It’s that time of year again, when all good feminists stop, take stock and ask themselves not “what have feminists achieved over the past year?” but “how many ways have other feminists fucked up?” It’s an important part of feminist praxis, perhaps the most important part: being self-critical in some vague, global sense in order to make yourself (in the specific sense of the word) look good and other women look bad. Obviously I’d hate to miss out on this so I’ve compiled my own list on what “we” (as in “you”) have got wrong in 2014.
The errors are extensive, so extensive only someone of vastly superior moral standing would be able to spot them. Thankfully, I’m one such person. Read it, fellow feminists, and feel duly ashamed.
Feminism in 2014: Where did it all go wrong?
- over-use of alienating terms such as patriarchy, misogyny, male violence, rape culture, woman, female, vagina etc. Terms to use in 2015: meanies, meanness, the be-meaned
- insufficient innovation and expansion in the realm of phobias and –ERF acronyms. Proposed for 2015: PERF (penis exclusionary radical feminism), fuckphobia, hommephobia, garçonphobia, fillephobia, phobiaphobia
- only 23.4 per cent of female experience classed as “lived” in 2014, down on 42.1 per cent in 1994 and 100 per cent in 1954
- feminist fashion faux pas, 2014: pants excessively ethical, t-shirts insufficiently ethical,
shoes just wrong - continued failure to centre insights of the following within feminist praxis: Paris Lees, Brooke Magnanti, Jeremy Clarkson, Toothless the Dragon, Limahl from Kajagoogoo
- insufficient checking of: cis privilege, time, credit rating, this funky groove
- all opinions on celebrity feminists officially deemed to be “the wrong ones”
- unauthorised befriending and retweeting of other feminists (from January 1, 2015 a handy consent form will be available to download from Feminism HQ, requiring the signatures of two responsible males before any future feminist interactions take place)
- shameful lack of “nuance” in feminist responses to “nuanced” acts of rape and murder
- persistent failure to make Ally Fogg proud in spite of all he’s done for us
- milk soured and village crops failed due to irrational beliefs in “female biology”
- enthusiastic consent deemed “insufficiently enthusiastic”
- excessive focus on pronouns at the expense of proper nouns, adverbial clauses and correlative conjunctions
- feminist hands placed too frequently on feminist hips
- global shame at ongoing failure to know what the feminist take on Frozen should be
- foolish inclusion of beetroot juice in Feminism in London goody bags
- failure to destroy millennia of deeply ingrained hatred, violence and systematic oppression by listening to the former editor of Loaded
- all attempts to harness the power of queering as a method of contraception as yet unsuccessful, perpetuating cissexist use of the coil and the pill
- something something banknotes
shoes There are, I am sure, many more things that could be added to the list. Unfortunately I’m too busy being perfect to think of them. As for you, isn’t now the time to don a hair shirt, self-flagellate and resolve to make 2015 the year in which you listen, learn and bloody well know your place?
This post was originally published at Glosswatch and was cross-posted with permission from the author.
Glosswitch is a mother of two and languages editor who thinks women are amazing and loves writing on feminism.