Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Margaret Atwood and the problematic feminists. . .



                So, I’m in the middle of a very good book by the Dutch journalist Frank Westerman, Engineers of the Soul: In the Footsteps of Stalin’s Writers. It is excellent. But I’m not done yet, so this blog will not be about that. There are two lessons – reminders really – that I can take from it:


1)      Novelists will always piss off ideologues.


2)      Revolutionaries often eat their own.


The most dedicated, idealistic and genuine Bolsheviks were the first to go in Stalin’s purges. Trotsky himself wasn’t safe. And even useful novelists were considered deadly enemies…


I thought about this while reading Margaret Atwood’s op-ed in the Globe and Mail, “Am I a Bad Feminist?” I was more than a little gobsmacked when I encountered the title. How could the author of The Handmaid’s Tale ask such a question? Well, see above. . .


Atwood you see, had the temerity to defend due process, the presumption of innocence, and her insistence on knowing the facts before making a judgement. (Specifically, in the case of UBC professor Steven Galloway, accused of a crime, exonerated by a judge, by dismissed by UBC anyway). Here’s what she says:




A couple days later the Globe carried a response co-written by Baily Reid, Erica Gee and Erica Iffil of the Bad and Bitchy podcast. Atwood is not necessarily a “bad feminist” they say, but a “problematic one”. Here’s what they wrote: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/well-are-you-a-bad-feminist/article37609948/


You may make up your own mind, but my personal sympathy is not with the bloggers. Atwood is a writer, and so her concern is the human condition in all it’s glorious imperfection and nuance. Reid, Gee, and Iffil are activists (bios here: https://badandbitchy.com/p/about-the-hosts-1493648798/), and their concern is their end-goal, which is change. Atwood’s piece is eloquent, sober, logical and thorough. Reid, Gee and Iffil’s piece is full of buzzwords and slogans. Tellingly, they don’t even try to address Atwood’s concerns (or even acknowledge what she says), and largely prove her own point for her: Galloway’s guilt is taken for granted – guilty because accused, as Atwood puts it. To Atwood's
""A fair-minded person would now withhold judgment as to guilt until the report and the evidence are available for us to see"
They dismiss:
This is the language of right-wing women who have co-opted feminist labels and fathers of accused rapists alike. 

So much for fair-mindedness then, or withholding judgement. Such concerns are only the Privilege of Power, as if Atwood inherited her influence and not earned it through a life-time of writing. But  Reid, Gee, and Iffil have no time for old books either:
"Your feminism is outdated. . .the fact that you, say, wrote dystopian feminist stories during the second wave of feminism may not still qualify you for your annual feminist membership."
In other words, "what have you done for us lately?"

You'll notice a few things implied: 
      a) Reid, Gee, and Iffil are now in charge of accepting, rejecting and revoking membership in the feminist club. 
      b) Margaret Atwood and her ilk have only been co-opting feminism all this time.  
      c) Basing one's opinion on evidence and waiting for evidence to form an opinion are now only right wing concerns. 

You will also notice the "you're with us or you're with the rapist" attitude, which does rather discourage dialogue. 

Atwood has been accused of waging “war” on less powerful women. And her piece has been bafflingly reported as a criticism of the #MeToo movement.  Here’s what she actually writes:

The #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. All too frequently, women and other sexual-abuse complainants couldn't get a fair hearing through institutions – including corporate structures – so they used a new tool: the internet. Stars fell from the skies. This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake-up call.


This doesn't sound like criticism to me. She does ask what the step might be, and does caution that there may be risks as well as rewards in the new way of doing things. I let her speak for herself:



 The legal system can be fixed, or our society could dispose of it. Institutions, corporations and workplaces can houseclean, or they can expect more stars to fall





A warning, no? Clearly, things must change – who said they shouldn’t? Certainly not Atwood. It is not wrong to ask what form this change may take, or warn of the possible pitfalls along the way. But in some circles, even asking the question is a form of treachery.
Arguably, I myself am not entitled to an opinion. If it’s any consolation, nobody reads these blogs anyway. Someone – somewhere - might ask why I never chose to address #MeToo until it was time to defend one of its critics. Well, again I maintain this piece was NOT a criticism. And I suppose I still belong to a world where supporting Margaret Atwood is not a misogynistic thing to do. I suppose my alarm bells naturally go off any time a writer is shouted down. Or when slogans are substituted for argument. Or when emotions are blackmailed. I can’t help wondering if Atwood’s most strident critics actually read her piece. Instead, there seems a whole lot of projection, and substitution of what she actually said with a whole lot of what she didn’t say (who, for instance, has been silenced by this piece? ). She did sound a note of caution, and insert a bit of nuance into the proceedings. She did insist on seeing the whole wide big complex picture of reality and the very messy -yes, “problematic” – role that people – mere humans, play in it. Which is exactly what writers are supposed to do.





Which brings me back to Westerman’s book. Ideologues don’t like novelists. They don’t see things the same way. They almost always end up clashing. If authoritarianism can creep up on us from the likes of Trump, it can also creep in from the opposite direction, from the well meaning and the good-intentioned, who, being right, quite logically assume all others to be wrong, and therefore, obstacles to be removed. A sure-fire warning sign is when they turn on writers.


I leave the last word to Atwood herself. 

“Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.

No comments:

Post a Comment