The EU is a feminist issue. I’m voting to leave
You only have to listen to the patronising, gaslighting ‘in’ campaign to know why
Julie Burchill
For decades — even before it had its name, which sounds thrilling, as words with an X in them tend to — I’ve been a Brexiter. I even mistrusted the Common Market, as we called the mild-mannered Dr Jekyll before it showed us the deformed, power-crazed face of the EU’s Mr Hyde.
The adored MP of my childhood, Tony Benn, preached against it in any shape or form. ‘When I saw how the European Union was developing,’ he said, ‘it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don’t like it you can change it.’
I’m aware that being against the EU has always been about as popular in ‘civilised’ circles as being pro-capital punishment. (Which I also am.) Imagine my delight when, in recent months, two of the contemporaries I admire most — Suzanne Moore at the Guardian and Janice Turner at the Times — wrote magnificent columns in support of Brexit. And interestingly, they took robustly feminist views of the proceedings, which is handy, because of the third of Britons undecided on how to vote on 23 June, 60 per cent of them are women.
From Britain’s dubious induction into the wretched gang by that arch-misogynist Ted Heath to Neil Kinnock’s shameful monstering of the brave Brussels whistleblower Marta Andreasen, it’s hard not to see the EU as the biggest boy’s club of all. The recent letter by the ‘Women In’ group claimed that Europe has given us equal pay and anti-discrimination laws — but countries outside the Magic Circle have those too, while inside (Ireland closest to home) are only just dragging their attitudes to women into the 20th century. We Brexiters are fighting back by pointing out that £350 million a week is blown on the EU, which could be better spent on the priorities of women voters, such as healthcare.
Women are thought to be less Eurosceptic than men — but this doesn’t indicate open-mindedness, in my book, so much as fearfulness, which is surely not to be encouraged. What has quite rightly been called Project Fear plays on the Nervous Nellie in all people, evoking anxieties about more expense and less security, as though Britain had been some sad wraith of a nation in the pre-EU 1960s instead of the robust, confident country it so memorably was.
In fact, the behaviour of the pro-EU mob makes me think of the mode of manipulation known as gaslighting — ‘a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favour the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity’. Repeatedly, this small but dynamic country is told: ‘You’ll be nothing without me!’ ‘No one else will want you!’ and of course ‘You look fat in that dress.’ (See constant comparison of overweight, fun-loving Englishwomen to dull, thin French ones.)
It’s creepily similar to a bad marriage even before you bring in the German Question. Is Germany a homicidal maniac itching to start the third world war the minute we leave (those warnings that the EU has ‘kept the peace in Europe for 70 years’ — nothing to do with Nato, then?), or is it the cool-headed big brother that keeps unruly Britain in sensible shoes? It’s hard to see how it can be both.
The country is being ‘mansplained’ — another word popular with we feminists meaning ‘to explain something to someone, typically a man to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising’ — on a massive scale when it comes to Brexit. But the mansplainers aren’t aware of how dumb they look, and how much their own desires distort their point of view.
There are lots of high-flown reasons to want to stay in the EU. But there are, I suspect, a sizable tranche of deeply uncool people who imagine that a bit of subtitled European cool might rub off on them. Emma Thompson’s recent rant about baked goods comes immediately to mind.
EU cheerleaders imagine themselves to be the repositories of French savoir faire, Italian passion and Scandi egalitarianism, but they are, ironically, generally a horribly recognisable English type — the metropolitan smuggie whose self-love is matched only by their loathing of their fellow citizens and the country that made them.
I see a stuck-in-the-mud, male-power institution that needs a good feminist kicking — and then I feel that even that would be a waste of our time, energy and pedicures. Let’s just leave them to get on with it, and go our own merry way. As every broad worth her weight in pinches of salt knows, the endgame with any gaslighter, bully or abusive spouse is not confrontation but non-engagement. Bring on the Brexit!
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/the-eu-is-a-feminist-issue-im-voting-to-leave/
My instinct is pro-Brexit (and it’s nothing to do with Boris)
Being anti-EU is not the same as anti-Europe. Voting for more of the same – male-dominated, undemocratic, unaccountable – does not appeal
Suzanne Moore
The first time I was shown around Westminster a very long time ago, by a well-loved maverick, he took me to a large gloomy room in the midst of the rabbit warren. It was full of towers of paper. “Do you know what that is? ” I obviously didn’t. “Its EU regulation. No one reads it. None ever will. One day though ...”
I did not understand then how the EU “worked”. I still don’t, except that now I see it depends on us not knowing. Much of its power rests on a deadly combination of mystification, officiousness and being so boring that most people just switch off. What we are left with, then, is instinct – a thing clever people disdain in politics but something that good politicians understand.
My instinct now is pretty Brexitty, much to the horror of many of my left/liberal friends who equate being anti–EU with being anti-Europe. This is not the same thing at all. I have not yet decided, but voting for more of the same does not appeal.
The argument that we can reform the EU (er, actually banks?) from the inside does not work. Why haven’t we? Over the past few years, the more we have seen of the actual workings of the EU, the more unattractive it appears: the troika pursuing regime change in Greece, then openly asset-stripping it. Or watching last week, as rooms full of middle-aged men fiddled around to sort the small change of a deal that Cameron could sell. It prompted me to ask: “Where are the women?” The answer I was given was Angela Merkel. As usual, my question was misunderstood – I had not asked: “Where is the one woman who makes up for it being an entirely male-dominated decision-making process?”
It doesn’t look to me like a democracy. Nor does it appear accountable. This matters. Not a single one of my pro-EU friends could name their MEP when I asked them. Maybe this pales among issues like security, workers’ rights and border control, but as a representative democracy it is sorely lacking. Now of course, this will all be overshadowed by Boris and his “personality”, after the shocking development that he will be doing what works best for his “king of the world” plan.
The points about democracy and sovereignty matter, and I am not sure that they can be smoothed over by personalities alone – whoever they belong to. The only left arguments are variations on a theme from people like Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister who has told of witnessing “the banality of bureaucracy” – and who was told by the German finance minister that elections cannot be allowed to change the established economic policy. Nonetheless, Varoufakis thinks we should stay in and try to reform institutions that he acknowledged were set up as democracy-free zones
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, and his shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, seem unable to rouse themselves at all. An opposition party ought now to be gunning for the momentous split in the Tory party that is happening from the bottom up. Labour seems completely absent, possibly because its leaders are naturally Eurosceptic, possibly because they would rather think about Venezuela, or possibly because their media strategy consists mainly of sulking.
But there are many people like me – about a third of voters – who are undecided and open to persuasion. Yelling “Ukip” or “business” is not enough, nor is Boris’s last hurrah either. The remain crew should not take us for granted, because voting for more of the same feels awfully like the way the worst parts of the EU function: by boring us into submission. A lot of us want something that gives us a more direct connection to those who make our laws, and we won’t decide simply by choosing one Etonian over another.
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...instinct-brexit-boris-anti-eu-not-anti-europe
