Karen Woodall: Warum ich keine Feministin mehr bin

Kann die feministische Ideologie so transformiert werden, dass innerhalb ihres Rahmens auch etwas für Männer und Jungen getan wird? Die britische Familienberaterin und Publizistin Karen Woodall ist skeptisch:

I am no longer a feminist. I was for many years, I am not now. Further, I consider that feminism is a deeply problematic, politically driven, stand point approach to supporting children and I want it to stop. I work alongside my husband and other colleagues and we have stopped delivering our services in a feminist paradigm and as a result our practice around families has become safer, inclusive of the needs of men and women as well as boys and girls and it allows those people to be exactly who they are instead of forcing them to conform to my view of how they should be in the world.

(...) There is a world wide global feminist movement which is funded in the billions, it is well organised, it is institutionalised and it is teaching your boys as well as your girls what being human is all about right now. And it has got nothing, whatsoever, to do with equality. Feminism is the practice of ensuring that women’s rights come first, the well being of girls comes next and men and boys can be additionally served so long as they accept that their place in this hierarchy is at the bottom of the heap. Its wrong, its deeply damaging and its killing men and children in the western world in particular as I write.

Woodalls Erfahrungen spiegeln die Erfahrungen, die man hierzulande seit einigen Jahren mit der Politik des Bundesforums Männer macht:

And so we go back to the conversation that I was having yesterday and the debate about how a global men and boys movement could incorporate itself into the feminist paradigm by alignment. I might be wrong but the debate sounded suspiciously like the trojan horse idea so favoured by some of those hapless chaps at FNF, you know how it goes – if we can just get in on the inside and persuade them that we are all really nice people then we might get some funding, someone might listen to us and then we can change the world… or versions to that effect.

And then when they get on the inside and are silenced by the orthodoxy that only allows them to speak in a certain language or behave in a certain way? Most of them roll over in my experience and decide that its men that need changing, not the system and from there the feminists have completed their neat little trick of making space for men, so that they can ‘educate’ said men on how deficient they are.

Woodall plädiert für einen anderen Ansatz:

I am convinced that outside of the feminist paradigm there are ways of working with women and girls and men and boys that are about true equality, about harmony and about respect for the difference between us. I am convinced of this because I see it in our every day practice at the Family Separation Clinic and I have increasingly seen it since I recovered from feminism. I do not believe that feminism, at least as it is impacting upon the western world, is about equality. I believe it is about upholding the rights of women over everyone else. In countries where women’s rights fall far behind those of men I do believe that fighting for the rights of women to be equal is a fair and just cause and I support it, wholeheartedly. But I do not believe that feminism as a word, a meaning and an intention, in the western world, is about equality between men and women. Feminism in its practice and in its influence on policy, service delivery and evaluation, in every aspect of life that touches women and children upholds the rights of women first, putting everyone else a long way behind. But as Erin Pizzey has shown us, from the early years of her work to this current day, being human outside of the feminist paradigm means integrating the needs of men and women and girls and boys, not putting women’s rights first and dictating to everyone else how they should think or feel.

(...) Feminism is not about equality. And we should say it loud and say it proud, together, as men and women, boys and girls, united in a new Equalities Movement. Different and above all equal.