Why I am a feminist
by Stephen Mumford (FSL and Durham University)
The back cover of Christine Delphy’s Close to Home: a Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression poses seriously the question ‘whether men can be feminists’. For a lot of my life, I wrestled with this. I was an undergraduate student back in the 1980s and read feminist thinkers as part of my degree: the likes of Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvior and Kate Millett. But my campus was also very politically active and there was a strong women’s group in which the detailed matters of feminist practice were confronted. This made me aware of some strands within the movement that resisted the involvement of men and advocated for women-only spaces. I had to respect that view. Some women had very real fears of what men might do and I acknowledged the narrative in which men were oppressors of women. While retaining my interest in feminist thinking, and in sexual equality and justice, I never felt I had any authority during my academic career to either teach or research in feminist philosophy.
There are a host of reasons why I have come to re-think my stance. They can be summed up, however, in the title of bell hooks’ book Feminism is for Everybody. I truly believe this. A feminist world would not only be to the benefit of women. It would be to the benefit of men too. And it would be to the benefit of all those many who don’t fit neatly into that binary of woman and man.
Patriarchy can be understood as a system of sex-based injustice, and in order to perpetuate that injustice, it has to advocate for the strict reality of the sex binary. Women suffer from this injustice, certainly, but most varieties of queer people will often suffer even more. And I believe that men suffer also. There is a real sense in which oppression harms all involved. The oppressed are harmed in concrete material ways but, perhaps following Socrates, I think that oppression harms the oppressor too: even if it is just their soul. I want to oppose all forms of injustice because they are wrong, but if you thought that you could support a cause only if you had a direct stake in it, I think that men have a stake in ending sex-based injustice.
It is not only in a spiritual sense that patriarchy harms men. In enforcing compliance with gender norms, we are all put in cages. Of course, one can stay in the cage voluntarily, or think that one does. But we should be free to leave whether or not we choose to exercise that freedom. In my personal experience, sport was a key arena in which I became aware of the oppressive enforcement of the gender norms. Toxic masculinity, manifest in ruthless aggression, lack of compassion, homophobia, were enough to put me off. Women have a different set of challenges when they participate in sport. Indeed, mere participation alone is often enough to provoke misogyny.
When I met Sheree, I loved her inclusive vision of feminism. She saw that patriarchy harmed us all and how limiting it would be to turn feminism into a women-versus-men conflict (and it’s even more limiting to make it a women-versus-trans-women conflict). Learning this from Sheree gave me the confidence to proclaim openly that I am a feminist. I now see feminism as acceptance of a set of values, and they are values that all of us should accept, irrespective of our gender. These are values of equity, compassion, diversity, tolerance, intersectionality, liberation, community and social justice. It cannot be simply women versus men when there are some women who uphold patriarchy and reject these values. This is why simply having a woman prime minister is no feminist win on its own. The UK has a recent history of right-wing women leaders who have assisted patriarchy at every step. In contrast, and through the Feminist Sport Lab, we are seeking to challenge the status quo and advocate for real change in society. We see the power of sport to do this: how it can change our perception of what a woman is, of her place and her role. She can be physically strong and courageous, as much as anyone can. In being so, she challenges the myth that men’s dominant place in society is either natural, inevitable or just. This is why sport is so vital for the future of feminism; and why feminism is so vital for the future of sport.