auch eine recht radikale Feministin für die Gegenüberstellung gewählt worden, die meisten Queerfeministinnen würden diese Worte so sicherlich auch nicht wählen.

Sie führt es dann weiter aus:

Many modern-day feminists engage in man-bashing rather than making dignified demands for equality, as the feminists of the early twentieth century did. So Robin Morgan unashamedly admits, ‘I feel that man-hating is an honourable and viable political act’. The view many modern feminists seek to spread, in the words of Marilyn French, is that ‘all men are rapists and that’s all they are’. A Feminist Dictionary goes so far as to define ‘male’ as ‘a degeneration and deformity of the female’. This is an effort to make men seem inferior, not to elevate the position of women. It starkly contrasts with the goal of feminists of old, which was to make women be viewed as equal, not superior, to men.

Wie gesagt, auch da wird man in verschiedenen Richtungen des Feminismus nicht zustimmen, allerdings erfolgt auch selten eine Abgrenzung und das Feindbild Mann wird dann eben auf andere Weise ausgedrückt, eben über „Männlichkeit“ oder andere Konzepte.

If recent debates are anything to go by, feminism now seems to be about protecting the delicate, sensitive, victimised female of the human species. For example, we apparently need to be protected from pictures of topless women in the Sun, lest these images destroy our self-esteem. Feminism perpetuates the view that women are fragile – in the words of Andrea Dworkin, ‘to be rapeable, a position that is social, not biological, defines what a woman is’. In contrast, the feminists of the early twentieth century were keen to show that they needed little help and could fend for themselves, just like any man. Indeed, as early as 1847, Charlotte Brontë wrote: ‘Women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer.’

Eine Abkehr von der Opferposition hin zu einem positiveren Feminismus wäre in der Tat schön. Allerdings ist diese nicht zu erwarten. Die Opferrolle ist zu verführerisch und wird zudem durch IDPOL gestärkt: Eine Abkehr von ihr ist Verrat an der Sache.

The goal of feminists today is to change certain men’s view of women as sexual objects. This speaks to a fundamental shift in the focus of feminism, away from demanding structural change – that is, having women in the workplace and represented in government – towards calling for cultural change – for example, by reengineering certain men’s values and views. In part, this is a result of the fact that women now have jobs and are represented in government, so inevitably the scope of feminism will become narrower. The economic and political security we now enjoy has given women the ability to bring feminism to the forefront – but it has also made feminism less appealing. As Gloria Steinem said, feminism was not about ‘getting a job for one woman’: ‘It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.’

Der Unterschied ist hier eher, dass man die Perspektive verschoben hat. Von tatsächlichen Änderungen hin zu vermeintlichen Angriffen auf die Geschlechterrolle. Mit der Bekämpfung der Sicht der Frau als Objekt soll eben eine neue Sicht auf die Frau erreicht werden, die dann positiver sein, weniger von Rape Culture geprägt, fällt erst die Objektifizierung der Frau, dann fällt auch alles andere. 

In sum, feminism wasn’t always as narrow and petty as it is today. It was once about equality for all, true freedom, more choice and radical change, not censorship, man-bashing and the social re-engineering of bad male attitudes. Gloria Steinem put it well: ‘A feminist is anyone who recognises the equality and full humanity of women and men.’ Contrast that with Sally Miller Gearheart’s demand that ‘the proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10 per cent of the human race’.

Es wäre schön, wenn der Feminismus einen Umschwung schaffen würde und wieder und weg kommen würde von Zensur, Männerbahsing und dem Versuch Männerverhalten zu ändern. Ich bin allerdings sehr skeptisch. Die vorherrschende Meinung im Feminismus ist immer noch der Genderfeminismus und innerfeministische Kritik daran findet letztendlich kaum statt.