“…there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”
So instructs Valerie Solanas’ infamous work of feminist polemic, the S.C.U.M Manifesto. Published in 1967, it tore through the boundaries of acceptable thought, provoking a visceral response and challenging the very foundations on which society was built. Almost 50 years on, I found it a delight to read a feminist text with the power to truly shock. Compared to the careful, composed feminist dialogue of today – where the slightest hint of controversy results in immediate no-platforming, where opinions are kept quiet for fear of being branded the “wrong type” of feminist – the raw and unfiltered passion of Valerie Solanas was refreshing.
Free speech and feminist politics are often presented as being mutually exclusive – at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how public discourse unfolds. The concept of free speech is commonly misunderstood, represented as license to voice any opinion – no matter how abhorrent – without criticism. Paris Lees argues that bigots should not be given a platform in the name of “Freeze Peach,” using the example of Bonnie Greer facing the racism of Nick Griffin on BBC Question Time as evidence that it is unjustifiable.
I cannot speak for Ms Greer but, as a Black woman, I would far rather racism was exposed for the cowardice and superstition that it is in public. Certainly, dealing with racism is painful. But censoring the Nick Griffins of the world only serves to give their views legitimacy in a way that their own words never could. The beauty of free speech is that it allows for ideas to be explored, critiqued, and challenged. The irrational ones, like racism, do not stand up to scrutiny. With cool logic and a firm grasp of reality, Bonnie Greer decimated that ill-informed bigotry, for which I applaud her.
Feminism must be bolder. Veteran campaigner Julie Bindel was no-platformed by the National Union of Students on the grounds that she is “dangerous.” Having committed her life’s work to the liberation of women and girls and challenging prejudice directed towards lesbians, the idea that Bindel presents a threat to students is frankly laughable. The same goes for Germaine Greer. Neither woman, as far as I am aware, has any recorded history of violence. Both have contributed greatly to the feminist movement. The worst that would have happened was a difference in opinion between speaker and audience, surely a common occurrence on any university campus. Yet Bindel and Greer are being treated like criminals, often by the very people their work uplifts. All of the best ideas are dangerous, with the power to change the world – the very objective of the feminist movement.
Safe-space culture is toxic. I believe wholeheartedly in the collective organization of marginalized groups, in people gathering together politically along the lines of race, sex, sexuality, etc., but the concept of a safe-space has been fetishized by student politics, warped into something it was never meant to be: collective organisation was about taking radical political action, not creating an emotional comfort blanket for those under 25s traumatized by the horrifying prospect of hearing an opinion contrary to their own.
It’s time to stop the hand-wringing and the gratuitous mea-culpas. What’s revolutionary about being universally palatable? What’s radical about allowing our ideas to stagnate? A sanitized, scripted feminism will achieve nothing. Own your opinion. Defend it, or accept that it’s better off being discarded. Build a feminist movement worth fighting for.