Location:Abou Al Mahasen Square,,Egypt

Facebook announced this week that users of online music streaming services like Spotify will soon be share or every song they listen to to Facebook automatically, so-called frictionless sharing. I’ve used a similar service for years called Last.fm which is owned by CBS. Every song I listen in Spotify or my desktop music player foobar2000 to is sent to Last.fm, who then build a picture of my listening habits and recommend music I’d probably like. I’ve found countless new bands this way and it’s only been possible because lots of other people with similar listening habits use the service too. It’s one of my favourite web services.

Facebook has about 750 million users while Last.fm has about 40 million. Facebook is in a very strong position to become dominant in yet another aspect of online life. Facebook already offers many services within one website. which other  websites and mobile apps focus entirely on: location sharing (Foursquare and Gowalla), instant messaging (countless services), surveys and questions (Ask MetaFilter etc, Survey Monkey) and so on. A similar observation could be made of Google who have a huge array of products and services.

What strikes me about this is how similar this is to the relationship between supermarkets and independent traders. Supermarkets like Tesco offer everything from fruit and vegetables to laptops. Independent traders sell either fruit and vegetables or laptops. Speaking recently on the ‘Tesco-isation’ of Britain, the Labour leader Ed Miliband commented

I think it is a problem that people think the character of their local high street is being changed and they have no power against big corporations in this country.

In its report The Guardian made the point that

Labour…has to make a judgment on whether the big four [Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and Morrisons] dominate simply because they are popular and more efficient, or because they can stifle competition and choice.

The same questions need to be asked about the domination of large internet companies like Facebook and Google. Is it in the interests of the online public for small companies offering specific services to be dominated by much larger companies who can offer a myriad of services?

I haven’t completely made up my mind on that yet. The concentration of shopping and online activity on companies who offer lots of services within the same site or building do seem to be the effect of the same phenomena though. I made a similar point a while ago here where I said

In the same way that small, independent shops are going out of business because customers find it easier and more efficient to go to large shopping centres to do their shopping, internet users have turned from complicated HTML sites, to slightly less complicated Myspace pages and finally to the easy-to-use Facebook to create their online identity. What both of these phenomena have in common is a societal shift towards a more market-friendly behaviour.

Supermarkets are more similar to Facebook and Google than shopping centres but my general point is the same. The effects of capitalism of companies driving towards making efficiencies by reducing costs and of increasing profits by expanding into different markets apply to the online world just as they do in the offline world. This is having effects on small internet companies just as it does to small traders on the high street.

That the Shadow Education Secretary Andy Burnham is sending letters to Lib Dem MPs asking them to support his calls for “1. fair admissions 2. qualified teachers in schools 3. ‘face-to-face’ careers advice” at the third reading of the Education Bill on Wednesday is encouraging. Reaching out to the Coalition’s junior partners like this is significant on a couple of levels. It points to Burnham’s trust that the Lib Dems are not a lost cause for those interested in pluralist, centre-left politics. It is also a sign that some within Labour want to start building a working relationship with the Lib Dems as soon as possible, whether they are working (or conspiring as some would have it) with the Tories or not.

As Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy rightly points out, Labour’s and many others’ obsession with wanting Clegg, Cable, Huhne and Alexander to resign, fail or apologise has distracted attention from the real drivers of the government’s regressive proposals and policies, the Tories. Just as important though is that the Lib Dems need to be aware that they do have a viable choice in who they work with. Labour, the Greens and the broader left must be prepared to continue to build a working relationship with the Lib Dems to be ready to fight conservative and neo-liberal ideologies and politics both now and in the future.

Against the backdrop of NHS reforms unpopular with the Lib Dems, an article in yesterday’s Observer claims that Ed Miliband is openly calling for defections from the Lib Dems to Labour. The caption to the picture to the article states that Miliband would “welcome defectors” from the Lib Dems. I’m not convinced Miliband has actually said any such thing though. I can’t find any direct quotes in the article from Miliband clearly saying that nor am I able to find the original text by Miliband which the quotations in the article came from. [If anyone reading this finds such a text could you let me know?] The only quotations in the article which might be interpreted as encouraging defection are “They can come and work with us. My door is always open” and “Lib Dems have to work out which side they are on. Do they want to be on the Conservative side, backing the Conservative-led government, or on the progressive side? It really is time for them to make up their minds.” Miliband’s comments appear to me to respect Lib Dem cabinet ministers’ and MPs’ continuing membership of a Liberal Democrat party which could and should be able to work with Labour, the Greens and others. Again, these are promising signs from the Labour leadership. 

To publicly suggest that Lib Dems ought to leave their party would surely appear patronising, cynical and tribalistic. It assumes that there is no possibility for the Liberal Democrats to ever do good work with the Labour party in the future and that the Labour party has a monopoly on centre-left thought and action. Neither assumption would lead to a productive engagement with a party who should be an ally in the fight against the common enemy of those informed by conservative and neo-liberal traditions. There is a constructive and positive way forward without requiring Lib Dems to switch tribe. Co-operation between the two parties, the Greens and others outside of party politics allows for the broadest possible consensus against regressive, conservative and neo-liberal politics. The rest of the Labour party should follow Miliband and Burnham’s pluralist lead and treat the Lib Dems’ members and traditions with respect despite the current Lib Dem leadership’s disregard for those same members and traditions.

A caveat to all of this talk of co-operation is that it doesn’t seem possible for the most prominent Lib Dem adopters of neo-liberal economics – Clegg, Alexander and Laws – to continue to lead the party while in any formal collaboration with the Green party or a Labour party led by Ed Miliband. Clegg is electorally toxic and the light-touch economic policy espoused by him – but crucially not huge swathes of social liberals in his party – seems in direct opposition to Miliband’s and the Greens’ politics of democratic resistance to the negative effects of capital. There would surely have to be changes at the top of the Lib Dems before co-operation between the parties was formalised.

For their part, Labour needs to develop economic policies which resonate with the electorate, counter the ‘no alternative to cuts’ narrative and are convincing to other parties within the centre-left. Just saying “we’ll cut less than the Tories” doesn’t seem to do that. Building up a broader narrative based on stimulating not cutting an economy into growth is my preferred approach but I’m sure not the only way to encourage the centre-left unity necessary to oppose the Tories.

Those from the upper- and middle-classes who go to Oxbridge will do fine – as they were always going to do. But Blair’s dream of a working-class kid getting a degree that would catapult him or her up the social ladder has not come off. Instead, they’ll probably end up doing similar work to their school-leaver parents – only with a debilitatingly large debt around their necks…

the reason the Great Degree Scramble has not paid off in better jobs is because Labour did not try to provide them. That would have required nurturing new businesses and raising conditions for the most awful jobs – the sort of thing Blair and his party emphatically did not do…

Up until the mid-90s, Switzerland – one of the richest and most industrialised nations in the world – sent only 10-15% of students off to get a degree. But it made sure the others had apprenticeships with actual businesses and vocational training. There must, surely, be a lesson in that.

Chakrabortty is absolutely right to argue that Labour failed to do enough to improve working conditions or to provide enough in the way of vocational training. They emphasised the virtues of a university education without doing enough to say why work-based training was worthwhile. But Labour’s aims of increasing working class access to university were admirable despite their questionable means (top-up fees) of achieving those aims.

Critics of the explosion in university applications rarely appear to expect anyone other than the working classes to be the ones who should stop going to university. Chakrabortty follows this trend when he unquestioningly contrasts the failure of the working class students to profit from their university education with the continuing ability of upper- and middle- class graduates to enter highly-paid or highly-valued work. He seems to write with an underlying assumption that it’s normal and right for middle- and upper- class A-Level students to go to university and for working-class students to move into vocational training.

It may very well be that Britain has too many graduates but it’s a form of class discrimination to assume that automatically means there are too many working-class university students. So yes, Chakrabortty is right to deplore the lack of investment in and promotion of vocational training. But there’s also an unfortunate presumption in his writing that middle- and upper- class students are best suited to a university education and are the only students who will necessarily be rewarded themselves and who will benefit the economy after graduation.

Chakrabortty’s article has been given the headline ‘The great university con: why giving degrees out willy-nilly doesn’t actually help the economy.’ These aren’t his words but when read together with the article it does presuppose that degrees would have to be given out ‘willy-nilly’ for working-class students to succeed at university. It also wrongly takes it as a general truth that having lots of specifically working-class graduates harms the economy. It might be more productive for critics of the high numbers of students to consider why vocational training is marked as more suitable for working-class students than students of other classes.

One way of overcoming the current situation would be to try to undo middle- and upper- class perceptions of post-GCSE/A-Level vocational training as inferior to and less worthwhile than a degree — a perception which I openly admit I had at school. Combined with a strategy of ensuring working-class access to all educational institutions, this would allow Britain to have economically-advantageous numbers of university- and vocationally- trained workers. Achieving this realignment in class-based educational expectations requires careers advisors and teachers as well as the media and government to give vocational training the same space as degrees within their discourses and rhetoric.

The answer to having too many graduates isn’t to dissuade working-class students from going to university but to invest in and promote vocational training to a much greater extent than has been done so previously. Vocational training needs to be widely seen as being just as valuable and valued as degrees. It’s also important to emphasise to students from all classes  — and indeed to society in general — that university isn’t the only route to a good career. While vocational training is undervalued by politicians, the media and careers services and is relegated beneath degrees in their rhetoric such promotion of vocational training  will be unlikely to find a wide and ready audience however.

Raab’s argument that it’s impossible to deal with huge amounts of identical emails is completely understandable. Yes, the taxpayer does pay his wages and should be able to expect him to read and reply to correspondence but this correspondence surely has to be original and unique to warrant his attention. Email, when used in the right way, does have the potential to be a highly useful tool for those without the time or money to lobby MPs. But it’s a huge waste of time and money to have Raab and other MPs’ staff trawling through thousands of indistinguishable emails from 38 Degrees users. Indeed, 38 Degrees’ strategy is proving to be counterproductive in that it is obviously forcing MPs to spend more time working out the logistics of reading the emails and less time actually acting on the issues dealt with in the emails.

38 Degrees’ strategy is not beyond reform. I provided 38 Degrees with a reasonably detailed set of proposals for altering their system back in May. I got some positive feedback from their team but they don’t seem to have changed their strategy in the months since then. One proposal was to ensure that emails sent to MPs are written by individuals and not by the campaign organisers. This is easily achievable by not providing a pre-written message for users, automatically ensuring originality. It would of course still be possible to offer a series of style tips and campaign points to assist the website’s users

There are several advantages to writing original emails (and letters) to MPs. They get a reply from the MP and maybe from a government minister. They provide useable evidence of their constituents’ feelings for MPs to cite in parliamentary debate. They also show an individual’s strength of feeling on an issue in a way that adding your name to a message written by the campaign group doesn’t.

The principle of making it easier for the electorate to lobby their MP via email is an excellent one. As I wrote in May,

At the moment, email is simply the most efficient method for members of the the general public who feel strongly about an issue to register their opinion with those who legislate. It is a method by which people without great wealth or privilege can lobby their representatives in Parliament. Big business can spend millions on lobbying legislators and the civil service to make law conforming with their interests. Such monetary resources are just not available to normal people.

A reformed 38 Degrees has the potential to open up email as a hugely productive and highly accessible channel of communication between the electorate and its representatives. Emailing your MP is not synonymous with spamming your MP but if MPs feel they are only going to be bombarded with thousands of uniform emails, they are surely unlikely to be receptive to this new dimension of participatory democracy. 38 Degrees badly needs to alter its campaign strategy for the good of its causes and also to ensure that MPs are amenable to the virtues of email-based lobbying in general.

Researchers have found that many women switch their preferences once they pass the age of 30 because of a biological “fluidity” in their sexual orientation that is much more common than in men.

The phenomenon, whose discovery has taken researchers by surprise, suggests lesbianism could be more widespread than previously thought. While many women could be future lesbians without knowing it, others may already have switched but be concealing their sexuality to keep their families together…

Most textbooks assume that, as with men, women’s sexual preferences are partly genetic and become fixed in the teens and early twenties, with relatively few changing sexuality later in life…

a series of studies have shown that in reality women’s sexual orientation may become more fluid as they grow older, with many developing lesbian or bisexual tendencies after the age of 30…

Researchers believe the phenomenon of fluid sexuality is far more common in women than men. “Women have a uniquely female potential for periodic shifts in sexuality over time,” said Christan Moran, a researcher at Southern Connecticut State University…

for many women, love and desire are not heterosexual or homosexual but fluid concepts, changing as women grow older, changing their social groups and relationships.

I’m certain a lot of people will view these findings not as evidence of women ‘developing lesbian tendencies’ in later life but of women who have always been lesbians finally feeling comfortable enough to express their desires publically.

What struck me most about the article though (and by extension the studies) was the way it repeatedly set up women’s fluidity in opposition to men’s stablility. It continually referred to how women’s sexuality is fluid in a way men’s isn’t. It almost felt like it was saying “yes some women will become lesbians in later life, but wives don’t worry, it won’t happen to your husband and don’t worry men either, it definitely won’t happen to you.”

As the article acknowledges, it is simply inconceivable that genetic makeup is the sole reason why some women express a variety of sexualities throughout their lives. Similarly, non-genetic factors play a huge role in some women’s repression of same-sex desires. As one of the researchers Christan Moran points out in the Sunday Telegraph’s article:

many women who develop lesbian feelings in later life refuse to “come out” for fear of society’s reaction…

To leave a heterosexual marriage in favour of lesbian identity is to abdicate enormous and undeniable privilege.

This is a perfectly acceptable position which could be drawn out to build a theory of how women come to express their sexuality or sexualities. One possible theory stemming from this could see women as having a genetic makeup which offers a certain range of sexual identities and a myriad of environmental conditions allow them to be aware of or feel comfortable expressing various positions within that range. This would take into account the environmental as well as the genetic in the forming of sexuality and presumes neither a predetermined outcome nor a sexuality completely free of genetic influence. The problem is that it’s apparently unthinkable to these researchers that this theory, or anything similar, could be applied to men.

Moran and others take it for granted that it’s men’s genes which are responsible for their apparently stable sexuality. If though we are to accept that women’s sexuality is unstable, it must be problematic to see men as necessarily of a single, stable and essential sexuality. It’s strange and hypocritical to hold the position that genes don’t determine everything in the case of women’s sexuality and simultaneously to assume that genes are the only factor in men’s sexuality.

Surely it would be significantly more productive to research the non-genetic reasons why many more women than men are expressing a variety of sexualities in their lifetime rather than assuming that genetics is solely responsible for men’s sexual preferences. Moran suggests that fear of society’s reaction and of losing the privilege of heterosexual marriage leads some women to hide their ‘late-blooming’ lesbianism. I’d suggest that similar reasons are significantly more responsible for the apparent stability of men’s sexuality than a pre-determined and pre-determining genetic makeup.

It would seem likely that wider societal tolerance of non-heterosexual sexualities is at least partly responsible for increasing numbers of women recognising potential non-heterosexual positions within their fluid sexuality. Yet, as the researchers state, some women continue to feel uncomfortable expressing such positions. My gut feeling is that the path to more men and women recognising and freely expressing a variety of positions in their fluid sexuality will start in earnest when heterosexual privilege is undone and when society becomes tolerant and understanding of individuals with multiple sexualities. This is, of course, a great challenge but we’re unlikely to make much progress with it when major newspapers uncritically report research on sexuality which relies on genetic determinism to reach its conclusions.

Update – 23.7.2010

A Facebook friend of mine pointed me towards this article from yesterday’s Guardian on the same topic. Much of it is very similar to the other articles but it does also talk about men’s sexual fluidity. It quickly switches back however to viewing men as necessarily being a certain way without considering how or why men came to be that way.

Sexual fluidity occurs in both men and women but it has been suggested that women are potentially more open and malleable in this regard. Richard Lippa, professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, has carried out a variety of studies that have led him to the conclusion that, "while most men tend to have what I call a preferred sex and a non-preferred sex . . . with women there are more shades of grey, and so I tend to talk about them having a more preferred sex, and a less preferred sex. I have definitely heard some women say, ‘It was the person I fell in love with, it wasn’t the person’s gender,’ and I think that that is much more of a female experience than a male experience…

”I’ve never had a straight man say to me, at age 45, I just met this really neat guy and I fell in love with him and I don’t like men in general, but God, this guy’s so great that I’m going to be in a relationship with him for the next 15 years."

The same problem persists in the Guardian’s article. Despite acknowledging the existence of some men with fluid sexuality, it is still assumed that because straight men don’t usually develop same-sex desires, stable sexuality is something essential to men. The likely effect of societal pressures on the construction of men’s apparently stable sexuality continues to be ignored.

It isn’t a huge leap to suggest that a drop in support for the Lib-Dems could lead to defeat for the ‘Yes’ campaign in the referendum on the Alternative Vote. In another YouGov poll published yesterday, AV’s lead over FPTP was down from 13% a fortnight ago to just a single percent. As much as supporters of the ‘Yes’ campaign will try to avoid this, the referendum could all too easily end up being a poll of the public’s view of the Lib-Dems.

As the main parliamentary advocates of electoral reform, the Lib-Dems have a huge responsibility to keep a strong, distinctive and successful role within the government. It’s important that they show that coalition government – slightly more likely under AV – works. Equally important though is that they ensure that they, as the party which will be campaigning hardest for AV, keep to the principles that their supporters voted for at the last General Election. It will be nigh-on impossible for AV to be passed without Lib-Dem voters voting in favour of it. Unfortunately, the Lib-Dems seem to be forgoing the principles upon which they were elected which has of course been reflected in their poll numbers.

The introduction of legislation in the budget such as a rise in VAT which hits the poorest hardest suggests the Lib-Dems in the Treasury aren’t pushing principles of social justice particularly hard. A similar trend seems to be taking root in the Department of Education. Sarah Teather, the Lib-Dem Minster of State for Children and Families, gave an interview to the New Statesman this week where she spoke in glowing terms about her Tory boss Michael Gove. While some will argue there are elements of Liberal thought within Gove’s Free-Schools plan, Teather seemed to suggest that rushing the plan through Parliament wasn’t problematic because Gove was ‘clever.’ I’m certain most Lib-Dem voters would hope for somewhat deeper scrutiny of such far-reaching legislation in Parliament.

On top of this of course are are the government’s spending cuts; huge in terms of their unpopularity and their effect on public services. The pre-coalition Lib-Dems argued for delaying deep cuts in government spending until the economy was more stable. They saw mass unemployment and cuts in front-line services as damaging to Britain’s economy and communities. The days after the coalition negotiations with the Tories saw a swift climb-down as senior Lib-Dems converted to monetarist supporters of immediate and deep cuts.

None of this is to say they are completely unable to regain a rhetorical and legislative role in the coming months and years which is in touch with their principles. The issue for campaigners for electoral reform however is that because most voters will probably see AV as a Lib-Dems project, success in the AV referendum is bound up with the popular support of the Lib-Dems and their performance in government. I’m not sure it’s going to be possible to completely remove the party-political aspect of the electoral reform debate entirely but it’s certainly important to try.

It seems to me that the only way to soften the impact of the Lib-Dems’ potential unpopularity on the ‘Yes’ campaign is to have an exceptionally vocal, independent campaign which is united behind its cause. Senior Lib-Dems will of course want to be involved at a high level of the campaign but I’m not sure how productive that will be. If their unpopularity is going to harm the ‘Yes’ campaign then they may have to step back from the front line of the campaign and let strong, independent voices articulate the need for electoral reform.

This is the abstract and should let you know the gist of the work and whether you want to read it or not:

This dissertation examines New Labour’s construction of fathers and fatherhood between 1997 and 2009. It argues that much of the existing literature on New Labour’s policies regarding fathers and fatherhood should be applauded for their appraisal of Work-Family Balance policies and its analysis of how fatherhood has been viewed by New Labour. However, while New Labour’s understanding of fatherhood has been examined, the construction of fathers within New Labour’s discourses has not been interrogated sufficiently. This dissertation therefore looks to go some way towards overcoming that issue. The resulting analysis finds that New Labour has constructed a number of hierarchies of fathers; teenage fathers are viewed as inferior to older fathers, heterosexual fathers are constructed as more suitable than gay fathers and biological fathers are privileged over social fathers. The implications of these hierarchies are then considered and it is proposed that New Labour’s stated goals of improving child welfare are damaged, homophobia is perpetuated and goals of gender equality are damaged.

The analysis of the existing literature, New Labour’s discursive construction of hierarchies of fathers and the implications of those hierarchies draw upon ideas deriving from queer theory, Foucauldian understandings of power, and the theories of discourse as proposed by Laclau and Mouffe. The conclusions, which this dissertation arrives at, aim to contribute to achieving the goals of the feminist movement. These conclusions are knowingly reached from a privileged, male perspective and as such this work intends to be viewed as a piece of pro-feminist work.

Here are some excerpts from the introduction to this essay:

Michel Foucault talked about the exercise of power as the ‘conduire des conduits’ (Foucault, 2001: 1056). Translated directly, this means the conduct of conduct or the management of behaviour. This regulation of behaviour is, he argues, the way modern governments exercise power (Foucault, 1980: 119; 1991b: 100). Researchers such as Butt and Harris (2009), Bekkers and Homburg (2005), Henman (2010) and Bhatnagar (2004) have looked at what we might call the e-conduct of conduct. They examine ‘the deployment of internet technology for the conduct of government business’ to consider how governments have utilised power through electronic means under the heading of e-government (Henman, 2010). This essay does something quite different to those who study e-government however. I analyse the ways in which the British government is using power to manage online behaviour or the conduct of e-conduct…

In this essay, I apply Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power to the case of the Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA). The DEA was designed to reform the broadcasting industries, begin the switchover to digital radio, to tighten regulation of video games classification and to tackle online copyright infringement (Digital Economy Act, 2010). It is this final objective which I examine here. In short, the DEA enables copyright holders to scrutinise internet users to assess whether they are infringing their copyrights. An internet user’s penalty for persisting in infringing copyrights could be connection speed restrictions or account suspension. Those who infringe copyright for commercial gain can be fined up to £50,000 (Digital Economy Act, 2010). My argument is that the authors of the DEA are attempting to use disciplinary power in line with their social, political and economic goals to produce a norm of online behaviour. Like the prisoner in [Bentham's prison,] the Panopticon, internet users cannot determine if they are under surveillance or not and they have to adhere to that norm and self-regulate their behaviour if they wish to avoid punishment. I continue by arguing that by uncovering the disciplinary power relations which are present within the Online Panopticon which the DEA has constructed, this essay allows for internet users to both understand and criticise the DEA and the Online Panopticon; a critique which is currently absent within much of Britain’s online population.

If new fathers were offered the same amount of leave as new mothers, fathers would have the opportunity to make the best use of their caring attributes. At the same time, employers would have no reason to discriminate against women on grounds of their potential for their taking maternity leave because their male employees would be just as likely to take leave. This is just one small example but it gives an insight into how reconfiguring masculinity can lead to benefits for mothers and fathers.

At a recent roundtable discussion on portrayals of beauty in the media, I found the debate concentrating on how awful lads’ mags are for taking advantage of women and using the female body for financial profit. Of course, it’s perfectly correct to criticise these magazines for objectifying women. It is at least as important though to make the argument that the attitudes of lads’ mags make it normal for men to objectify women. In the words of Catherine Redfern, in her review of John Stoltenberg’s book Refusing to be a Man, ‘how can the oppressed be free unless the oppressors change?’ There are certainly good reasons then for feminism to engage not only with the lives of women but also with the lives of men.

Redfern further argues:

it is obvious that feminism is an ideology that can free both women and men. Men’s and women’s lives are so intertwined (even for seperatists [sic], who must still live within our sexist culture) that feminism can’t truly be successful without freeing women and men from gender stereotypes. I don’t actually believe it is possible to let women be free of sexist stereotyping without simultaneously breaking down the stereotypes about men…

Feminism can only fulfil its full, radical, revolutionary potential if it liberates men. This is what radical feminism really means: liberation from sex stereotypes for women, men, and anyone who doesn’t fit into either of those categories. I strongly believe that one of the aims of third wave feminism must be to break open masculinity as well as femininity…breaking down masculinity should not mean forgetting women’s problems – on the contrary, it will help women.

Hugo Schwyzer, in his blog post on what feminism can achieve for men, emphasises feminism’s ability to acknowledge the male emotional capacity:

I am a feminist because I want to see a world in which both men and women are free to become complete people. When we shut down women’s anger, women’s desire, women’s impetuousness — we create half-people. When we shut down men’s tenderness, men’s vulnerability, men’s empathy — we create half-people…

Feminism is, as we’ve all heard, the radical notion that women are people. But it’s also the radical notion that men are people too, complete human beings, with the same range of emotions and the same capacity for empathy and self-control as any woman…

As most any serious feminist will tell you, feminism is about reconfiguring the culture in order to create greater equality between men and women. For most feminists, it’s also about liberating both men and women from the chains of sexism and patriarchy.

As I argued at the beginning of this piece, if feminism wishes to fight for women’s freedom, it also needs to fight for men’s freedom. It struck me that this world view which looks to liberate both men and women and enable men and women to lead as full a life as possible is perhaps not best described by the word feminism. If we accept that all gendered stereotypes need to be undone to achieve freedom for women and men, then a word which concentrates solely on the feminine might be inadequate to describe the third-wave feminist movement.

More accurate terms for the feminist movement do not come to mind easily. Femanism and femenism are problematic for reasons which Redfern describes. They are also tacky-sounding portmanteaus which would fail to lend any weight to the the contemporary feminist movement. I tentatively suggest ‘Gender Liberationism’ as an alternative name for the movement which fights for the freedom of all genders from patriarchy and gendered stereotypes. I will consider this possible name in the coming days and weeks and then post again on the advantages it has.

I fully expect resistance to the idea of renaming feminism. The movement does after all have a long and distinguished history under the title of feminism. But with the realisation that the inequalities which women face are at least partly a result of restricted masculinities which need to be deconstructed for everyone’s good, the movement’s name should, I think, be reconsidered. Despite all of this, I am absolutely open to being persuaded that feminism is still the best term to describe the movement and I have tried to reflect that with a certain tentativeness in this post.

By all means respond below to the premise and the suggestions made in this post.