How popular is feminism? (and four other stories)

Five reads on gender (in)equality to end your week.

The kids are asleep, it’s dark outside, and the weekend is tantalisingly near. Here are five reads on gender (in)equality and the backlash to feminist progress to end your week.

1) The ubiquity of violent men

This week, in one 24-hour period, some of the biggest news stories in the UK involved male violence against women. I wrote this about how, despite the statistics, we are failing to see the frequency of such violence for the emergency that it very clearly is (see also this tweet from the Domestic Abuse Commmissioner).

lucy manning @lucymanning

Struck by the words of friend & colleague of Emma Pattison, the head shot by her husband. “Emma’s loss reminds us it doesn’t matter how successful or accomplished or brilliant you are as a woman. You are only as safe as your male partner allows you to be.” CEO of @GDST

2) How feminism is losing popularity

This slightly-too-long piece is interesting on the backlash in the United States to the Me Too movement. It includes this nugget on opinion polling about feminism:

Public opinion polls show the backlash rolling on. Feminism is becoming less popular, especially with young men. According to a 2022 study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, 62 percent of young Republican men say feminism is a net negative for society, and 46 percent of young Democratic men agree. (Less than a quarter of young Democratic women agree with that statement.) In contrast, in 2020 a Pew study found 60 percent of men across parties agreeing that feminism was “empowering,” and only 34 percent saying it was “outdated.”

3) An inter-generational conversation

Not strictly speaking from the past week, but this is brilliant and I wanted to share it. A new magazine, The Dial, published its first ever issue recently, all about reproductive rights. In this piece, the Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux and filmmaker Céline Sciamma talk about their lives, work and feminism. On the latter, Sciamma says:

There are two different scales: that of our individual lives, and of our collective struggles. We can fight for alternatives, or embody them from day to day, making our lives a kind of laboratory in which we can experiment with other ways of making community. So yes, we are going to fight all our lives, but it will enrich us, it will call upon the entirety of ourselves. That is what I find promising going forward. What we have to do is see feminism as a complete reconfiguration of the world.

4) Madonna’s words to live by

Madonna went to the Grammys and had to deal with a lot of online nastiness about her looks and her apparent penchant for plastic surgery. Her response was a joyous riposte to all the haters:

I look forward to many more years of subversive behaviour - pushing boundaries - standing up to the patriarchy - And most of all enjoying my life.

I might adopt that as my new motto. But there is something problematic in defending plastic surgery on the grounds of feminist empowerment. My day-job colleague Pravina Rudra wrote this sharp piece about that.

5) Why feminism needs gender transgression

At the bottom of this Q&A about second-wave feminism in the New York Review of Books, there is a discussion about the relationship between trans politics and feminist thought. Here is a snippet:

Feminism, to my mind, names the richest, most sustained body of thought we have about gender as both a constraining imposition and an uncontestably personal language through which we describe and express our most intimate selves. Trans and gender-nonconforming people need that history. It belongs to us, too

And a bonus: In case you missed it, this week I published the first ever monthly The Backlash Q&A. Exciting times. I asked Jane Sloane of the Asia Foundation about whether we can achieve global gender equality without improving access to childcare.

Every month, I will interview someone who can help explain a facet of this moment in the struggle for gender quality. Got a suggestion of something I should look at? Let me know if you do…!