The first thing I got riled up about as a brand new parent was the sexualisation of little girls. In fact, it is one of the first things I started writing about on this blog. It is enormously disappointing to me that Melinda Tankard Reist has become the voice in Australia for this topic.
Two reasons.
Tankard Reist has a very narrow view on what are appropriate expressions of sexuality for adults. This means that it is easy for opponents to dismiss criticism of the sexualisation of children as being anti-sex. I think the denial of children’s sexuality actually harms the movement because it falls short of calling for children to be given the space to explore their sexuality for themselves without adult exploitation, manipulation and commercialisation. It tangles children up with the wrongful policing of young women’s sexuality, which has the effect of bringing the ‘small l’ liberals out in defence of advertisers, marketers and ‘free-choice-perfectly-informed consumers’. I find much of Tankard Reist’s work to be tinged with a kind of slut-shaming tone. Personally, I don’t think the problem with Bratz dolls is that they look like whores, I think the problem with these children’s toys is that they look like an adult version of sexuality and materialism. I also think there is a problem with someone thinking ‘whores’ are the very lowest expression of sexuality and therefore the very worst thing a girl could imitate.
And secondly, I just don’t find her feminism very analytical. Tankard Reist is good at picking up on examples of sexism and spreading the word on them – and I’ve enjoyed a lot of what she’s written in this area – but, she’s not so good at identifying the deeper themes beneath the sexism or in moving a stalled public conversation forward. This is why I was so very excited when I first heard Shelley Kulperger speak on the topic. Because yes! feminist analysis uncovering who is really most vulnerable when it comes to the sexualisation of children (hint: has something to do with intersectionality), and also, hey, what is therefore so wrong with the liberal defence of ‘sexy children’s advertising’, and hey, not being anti-sex either.
Tankard Reist is also a self-proclaimed anti-choice feminist. I don’t have a problem with feminists being personally opposed to abortion, but I have huge problems with women believing they can be feminist and at the same time actively campaign against the choice of abortion being available to other women. If you think you know better than women what they should do with their own bodies, you are not a feminist. If you think a better world would make abortion obsolete for women, then you better be directing all your attention towards making it a better world for women rather than closing options for women who exist in this world right now, because otherwise, you are not a feminist. If you hang about with the Right to Lifers, I’m going to damn well question your feminism. Right to Life harasses and terrifies women seeking abortions, this is not feminism. If you’re a feminist and you feel some urgent desire to work with Right to Life then you better be bloody campaigning within to get them to stop treating women that way. The so-called Feminists for Life in my state wrote a newsletter for a long time with the word ‘feminists’ unwittingly misspelled in the title – frankly, it is difficult for me to believe that women who couldn’t spell ‘feminist’ were anything but opportunistic in using the term to describe their group.
So, thank you Helen, Melinda Tankard Reist doesn’t speak for me either as a feminist.
Media, stop using Tankard Reist as the voice of Australian feminist motherhood.
I have never heard of Melinda Reist before today, but everything she seems to represent (mixing up anti-commercialization of sex with anti-sexuality in general) is very much a problem in the US, as well. And in feminism throughout the world, I suspect.
Damn straight!! A call to arms, bluemilk. I want to print this out and carry it around on cards for people, it’s so well-expressed… Particularly the idea about not closing options for women who live in :this: world, right now. This post is going to be one of my all time favourites.
Hallelujah!
[...] berries or locally-produced artisan cheeses and working on their knitting projects. All those Mommy Blogs and craft sales and DIY cupcake dresses. It’s the DIY aesthetic of Riot Girl taken a dozen [...]
I’m not sure if you saw this article:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/antiporn-activist-threatens-to-sue-blogger-over-religion-claims-20120116-1q39d.html
I thought I was the only person who felt that way after reading some articles by feminists. Thanks.
Perhaps my view about MTR would be different if I hadn’t witnessed her being attacked at the conference. I don’t know.
I don’t think MTR and I are the same kind of feminists. I’m worried that you think that.
Yes, I’m well aware of the patriarchal structures that oppress women.
Please delete my posts above. Thanks.
Catherine, I’ve deleted your previous comments by request but let me know if you change your mind and want them reinstated. As I said to you by email, I liked your comments, they were thought-provoking and insightful.
@Catherine
You have a very good point about the MSM being lazy and relying on one person to be the ‘voice of’…
I don’t see having sympathy for how someone was treated as necessarily agreeing with her views. It is a shame that MTR was treated badly by a room of feminists, but I understand that it is difficult to remain calm when someone who advocates anti-abortion speaks to a room of women who are (mostly) passionately pro-choice because it forms an essential part of their feminist identity. This is of course no excuse.
Mindy, MTR did not attend the conference I’m referring to.They convicted her in absentia.
Great post. I have been dismayed by the nasty personal attacks on MTR this week, but that doesn’t mean that I’m comfortable with her role as a self-appointed spokesperson for the feminist movement. Your analysis of why is spot on. Thank you.
I’ve identified as feminist for 30 years. I shouldn’t have to flash my academic record or my writing about whether some feminists can police others to prove my feminism. I would never campaign against a woman’s reproductive rights. Perhaps my views on some things have softened over the years, but that one stands firm.
To engage with your argument:
Lets say millions of women in the world identify as feminist, even though they are religious and don’t approve of abortion (whether they actively campaign against it or not). Who is going to tell them they can’t be feminists?
If a woman believes what you say a feminist believes and doesn’t identify as feminist, would you insist that she is?
I think feminism for most people is a journey – I am learning and making mistakes and changing my mind and expanding my ideas and reading and deepening my understanding all the time. I also think it is fine for a woman to find feminism and identify herself as such and not have done a lot of reading or talking or testing her ideas of it with other feminists. Totally fine. The more the merrier, hooray for her. A woman telling her truth about her life is a feminist and her lived experience is a rich source of feminist knowledge and all that.
BUT if she wants to be identified as a public figure for the movement then I think certain core expectations need to be met. That’s the problem with MTR. And really, would any movement be any different? Can I speak as an Evangelical Christian without believing in God? Can I expect to be accepted and supported by Evangelical Christians when I identify as a non-believer? Can I campaign against having faith and still be a public figure for the church?
Oh, and I’ve done some media, after I published a piece on motherhood and power in SMH, eight years ago. Radio was fine. Television – it was Insight – they edited out everything I said about societal structures that do impact mothering, or could support mothering. They just wanted me to oppose the attachment parent (who shared care with her partner, so not exactly extreme – they seemed to have it together). And they had footage of a mum taking her small kids shopping at 5pm – she told me after the taping that they encouraged her kids to be feral for the filming and tried to present the parents as incompetent.
Just be careful.
I saw that particular program. It was terrible and was so clearly a set up (for the supermarket shopping mother and the attachment parenting family).
Regarding your critique of ‘policing feminism,’ I can see where you are coming from but surely this is a hazy line at best. If feminism was merely about self-identifying then it would cease to have any real meaning.
I realise that many people do use the word in just such a way, as in, “feminism means that women should be free to make their own choices and I choose X, Y or Z, and, therefore, I am a feminist,” but this could hardly be considered to be a valid argument.
What if X was a role that was exploited or subjugated on the basis of gender? Or, more relevantly, what if Y was a role that exploited other women? Or what if Z was a role that served to reinforced the patriarchal structures that exploit many other women?
Doing what you want to do is hardly the definition of feminism – especially if what you ‘want to do’ is informed, constrained and defined by patriarchal structures or, even worse, if what you want to do actually serves to subjugate, control or exploit other women (and reinforce patriarchy while you’re at it).
And this brings us nicely to actively taking an anti-choice stance – this is a choice that actually serves to control other women and to reinforce the patriarchal control over their bodies by the State. As such, I don’t think it is a compatible with feminism.
[...] the heat of this Melinda Tankard Reist debate I thought it might be a good time to post a link to this piece, “The rights of the [...]
[...] it’s a feminist issue. No, hang on, it’s all about religion. Or Censorship. Or Bratz dolls. Or something. I’m not saying that these aren’t all factors, or valid points of [...]
I love this blog.
To those who want to proclaim that MTR is a victim of spineless attacks, you should have seen MTR and her crew attack Catherine Lumby and Alan McKee a few years ago when they appeared on that dreaful ABC show “Difference of Opinion”. MTR is about using feminist symbols to manipulate the ‘flock’ and bring them back to her God.
I’d say bluemilk’s hand has been raised for as long as this blog has been going, and that for precisely the same reasons MTR is having problems, bluemilk is anonymous…
I’m not sure it is MTR-bashing to discuss the limits of feminist
identity and whether a particular person can become a media identity
for a movement when they are at odds with the majority of the movement
(or are they? maybe I’m wrong, and maybe most feminists feel that
being anti-choice is not at odds with feminism, but let’s have the
discussion and see..?).
Right now there is rightfully a big debate/argument going
down in online feminism about a man with an abusive past becoming a
media identity for feminism. These discussions are important – they
help us as a philosophical movement understand what we’re about.
A broad movement needs to accept differences of opinon, certainly, but
how many differences and which differences? Let feminism be defined
purely by self-identification and it will end up a pretty meaningless
affair. How many freedoms for women can you limit for others before you’re considered anti-feminist?
I’ve thought long and hard about this, and like I said in the post, I
can accept a feminist being opposed to abortion (increasingly, Naomi
Wolf, for example) but I cannot accept the idea that a feminist would
actually campaign against the choice being available to other women.
There is a line there that you are crossing where you are no longer a
feminist – you believe that you know better than another woman what is
right for her, what decisions she can make about her own body, about
preserving her own health, life and dignity, you believe your views
are more important than her bodily sovereignty – you’re not a
feminist. You might be someone very interested in issues effecting
women, you might be someone who promotes causes important to women,
you might have important things to share, but you are a not a
feminist.
The difference between being inclusive and ensuring the movement
reaches and embraces feminists with lives and priorities and concerns
far different to my own – Aboriginal women, women with disabilities,
religious women, women working in the sex industry, transgender women
etc – is that these women are not trying to actively campaign against
my bodily sovereignty by their very existence.
I don’t like some of what is going on against MTR – for instance, I’ve yet to see a funny meme about her, they seem mean-spirited and spiteful so far. I share your concern about bullying behaviour in feminist circles and
about the decision to silence and exclude people with ideas some/most of us disagree with from speaking at feminist events, but I also think a
media identity/public speaker needs to be careful about claiming an
identity that doesn’t align with the movement they want to speak for. I have seen MTR speak at a feminist conference, and there was a lot of complaint about her being a speaker but she was included on the bill. Still, there is also a case to be made that the space for feminists is limited and that why give up some of that space to a non-feminist when it means a feminist speaker potentially misses out on the opportunity.
Yes, I am increasingly putting up my hand for media duties as a feminist.
‘For me feminism involves speaking out for what you believe is right and fair’. I think it involves working for women women to have what is right and fair, and the point of this post is that there are others out there saying what is patently not right and fair for other women, but calling themselves feminists.
I don’t like feminist policing – whose feminism is ok or enough and whose isn’t but I do think there are some fundamentals in this movement.. kinda like the way skepticlawyer put it here on the Hoyden post http://hoydenabouttown.com/20120116.11185/melinda-tankard-reist-doesnt-speak-for-me/comment-page-1/#comment-171758
I actually find some of the stuff Gail Dines talks about very compelling and thought-provoking and I don’t like the way she is treated by the liberal left, so I think I get where you’re coming from .. But, I have a very different definition of feminism to you it seems and MTR, maybe that’s where the disagreement lies. I believe feminism is more than a belief that men and women are equal, it is more than finding certain billboards sexist, it is an understanding of a systematic form of oppression working against women (and other marginalised groups) – it’s an understanding of the existence of the patriarchy.
The violence against women of forced pregnancy is intimately connected to the patriarchy!
That is a very good way of outlining the situation. I may debate internally the various philosophies of life and when it begins, I may look at my own children and be thankful that as a teen mum I decided to keep them (or I may also at times wonder if that was a sound decision), but a fundamental tenant of my identifying as a feminist that any woman can make this decision with absolutely no judgement from me. It should just be a baseline. There are many different schools of thought within feminism, but supporting bodily autonomy really should be automatic within all of them.