Virgin/Whore/Lunatic then?

Company have re-printed a quiz published in Ellie Levenson's book The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism. The original may well have been presented as a tongue-in-cheek bit of humour, but it comes across as a bit... shite, really. Instead of embracing the different facets of feminism and womanhood, it gives three answers for each question: doormat, man-hater, "normal" girl. It still presents the option of being a radical feminist as both foolish and wrong. It's not wrong, if that's how you roll - after all, marriage is a patriarchal tradition. Holding the opinion that more women should hold management and board positions in a company isn't radical feminism, it's fucking feminism.

Let's take a look at question four

"Your partner offers to take the male contraceptive pill as part of a trial study so you can give your body a break from the extra hormones. Do you...

• Say "Actually honey, women's bodies are designed this way in order to bear children. We should be stopping contraception altogether and making a family - that's all I want in life."
• Say "Why make the empty gesture, every time I sleep with you the act of penetration feels like a crime against women anyway?"
• Say yes, but because you don't trust him to remember you secretly get fitted with a coil as well.

Where is option four - "discuss it reasonably, including whether you would be prepared to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy and whether or not a second back-up method of contraception should be used"? Why the fuck do I have to choose between caricature doormat, caricature feminist, or distrustful woman? Why the fuck is it assumed I'm shagging a man anyway?

Why does each "normal" option, the one women are supposed to choose, include a slightly negative side. Why do I have to be secretly pleased when I'm wolf-whistled at by strange men? Why does offering to split the cost of dinner exclude the possibility to have sex with the dinner date in question? Why do I have to be a man-hating lunatic to be a feminist? I get that Company/Levenson are trying to say that feminism doesn't have to be scary, but - to borrow a phrase from a friend,

"Feminism IS scary because it questions the gender stratification of society and that's a good thing, scary is good when looked at that way"

The quiz makes feminism fluffy instead - like the book, it presents feminism as pink and fluffy and "girly"; it buys into the fallacy that women are supposed to (only) like pink fluffy girly shit, that their brains can't cope with long words like patriarchy - it seems to say that feminism needs to be fun and fluffy for women to understand. In patronises women. We do not need pink fluffy to make something understandable or attractive.

Today's feminism doesn't mean you have to hate on men. But it doesn't mean you should embrace being "feminine" (whatever the fuck that is). It doesn't even mean you need to have ovaries. Feminism doesn't need to be fluffy. It needs to be scary enough to make a bloody difference.

In an attempt to answer the question "are you a feminist?", Feminazery presents another version:

Question One: Do you think that an individual's rights and opportunities should be limited due to any of the following factors: their biological sex, their gender, their choice in sexual partners, whether or not they are mentally or physically disabled, what colour their skin is, what their surname is, how old they are, whether or not they are presenting as the same gender as the one they were assigned at birth, where they were educated, the accent they speak with, whether they fit a narrow definition of beauty, or whether they are over- or underweight?

1. Yes
2. No

If you chose option two, you're a feminist. How radical you are is up to you! If you want to hate all men, wear high heels, have kids, watch porn... whatever, it's YOUR CHOICE. As long as you take a moment to think about why you're choosing whatever, and decide if that choice is one that doesn't harm anyone else, then carry the fuck on.

If you chose option one, you're a twunt.

Protecting women's rights - by removing their freedom of choice

I'm referring, of course, to France's 'progressive' proposition to fine Muslim women £700 for wearing the veil in public. The president of the ruling party claims that the new ruling is "intended to protect the ‘dignity’ and ‘security’ of women." It's a move for sexual equality, says Jean-François Copé, and nothing to do with religion (to which anyone with a modicum of intelligence will likely reply "Pull the other one!")

A nice thought, but let's look at what is really being suggested here. We make the assumption, first and foremost, that women do not choose to wear the veil. This is a very dangerous assumption, and is based primarily in ignorance and in the patronising Western idea that all Muslim women are victims of an oppressive patriarchal religion - as India Knight points out in her recent Times article, '....basically that they are all tragically mute victims of an especially monstrous patriarchy and are probably beaten or set fire to if they don’t cook supper nicely'.

Now there's an element of truth to this. Certainly some Muslim women do wear the veil because it is forced upon them; because their culture states it is what 'good' Muslim women do, or because their husbands demand it of them. And that's an unsavoury thought. But what I take umbrage with it the great white assumption that our way of life is somehow superior - that by 'freeing' a woman from the bonds of the Burqa and integrating her into our society we are somehow rescuing her, awakening her to a whole new world of feminine freedoms.

The problem is, that's largely a falsitude. Can we really talk about women's liberation from a country with the lowest rape conviction rape in Europe? When we penalise women in rape cases for utilising that "freedom of choice" and wearing a miniskirt? "She was asking for it" is still a valid criticism in our society. We are free to brand women 'sluts' and 'whores' when we consider them underdressed by our superior Western standards, or alternatively we objectify them - a woman in a tight pair of jeans is obviously asking to be leered at! Of course, the freedom to choose what we wear is only afforded to us if we fit the current 'body beautiful' - the fat woman who dares to bare is as public an enemy as the niqab-wearer. So much for freedom...
The Daily Mail, tellingly, is particularly critical and at times downright lecherous when women step out in public showing any amount of flesh. The Sun, Britain's most popular newspaper, is practically built on the "Phwoar" factor. How is any of this any less oppressive than feeling bound to the niqab? I don't doubt there are many women out there who long for the privacy and invisibility afforded by such a garment, if only to hide occasionally from the judgemental gaze of a society which rates us as bodies first, human beings second.

The biggest fallacy of all, though, is pretending that forcibly preventing women from exercising their free will (and let's not kid ourselves here that all burqa-clad women are forced into it - choice informed by religion is still choice) is somehow liberating. It is, at the end of the day, a garment like any other - no less oppressive than the push-up bra, which some women wear with gusto and others wear out of a sense of having to conform to the "maximum cleavage" type of cheap sexiness thrust upon us by 'Nuts' and 'Zoo'.

In an ideal world, Muslim women would truly have the freedom to really choose whether the veil brings them closer to Allah or serves as an obstacle to the outside world, and that's an aim worth working towards - our Muslim sisters ought to have the right to express their religion in whichever way they see fit. But taking the veil away from them means that France is no better than, say, Saudi Arabia. Oppression is oppression, whether you're forcing a woman to cover up, or forcing her to expose herself for no better reason than 'to be more like us'.