"Thank you, feminism" (and four other stories)

Five reads on the backlash against feminism to start your week

Dear readers,

I started writing this from a train to Liverpool, where I am spending a few days at the Labour party’s annual conference. Outside my window on the journey up here: rain, grey skies, neat green fields, wind turbines. Outside my window this morning: it’s still raining.

P.s. At my day job, I am now co-hosting The Prospect Podcast with my very brilliant colleague Ellen Halliday. We have some backlash-against-feminism-related guests coming up soon. In the meantime, if you like you can catch up on some of our recent episodes.

And now for the reads….

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1) “Thank you, feminism”

Since I wrote last week’s post about misogyny’s disparate pieces, a new report about a wealthy and powerful man allegedly abusing women has surfaced. The late Mohamed al-Fayed, who died last year, has been accused of raping and assaulting employees at Harrods, the iconic London department store he owned, over many years. And in the US, the rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs has been indicted for a litany of crimes including sex trafficking. In both cases, it looks numerous people enabled repeat offending by a sexual predator.

When I see such stories I despair. I feel like things will never change. I certainly felt despairing when I wrote last week’s post. However, an exchange on X with the writer Rebecca Solnit brought me some hope and lifted my spirits. I had quoted Solnit in the post on how we see the “spatter pattern” of misogyny everywhere. But where I was despairing, she sees a long-term trend of change:

RS: I've been talking about it for decades, thrilled that after 2012 it felt less like I was talking about it alone....

The Backlash: You were ahead of your time! What happened in 2012?

RS: The coverage of the Steubenville rape, the New Delhi rape/murder of Jhoti Singh, and campus rape activism and maybe time itself, with feminism and feminists/survivors on social media, opened space to have the conversation about violence against women....

It's often said that somehow #MeToo did this in 2017, but #MeToo was a consequence of the space opened up earlier for women to speak up and be heard and of widespread education about the nature of rape and other violence.

TB: I remember when these happened, Steubenville and New Delhi, feeling horrified and thinking how nothing had changed in my lifetime when it came to violence/abuse of women. But maybe the change is this space you describe and the end to the hatred and violence will still come

Do you ever think about how you apply your thinking on climate activism (joy as strategy, for instance) to this?

RS: Mostly I think about how while the individual stories continue to be grim, the overall situation for women is radically better than it was fifty or sixty years ago. Thank you feminism, I say then.

TB: This gives me hope!

RS: I mean a lot of what that post-2012 tsunami really means is: finally people, including the justice system and the media, are ready to listen to women about these crimes that took place years and decades ago as they were not before.

P.s. On the Independent, Olivia Petter asks whether we are seeing a “second coming” of MeToo.

2) Meeting incels

For Prospect, another very brilliant colleague, Emily Lawford, has written a beautiful and compassionate longread about her experiences of meeting men from incel forums. Here is a snippet:

I wanted to meet someone who was in the process of being dragged down into the manosphere. I found Dan*, 18, who seemed to spend a lot of his time posting on Reddit about men’s rights. He isn’t an extremist. But he’s very concerned about the damage women can do to men.

We meet one afternoon in the foyer of a cinema. He’s wearing a checked shirt and has a shiny brown ponytail. He says: “I want to start off by saying that if things offend you, I’m sorry. If I do say anything offensive, I don’t intend to.”

Dan is concerned that there’s no healthy, positive masculinity anymore. It’s feminists’ fault, he tells me: they’ve torn down the traditional ideals of manhood—holding doors, being a gentleman—and left a space for new role models who might be worse. “And now they’re freaking the fuck out about that.”

3) The persistence of rape culture in India

Last month, a trainee doctor was raped and murdered in a hospital in Kolkota where she was working. On New Lines, Surbhi Gupta writes about the persistence of rape culture in India throughout her lifetime. Here is a snippet:

Whenever rape makes the news in India, one particularly horrific instance is brought up. In the winter of 2012, a 22-year-old woman was brutally raped on a bus by six men after a movie night with a friend. Her injuries were so gruesome that she died two weeks later and the details so gory that widespread protests were sparked across the country. Drawing international attention, the case led to New Delhi — or perhaps India — being dubbed the world’s “rape capital.”

The attack prompted a series of legal and judicial interventions, including an expansion of the definition of rape and the institution of fast-track courts. Prison sentences were increased from seven to 10 years and the death penalty was introduced for cases of gang rape of a girl under the age of 18 that leads to death or a persistent vegetative state. The incident shook the nation’s conscience and triggered an intense public discussion of rape and gender-based violence. It seemed that Indian society was finally grappling seriously with the reality on the ground.

I was on the verge of completing high school then and I am on the cusp of turning 30 now, yet every time a new rape case gets media attention in India, a question recurs: Why has the situation not changed in over a decade?

4) It’s what’s on the outside that counts

Are young girls today being taught that their looks matter more than anything else? In the New Statesman, Amelia Tait asks when we stopped telling young girls that beauty is more than skin deep. She writes:

Celebrities say that anti-ageing injectables are “empowering”, and can make you “the best, most authentic version” of yourself. Headlines sincerely claim that “Botox is feminist” while decrying “plastic surgery shaming”. Cartoon princesses have become more diverse in their desires and dress sizes since I was a kid, sure, but Disney now launches tie-in skincare ranges for its latest films. The Inside Out 2 x Bubble Skincare “3-Step Barrier Boost Routine” promises to “keep your skin (and mind) balanced and ready for anything.”

Much of this is a course-correction, an attempt to defy the sneers of men who have for centuries viewed those who partake in beauty practices as frivolous and shallow (while simultaneously freaking out if we don’t conceal our under-eyes). Make-up and skincare can be a hobby as much as any other, and many nail artists are indeed artists. But I’m still troubled by the messages our youth are – and more specifically, now aren’t – consuming.

5) The men performing masculinity

Here on Substack,

15thCenturyFeminist

has been publishing a series of conversations with men about living in (with? through?) masculinity and patriarchy. This introduction explains the idea of the project. In the final installment,

John Lovie

reflects on his understanding of patriarchy throughout his life. He writes:

I never felt enough performing patriarchy, but that just made me try harder. There was always that cognitive dissonance. I moved again at thirty-four, this time to New Jersey, still chasing that dream of corporate success. What I found was rampant patriarchy. The casual misogyny was stunning. The company ran an ad in a trade magazine featuring a salesman (of course) sitting in a diner doing paperwork while the cleaning lady (of course) looked at the clock reading five minutes to midnight. The caption read "Customer commitment means missing your wife's birthday," with other versions reading "... your wedding anniversary," or "... your kid's soccer game." .

I tried to cosplay it for six years, but after too many missed birthdays, anniversaries, and soccer games, I finally quit corporate life for good just before my fortieth birthday. By that time I'd convinced myself I was unworthy of love and unworthy as a husband and father, and my first marriage paid the price.

Thank you for reading. See you next time.

Bonus: Being the only woman in the room | Project 2025 is a misogynist manifesto