"Diabolical lies" (and four other stories)
Five reads on gender (in)equality and the backlash against feminism.
Dear readers,
Last week, my regular X (can I please still refer to it as Twitter?) doomscrolling was interrupted by an unsettling video being shared widely on the platform. This was CNN’s exclusive security camera footage of P Diddy, now widely revealed as a violent abuser, beating a former girlfriend in a hotel lobby in 2016. I watched the footage without thinking, disturbed by this casual vignette of intimate partner violence in amongst the posts. The voyeurism felt wrong, cold, and there I was taking part. Then I saw a post which revived my faith in the human capacity for empathy, by the broadcaster Charlene White. Here it is:
Now, welcome to the new The Backlash subscribers, and welcome back to those who have been here for a while. This newsletter has been less than regular of late, partly the result of a lot of change (nothing bad, just good old change) in my life recently. I’m hoping to reach an equilibrium soon, and to get back to sending this out weekly, and even on the same day every week. Bear with me—and wish me luck…
And now, the reads….
1) “Radicalisation as a masculinity project”
Last year, the scholar Elizabeth Pearson brought out a book called Extreme Britain: Gender, Masculinity and Radicalisation. She went on the New Lines podcast to discuss her research, which shows that misogyny has been more significant in radicalisation and the growth of extremist movements than previously acknowledged. She says:
“It’s not really possible to understand extremism without thinking about gender…I talk about radicalization as a masculinity project, by which I mean that at each stage you see this fulfilling of particular masculinities as a means of gaining status.”
And on how misogyny is useful to extremist groups:
“[Misogyny is] a tool that maintains gendered orders and those gendered orders … uphold men’s power and men’s dominance. It’s not about hating women. In fact, it’s about rewarding some women, the women that are working with you to uphold those structures.”
And on what right-wing and Islamist groups in Britain have in common:
“Everybody was like, ‘Men and women are fundamentally different.’ … This was something that was common to both groups. They have this belief about what gender is and how men and women should behave.”
2) The UK’s birth trauma inquiry
British maternity services are increasingly unsafe for users. On 13 May, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on birth trauma published an 80-page report which details how this long-time underperformance has led to scandalous rates of physical and mental trauma and harm. As Denis Campbell writes:
[The report] highlights how “mistakes and failures” by maternity staff lead to stillbirths, premature births, babies being born with cerebral palsy because they were starved of oxygen at birth, and “life-changing injuries to women as the result of severe tearing”. How some mothers were mocked, shouted at, denied pain relief, not told what was going on during their labour, left alone in blood-stained sheets, with desperate bell calls for help going unanswered – all examples of “care that lacked compassion”. And how, in some cases, “these errors were covered up by hospitals who frustrated parents’ efforts to find answers”. It amounts to a shameful catalogue of negligence in the only area of NHS care where two lives – one still unborn – are on the line.
For the New Statesman, Hannah Barnes recently wrote a powerful piece about her own nightmare experience of giving birth, and Britain’s maternity scandal.
P.s. Last year I wrote a long read trying to understand what’s gone wrong in the UK’s maternity services.
3) Diabolical lies
On 11 May, American football player Harrison Butker caused quite the stir with his commencement address at a Catholic liberal arts college in Kansas. Butker covered various topics, including abortion and “degenerate cultural values”. Here’s what he had to say about women (as per the Guardian):
Butker later addressed the women in the audience, arguing that their “most important title” should be that of “homemaker”.
“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolic lies told to you,” Butker said. “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
Relatedly Petronella Wyatt has a personal essay in the Mail titled: “I’m single, childless and alone. Feminism has failed me and my generation.”
4) Ukraine’s war widows
On Foreign Policy, Liz Cookman interviews five Ukrainian women whose partners are among the 70,000 soldiers who have lost their lives in the war. She points out that you hear little about their sacrifice and grief. Here’s a snippet:
As the heads of devastated households, these women have become the sole providers for their families, responsible for finding shelter amid widespread destruction, raising children alone and keeping them safe amid conflict. Some are so young that they are setting out on adulthood in mourning. Ultimately, they will raise the generation that will rebuild Ukraine and shape its postwar trajectory.
5) Decolonial feminism
This was published in February, but I thought it was so interesting when I came across it this week that I had to include it. In The Republic, Ololade Faniyi has published an “African Feminist Manifesto” that touches on colonialism, modernity, queerness, and tech. Here Faniyi summarises the argument:
Decolonial African feminist thinking thus prompts us to question supposed prescriptive statements when the production of its knowledge is stripped from certain bodies and centres only on a specific type of white body. It connects us to a critical legacy that binds contemporary Black women to their ancestors who not only resisted slavery but created breaches of resistance within alien spaces of domination, and whose legacies continues to sustain the spiritual and material connections between Afro-diasporic people today. A decolonial feminist thought is equal parts rage and radical care. It is a collaborative and unbiased call to action that insists on justice, self-determination, and autonomy, building on the legacies of foremothers to create our lifelines for our future and the ones that come after us. Ultimately, decolonial feminist thought is understanding that our future will not be a utopian world, but one where our interpretations are our own, and our tools of worldmaking are even more rooted across diasporic lands and seas and more sophisticated and cohesive, in refusing coloniality and its systems of domination.
P.s. In 2017, The Republic published a series of essays on the state of African feminism.
Bonus: Finally for Judith Chicago | “No Web without Women”
Thank you for reading. See you next time.