Take your privilege and shut up

So today started out well. What better way to start your day than with a nice cup of coffee, a bit of sunshine and a good dose of privilege spread across the opinion pages of the Independent?

Now, before you go looking for the article – don’t. Don’t give them the honour; don’t feed their advertisers. Lovely woman as I am, I have summarised Barbara McCarthy’s privileged views below along with some rage-fuelled commentary. Hurray!

McCarthy introduces her tribute to privilege with a brief anecdote of a man revealing himself to her at an airport, exemplifying the many situations that would justify her feeling offended. She was even called a tranny once – what an insult, eh? Her point is this: feminists these days take offence too easily, most likely only out of a need for attention, and they need to stop and focus on the real issues.

On a breastfeeding campaign criticising a culture in which many new mothers are forced to nurse their babies in toilet cubicles, she writes: “No one I know, nor anyone they know, was pushed into a loo to breastfeed out of public sight. […] You can breastfeed anywhere you want. You’re just seeking attention, looking for some kind of medal for doing something totally normal.” It’s not just that she is wrong – like, totally deluded; it’s also pretty embarrassing for an intelligent, eloquent woman to be so utterly lacking in empathic ability that she will happily base her political commentary on ‘it didn’t happen to me, so it mustn’t be an issue’. We live in a culture where the hip and youthful site Lovin Dublin publishes a list of 9 Spots in Dublin Where You Can Breasfeed in the Open, despite the fact that it is a nursing mother’s right – by law – to breastfeed wherever she so pleases.

McCarthy’s lacking analytical skills are again on display as she comments on the recent Knockanstockan events and the #FreeTheNipple movement. Carina Fitzpatrick, who went topless at the Irish festival, reported a huge number of people walking up to her to thank her for making them think about their outdated views on nudity and women’s sexuality. “Yawn,” says McCarthy. Fitzpatrick is narcissistic and has too much time on her hands. McCarthy, on the other hand, is super busy suggesting that the equivalent of a woman taking her top off at a festival is a man showing his genitals, taking an otherwise interesting and illuminating experiment out of its patriarchal context to show yet again that she has no interest in or ability to empathise with those who struggle with body image issues and raw fear due to a culture in which women’s bodies are continuously and persistently made into sexual objects.

When a gay couple was told off by a Sainsburys security guard for showing affection – a homophobic message said guard happily passed on from a fellow shopper – the gay community was making mountains out of molehills, McCarthy writes, for taking to the aisles of the shop for some kissing. Not only were they taking unnecessary offence; they were causing more hassle for other people, who may have struggled to get from one aisle to the next due to kissing gays, than the homophobic shopper had done. Maybe McCarthy was never told that her relationship was disgusting and unnatural – I don’t know.

What else? Abortion. Of course. “While some people are getting offended about the removal of an Eight Amendment poster in Temple Bar, they’re happy enough to pay over the odds for an apartment in Dublin city,” the supposed feminist writes. She’s really starting to lose not just empathic ability but also sense and reason at this point. What does a ridiculous rental market have to do with abortion rights and free speech, you ask? This is one question I can’t help you with, I’m afraid. Ask McCarthy. The women “being photographed with abortion pills at the tip of their tongue”, getting heaps of media coverage along the way, I should add, were “crass”. The word ‘crass’, then, means ‘to show no intelligence or sensitivity’. In comparison with the writer herself, who demonstrates such sensitivity to the situation that forces women to remain pregnant against their will, are force-fed in Irish hospitals and have c-sections performed on them by brute force; and of course to the parents who simply can’t afford to put food on the table for one more child due to the problems with the housing market the writer is so painfully aware of.

“I’m all for women having abortions here, if only just to shut everyone up about it. Unlike the rest of the campaigners, I feel pain for people who can’t have children, or regret having abortions – they do exist, even if their voice doesn’t count.” If Barbara McCarthy was quietly ignorant, it wouldn’t bother me so much. But she has a platform. She writes for the opinion pages of one the country’s main dailies.

I am part of those activist networks. I am an active member of the Facebook groups. And let me tell you this: you’ll have to look long and hard to find more empathic, mother-and-child friendly, open-minded people than the pro-choice campaigners I spend hours discussing and campaigning with on a daily basis. The key is in the word ‘choice’, McCarthy; many of these women are mothers, they have babies, they might know that abortion is not for them – but they will spend what little precious time they have campaigning for the right of other people to pop the aforementioned abortion pills, and to change Ireland’s archaic laws so that they won’t have to travel abroad to access abortion. (And, by the way, there are men flashing women at airports, remember? Not the best side dish for a dose of misoprostol.)

“Women shouldn’t have to travel to the UK to have abortions in cases of foetal abnormality or rape, but why are the rest of them so offended?” asks McCarthy. “It’s not like they’re being sent to an institution. London is a one-hour flight away. Plus there are monies available for people who can’t afford the trip.”

Shut up, Barbara McCarthy. We are offended – scrap that, furious – that women like you tell people like us that there are good abortions and bad abortions, that women are dying due to an amendment to the constitution and we are told that we are overreacting, that a one-hour flight is just a symbol for a lifetime of silence and being denied basic healthcare, emotional support and respect, and that, actually, the ‘monies’ you may have heard of is far from enough and won’t make up for a complete and utter lack of bodily autonomy.

I, too, think that people should be offended by things like the war in Syria, climate change and the refugee crisis. In fact, be my guest: you seem to have plenty of time on your hands, Barbara; take your time and monies and go help those in need. Just do us a favour and take your privilege with you.