Århus Feminist Reading Group discussion

Link to text: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

Hey everyone! Reading through the text today, I thought of a few questions we could maybe consider in our discussion.

- Do we agree with Lewis that (historical) feminist figures are either celebrated as saints or "cancelled" in contemporary feminist discourse? Isn't this also happening to prominent contemporary feminists and is there a difference?
- Should we be forgiving of the "sandblasting" of someone like Coco Chanel in a children's book like Lewis says she is?
- How can we, as feminists, try to navigate being critical of public figures, movements, each other and ourselves without losing sight of the complexities?

I also have a thought from a personal angle I thought was maybe relevant to this discussion. The other day I started reading an essay collection by a Danish author that I had been wanting to read for a while - then, as I randomly scrolled through my Facebook feed, I found and read an article criticising her take on "identity politics" (in an essay from the collection I had just started reading), making it clear to me that I probably don't agree with her on this topic. This made me wonder if she and her writing could then perhaps, however vaguely, be considered anti-feminist. Then I wondered if I should continue reading her work at all.

I realised that was probably a silly reaction and that yes, I should keep reading to find out for myself! But it reminded that trying to navigate being a "good" feminist is hard and entails daily considerations of your opinions, your values and how you engage with texts and other things.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! ❤️

Hey! First to reply to your points:

- I think it does still happen in the contemporary moment, and I think this comes down to the thumbs up/down model that Lewis mentions. I think it is interesting to further probe the idea that women can either be good or bad, and that there is nothing in between. Does social media and the way we react on there have something to do with this? I guess the problem is also that we have a one-size-fits-all idea of what a "good feminist" is, rather than thinking about people.

- Good question - should we skew stories just for the sake of giving girls role historical role models? I think there are probably many, many other figures who could be written about who are not Nazi collaborators, for example. Does this have something to do with celebrity? Why do the same figures get written about and crystallised in history and not others? It is because they are recognisable and acceptable and palatable? Lewis shows that so much has been erased about their complexity in order to make them so. On the one hand we need to teach children that women aren't always perfect, but on the other hand there are other figures that could be included in books like that.

- I think this is absolutely necessary to figure out. Not only do we not all have the same ideas and views, but we aren't all nice all the time, and not all feminists are going to get on with each other. Figuring out ways to work together and work towards goals for equality beyond the personal is key, but feminism will always be a group of individual humans struggling with/against each other at the end of the day. Getting over the desire to be liked or the need to please everyone can be so liberating, but it is really hard.

Thanks for sharing the reflection on your reading experience. I constantly come up against this kind of stuff, especially with transphobia. I am always researching older feminists to find out if they are anti-trans, and then wondering if I can use them or not. I think it is all about context, and as you say, we should read them and make our own judgements no matter what. It is also about the way one reads of uses a text: is it about the ideas raised, how the text is interpreted, or about the individual who wrote it?

I do think there's something that Lewis misses here. The article is really short so there will always be some blank spots. She doesn't interrogate the gender binary, but I think that's more because it is not in the scope of this piece. A way we could push her points further would be to consider how the thumbs up/down or good/bad model applies to trans and non-binary folks. I also think it is worth considering how this effects men in feminist spaces and movements. Are men allowed to be difficult in feminism, or do they have to be "nice"?

Also, just an observation: when Lewis says that 'feminism has a particular duty to fight “the tyranny of niceness”', there is a wordplay on another piece by Jo Freeman called "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"! I wondered if this was a subtle nod to Freeman and her work on trashing, or just a total coincidence...?!

A final point/question -- what do we think about Lewis's demand that we look back to the "seven demands of the first Women’s Liberation Movement conference, in Oxford 50 years ago this month"? I constantly find this "looking back to look forward" approach in feminism. Is it really that useful? Is it nostalgia? Is she onto something?

Looking forward to discussing more! x