Louise Mensch is a Nincompoop: where I ignore my rules about Feminism

Technically, this blogpost will violate all of my personal rules on feminism and not participating in attacking women for being women. I don't want to do this but I'm not entirely sure how to write about Louise Mensch without declaring her a nincompoop. Twice this week, Mensch has come out with statements which demonstrate both an incredible lack of awareness of reality and a complete refusal to even attempt to understand privilege or intersectionality.

The first statement this week basically implied that most people who are depressed just need to exercise more. Now, there is some correlation between exercise and dealing with depression but to suggest that most depressed people just need to exercise more is just offensive. It ignores the realities of depression and mental illness. I could honestly rant about this for hours but, fundamentally, Mensch's comment is further demonstration of her complete disconnect from the lives of most women. 

Mensch's second foray into nincompoopery this week was another blogpost on intersectionality which, unfortunately, was cross-posted in the Guardian. It is yet another whiny piece about how intersectionality is a big scary word that is too difficult to understand. I am so bored of these blogposts. Intersectionality isn't difficult. Most small children understand multiple oppressions. They may not have the language skills to articulate it but your average primary aged child can figure it out for themselves. Why middle class white feminists seem to be stuck on this "it's too difficult" record is beyond me. Yes some feminists may not have come across it before but 2 minutes on google would make it fairly clear what it was.

Intersectionality and "check your privilege" have both been used as silencing tactics but that doesn't make them irrelevant. It just means that a group of aggressive whiners have deliberately misunderstood the terms in order to find more things to tantrum about. Personally, I've taken to ignoring them. Why waste your time on women trying to silence other women? I wasn't going to reply to Mensch's article because I do think she's an attention-seeking troll and we should be ignoring her rather indulging her self-important dramatics had she not referenced Laurie Penny's tweet about Ron Liddle's racism. 

Laurie Penny tweeted out the phrase "don't feed the trolls" in reference to Ron Liddle's deeply offensive Spectator piece this week. I retweeted it because I agreed with her. Comedian Ava Vidal tweeted Penny to point out that a white woman telling WOC to ignore racism was a silencing tactic. Like Penny, this had not occurred to me. I do believe that feeding trolls is wrong but to not call out racism is equally wrong. We need to work harder at not feeding trolls whilst simultaneously calling out racism, misogyny, disablism, classism etc. There is a balance. I've not figured it out yet but I'm trying. 

I disagree with Penny on lots of issues but one thing Penny does is apologise.  For that, she's one of my favourite feminists. There seems to be this theory that women apologising is a sign of weakness to be avoided at all costs. Being wrong isn't a bad thing. Being wrong doesn't make you a bad feminist. It means you made a mistake or simply didn't see your privilege. Apologising is a feminist action. We need more feminists like Penny who are willing to step up publicly and admit they were wrong. 

According to Mensch, Penny's apology was a sign of weakness; a desperate attempt to be one of the 'cool kids'.  When did we get to a point where apologising was wrong? Surely, a fundamental tenant of feminism is that we are all learning from one another and will, inevitably, make mistakes? Mistakes are a part of the learning process; as is apologising. 

According to Mensch, feminists are spending too much time discussion oppression and, as such, are making male feminists sad. :( Here's a handy tip about "male feminists": if they stop listening to women because they are bored, they aren't actually feminists. I know that sounds difficult, like intersectionality, but the whole point of feminism is that we listen and learn from one another. If men don't like it, well, that's just male privilege for you; just as white, wealthy women ignoring the opinions of WOC is white privilege. 

I could spend more time explaining privilege and intersectionality but Mensch isn't going to listen. She's far too busy being smug and rich and white and arrogant. 

These are some of the excellent responses to Mensch's Guardian article:

The Debate: Check Your Privilege, Louise Mensch at Black Feminists

Intersectionality - Round V at Black Feminists

Intersectionality for Dummies at Black Feminists

Here's Some Reality For Ya at It's Not a Zero Sum Game

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants by Renie D Lodge

Louise Mensch - Take A Lesson on Privilege from the Internet by Laurie Penny

Being a Mentalist at Put Up with rain

If we checked and apologised for every privilege the world would be a dull monolith but ... at Flying on the Rainbow

Straight Allies, White Anti-Racists, Male Feminists (and Other Labels That Mean Nothing to me) at Spectra Speaks