I think this post has been a while coming. Feminism in itself seems to be having a bit of a surge of late, and I’m often asked what I think of certain things anyway, people presuming me to be a feminist (why? I have no idea).

So fine, world, here are my views.

I’ve recently seen two things which have reinforced the sentiment I hold that modern feminism is killing equality and female independence. The idea that feminists aren’t speaking for women in general isn’t a new one, but lately it seems that every time someone mentions something which could be anti-feminist, up pops a would-be Germaine Greer with views, and then they are directly followed by a host of people either applauding their strong feminist ideals, or calling them out on the exact same thing. If I was to get involved, which I don’t, I think I’d mostly be on the second team, and here is why.

A lot of people have been passing around this video, which is an advert for Always.

Now , I stand  by the message of the video completely, and I think it’s an excellent way of getting that message across. The fact that it has gone viral says it all about the quality of the statement. The thing I have an issue with is the very last line, which I think completely decimates everything the video is trying to achieve. Feminism should be about equality, and destroying a phrase which positions a girl as weak and a valid insult, is great. So why, oh God why, must they end it by saying

Why can’t “run like a girl” also mean “win the race”?

Oh I see what you did there Always. You took a great statement about equality, and at the last minute you snatched it away to replace it with “run like a girl” = the winner. So presumably then “run like a boy” (being the opposite) now = loser. So what you’re doing is falling into the trap of militant feminism which is essentially just female dominance, and has no relationship with equality at all.

I know I’m taking it a little far, and I know that’s not how the final phrase was meant, but I really stand by my argument that this is not feminism at its best at all. Enter my next gripe – this article which popped up on my Facebook news feed today.  The URL reads “can a feminist be a bride”. On seeing that, I had only one thought in mind. Yes. A feminist can be exactly what she wants to be, that’s literally the whole point. Apparently, however, Laura Bates felt she ran into more trouble than that.

I have innumerate issues with the article, but it boils down to the point I’ve just made. Feminism has worked hard over the last century to get one thing – equal rights for women. So if you want to propose to your boyfriend, do it. It’s your right. If he says yes, then great. If he has a problem with you proposing, you need to address that before you decide to marry the guy. Obvious, no? “But Sally, what about when people ask him how he did it?”…Are you serious? Just tell them. We live in a modern world where no-one should be surprised by independent women doing whatever they want.

Similarly, you may feel somewhat bullied and diminished by signs in bridal shops talking about sizing et cetera, but if you do, it’s because you’re letting yourself feel that way. I personally hold the view that everyone should strive for general fitness, and that often means getting thinner. If you’re happy to not do that, then go you, but I understand why current beauty standards hold us to be thin, and I support them to some extent because for many people, thinner means healthier. So don’t be surprised if you are asked how much weight you plan on losing for your wedding – it’s something wedding dress shops deal with all the time, and it’s a relevant question. Similarly, signs making it clear that extra adjustments will be costly are not “bullying” they are “necessary”. That work costs money, and to be honest it’s probably mostly women who enter the store as a raging “I won’t change for anybody” feminist who need these adjustments most, when they decide a month before the wedding that there is a person they’d change for, and it’s them-self.

Finally, and I think this encompasses all of the other aspects of the article, yes, historically a lot of wedding traditions are a bit patriarchal and antiquated. Know what, I’m probably going to do a bunch of them anyway, because I like them, and I like the all-round wedding image. And anything I do, I’ll do with the consent and support of my fiancee, and I won’t do anything that he’s not keen on. That will result in the perfect wedding – an equal one, where if someone asks why I went along with a “non-feminist” tradition, I can say “because WE wanted to” and where he can say the same if he’s challenged about something.

The key take-away from this long ramble on my part is that in the face of a new, and more equal world (though not entirely equal, and we should still fight for equality on all levels), so-called feminists are absolutely not speaking for the majority of women any more, because the majority of woman are now making informed, independent and personal decisions about  their lives. There are still a host of causes to support, and I hope that in future people will learn to focus on them, rather than imposing their views on others. That’s happened before, and we all know how well it goes…

Those avid readers among you (which I am well aware is 1< person weekly, never fear, I’m under no illusions) will know that I now go to the gym. I don’t think it’s fair to say I go on a “regular” basis, but I probably go at least once a week, which is an improvement on not-once a week, so there’s that.

Anyway, I’m not the only person in the gym, unfortunately.  And I have some very clear views on other people in the gym.

1) Don’t make weird noises. I know exercise is different for everyone, and you’re probably working way harder than me, but it’s so distracting and often scary when you make noises like your lung just collapsed.
2) Don’t try to break the machines, or make the machines break you. If you have to keep pressing the emergency stop on the treadmill, you may be running too fast. I understand the concept of interval training and trust me, you’re doing it wrong.  Also, pumping the cross-trainer madly on level 1 so that it looks like it’s going to tip over is doing no-one any favours.
3) Don’t stare at me. I know I go bright red, it’s not attractive, but aside from the colour of my face I’m clearly fine. Don’t stare at me. Stop staring. Now.
4) Please God, stop turning up fully made up. It’s 7am. No-one is here for that, we are all here to work out and then get on with our lives. If you’re going to try and pick people up at the gym maybe come back at lunch time when the place is populated by people under 50 who don’t have real jobs. They will be interested. We are not.

Far be it from me to judge (though that’s exactly what I intend on doing), but it seems to me that if you turn up to an exam fully made-up with exquisitely coiffed hair, and then pester your friend outside because you’ve forgotten a pen, your priorities in life are all wrong.

Let’s expand on this. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to take care of your appearance, or take pride in your hair. I’m not jumping on the bandwagon of make-up haters who have been all over social media recently.  I’m also not insisting that the only thing of merit is a good quality education and exemplary exam grades.

However

If you make the decision to go to university then you are
a) quite clever
b) interested in furthering your knowledge

so you shouldn’t be wasting time on an exam morning plastering yourself with make-up when literally no-one but the invigilators will take a second look at you.

Of course, if you just came to university because they have low expectations and are accepting below-average students in order to fill their already gold-lined pockets, and because you were in FE and the system failed you by not suggesting you had other reasonable options than to sink yourself into a pit of debt while not really achieving anything except a 3rd in a course everyone agrees is not a real subject, then go ahead with your make-up and lack of pens. Someone should have explained a long time ago that you are wasting your time at university anyway.

Well, that escalated quickly. Rant over.

Oh, and good luck to anyone taking exams!

I think this is a thing I should blog about, because surely everyone in the UK who has a blog is blogging about it?

I’ve found the last few weeks deeply frustrating, because I try to maintain a policy of not fighting with people on the internet (specifically on Facebook), because I am not very good at arguing and I feel I would devalue my argument by trying to reduce it to “comment” length. The reason I have been frustrated can be put into four simple letters:

UKIP

I did not choose to vote UKIP during this European Parliament election, but I certainly didn’t  make that choice on the basis of the LITERALLY THOUSANDS of posts which turned up on my Facebook feed telling me not to. I made that choice on the basis of reading policies and making judgments, the way I genuinely feel everyone should make their voting choices. If Facebook must have a say, I’d prefer it to be my friends sharing who they ARE going to vote for, but only a small handful of my friends managed that.

Which brings me to my next point. People don’t think very hard about what they share on Facebook, they see something, have a reaction, and share that reaction. A person on my Facebook recently shared an image slamming halal slaughter (which was just a thinly veiled cry of Islamophobia). When she was questioned on her sharing of the image she fought for a while about the sanctity of  “her opinion”, and then took it down. The reason for this, I have no doubt is because she realised that she
a) actually had no idea about the subject of halal slaughter and the real facts
and
b) had shared an image from a crazy fundamentalist organisation.

And that’s all very well, except that she didn’t know before she shared it, and she did it anyway. Which tarnishes my image of her, but more worryingly shows how many people have strong opinions based on their own sheer lack of knowledge. Social media is then not doing them any good, because when people insistently share only negative media (see my issues with UKIP articles above) then stupid people who don’t learn and just opine are only exposed to these views. Which in turn makes them into vocal extremists with no real understanding at all.

This brings me to my most controversial statement of this blog post. I don’t think these people are people who should be voting.

Now then, before I am lynched, I know that what I’m saying goes against many of my own fundamental beliefs, and I’m still working hard to resolve that on a personal level. However, I can’t deny that when Facebook binged this morning, and cheerfully reminded me to vote, I had another pang of annoyance. I feel that members of the community who don’t think for themselves are not doing us any good, and I also feel that we would have a far more sensible and mutually beneficial political system if we worked via a meritocracy, allowing the people who know best to do the thinking.

I don’t suggest this is workable, and I am a huge proponent of democracy, but today, as my friends chirpily pat themselves on the virtual back via tweets and statuses for voting, I can’t help but feel that a whole lot of them maybe shouldn’t have been allowed to.

“Once upon a time, there lived three billy goats gruff…”

…and on the story goes, with mention of clippity clopping and a bridge belonging to a certain troll. I’ve seen a lot of versions of this story, and the troll ranges between creepy and craggly to downright hilarious. It’s a classic fairytale (Norwegian, the internet tells me) with the moral that greed will get you no-where. Or possibly that you should trick people until your big brother turns up to beat them up. One of those two morals, definitely.

Anyway, this is not the troll I am talking about. Oh no. Today my subject of discussion is the internet troll.

Earlier, one of my friends posted a link to this list and it popped up on my facebook. Can I urge you to not follow the link unless you cannot contain your curiosity, because of the point about increasing visibility I mention later. Anyway, onwards… What followed was a stream of frustrated comments from highly educated but irate women, and that is such a shame. This article is undoubtedly completely serious, and is definitely very incorrect, but the fact that an anonymous person spouting rubbish on the internet should provoke an outpouring of (often) ill-thought out comments from even the most educated of us, is the biggest issue with internet trolls. Any grown adult should feel able to see right through petty bigotry and inflamatory messages, and rise above it, but time and time again I see people taking the bait.

For me, the primary issue is that more often than not, discussing these types of articles or statements online is simply fueling the fire, and in a quite literal sense. The more hits their sites get, the more motivation to continue being inflammatory. On top of that, sharing this content widely has the potential side-effect (and I say potential because I like to believe no-one is this stupid, but hey) that some individuals might read it, agree, and consider themselves vindicated by the token that they’re not the only person who thinks that way. It amazes me daily to see tweets such as these, in a response to an article by the Queen Troll herself, Katie Hopkins.

We know this level of racism is still sadly rampant across the country, but the fact that such a high-profile social commentator gets away with it on a daily basis allows people like the respondents here to feel that they are in some way correct. Meanwhile the rest of us, on complaining, are either told we’re overreacting, called overbearing hippies (or worse), and our comments are pushed aside. The simple reason for this being that by engaging on a social media level we’re reducing ourselves and our well-thought out, cohesive, meaningful and balanced arguments to the same series of grunts we’re trying to combat. What’s worse, each time a sane voice is quashed it is seen as an additional symbol that the original stance is right. Banging one’s head against a brick wall doesn’t even come close.

So what do we do about the trolls? For me the simple answer is, not engage, at least not on a 140 character or other limited basis. If someone posts or makes reference to something I disagree with on Facebook now, I personal message them and try to engage in a meaningful discussion which isn’t marred by attention seeking to others, or interrupted by someone who feels they know better, but who is ultimately just devaluing the argument. Even better, I try to meet with them. It is amazing the difference a little tone of voice can make. Ultimately if someone references something I disagree with and I don’t have a proper platform to discuss it, I ignore it. I’d prefer to remain silent than resort to mud-throwing. Internet trolls can take it too far, and there are limits which should never be overstepped and cannot be ignored, but for the rest, just turn off your computer and go outside. Soon you’ll find their opinion doesn’t matter as much as you thought.