17 September 2015
Third-Wave Feminism
Proudman or Proud Lady?
by Lynda Goetz
Much has been written about the barrister, Charlotte Proudman, aged 27, in the last week; some of it supportive, some condemnatory and the rest more than slightly incredulous at all the fuss. For anyone who has been on Mars or in the Maldives (where more serious stuff is going on), the furore is all about an inappropriate and, given the climate these days, somewhat crass comment by a male solicitor on the photo Ms Proudman had put up on her LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn, as Ms Proudman rightly points out, is supposed to be a professional networking site. What Alexander Carter-Silk, aged 57, said, when agreeing to connect was “I appreciate this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!!” As she had clearly put up a very flattering and professional photo of herself, the gracious reply might have been to thank him, but to point out that the purpose of the site was not dating but work. Ms Proudman however took objection to being ‘objectified’ and delivered a stinging rebuke. Rebuke delivered and apology received, the matter should have been left there. Not content to do so, Ms Proudman decided to circulate the exchange on social media.
One of the more interesting slants on the discussion she has prompted came from the online law paper Legal Cheek. The writer here, Judge John Hack, (a pseudonym in case you were wondering) took the view that Ms Proudman’s inexperience and youth caused her to make a serious error of judgement – in a world where judgement clearly matters a great deal. He points out that she has portrayed herself as ‘unreliable and reckless’ and someone who ‘doesn’t really understand the game she is playing’. He suggests that had she been cleverer, she could have exposed Carter-Silk anonymously, putting him in the impossible position of either not defending himself or of being ‘the active party and the bad guy who not only sent an inappropriate message, but also ruined the career of a young barrister’. As it is, she may have done that for herself, at least temporarily; although, to be fair, she must be about the best known junior barrister in the UK at the moment.
Was Ms Proudman (not her real name either, by the way, she was born Baileye, but that seems to be another story) seeking publicity or was she really offended by the older man’s remark as much as she made out? Her website advertises the fact that she is a barrister in human rights law, specialising in violence against women and girls. She is currently taking a sabbatical from practice to do a PhD in Sociology and Law at Cambridge, focusing on FGM. For the last 3 years she has been building a media profile with several radio and TV appearances (including, of course, another on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, last week). She makes no bones about the fact that she is a feminist legal activist. So did she really see that rather silly compliment as ‘the eroticisation of her physical appearance as a way of exercising power over her’, or did she see an opportunity of making her name stand out just a little more? One of the things that really does seem to characterise modern feminists is their unshakeable belief. Belief in the wrongness of the world; belief in the ‘ritual humiliation’ of male dominated workplaces; of the fact that men make workplaces ‘a repugnant world’ ( both from Charlotte Proudman’s article in Left Foot Forward February 2015) and conviction that men hold the balance of power. Serious to a fault they do not even appear to see that others have a right to a different point of view. Humour and any sense of perspective seem to have been jettisoned. How has it come to this and why on earth do these young feminists seem to be so vehement and feel so victimised?
Chrissie Hynde, aged 64, legendary frontwoman of 80s band The Pretenders, caused uproar amongst the feminists and the politically correct with comments in her recently published autobiography ‘Reckless: My Life as a Pretender’. Talking about an incident in which she was assaulted by a group of Hells Angels when she was 21, she commented that she took “full responsibility”. She reiterated this in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine (6.9.15). It resulted in an internet storm of outrage. According to Paula Mejia writing in Newseek online, ‘Naturally, people are upset about Hynde’s comments, particularly given her subversive stance in music and otherwise’. Naturally? Why? Surely, as Hynde herself said when confirming on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 that she felt it was important that ‘everybody should take responsibility for themselves’, she is also entitled to take a view on her own life without worrying that she is stepping on the toes of those who see ‘victim-blaming’ as a seriously misguided and completely erroneous attitude? According to Ms Mejia, Hynde’s comments are ‘not only reductive of women in contemporary culture but also at odds with hard data’. Leaving aside the evidence of hard data, which as we all know can generally be manipulated to show what we want it to show, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines ‘reductive’ as a rarely used word meaning, inter alia, ‘that reduces or serves to reduce.’ Chrissie Hynde maintaining that she behaved stupidly in her twenties cannot in any rational way serve to ‘reduce’ women in contemporary or any other culture. Those who rant at the adult woman commenting on her youthful misguided behaviour, may, on the other hand, be serving to ‘reduce’ women. What they are not allowing them to do is to be grown up and take responsibility for themselves and for the life they have led or are leading.
In spite of what young women like Ms Proudman seem to feel, massive strides, at least in the Western world, have been made in the position of women in what is, historically, a minute space of time. So why the continual sniping, hatred and humiliation which modern feminists (Third-Wave Feminists so-called or, as a male friend of mine called them, ‘Tsunami feminists’. They want to engulf the whole system!) seem happy to indulge in perpetually. Rape is an inexcusable crime in any society, at any time in history. It has become particularly unacceptable since men have lost the control over women which historically they used to have. Compliments, however inappropriate, are not rape. Is it perhaps time the latter-day feminists grew up just a little and stopped blaming men for everything about the world they don’t like, not to mention attacking all those other women who don’t agree with them? I wonder what the ‘feminist icon’ of DNA, Rosalind Franklin would have made of all this?
Rosalind Franklin, currently being celebrated in Anna Ziegler’s new play, Photograph 51 with Nicole Kidman in the lead role, was part of the team that discovered the structure of DNA in the 1950s. She died of cancer in 1958, four years before her three male colleagues, Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in 1962. Her sister, Jennifer Glynn has just published a memoir, ‘My Sister Rosalind Franklin’ (Oxford University Press). Both Jennifer Glynn and her nephew, Dan Franklin, are wary of the portrayal of Rosalind as an undervalued victim. According to her nephew she did not feel ‘in any way held back’. She loved her work, at which she was obviously brilliant and just got on with it. Although she has been picked up by the feminists as an icon, she herself ‘wasn’t out for fame and glory’ and according to Mr Franklin would definitely not have been outraged by the ‘trouble with girls’ comments which landed Professor Tim Hunt in such deep water a few months ago. “I really, really don’t think this feminist business that’s attached to her was an issue for her at all.”
Perhaps contemporary barristers should take note and just get on with their work – unless that is they are out for the fame and glory. As for contemporary rock icons, they already have that and should be surely be entitled to comment on the business they are in and on their own past.
