Louise O'Neill: It’s important that we’re aware of the historical context of the backlash against feminism
I went to the Tate Modern in London because I wanted to see what The New Yorker described as an ‘empathy-inducing installation’ about immigration by the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera.
While I was there, I also saw an exhibition titled ‘Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany’; a collection of art created between the first and the second world wars, a time of great social upheaval for the country.
As I walked into one room, there was a large sign warning that the artworks might prove to be disturbing for some visitors, and I was immediately confronted with graphic images of violated female corpses. ‘Lustmord’, which translates to “sex murder”, was a theme that recurred frequently in Weimar Germany.
The famed American academic, Maria Tatar, wrote a book examining why the sexual politics of the time, which was viewed as the ‘birthplace of transgressive avant-garde modernism’, resulted in a society that was fascinated with murders by sexual predators, and depicted that fascination through literature, art, and film.
These themes have been linked to post-wartime trauma, but also to the increasing freedom that women were enjoying, as ‘the shifting social and economic conditions of Weimar Germany created new possibilities’ for them. ‘Lustmord’ was, in a way, a response to this emancipation of women, but hasn’t there always been a swift backlash any time there has been forward momentum in the women’s movement?
Women who had entered the workplace during the second world war because the men were fighting, and those who found that they liked it faced discrimination and hostility when the men returned and wanted their jobs back.
As Betty Friedan notes in The Feminine Mystique, these same women were then bombarded with images of the ‘perfect housewife’ in advertising, magazines, and television; warning ‘careerist mothers’ of the dangers their selfishness could have on their children.
Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash, examined how, as a response to the great strides that were made in the 1970s, the ’80s saw a ‘counter-assault’ on feminism through the portrayal of women in film and TV, the growing popularity of plastic surgery, and the ‘trend journalism’ which tried to scare women into believing that they would die sad and alone if they put their career before their love lives.
Even in 1992, when the state of Iowa was putting laws into place that would make sex discrimination illegal, the evangelist Pat Robertson proclaimed that feminism was a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians”.
I think it’s important that we’re aware of the historical context of the backlash against feminism so that we can ensure that it doesn’t derail the work we are trying to do.
From the Domestic Violence Act 2018 recent bill concerning coercive control and emotional abuse, to the Referendum last May where the majority of people who voted to repeal the eighth amendment cited ‘a woman’s right to choose’ as their reason for doing so, Ireland has proved itself to be a progressive country in recent years. But, as the scholar Ann Douglas wrote, “the progress of women’s rights in our culture… has always been strangely reversible.”
We can see that happening in the States now, as the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court — despite multiple claims of sexual assault — could very well see the overturning of Roe V Wade, and the restriction of abortion rights.
After a year of anger and protest and women bravely sharing their #MeToo stories publicly, what else can this be but an attempt to put women back in their place?
I’ve been watching the growing popularity of figures like Jordan Peterson for a while, and what it’s enabling amongst disenfranchised young men who feel displaced in a society that is striving to for equality, no matter what your gender, sexual identity, religion, or race.
Online subgroups like the incels (involuntary celibates) who have, amongst other things, endorsed violence against sexually active women (the 2018 version of lustmord, if you will) are particularly frightening, and their members have been responsible for some of the most horrific mass shootings of the last ten years. While Peterson (whose book, 12 Rules for Life, has been a global bestseller) does not claim affinity with incels, he has, amongst other things, called for disciplines like women’s studies to be defunded.
He’s said that the “masculine spirit is under assault”, and argued that feminism has destabilised modern society. He also believes in ‘enforced monogamy’ as way of decreasing male violence, although hasn’t specified how we are going to ‘enforce’ women to marry these violent men.
I was on a BBC panel discussion with Peterson in May, and while I found him to be polite and eerily persuasive as a speaker, I disagreed with pretty much everything he said. It was a reasonable debate, conducted in a relatively respectful manner, but afterwards, I was shocked by the abuse I received from Peterson’s devotees; YouTube videos made about how Peterson had ‘destroyed’ the ‘feminazi’.
Both their fury and their glee took me aback — it seemed a completely disproportionate reaction to the discussion itself — but in a way, I was grateful for the experience. It made me more aware, and more determined than ever to ensure that I not become complacent.
2018 might mark one hundred years since Irish women over the age of 30 got the vote, but there is still so much work to be done, after all. Women earn 14% less than their male colleagues in Ireland, and the World Economic Forum said it will take another 217 years to close the gender gap globally — we need to ensure it happens quicker.
One in three women will experience abuse in their lifetime, sexual or physical — we must eradicate this epidemic of violence.
Let us stay true to the principles of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and continue to fight for ‘equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens,’ and refuse to allow any backlash to derail this important conversation.
