A female political blogger's right to choose: thoughts from the Liberal Conspiracy conference

Last Wednesday there was a Liberal Conspiracy event held at the Guardian where all sorts of internet wrongmos from the "left and liberal" blogosphere got together to talk blogging campaigns and networks and stuff. Desperately short of anyone good to make up numbers and having exhausted all other options, Sunny asked me to be the fourth speaker on the panel about why women don't blog about politics. As those who know *ahem* me well, I'll try anything once, and there was the rumour of free booze afterwards so I gamely took Sunny up on his offer. You'll be pleased to know that the famous Smith sense of direction was working better than usual on this occasion - I only got lost twice on the way from Westminster to Farringdon. Call me Edmund Hillary.

There has been a lot of comment about the women discussion subsequently but I've been too busy listening, leading, and losing in Henley on Thursday and going to barbeques (mmmmm, sausages) and generally causing trouble to blog on it. I do so now in the somewhat grim suspicion that I am going to come across as a member of the raping patriarchy which is pretty distressing as I've always considered myself a right-on feminist. Although, to be honest, keeping one's name after marriage apparently constitutes "radical man-hater" these days in this, the era of Ruth Fowler.


So before I start I'd like to lay the ol' feminist credentials firmly on the table: I own and have read the SCUM Manifesto and books by Andrea Dworkin as well as "softer" tomes such as those by Luce Irigaray, Juliet Mitchell, Greer, de Beauvoir, and all the others you'd expect (and some that maybe you wouldn't); I did my dissertation at college on how the mental processes by which we evaluate women haven't changed significantly since the pre-Enlightenment era; I have a t-shirt from the Fawcett Society that bears the legend "this is what a feminist looks like"; I understand such concepts as objectification and the penile gaze, and; I think women who subscribe to the view that lapdancing, prositution, and stripping are "empowering" are merely invoking the morality of the slaves. I'm not one of these women who are all, "like, feminism is like sooooooooo 1973 dahling! I've got a degree and take my clothes off for cash because I'm hot and A Strong Woman Who Knows My Own Mind [copyright Nikki, 21, from Kettering]."

Convinced everyone? Good. Now I'm about to get all Kramer and Sprenger on your asses. Blogospherically speaking that is.


On the panel was Cath Elliott of Comment is Free Fame, Kate Belgrave, and Zohra Moosa of the f-word, and almost immediately after the first whistle there was a smack-down regarding ownership of the 24-weeks issue that the Liberal Conspiracy had been campaigning on last month. The contention seemed to be that although protecting a woman's right to choose is something that the feminist blogosphere has always been rightly concerned with but as soon as LibCon got involved the campaign was taken over by a collection of male bloggers, and that the traditional proponents of women's liberty had been written out of the discourse.


Maybe this is true, I don't know. The Tavern was only involved in the periphery of the discussions, but I remember at the time - maybe naively - being quite pleased that those in possession of gentleman-bits were actually getting irate about the attempt to lower the upper limit on abortion. As someone who has spent the last ten years somewhat unsuccessfully trying to persuade male friends that soft-core porn is not "just a bit of fun," I found the hands-across-the-water moment against Nadine Dorries' amendment thoroughly heartening. That's not to say that women should be grateful that various knights in shining armour are coming to our "rescue" on such issues, merely that in spite of our darkest fears that UK feminism has been crushed under a slurry of fruity young ladies from Cambridge in their underwear declaring that the movement is passe, we must be doing something right if at least some men "get" what we're trying to achieve on at least one aspect of women's issues.

In addition, isn't this just, like, TOTALLY how the left operate? There's Mad Nad and the Tories trying to restrict a woman's right to choose and instead of actually doing anything about it, we're all sat in a meeting arguing about what the committee to deal with the issue should be called not noticing, in the meantime, that not only have we missed the battle but we're well on the way to losing the war.


In any case, for all that the discussion was meant to be about why few women write about politics, it was soon all about women writing about feminism and how this isn't given enough coverage by the traditional political blogosphere. Heh. I felt that the swift return to women's issues from the advertised topic answered its own question somehow. Inevitably we were then into the realms of "how can we establish better networks and blogging communities?" and the like. Okay. Now, I'd be the last to deny that feminists aren't heard enough - but you can't simultaneously complain that no one on the blogosphere is noticing you and then lambast them for not being sensitive enough to understand every socio-historical implication of their involvement when they do (as in the case of the 24-weeks discussion).

By this time I was feeling somewhat of an outsider at the event because I don't necessarily write because I want to be involved in blogging networks/communities in order to further the (still undefined) left-liberal agenda. If I want to affect social change I'll do it through the Labour Party. I write, however, because I like it.


To conclude with a thought that's probably going to make me REALLY unpopular: it seemed to me that the discussion at the Liberal Conspiracy was suggesting that an identity had to be chosen: either Labour/Conservative/LibDem/whatever blogger who writes about politics, or feminist blogger who writes about women's issues.


I've clearly put my foot in it here so I might as well go in up to the groin and say that if I had to choose I'd choose being a Labour blogger every time. It's a diverse arena where anyone can be involved (join now kids! Donate! Jes' kiddin') whereas the feminist blogosphere came across as an exclusive members-only club fraught with rules and regulations on participation where the saying "the wrong thing" risked turf warfare and discord.


Personally I don't really see why women can't choose to be a member of both groups. But then maybe I'm just an unreconstructed feminist.