Let’s #voteCorbyn to improve women’s representation. Erm what?
Cath Elliott
Posted on August 18, 2015
Since Jeremy Corbyn threw his hat into the ring I’ve seen a number of people claiming with no sense of irony at all that ‘as feminists‘ they’re proud to be supporting him in his campaign to be the next leader of the Labour Party. Personally I haven’t decided who I’m voting for yet: as a socialist I may well end up voting for Corbyn myself, but I’m certainly under no illusion that that would be the feminist thing to do.
It’s not often I find myself agreeing with a Telegraph journalist, let alone former Labour Party official and ultra Blairite Dan Hodges, but much like a stopped clock it seems even Hodges manages to get it right sometimes. A few weeks ago for example I watched the following exchange unfold on Twitter, and while I didn’t join in, I did find myself cheering Hodges along from the sidelines:
I’ve storified the rest of the conversation here – Sometimes Dan Hodges Gets it Right..
Now obviously the irony of bigging up a man for basically mansplaining feminist politics to women isn’t lost on me, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and give credit where it’s due. Plus, Dan Hodges is the only other writer I’ve seen so far picking up on this specific and quite frankly bizarre element of the #voteCorbyn campaign.
This is the element that argues that because Corbyn has produced a half decent gender equality document, and because he’s pledged that 50% of his shadow cabinet will be women, in order to ensure better representation in politics of and for women, women voters should vote for him.
That’s right, forget Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, the two women standing to be Labour leader; forget if you can the fact that those who have a vote in this contest have the historic opportunity to elect women to the positions of both leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party: rather than voting for women directly, vote instead for the man who promises to do what he can to promote more women.
As for Corbyn’s position on wider women’s issues, those beyond our political representation, Rahila Gupta rightly pointed out in her piece for Open Democracy – Jeremy Corbyn: Labour’s Gift to British Women? – there are some gaps in his Working with Women policy document, particularly concerning his views on prostitution and the impact of religious fundamentalism on women’s freedoms. Sadly, from the resounding silence myself and others have been met with when we’ve asked for some clarification on these issues from the Corbyn camp, it would appear these subjects have been left out of the paper deliberately rather than having been omitted in error.
Maybe it’s simply that Corbyn hasn’t decided yet where he stands on some things, or maybe he’s just confused – it’s reported for instance that he supports the decriminalisation of prostitution, and yet back in 2010 he signed an early day motion on trafficking and sexual exploitation that urged the then government to “take action to reduce the demand in the UK for trafficked women,” which sounds more like something a proponent of the Nordic model would be calling for, rather than someone who thinks the recent Amnesty decision is the way to go.
Talking of early day motions, here’s the text of another one Corbyn signed, this time in 2011, on foetal alcohol syndrome:
“That this House notes with concern research carried out at the Medical Research Council’s laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, which has concluded that alcohol damages DNA and can cause permanent genetic damage to unborn children; is aware that binge drinking by young women is widespread and that Britain also has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the developed world with such pregnancies often associated with alcohol consumption; believes therefore that many genetically damaged babies are being born in Britain each year, which is tragic for those children and for their families but also a growing problem for wider society; draws specific attention to comments made by Dr Ketan Patel who led the research that shows foetal alcohol syndrome leads to birth defects and learning difficulties; considers that mild exhortations to pregnant women to drink sensibly are wholly inadequate to address the problem; and calls on the Government to bring forward serious and effective measures to counter these behaviours as a matter of urgency and end this ongoing tragedy.”
That’s right, our new male feminist messiah once put his name to a motion calling on the goverment to do something about feckless young women drinking themselves pregnant and being too stupid to understand the impact of their behaviour on their unborn children. (Meanwhile we’ll try and ignore the other one he signed the same year “remembering the smiles” Jimmy Savile brought to children’s faces)
But that’s enough of that. I’m not the Daily Mail and I’m certainly not out to do a hatchet job on Corbyn – I actually think it would be amazing to see an old-school socialist leading the Labour Party. But neither am I prepared to join in with the almost cult-like adulation that now greets him wherever he goes. Because at the end of the day, while on the one hand Corbyn claims to support the increased representation of women in politics, and more importantly the increased representation of women in more senior positions within politics, on the other hand he’s a man standing against two women candidates. And aside from whatever other dodgy views he holds on women’s issues, that’s simply not feminism.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
But the tragedy is that, in this particular case, the two women candidates happen to be complete shit.
See, that’s where you end up when your ‘Feminism’ dictates to you the most important thing about a person is what genitals they have, rather than a Feminism that is about equality.
There’s nothing contradictory about supporting Amnesty’s approach to Prostitution either, and wanting to end trafficking too. Amnesty themselves are completely against trafficking – it’s only the SWERFs that have been trying to conflate the two – and they’re completely wrong. Corbyn has actually given quite a few indications that he wholly supports complete decriminalization.
From http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/how-pledgedecrim-takes-sex-worker-rights-mainstream
As the Labour leadership race dominates the news, many sex worker rights activists are excited by Jeremy Corbyn’s frontrunner status. Corbyn has long supported decriminalisation. “We’ve been contacted by quite a lot of people asking where do the candidates stand on decriminalisation, and it’s fantastic to be able to say Jeremy Corbyn is completely on board,”
Isn’t that simply great for modern Feminism? Hopefully this blokes any chance of the Nordic Model gaining traction in England under Corbyn, and means as sex positive feminists we can continue the eclipse of the bigoted second wavers
As a bigoted second wave, SWERF,TERF, ETC, is it really so unreasonable to state that an industry that promotes sexual slavery as a recruitment method and calls its female workforce by hate speech is not and can never be feminist? If being sexism positive can be morphed into sex positive in the rush to conflate paying to abuse another in the name of the rights of the abused to be abused, then what next, fighting for the rights of sweat shop labour to be under paid, beaten and exploited? After all, it is their choice after all? How can Amnesty and Socialism have turned its back so completely on the Human Rights Act that was fought so long and hard for just because the abuse takes place in a bedroom rather than a shopfloor? The Nordic Model draws on understanding that not all consent is freely given, and the customer and management base of the sex ‘industry’ should be open to a little more critical thinking than waving a simple Choice banner.
The issues you present, as your comments illustrate, are things that even feminists themselves cannot agree on. As a socialist yourself you can see how his policies are best for equality in general, so I don’t see how you can say that he is anti-feminist just for running against women who would not be good for equality. Thatcher wasn’t any good for equality and I’d take an old white man over a Thatcherite every day of my life. Some women have become patriarchs to get power, choosing them does us no good at all.
Not to deny the all too real problems of exploitation in the sex industry, but to simply write off what is in reality a highly variegated, multifaceted industry as ‘promot(ing) sexual slavery as a recruitment method’ is an absurd sweeping generalisation that helps no one.
I think you’re making a category error here. You’re comparing people working in a particular industry (prostitution) to people employed in whatever industry under certain conditions (sweat shop labour). That’s an apples-and-oranges comparison you’re making there. A more appropriate comparison would be between prostitutes being controlled for gain by pimps and subject to sexual and physical violence and sweat shop labourers in other industries.
Just because the abuse happens in a bedroom rather on a shopfloor and involves sexual organs doesn’t mean that it’s grounds for seeking to abolish the entire industry. We don’t take that approach to any other industry. We don’t say that sweatshops producing trainers are grounds for abolishing shoe manufacturing. The fact that the sex industry involves genitalia doesn’t magically make it any different.
What ‘the Nordic model’ is about is infantilising adult women in the name of feminism. Furthermore, it doesn’t even do what it says on the tin, which is to say that it has not led to the decriminalisation of prostitutes, who, for example, can still face criminal charges for ‘mutual pimping’ if they share a property for the purpose of plying their trade in safety. Moreover, if the consent of prostitutes is not free, and therefore doesn’t count, because of economic factors that prompt them to sell sex, then frankly, no one’s consent to sex is free (and therefore everyone’s consent is null and void), because all sexual choices are influenced, shaped and restricted by economic factors.
Mansplain alert!