How things intersect (and four other stories)
Five reads on gender (in)equality and feminism.
1. How things intersect
Last week was quite the week here in the UK for any misogyny/gender (in)equality/backlash-to-feminist-progress watchers. Last Monday, an officer from London’s Metropolitan Police Service pleaded guilty to 20-years-worth of rape and assault charges (49 counts against 12 women), making him one of the UK’s worst sex offenders. David Carrick had evaded justice while working as a police officer, despite various allegations being made about him over the years. The details of his crimes are sickening, as is the thought that if anyone at the Met had taken any of the problems raised about him at all seriously a lot of women might have been saved a lot of pain. In the end, a different local force did take complaints against Carrick seriously. It was that investigation which resulted in his conviction.
This was the latest evidence that the Met has a toxic culture that is a danger for women. Even after a young Londoner, Sarah Everard, was abducted and murdered by a Met police officer in 2021, the force still didn’t take the violent misogyny in its ranks seriously. For so many years, Carrick used his position as an officer to threaten and intimidate women. As my day job colleague Rachel Cunliffe wrote, the Met has shown once again that it is a haven for sex offenders. It is not clear how any woman, or any victim of abuse or assault for that matter, can look to it for protection.
Meanwhile, something else related but separate has been going on, too (bear with me): PM Rishi Sunak blocked Scotland’s gender recognition reforms, which would allow people to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate from the age of 16, and also shorten and simplify the process for getting one. It was the first time the UK government has used section 35 of the Scotland Act to block Scottish legislation. Scotland Secretary Alister Jack explained the reasoning for the unprecedented move thus: “After thorough and careful consideration of all the relevant advice and the policy implications, I am concerned that this legislation would have an adverse impact on the operation of Great Britain-wide equalities legislation.”
Whatever the reasons for Sunak blocking the bill (some argue he had every right to, others that Sunak is “stoking a culture war”), the legislation faced opposition from people who argue that simplifying the process for legally changing your sex hurts women’s rights, including putting single-sex spaces at risk. What some claim is that violent men would abuse the self-id element of the legislation to attack women. In the lead-up to Scotland’s vote on the bill two UN rights experts spoke out in support and in opposition.
So this week, my Twitter timeline was full of news about the horror at the Met and whether or not people who might abuse a gender self-id system would hurt women if they could. These two stories intersect when it comes to misogyny and its violent manifestations. I did wonder, reading about them this week, whether perhaps trans women are not the enemy or the problem here. It is men like Carrick, and the cultures that enable them, who are. If only the people so incensed by Scotland’s legislation, and those incensed by the opposition to it and Sunak’s blocking of it, could talk to each other.
2. Women and “the well”
The New York Review of Books has published an essay by the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, and a letter in response by Cuban-Italian writer Alba de Céspedes y Bertini, about the interior life of women. Originally published in 1944, there is much in this beautiful exchange that still resonates today.
3. An ode to feminist foreign policy
Last October, Sweden’s new government dropped its feminist foreign policy (FFP), which was instituted in 2014. This joint essay by activists and officials “working all over the world to advance this approach” explains why Sweden’s FFP was visionary and more than mere policy virtue signalling. This piece, meanwhile, looks specifically at Germany and whether or not the protests in Iran are a test for Berlin’s attempts at FFP.
4. The “shame” of unintended consequences
Another big story over the past week (or so) was the all-male short-list for the gender neutral category of best artists at the Brit Awards. In an interview over the weekend, Sam Smith, a non-binary musician who had supported the move to gender neutral categories, said it was “a shame” no women were nominated. The problem, of course, is not necessarily with gender-neutrality in itself. It’s with those involved in making nominations for the shortlist not suggesting any women, despite a plethora of female talent in the music industry. As Emily Bootle wrote in the i:
Though it may be surprising given their inconsistencies, the Brit nominations aren’t decided by a few white guys in a skyscraper: they’re chosen by the “voting academy”, a varied group of over 1,000 industry execs, from lawyers to producers.
5. We will miss you, Jacinda!
Last but not least, unless you have been concentrating very hard on ignoring the news, you will know that Jacinda Ardern, hero to women worldwide, has resigned as New Zealand’s prime minister, citing having “no more in the tank”. Here is a fun round-up of her “best feminist moments”. As has been pointed out, even her resignation, with its admission of fallibility and vulnerability, was admirable. I struggled to imagine a male leader admitting it was time for him to step down in the same way. Is that sexist of me or is there some truth in that (— or have I been thinking too much about Benjamin Netanyahu and Boris Johnson)?