by Guest

contribution by Ray Filar

It’s difficult for women to speak in public, particularly political women. Yesterday, Helen Hasteley-Lewis blogged at the New Statesman about the torrential online abuse feminist writers get.

This follows Cath Elliott’s blog earlier this year on the shocking invective she personally regularly receives.



At the moment, the internet is a society where being (perceived as) female and writing about feminism invariably leads to responses on the theme of: ‘shut up or I will rape you/you’re ugly and deserve to be raped/you’re too ugly to be raped’.

Abuse is more explicitly misogynist online, where trolls can hide behind anonymised usernames, but it isn’t a phenomenon isolated to the internet. The watered-down version plays out offline all the time.

How does silencing work? Partially, it works by ad feminam response. Suppose that Fictional-but-also-factual-John and I are having a discussion.

I say that I think silencing is something that is usually directed against women by men in order to shut them up. John replies with, ‘okay, but you don’t have to be so angry about it all the time/you’re cute when you’re political! / did someone get out of bed on the wrong side this morning? / you don’t have to make it about gender all the time/you’re just saying that because you’re a woman / ok…come here and kiss me / yeah but you’re fat and ugly and therefore irrelevant’, and so on.

My opinion is sidestepped; irony abounds. Next time, it is harder to speak.

Silencing works by trivialisation of what women say, through mockery of what women say, through reducing-women-to-sexual-appearance.

After being silenced once, twice, a thousand times, I find it surprising that anybody has the labia to say anything at all.

This is not to say that there aren’t loud, opinionated, dominating women, or shy, retiring men, or that people biologically conform to a gender binary. It not to say that ALL WOMEN are one way and ALL MEN are another way. It’s not to say that silencing doesn’t happen along other axes of oppression, race and class being two of the rather pertinent ones.

If you, of any gender, find yourself instinctively disregarding what a woman is saying, if you find yourself not listening, or wanting to interrupt, or looking at the clock, you are enacting a form of silencing. If find yourself thinking, ‘what a cow/bitch/hag’ when a woman is saying something in an outspoken fashion, you are taking part in the mentality of silencing.

Take a step back, have a look at your own privilege, and then, please, stop doing it.

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Ray Filar blogs here and tweets from here.