#Life and style RSS feed Women RSS feed World news RSS feed Gender RSS feed Feminism RSS feed Comment is free RSS feed Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off * Jump to content [s] * Jump to comments [c] * Jump to site navigation [0] * Jump to search [4] * Terms and conditions [8] Edition: UK * US Sign in Mobile * Your profile * Your details * Your comments * Your clippings * Your lists Sign out Mobile About us * About us * Contact us * Press office * Guardian Print Centre * Guardian readers' editor * Observer readers' editor * Terms of service * Privacy policy * Advertising guide * Digital archive * Digital edition * Guardian Weekly * Buy Guardian and Observer photos Today's paper * The Observer * Comment * Sport * New Review * Magazine * Observer Food Monthly Subscribe * Subscribe to the Guardian * iPhone app * iPad edition * Kindle * Extra * Guardian Weekly * Digital edition * All our services The Guardian home ____________________ [Comment is free] Search * News * Sport * Comment * Culture * Business * Money * Life & style * Travel * Environment * Tech * TV * Video * Dating * Offers * Jobs * Comment is free Beware the anti-feminists Movements such as Surrendered Wives and Taken in Hand are disturbing, but they won't stop women's advancement * Share * Tweet this * * * Email * Cath Elliott * + Cath Elliott + guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 January 2009 10.30 GMT * Jump to comments (…) While it may be true that there are fewer women who identify as feminists these days, there's still very little doubt that most of us actually are. Ask any young woman who spits out "feminism" like it's a dirty word if she genuinely believes herself to be inferior to men, and therefore less deserving of rights than those gifted with a male appendage at birth, and the chances are she'll scoff and tell you not to be so ridiculous. We may not have overthrown the patriarchy just yet, or managed to sell feminism as a badge to be worn with pride, but at the very least we've managed to imbue in the majority of women the sense that we're as entitled to the same freedoms and opportunities as the rest of the human race. So whether they call themselves feminists or not, women aren't about to go quietly back into the kitchens anytime soon; and as for accepting the second-class citizenship status our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had to endure, those days are long gone. For most of us anyway. Unfortunately, as in any movement for social change, there are those who remain resistant to their own emancipation: a tiny minority who have been so indoctrinated by both gender and religious conditioning that they continue to see themselves as men's subordinates. These women defer to their men in all things; they believe their primary role in life is to produce children and to keep a tidy and happy home, and while they enjoy all the benefits that feminism has brought them, like the right to vote, the right to contraception and the right to escape their miserable marriages once the penny drops and they finally wake up to the drudgery that their lives have become, they regard feminists like me as the antichrist. These Stepford Wives don't hesitate in denouncing the work of women's liberationists down the ages, while at the same time failing to recognise that if it hadn't been for that work, they wouldn't now be enjoying the freedom to speak out about anything. In October last year about 6,000 of these self-hating collaborators flocked to Chicago to take part in the True Woman Conference 08, an event described by Kathryn Joyce on AlterNet as: "A stadium-style event to promote what its proponents call 'biblical womanhood', 'complementarianism' or â most bluntly â 'the patriarchy movement'." The patriarchy movement is yet another brand of evangelical anti-feminism. A bit like the Quiverfull movement, only this time without all the children, biblical womanhood does exactly what it says on the tin: it sends women back to the dark ages. At the True Woman Conference, for example, the Christian sisters launched their new manifesto, inspiringly titled The True Woman Manifesto, where they resolved to cultivate "such virtues as purity, modesty, submission, meekness, and love" and where they affirmed their calling as women "to encourage men as they seek to express godly masculinity, and to honour and support God-ordained male leadership in the home and in the church". It's heartening to see that so far fewer than 3,000 women around the globe have signed up to this misogynists' charter, but it's also depressing to think that 3,000 women think so little of themselves and their daughters that they're prepared to endorse such illiberal, anti-woman nonsense. And the patriarchy movers aren't alone. In 2001 self-proclaimed feminist Laura Doyle brightened up the lives of poor, downtrodden men everywhere with the launch of her book The Surrendered Wife: A Step by Step Guide to Finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace with Your Man, in which she called on married women to cede control to men in the domestic sphere as a means to achieving marital harmony. According to Doyle, modern women have become too nagging, shrewish and belittling towards the men in our lives, and rather than telling our husbands to stop moaning, shape up or ship out if they can't handle a bit of dust on top of the telly and are seemingly incapable of doing anything about it themselves, instead we're supposed to mollycoddle them and treat them as if our semi-detached suburban chalet bungalows are really castles, and they're the kings over all they survey: including us. Forget that most women now work just as many hours outside of the home as their menfolk, or if they don't it's because they're stuck indoors with the kids all day; when hubbie gets home we're supposed to have recovered ourselves from all that, we're supposed to be waiting graciously by the front door with his slippers at the ready, with a candle-lit bath already drawn upstairs, and a hot meal on standby in the oven for when he comes down. Suffice to say there's as much chance of me signing up for one of the rapidly spawning Surrendered Wives workshops as there is of me visiting a nail bar or baking cup cakes for the local WI. And then there's the Taken in Hand crowd, the most bizarre and disturbing bunch of the lot. When I first came across Taken in Hand, or TiH as it's sometimes known, I have to admit I thought it was some kind of BDSM offshoot, but regretfully it's not. It's a "monogamous, heterosexual relationship which is male-led, and in which the female defers in matters of everyday life, as well as sexually, to her partner". This by itself isn't too problematic, not if both partners are consenting and go into the relationship fully aware of what they're signing up to, but which a quick glance around their website shows is nowhere near as "loving, decent and kind" as the publicity tries to make out. Taken in Handers practise what they call "consensual non-consent", which basically boils down to physical and sexual chastisement, up to and including rape, as punishment for the woman's transgressions. It apparently doesn't matter if she screams and cries throughout her ordeal, no amount of pleading is going to make the "punishment" stop: by dint of the fact that she's in the relationship in the first place she's deemed to have consented to any mistreatment and abuse her husband doles out. I'm not providing a link to the article, but any movement that tries to make a case for "when rape is a gift", deserves nothing but contempt, and not just from feminists. What's clear from all these groups is that no matter how much progress women make towards achieving equal rights, there are always going to be those among us who are too invested in the patriarchy to welcome that progress with open arms. That's up to them, but let's be clear about one thing. No matter how many of these oddball, anti-feminist, backward-looking movements spring up, women's advancement is going one way and one way only. Even if a million women sign the True Woman charter, or if only a handful of women ever choose to identify as feminists, women's rights are non-negotiable: we've already come this far, and we're not going back without a fight. * Print this Print this * Share * Contact us Send to a friend Close this popup Sender's name ____________________ Recipient's email address ____________________ Send Your IP address will be logged Share Close this popup Short link for this page: http://gu.com/p/24ngj * StumbleUpon * reddit * Tumblr * Digg * LinkedIn * Google Bookmarks * del.icio.us * livejournal * Facebook * Twitter Contact us Close this popup * Report errors or inaccuracies: reader@guardian.co.uk * Letters for publication should be sent to: letters@guardian.co.uk * If you need help using the site: userhelp@guardian.co.uk * Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard: +44 (0)20 3353 2000 * + Advertising guide + License/buy our content Article history About this article Close this popup Cath Elliott: Anti-feminist movements are disturbing, but won't stop women's adancement This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 10.30 GMT on Wednesday 28 January 2009. 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