Another blog where its a copy of a facebook comment responding to Vicky Beeching’s Jesus was a feminist and so am I and a discussion of BBC 4’s woman’s hour. Didn’t get any response there so I dunno if I’ll get one here!

One thing they mentioned in women’s hour is that men will need to be ok with “relinquishing” power. But is that really how power works?

I really like this article: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_woman_would.html

And here the picture he paints is one where when men “relinquish” power what they actually do is relinquish the trappings of power whilst men leave and go to areas where real power exist (leave the senate and become lobbyists for example).

Instead of men being ok with relinquishing power perhaps women need to get better at taking power (perhaps with male help)? I don’t know about this… the last psyciatrist seems to put a heavy emphasis (when talking about django unchained) about the system giving Django permission. And that that is important.

That term (“permission”) fits in more with what you’re talking about in your bbc piece. Jesus kind of gave women permission to have a voice when he appeared to Mary. And it was this permission that became liberating. It meant people naturally just took power rather then fought for it. (Mary just became an authority figure on this matter)

I don’t know the names of the people speaking on the bbc but one of the speakers seemed to talk about this. About women learning to “take” power but her views were about using sex to do this.

I think this is interesting and there is an awesome example of women using sex to exert power over men in a pretty awesome way in kenya. (Look at point #2)

But that was withholding sex not (as the speaker on the radio suggested) infidelity. I can’t see how sex used like this would really do much for “women” as a whole, instead it would kind of probably just help individual women in the way that the last psyciatrist describes.

So what do you think as a feminist? Do you think feminism is about helping men relinquish power or helping women take it? Or something else?