21st Century Colonisation of Women
Betty McLellan
One of the more interesting protest movements in recent times has been, in my view, the Occupy Movement. You will remember that it began with Occupy Wall Street when women and men gathered in a Plaza in the financial district of New York City, to protest the obscene level of economic inequality evident in democratic countries around the world. That first Occupy event was on 17 September 2011 and by 9 October, similar protests had taken place in 95 cities across 82 countries, and in more than 600 communities in the United States alone. It was a huge Movement. Each Occupy site set up a camp - including tents and outdoor kitchens - in a park or other public space, often near the city or town's financial district, with the intention of establishing a semi-permanent protest area. [http://www.occupytogether.org/]
The Occupy Movement didn’t actually become a permanent or semi-permanent fixture on the landscape, but that doesn’t matter. The fact is that it was a powerful movement while it lasted.
A spin-off of the Occupy Wall Street campaign was the Occupy Patriarchy movement instigated by feminists in the US following reports of several rapes that occurred during the Occupy Wall Street protests. As we know women are not safe from male predators even when those men profess to be your brothers fighting for the same human rights’ issues. Women’s human rights are obviously not important to them. So, Occupy Patriarchy arose in protest against that. [http://thefeministwire.com/2011/11/occupy-rape-culture/]
Setting aside the serious issue of the violence against women that occurred within some of the camps, I do find the whole idea of the Occupy Movement very interesting because “occupation” has always been a powerful political strategy – for good or ill. And, as feminists intent on making women’s lives safer, we need to understand the concept of occupation, we need to be fully aware of how it is being used against women at this time in history and, also, we need to figure out more effective ways of harnessing its power and using it in our quest to make the world a better, safer place for women.
UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF OCCUPATION
First, understanding the concept of occupation. The easiest way to gain an understanding of the concept is to cite examples, both negative and positive.
On the negative side – In 1788, Britain invaded this land owned for millennia by Australia’s Aboriginal peoples, and simply occupied it.
Another example of the negative use of occupation is Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.
The United States occupies every country where they’ve set up their military bases.On the positive side – “Occupation” as protest has been going on forever. All marches and rallies organised by feminists are a form of occupation. Every time we participate in marches for International Women’s Day and Reclaim the Night, by occupying the streets, we are making the point that that territory – our community’s public space – is ours to share equally with men, and that we have a right to do so without fear and without violent retaliation from men.
The establishment of Indigenous Tent Embassies is another form of occupation. When Aboriginal people set up the Tent Embassy on the lawn in front of Parliament House in Canberra, it was a brilliant example of “occupation”. This is our land, they were saying. We have a right to occupy it. The Tent Embassy in Canberra was established on 27 January 1972 and has, this year, celebrated its 40th anniversary. [http://www.indigenousaustralia.info/land/land-rights/the-tent-embassy.html]
Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp established in 1981 in Britain is another example of occupation. Women camped on Greenham Common day and night until the year 2000 protesting against the decision to site American cruise missiles there. The last missiles left the camp in 1991 but the protesters were determined that the camp remain in place till they won the right to have a memorial for peace erected on the site, and that occurred in the year 2000. [http://www.greenhamwpc.org.uk/]
AWARENESS OF HOW OCCUPATION IS USED AGAINST WOMEN
I want to move on now to look at the various ways occupation is used in the 21st Century against women – how it is used to rob us of our freedom – to colonise us. And that, of course, is the topic of my paper: 21st Century Colonisation of Women.
What we know about the term “occupied territory” is that it’s a military term. A foreign power sends in its military to occupy a country on some pretext or another, and those who actually own the country are robbed of their power, treated as second class citizens in their own land, and forced to serve the interests of the dominant power. In an effort to be acceptable to the dominant power, many people bow down to them and become obedient servants. Those who refuse to accept the occupation or the occupiers, on the other hand, are punished in a variety of ways.
What I am asserting in this paper today is that that is exactly the situation we women find ourselves in all over the world. Women live in occupied territory. It is our territory, our community, our country, our world, but it is occupied by men. Men are the occupying force robbing us of that which is rightfully ours. Some women are happy to bow down to it and accept the status of second-class citizen, others refuse to accept it.
So, let’s look at how men’s occupation plays itself out. Some forms of men’s occupation have been with us for what seems like forever, while others are relatively recent.
Core forms of occupation
Men’s violence against women, of course, has been with us for millennia, but make no mistake about it, violence and the threat of violence, rape and the threat of rape, are particularly potent forms of occupation.
Prostitution, the idea that men have a right to access women’s bodies and that the availability of sex must always be there, even if a man has to pay for it - and the prostitute (the colonised woman) is obliged to go along with whatever the occupier demands.
Pornography, too, has been entrenched in many cultures for a long time. But every day, this particular form of the colonising of women’s bodies becomes more extreme and more demeaning of women. As many of us know, the 21st Century version of pornography is particularly scary. So-called “normal” men. Colonising women’s bodies, often in the most violent of ways, for their own pleasure.
Men’s occupation of women’s bodies, women’s space, is a fact of history.
21st Century forms of occupation
Now, I want to move on to look at 21st Century forms of occupation. What new forms of occupation are women having to contend with today? In recent years, we have witnessed some alarming examples attributable, I feel certain, to a backlash against feminism. In the beginning, Second Wave feminism sent shockwaves through the comfortable lives of most men. And many of those men saw the feminist movement as a declaration of war, a war that they have been fighting ever since. No matter how we try to explain to them that it’s not a competition and that all we want is equality and justice – the war is on and every day they work to strengthen their occupation of our territory.
Men’s Rights Activists (MRA)
Men’s Rights activists are a particularly vicious bunch. The feminist push to break the silence about domestic violence raised awareness in the community of what had largely been a hidden atrocity and the mood in the community was such that people were demanding governments and other community leaders do something about men’s violence against women as a matter of urgency. Programs to support women were funded; the Family Court was established; police, law students and others received special training in Domestic Violence matters. And women and children were finally seeing some justice being done.
Enter the Men’s Rights Movement, whose central purpose was, and is, to compete with and dispute the feminist interpretation of violence in the home. Regardless of the statistics uncovered in very reputable research, regardless of the fact that research consistently shows that around 95% of serious violence in the home is perpetrated by men against women, Men’s Rights activists have produced questionable research insisting that one in three victims is a man and the violence against him is perpetrated by his female partner. At other times, they talk about 50% and, not letting the facts get in the way of their determination to come out on top, their occupation of this issue has succeeded in muddying the waters - to the extent that, in matters of the Family Court, a woman’s evidence of violence against her is often distrusted resulting, at times, in her losing her children as they are placed in the care of their violent father.
So successful has Men’s Rights occupation of this issue been that, when a father murdered his son earlier this year by throwing him off the Story Bridge, the whole community, it seemed, rose up to say what a lovely bloke he was, this father, this murderer. People felt sorry for him, that he had been driven to kill his son and then commit suicide – driven, no doubt, by his wife who had left him. And those of us who refused to feel sorry for this murderer, those of us who condemned him publicly, were subjected to incredible levels of abuse by Men’s Rights activists.
No longer is it a simple, straightforward thing to condemn male violence even when our views are supported by reputable research. Men have occupied the issue. And watch out if you don’t fall into line with the occupiers.
Transgendered men
Another 21st Century occupation of women’s territory is that of transgendered men insisting on their right to occupy all of our space simply because they now choose to identify as women. Now, I do have some sympathy for individual men who genuinely struggle with the issue of their own gender identity, but my sympathy does not extend to welcoming them into women’s space. They are not women, as we are women. They have not experienced the sexism, the hurtful subordination, the trivialising, the exclusion, the put-downs that most girls experience in their growing up.
In feminist and lesbian circles, there is a huge battle going on between the women who want to include those men as women, and those who see it for what it is – another way that men are breaking in and occupying our territory.
It’s a huge dilemma, a huge cause of division, in the feminist movement at this time in history. Men in the guise of women coming in and occupying our Movement. And, in their occupation, they claim it as their own and, in some instances, dictate the direction in which the movement should go. There’s a situation occurring right now in Britain around the RadFem2012 conference at which Australian radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys has been invited as a Keynote Speaker. First, the transgender lobby tried to get the organisers of the conference to un-invite her and, when that didn’t eventuate, they put enormous pressure on the owners of the venue to cancel the booking. Word came through a week or so ago that permission to hold the conference there has been withdrawn.
Such power! And where does their power come from? It comes from the fact that those men who have transitioned to women are members of the occupying force and, as occupiers, they command a lot of support from those women (including some liberal feminists) who are happy to bow down and accept the occupier’s so-called right to dictate how things will be. Radical feminists like Sheila Jeffreys, you, me, all radical feminists who refuse to accept such occupation can be on the receiving end of incredible abuse day after day.
The Internet
And the last of the new forms of occupation that I want to mention is that which takes place on the Internet. Have you seen any of this? Any woman who dares to express an opinion – about men’s violence against women and children, about any areas of men’s privilege, especially sexual privilege like pornography, prostitution, the sexualisation of children – cops a barrage of abuse.
After my tussle with Men’s Rights advocates earlier this year, there appeared a long, very nasty piece about me on one of their websites where I was called a “gristle of DNA”. “Anyone paying for therapy from this gristle of DNA needs to see a real therapist”, they said. Another comment about my work as a psychotherapist was (and remember, this is from men who had never met me): “She’s risen to a level beyond her competence”. And a particularly threatening comment was: “This bitch’s days in the tropics are growing shorter “.
So, you see, the occupiers of the Internet are quite a lovable bunch!! And they’re everywhere on the Internet. Ready to pounce on any woman who dares to express an opinion that they don’t agree with.
THE FEMINIST RESPONSE
So, what are we to do? Whether it’s holding our own against the onslaught from Men’s Rights activists; fighting against the takeover of women’s space by transgendered men; or continuing to speak out on the Internet –- we cannot and must not bow down to their occupation. They have no right to take over and dominate our space. No right to occupy our space. But make no mistake, this is patriarchy’s 21st Century challenge to feminism and feminists.
I believe our responsibility into the future is this – two things:
1. The first is as I’ve mentioned. We must continue to hold our own, to speak out, to demand our right (women’s right) to equality and justice. Even in the face of the extreme tactics and threats we’re seeing against radical feminists on a daily basis, we must continue working and fighting for a better deal for women. To go underground, to disappear from sight, would be to let women down at a time in history when they need the support of fearless feminists more than ever before.
But we must be strategic about it. Wherever possible, we must fight every battle on our own terms, not on terms dictated by the occupiers. We must be careful not to be drawn into any argument, the terms of which they have set up; not to be drawn into any battle we know we can’t win.
Their agenda is to frustrate our feminist campaign, so our task is to keep our eye on our own goal, our own agenda, and to proceed with that regardless.
If the occupiers cause your conference venue to close its doors to you, find another venue. If they insult you on the Internet, don’t be intimidated – just write another piece, and keep moving forward.
So, that’s our first responsibility: continue fighting, but always on our own terms.
2. And the second is this: We must get better at “occupying” our issues. There has always been so much for feminists to do that, instead of immersing ourselves in an issue, most of us seem to try to fight on all fronts at once.
Occupying an issue doesn’t mean that we will have to spend the rest of our lives on one issue. That would be too limiting. What it does mean is that, for as long as we choose to focus on that particular issue, we will be thorough in our analysis, we will write about it with a great degree of insight and knowledge, and we will speak about it with a huge amount of passion.
There’s a lot to be done, and a lot at stake, as we continue the task of standing up to the occupiers and demanding equality and justice for women. But, if anyone can do it, WE can!