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March 30, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
23:19
What Do Feminists Actually Want？
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Hey everyone, so I've been working on a Me Too video and it's taking a long time because there's a huge amount that I have to go through and in the process of researching this video I came across this panel discussion featuring Laura Bates of Everyday Sexism and a woman from the Women's Equality Party in Britain and I really think it's worth listening to the things that this woman has to say just so we can see exactly what her goals are.
Sophie, I mean yeah well I guess moving from the subjects into into a brilliant example of direct action I mean you just didn't feel like any party was representing you or a lot of your peers and so they or you went out and created the party yourself which is brilliant so I'd love to get some of your thoughts on sure.
Well first of all I didn't create it myself.
I had a few men.
I created it with recreated it.
A whole bunch of people came together because they'd had enough and I think it's really lovely being on a panel with a bunch of people you agree with because women are so often set up as you know we have to debate whether women's equality is something is a thing.
The number of times the BBC invites me and says well we're going to have for the interest of fairness we're going to have somebody argue that women's equality is really stupid and unnecessary and I'm like two points.
One women's equality mustn't already be a thing or there would be no need for your political party and second point this is a hugely difficult ideological question to answer because you need to define what you mean by equality before the conversation can even go on.
For example, do you mean should women have the same rights as men under a liberal democracy?
And the answer that everyone else has agreed on is yes.
And that's why you have them.
That's why you're never arguing for a certain right that men have that women don't have.
There just isn't such a thing, at least in my country or in the US or France or Germany, any of these modern Western countries.
It's just not a problem.
So the question now is what do you mean by equality?
And we all actually already know what you mean by equality.
You mean having the same material goods as men.
So one of the things that I think is really important in terms of us taking this forward is about practical solutions and being political in all that we do.
Because it's no surprise that the Me Too movement ruled through media and entertainment and politics first because those are the real bastions of male power.
They are the places where men tell stories about male power that normalizes the male voice and maintains women as second class citizens.
Okay, that in and of itself is just ridiculous.
The idea that you think in a country that has a female prime minister, women are second-class citizens is just demonstrably untrue.
There's just no way you can back that up.
And the idea that you think an objective voice, which is what almost everyone in the media strives to present, the fact that you think an objective voice is a male voice demonstrates how unbelievably biased you are.
The media, the politicians, all of these things, they're not crafted to cater to men.
It isn't the male voice.
You guys don't know what the male voice sounds like.
And as soon as you hear it, you loathe it.
Because to you it seems borish and brutish and violent and aggressive and something primitive.
Because in a lot of ways it is.
That's what men are like when they're alone and they're just men.
Personally, I haven't got a problem with this, but I understand that there are environments where that's not always appropriate.
Even if the environment is 100% men, that doesn't mean that all of those men want to engage in the sort of masculine dominance behaviours that is a sort of male voice.
This is why we have a more corporate culture when we have these kind of shared spaces, a formal way of treating one another rather than like a sort of informal, almost more tribal way of doing things.
And this is something that is important to preserve.
But that is in no way a masculine voice, a male voice.
It's a neutral voice, which is why women want to be in these spaces.
Because I tell you what, if you saw what a masculine space was like, if it was being recorded with no women around, you wouldn't like it.
And you wouldn't want to be in there.
But going back to your first point, yes, of course, the power-hungry, power-mad feminists who wish to radically change all of society to fit their ideology, naturally they're going for the places where power is.
Makes sense.
Where else would they go?
And so there's some really practical stuff we can do around how we change that in the media and entertainment.
I'm hoping we'll get a chance to talk about that later on.
But for me, it's about politics, obviously, because I think we have to look at politics differently.
We have to understand that feminism is a political ideology in and of itself.
It is not a nice to have.
It's not the thing you do afterwards.
Well, that's a great point.
And it's one I've been making for many years, and I wish people would pay more attention to.
You can't give any concessions to feminism because feminism is not satisfied.
Feminism as an ideology, as she's describing it, is not satisfied with merely giving women the same rights.
That's a liberal idea.
That's not a feminist idea because feminism these days, it's been entirely taken over by intersectionality.
And the feminists who we think of, say, 30 years ago, like Jermaine Greer or Julie Bindle, are now considered to be TERFs, trans-exclusionary radical feminists, because they will not allow men to become women because they see that as naturally encroaching on their special privileges.
When they say feminism, they mean intersectionality.
They do not mean feminism as it has been known in past generations.
And it is important to know that.
And it is also important to give them absolutely no ground.
Because everything you concede won't stop them.
That's just one more step that emboldens them.
They say, oh, you've agreed to this, right?
Well, you'll have to agree to that.
And we're going to keep pressuring you until you do.
And then the next step.
And then the next step.
Too often we get stuck between these sort of opposing views that you can either, you know, women's equality will happen when individual women just get better at being women.
Actually, it's when they get better at being men.
Because your problem at the moment is that men are out competing you and you don't like it.
You didn't want equality of opportunity ever because there's no way women are ever going to outcompete men in that regard.
You're just not going to put in the long hours.
You're just not going to be doing the right subjects because they just don't interest women in general.
It's nothing to do with bigotry or bias or prejudice.
It's just that women would prefer not to do these things.
Whereas on the other side, you have men who for hundreds of thousands of years have evolved to be a certain way and they just happen to have a preference for these things that are highly productive or come with a great deal of responsibility.
And probably because ancient women made it so.
Honestly, if women didn't exist, men wouldn't either.
But women do exist and so do men.
And now you're finding yourselves trying to measure up to the men who are just serving you ultimately.
It's not that you are not being a woman correctly.
It's that you are not being a man correctly.
And why should you be?
Which is something, you know, it's the sort of it's the classic white man meritocracy.
I just want the right person for the job.
Gong, why don't you project your own bigotry onto this?
Which basically means I want someone who looks and sounds just like me.
No, that's exactly not what it means.
It means someone who is competent and capable.
You don't want someone who looks different to you doing things.
You are the people who are always talking about representation.
You are the people who are always going on about the fact that there are not enough vaginas in the room.
You need more vaginas in the room.
And suddenly you've got a room full of vaginas and you're like, wow, it's really nice to be in a room full of vaginas.
That was what you literally said beginning this.
You weren't interested in the merit of what was about to be said.
You were concerned with the fact that these people just look the same as you.
So do everyone a favour.
Don't project your bigotry and bias onto everyone else.
I don't actually care whether it's a man or a woman doing a specific job.
I care that it's someone who's good at the job doing the specific job.
And women have been fed this story that if the barriers that you face are yours and yours alone.
So if you didn't get that pay rise, it's because you didn't ask for it right.
And if you've got bad body image, you should just run a bit more.
If you have a bad body image, it's because you don't have a very good body.
And the reason you don't have a very good body is because you don't take care of it.
I know this because I have bad body image.
It's not a male or female thing.
It's a fat, unhealthy, slob thing.
But I love what you're doing here.
You're sitting there and saying, hey, women, you know this thing about yourself that is your responsibility and your responsibility alone and that nobody else could even begin to possibly take responsibility for?
That's someone else's responsibility.
You're welcome.
Or take up yoga or meditation or clean eating.
And you should also be an excellent parent.
So read all those books on good parenting as well.
You should also be terribly sexy and all that you do.
So make sure that you are getting that bit right as well.
So we have this generation of women who are running and doing yoga and trying to figure out how to ask for a pay rise and be a perfect parent and bake and they're knackered.
Wow, it's almost like feminism was full of shit from the start, wasn't it?
It's almost like you can't have it all because to have any of it you've got to work for it.
And it turns out that having to work for all of it is, as you say, knackered.
Why wouldn't you be tired?
Do you think men sit there and tell each other you can have it all, dude?
You're a man, you can do all of these things.
Fuck women, fuck trans people.
You can do everything because you're a man and you were born with a dick.
You know, they don't do that, right?
Not only is feminism deeply illiberal, but it's actually a way of punishing women.
It's actually a way of trying to tell women, look, you are inferior to men and you should feel inferior.
Whereas most men don't feel that way about women at all.
And we're all knackered.
And it's time to say the problem's not us.
The problem is patriarchy.
Now you'll notice that she began this tangent complaining about meritocracy.
And then she described how she had to be meritorious and how it's very exhausting to be excellent at everything you're doing.
And so what you really should do is choose one or two subjects in which to be excellent and work hard at them.
Then it's less exhausting.
And now she's blaming this on patriarchy.
Because when they say patriarchy, they mean meritocracy.
And this is why patriarchy favours men in the feminist worldview.
Men are good at working hard at things.
And they are also quite sensible and don't tell one another that they can have it all.
Feminists have decided they're going to try and be men and women at the same time.
And then as soon as it doesn't work, they sit there and go, well, well, that's patriarchy for you, isn't it?
No.
That's feminism for you.
And so a politics that says, just be a better woman, is not a politics that's going to work.
And at the same time, a politics that says, after the revolution, sisters, also not a politics that's going to work.
Well, at least you admit that you're riddled with Marxists.
But yeah, none of this is going to work.
Absolutely none of it.
You're not going to just change politics because politics is really just an expression of how power flows within a society.
Who has it at what points and whether they're gaining or losing it and whether it's, you know, how it's being used to mold the society.
So the idea that we can come at this through class, for example, is simply not one that is ever going to fix things for women because women always are told that we'll get to you next.
And that was what propelled me into politics because I was really tired of being offered these two alternatives by politicians who still thought that they had my vote in their back pocket.
So it wasn't even like we have to try a bit harder because we think we're missing people here.
It was, no, no, we'll get around to you.
Just keep voting for us and it'll be fine.
And the risk, I think, here is really interesting.
We've got to make all of the other political parties understand that risk is not new parties with new ideas.
Risk is all the old parties who let you down year after year after year and who need to start doing something differently.
Why?
Why do they need to start doing something differently?
I don't know whether you've noticed, but you are the fringe.
A women's equality party that gets a tiny sliver of any vote that's cast and they need to start doing something differently.
Why do they need to do that?
Oh, to fulfill your agenda.
Well, they're not interested in fulfilling your agenda.
I mean, good job on not being a traditional socialist, though, by the way.
And the cross-party element of what we're doing, as Helen was saying with the suffragettes, is absolutely vital.
Because the other thing we have to challenge is that politics is about throwing rocks at each other.
You know, that we all get into our trenches and we all chuck stones and shout at each other.
That's easy.
That's so easy to do politics like that.
The hardest job in politics is to get out of your trenches and walk into no man's land and say, where can you meet me on this?
Okay, good call.
I agree with you.
We should have a dialogue.
I notice you're on a panel exclusively made up of women who are also feminists with not a single dissenting voice among you, which is why you're all nodding your head like sheep every time anyone says anything.
But anyway, let's talk about the idea of having a dialogue.
That's a really good suggestion.
Now, you want to overthrow the patriarchy.
That is translatable to the meritocracy.
And you think that a meritocracy means we want straight white men.
And you think that because straight white men work hard, you want to end meritocracy, give women additional bonuses that they get only for being women.
And these will come at the expense of non-women.
On this issue, I will not meet you at any point.
It either is going to be all or nothing.
I want it to be nothing and you want it to be all.
There is no compromise to be had with you on this point.
What now?
What can we get done?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
You have everything that feminism has ever asked for.
And now that you have it, you're telling us, well, this is tiring.
I kind of wish we had more.
The answer is no.
Everything beyond this will be something I will work to undo.
And being non-partisan has got this sort of reputation as being a bit wishy-washy.
It's a bit like we'll all just sort of sit on the fence.
It's not.
It requires nerves of steel.
And that is what you should be requiring of your politicians.
Because what's been said here is absolutely right.
This is structural.
This is not about fiddling around on the edges.
One of the things I get asked most of all is, what's the one thing you want?
And I sort of think, well, I'm going to go to the women's equality party.
Is that not quite clear?
There we go.
That's exactly it.
You want to overthrow the meritocratic nature of our societies and institute what is, I guess, could only really be termed gender communism, where women are exactly the same as men by fiat, by government action.
You don't even want people to be able to make their own futures anymore.
Because that's unequal.
Because women don't work as hard at that as men do.
And that's a problem.
That's deeply problematic.
Because some of these women might end up being housewives, or some of them might choose not to go into government or into STEM or something like that.
They might choose to do things that women on average tend to enjoy.
And then you'll be looking at the statistics and going, yeah, well, this isn't very equal, is it?
And we'll say, no.
But it is free and fair.
and it's making the people in it happier than otherwise.
But I think actually it masks, it masks and I...
What it masks is, what is the one thing you want?
Right?
There's a silver bullet.
If we can just figure out what the one thing is, we'll fix it.
No, they're trying to establish exactly what it is is your highest value.
For you, it's equality.
For me, it is liberty.
These things are not compatible because people are different.
In general, as individuals, however you want to slice it, all people are different.
And so when you say, well, I want men and women to be the same, I'm looking at that and thinking, well, that's fucking impossible without some kind of highly oppressive totalitarian apparatus to replace the meritocratic system that we have.
And you say, yeah, that sounds great.
Yeah, I'd really like some of that, please.
And again, I have to say, well, you can get shot in no man's land then, because I'm not coming out of my trench on this issue.
There is no one thing.
It requires equality of our education.
It requires equality of care.
Oh my God, what does that even mean?
Equality of our education.
You know, half of my classes when I was at school were women.
Well, girls, I guess, at the time.
But what really annoys me about this is this is just a complete denial of reality.
Girls are doing far better in schools than boys.
To have equality of education would be to improve things for boys and not for girls at this point.
It requires equality of representation.
It requires ending violence against women.
How is that going to be achieved?
We vote for our representatives.
If people choose to vote for men over women to the roughly two to one ratio that we have at the moment, what can we do about that?
Are we going to prevent them from voting?
Are we going to prevent certain candidates from running?
Are we going to do something that is going to be inherently anti-democratic?
Because that is at this point your only option.
It requires a structural, cohesive, collaborative, joined-up approach and don't ever settle for anything less.
There we go.
You can't even placate this woman.
She's not interested in compromise.
She wants full feminism.
She wants to gain control of all of the systems and institutions of the country, bring them under one dominion.
Don't worry about separation of powers.
No, no, no, no, no.
We need collaborative, joined up systems now.
So don't worry about separation of powers.
Now we're going to be entirely controlled by feminism and we're going to be doing this by the feminist playbook.
So forget your democracy, forget your meritocracy, forget your personal freedoms.
We're all going to have equality.
Because as much as I say, well, there is no one thing, I did name my party after the one thing that I'm actually after.
I'm going to finish in one minute, but the thing I would leave you with is look at how our institutions have responded to MeToo and to Time's Up.
Sexual harassment in Westminster.
Well, we just need better reporting systems.
Well, what's your suggestion?
What do you think should be done?
I mean, I'm not in Westminster.
I'm not sexually harassing people.
What do you think should be done?
Should we not be giving women a better and easier time to report problems when they occur?
Austerity is hitting women more than anybody else.
Yeah, we'll just tinker around the edges with that.
That should be a big wake-up call for feminists.
If women require the state to give them things far more than men are given things, do you not think that men deserve to be given things that women are given?
Otherwise they are not equal.
Of course, you won't suggest this.
But again, everything, everything about your worldview is women underneath men.
They are the victims of men.
And so everything has to come at the expense of men, whether people like it or not.
Men being the majority earners are going to be the ones who pay majority taxes.
And therefore, the taxes being cut are tax cuts for men.
We can't allow that.
That's terrible.
What we need to do is continue raising taxes for ever-increasing numbers of social services because fuck you.
We're feminists and we're going to create this society right this time.
Central planning may have failed every other time in all of human history, wherever it was tried, without fail, but we're going to get it right this time.
Just you wait.
Austerity is the end product of an economic process that is totally broken.
And we will never fix it by working within the same structures.
We will never have women's equality while we work within the same structures that are causing it.
Completely true, if you are talking about women's material equality.
But don't worry, men don't have a material equality either.
Men don't have the same as each other.
Each man earns a different wage all across the fucking country, love.
In fact, I can't go further than that.
It's all across the bloody world.
And it has been for all time, except in certain places that instituted communism.
You are, of course, more than capable of having political equality with men, which is why we have a female prime minister, why you're not arguing for rights.
You have the equality that feminists in the previous generation said that they wanted, and everyone agreed that that should happen.
Now you are arguing for gender communism, and nobody agrees with this, which is why only 7% of our country is feminist.
Thank fuck.
It could be way worse.
But the point is, you're never going to get this.
I don't even know why you think you're entitled to it, but you're going to have to start violating some rights along the way to try and get there.
So I guess you could, in a way, paint yourself as being anti-males' rights.
Because that's what you're going to have to do to achieve women's material equality.
Because believe it or not, women don't just deserve to have free stuff.
So be activists, be political, and don't ask for permission to do it differently.
Thank you.
Bravo.
Just don't ask for permission to do it differently.
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