suraj makwana

Saying all the right things, but being heard for all the wrong reasons, it was just over a year ago that Caroline Criado-Perez first burst into the headlines. She had seen a successful end to her fight to ensure that, of the six faces depicted on our banknotes, at least one of them was neither male, nor the monarch.

So far, so good. But it all suddenly went badly wrong. Her campaign earned her a torrent of misogynistic abuse over Twitter so violent, so graphic, specific and unrelenting, that she was forced temporarily to flee her London home. And that was when people really started to listen.

A year on, two of her trolls have been jailed for their threats of death and rape, and Criado-Perez has settled into a new normality. Last weekend, again, not without controversy, she visited Cambridge, to speak at the Women of the World (WOW) event at the Cambridge Junction. Finishing a panel-session, she tells me what she made of the experience. ‘‘It was a good discussion, and it felt like a very generous and open audience.’’

Counting about three men among the crowd, I ask if that matters. ‘‘Yes. It’s sad that feminism is seen as belonging to women. It’s difficult because feminism needs to be seen as a space for women, because women need to help themselves out of their oppression. But at the same time, where we’re talking about the abuse of women, it’s important to have men there so they can understand what’s going on.’

“Sadly, the type of men who are going to be abusing women on Twitter don’t care about what women have to say, so it’s important that other men, who they’ll listen to, get involved and provide that social sanction.’’

Criado-Perez started her adult life ‘‘not a feminist at all; if anything, an anti-feminist. I didn’t know anything about feminism.’’

It was whilst studying at Oxford, as a mature student, that this all changed. Studying feminism in linguistic theory was her original eye-opener. ‘‘What got me started off was recognising that whenever I thought of anyone in a position of power, and anyone who had a voice, I always thought of a man; I just felt that that was absolutely wrong.’’
Her breed of feminism, true to its roots, is academic. Discussing what spurred her into action in the case of banknotes, she explains, ‘‘banknotes are a political tool. They’re something that everyone uses. Currency has a historical pedigree as propaganda; it affects people’s world view.’’

There are loads of studies about how the lack of female role models affects women’s confidence, but also conversely about how the abundance of prominent male figures affects their self-belief.’’

She has a canon of psychological studies to support every point; here, she cites research that shows that reminding women of their gender before mathematical assessment affects their confidence so seriously that their performance is markedly weakened.

But, more, her feminism is completely unabashed. She doesn’t temper her language. She’s comfortable using words like ‘patriarchy’ and ‘oppression’, words that turn people off, words that many feminists avoid to package their views more palatably.

We move on to a discussion of the Twitter backlash with which she will forever be associated. How much personal impact did it have? ‘‘It massively got to me. I was terrified. I didn’t know who these people were; I didn’t know what they were capable of. It only takes one person to actually mean it, to carry out their threats, and people were trying to track down my address.’’

When you’re receiving these very specific threats, saying exactly what they’re going to do to you, what part of their body they’re going to put into your body, it’s impossible not to take that seriously.’’ It was a depressing reality that her treatment revealed; that such extreme attitudes still exist, and that the social restrictions generally applied to face-to-face contact act merely as a mask. “The reason people are so shocked is because it’s shown the thinking hasn’t changed; it’s just this idea of social stigma and embarrassment that’s made people feel like they can’t say it, so they say it online because they’re still thinking it.”

At great cost, this affair did secure Criado-Perez a platform. But platforms are a controversial commodity, and so hers proved with her appearance at the WOW event. The CUSU Women’s Campaign expressed their dissapointment, branding her as a ‘‘totally inappropriate and offensive”.

They accuse her of actively endeavouring to exclude ‘trans’ women from feminism, by rejecting the term ‘cis’ (used to describe those whose gender matches their biological sex), and of more general narrow-mindedness. She has replied that she is “committed to stand with trans women against the male violence that we all face.”

Following the panel, she is unwilling to discuss the matter. She remarks that “it seems to be a personal vendetta, and best forgotten for all concerned.” Wherever the exact truth lies, this exchange speaks to a broader issue, currently emerging to the fore of the feminist agenda. Although an increasingly wide and diverse spread of voices are being lent to this cause, the interpretation of what it means to be ‘feminist’ is becoming correspondingly disharmonious.

The result? Vitriolic exchanges on the public stage, feminists railing against feminists, and the general toxicity from which so many have endeavoured to detach the feminist cause returning to the surface.

How helpful is this constant ideological correction and quarrelling within the sphere of feminism to progress on the world external to it? “I don’t think it’s an issue exclusive to feminism, I think it’s typical in politics, particularly on the Left. I don’t think the problem is that there are different kinds of feminism... [but] I think the problem is we have this very limited sphere in which we are heard; feminism is pretty much it. Women recognise this, and when a woman does start to have her voice heard, since women are brought up to be in competition with each other, I think that’s the root of a lot of the arguments on Twitter; women are resentful of other women for occupying the one woman’s slot.”

Celebrity feminists have also fallen victim to the critical current of contemporary feminism. Beyoncé, Sheryl Sandberg and even Emma Watson have all come under fire for their approaches.

This is rooted in the question of who, if anyone, can speak ‘for women.’ “We should absolutely celebrate everyone who stands up and says she’s a feminist, because it’s still a brave thing to do. Emma Watson’s approach wouldn’t necessarily be my approach, but I absolutely welcome her, and respect what she’s doing. ”
“People will find their place in feminism, and it doesn’t matter how they come in, as long as they do come in.”

Women's Campaign rail against "totally offensive" speaker