The other day I committed a terrible Internet sin. I am usually so well behaved, an altar boy at the church of Aaron Swartz, but like seeing a piece of china on a sea of glass, one little electronic fragment from billions piqued my keyboard warrior spirit. It was designed to be so and I should have known, I should have seen the subject matter and shouted ‘run away to the latest meme!’ I should have turned off the computer, or at least move onto pornography but no, I am a sinner and I sinned. I commented on an article about feminism.
And I used caps lock.
I still feel the shame. Beforehand, I had been doing the internet equivalent of a Saturday morning walk; reading the football transfer rumours, flicking through imgur, pretending not to visit the Daily Mail and generally working through those bookmarks that help us avoid work on a Monday morning.
It had then, been a good day on the internet. For one, I had just learned what ‘Tips Fedora’ meant; thereby helping my on-going mission of inserting myself into the rabid Reddit community surreptitiously. Visiting the Guardian, I saw the article title ‘How Amy Poehler and Tina Fey made the Golden Globes the first feminist film awards ceremony’.
Now, I’m convinced that the male brain has been conditioned to react to Feminism in recent years much the same way a terrorist might react to Barney the Dinosaur after a period in Guantanamo, but even to me this felt like a bit of a stretch.
Was it a
sub-editor mistake? Maybe, but my fingers were already twitching over the
keyboard. Deep breath, read the whole article first. Make sure the author
doesn’t refute the main point she is making in an ironic twist. Go back over it
again, man, this is an article about feminism where you can make a point. This is
important. Ready? Got that book on feminism in the media at the ready? Are you sure you don’t need to go over Wollstonecraft one more time? No? Caps lock are a go, people, caps lock are a go.
‘OH MY GOD
WILL YOU STOP EQUATING EVERYTHING ANY WOMAN DOES WITH FEMINISM? THEY ARE VERY
FUNNY COMEDIANS WHO MADE A DULL AWARDS SHOW SLIGHTLY LESS DULL, END OF.’
The evoking of him-upstairs (or her-upstairs, or her) at the start surprised me. Maybe I was actually annoyed. Feminism is one of the few subjects that really riles me, as well as many other men. As someone who rarely plants their flag on the internet comment boards, what is it about this issue that makes me put finger to keypad?
Firstly, a
confession; I’m a reformed feminist. About two or three years ago I went down
the ‘but it’s really a human rights issue, not a male/female issue’ road which
is pretty popular nowadays. It’s basically a divide and conquer tactic – ‘You
mean you don’t care about human rights? Oh, yeah I see, you really only care
about woman’s rights, don’t you?’ – which sends the core debate spiralling into
threads that end up people accusing one another of being ISIS (we’ve moved on
from Hitler).
I even invoked the Malala Yousafzai argument (‘that’s a real feminist, with real woman’s issues’) which is the internet equivalent of throwing yourself behind a pram when the shooting breaks out. It wasn’t any particular moment that changed my mind, maybe it was the brilliantly frightening Everyday Sexism Project or the 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman video, but it gradually sunk back into my mind that yes, woman are discriminated against because they are a woman, and that a separate movement is needed to address this balance. I got an actual high five from a female friend when I said this.
It’s all well and good shouting ‘Equal pay for all!’ but if you don’t understand the only people who aren’t equally paid are woman and minorities, then maybe you should look in the mirror. Or at your penis, because it’s pretty definite that you have one.
This article though, still evoked everything wrong (a top internet commenters phrase that) with feminism; a linking of it to anything a woman does successfully to being a deliberate stab at the male patriarchy. In a brilliant and ironic reversal of the Bechdal Test, every joke the authors pointed towards as feminist were ones made about men. In other words, woman comedians can’t be feminist comedians unless they’re joking about men.
If feminism is able to produce a pavlovian reaction in men, or internet commentators in general, then feminism and the Guardian on the same screen is like changing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s screensaver to a Charlie Hebdo cartoon. You will get a reaction.
So I dove in, all brass and no knuckles, with my caps lock. Then, lo and behold, the author, Hadley Freeman responded and I felt that momentary thrill that must go through the soul of troll’s everywhere. It was politely dismissive, with a little French thrown in to really put me in my place. I did chuckle, although the pang of regret in criticising someone else’s work settled in right after. It was then that the enlightened internet community came to my aid (or for a fight, but I’ll ignore them) and suddenly I was being defended by all corners of the globe. All corners of the globe that strangely only contained men, that is.
And so came the commentators’ remorse, hurriedly trying to clarify the point they made in order to not come across as a rampantly deranged misogynist with an axe to grind but rather a reasonable, kindly soul that should be involved in all debates on the subject in the future. I would be the moderator, the litigator, the arbitrator of all future discussions on feminism. All future discussions on feminism with men, of course, but we were ready to fight, to make a difference alongside our sisters who seem to be sitting in that corner over there ignoring us for some reason.
I had made the classic mistake; I got involved. There is no book in the world, no series of books, no television series, no movie that can accurately describes what feminism means to any one person. No way can we figure out our own feelings because of the relentless mess of ideas we get from books, television and movies, so trying to condense it into a comment box is only going to produce one thing – more comments.
The only thing we can probably agree (okay we won’t agree, but that’s what the comments are for) is that some issues shouldn’t be moved into the feminist arena, and genuine feminists need to be cautious on what issues they choose to use to promote equality between men and woman. Not because we care about provoking internet commentators, but because we should care about not provoking people into becoming internet commentators.
People intimately, and personally, involved in any cause will see that cause anywhere. People not intimately or personally involved in the same cause will only see them talking about it everywhere, and concentrate on the talking, not the issue. If you have a blinkered view of the world, all the world will see is the blinkers.
When this happens with a cause as fundamental as equal rights between men and woman, it knocks it back a couple of steps, or at least sideways. Not fatally, but enough to prolong the argument and extend it into areas where there should be none. The importance of the issue adds to the volume of articles and debate, and that sheer volume adds to the possibility that some of it turns out to be pretty irrelevant to the actual issue.
That helps reinforce entrenched views and helps produce the frustration that turns internet comment boards into a view of Dante’s seventh circle, with no blinkers for comfort.
And so I look in the mirror and again notice the glaring lack of a vagina. Maybe, I say to my penis, we should just stay the fuck out of the party until we're invited.
End of comment.
*Tips
Fedora*