Now, I know I am just a girl... :: 10:31 AM :: easyjetsetter

...and not supposed to have strident opinions, and if I do, people will think I am male, but my goat has been got. High dander, I think the phrase is.

This post was originally a looonngg comment on this post, which in itself was a response to this speech.

"That speech by Theresa May enrages me. Andrew's right, there's a lot of the good stuff in there that is missing from the Conservatives that could take them to reelection if they listened to Theresa.

But while Andrew can dismiss the way she feels obliged to couch her central argument with fluffy friendly feminism, I cannot. I am a girl, and she just lost my vote.

I can't be doing with the kind of feminism that sends me the message that I am a victim and deserve to be empowered by virtue of my extra X. There are plenty of victims out there, of both genders, with real problems. This sort of talk tells women they are innately weak by virtue of gender (culture) or sex (biological), by suggesting they need help to succeed against men.

I don't want to be against men. I want to work with them. I want to do better than them, sure, not because they're men, but because I want to do better than everyone.

I don't want to be courted because I am a woman who votes. I want to be courted because I am a citizen who votes.

If I ran for office*, I would never, ever, ever want to have to even suspect that the reason I was on the candidates list was because I was female, and not purely because I was qualified.

I particularly despise the concept of quotas, not because I don't want to see more women in politics, but more than seeing smart women in politics, I want to see smart people in politics.

I do not give a rat's ass what kind of genitals they have, as long as they have a more important set of organs, a brain and a heart, working together and balancing out.

Nobody ever suggested Maggie thought the way she did, and succeeded as she did because she was a woman, she thought the way she did and succeeded as she did because she was Maggie.

By yielding to the temptation to play the female card, Theresa May is weakening her position: she will be pigeonholed as women's issues thinker, instead of a thinker.

That is all. She made me cross."


As long as all the women in the Conservative Party continue to frame their thoughts as being "women's thoughts" then lists of rising stars in the party will continue to look like the list compiled by the telegraph in late May: all-male. (I can't find it...it's been pulled - anyone got a copy?)

This reminds me of what happened with Michael Kinsley and Susan Estrich last spring. Anne Applebaum had the best reply to the whole mess. I might send Ms. May a copy.

UPDATE: ARRRGH no, look what I found.

UPDATE II: Oh, and another thing in the opposite direction, while I am talking about feminism and satan's works. I would like to voice my support for poor Larry Summers: forbidden to even speculate as to why women aren't making it in science and maths as much as men, and forced to take sensitivity training.

For a start, research shows that if women take science and maths at university, the same percentages of them go on to higher things in the field as men. It's what happens in High School that turns girls off science and maths that should be examined. I suspect it is women like Susan Estrich and Theresa May who set up low expectations for us by telling us we need help to be good at "boy-like" subjects.

Another reason I dislike the sappy Guardian EQ/SQ test: girls aren't "supposed" to like complicated systems, and are "supposed" to feel animals' pain. If anyone had read their Foucault they'd know that it is public discourse like this that inscribes our gender culture more than anything. Judith Butler has a lot to answer for too. Although she's funny about drag queens.

UPDATE III: Good article by Steven Pinker, who, although old now, is another of my academic celebrity crushes (along with Niall Ferguson and Steven Levitt)

*Forget it Dad. Never going to happen.