When ignorance is no defence – Feminist Left Australia | Feminist Left

To reiterate our arguments made in 2023: the principles of feminism are – or at least should be – in complete opposition to the principles of the right and the extreme right. What’s more, the cause of gender-critical feminism suffers greatly when it is publicly associated with the extreme right, because this association prevents it from achieving acceptability in the eyes of the general public. Given the repeated attempts of neo-Nazis to attach themselves to gender critical public events, any women organising such an event have a responsibility to do everything they can to prevent these men from attending, or at least to actively dissociate the event from extreme right attempts to participate in it or hijack it.

Source: When ignorance is no defence – Feminist Left Australia

4 thoughts on “When ignorance is no defence – Feminist Left Australia | Feminist Left”

  1. By all accounts that event certainly was overtaken & hijacked by men – I was not there but it must have been distressing and ghastly.
    When we feminists organise pubic events we have too make it very clear who we are and that other groups/organisations/individuals are not part of the organising, nor invited to participate. It’s *never* a good idea to allow others to be part of, or to be seen as part of, our events.
    Back in the 80s we learnt that being identified with other groups over a particular issue will usually be counterproductive. An example – some feminists speaking out re pornography were on the same stage/event as conservative women’s groups like Women Who want to be Women. This gave rise to the media & public associating feminism with fundamentalist notions of women and society (proper place = kitchen, children & husband-care).
    We must guard our autonomous feminist status! And all power to feminist sex-based women’s rights!

    1. I couldn’t agree more about the need for the women’s movement to be autonomous Lavender but I do have some queries re the rest. Who decides what is “right wing” or “conservative”? I’m in an online radical feminist group where I do sometimes think some of the members are conservative, even right wing, on the basis of their views of economic class or lack of interest in activism or where they stand on global issues eg support for a genocidal Israel. I’m also aware of one “radical feminist” who jumped to the side of woman hating very rapidly and I know other “feminists” who appear to have contempt for women (hardly the hallmark of feminism). I’m also aware that in the 60s (a decade before I became an activist myself) the tiny movement in Australia that began to build an organised opposition to Australia’s support for America’s war against Viet Nam, consisted largely of 2 groups: the Communist Party of Australia and the Christians. Poles apart on most political issues but I believe they were able to develop a working relationship re opposing the slaughter in Viet Nam. Things aren’t as simple as the writer of the piece assumes.

      1. Yes, I discovered feminism in the early 80s in WAAGV, Women’s Action Against Global Violence (almost as bad a collection of letters of the alphabet as CoAL, Coalition of Activist Lesbians ). And I enjoyed banner making, marching and appearing before government inquiries with my sisters who were communists, radical left Catholics, liberals, etc. We learned a lot from each other.pnd

  2. I think the days of the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ as descriptive terms for political affiliation are over.

    In meaningful terms we now have the ‘progressive left’ entering and overwhelming the old concept of ‘left wing’ and leaving it obsolete.

    The ‘progressive left’ is no friend of feminism in my opinion. It is this phalanx of ideas that has led us to the age of ‘identification’ where we can identify as anything we like and then we are ‘it’, no matter how bizarre the outcome. We can be white and identify as POC; we can identify as animals in the class room and can reasonably expect a mat to be placed on the floor for our ‘rests’; we can be male and identify as female and the law demands others close their eyes to the emperor’s nakedness;

    Where is the ‘right’ today? What defines it? It cannot be wealth as so many in left circles are what I would call ‘rich’.

    Definition of terms is so important. And I think the terms in use today are nebulous without such definition…

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