On oppression, charitable works and feminism

It seems that the bit of my post where I suggest that charitable works don’t change anything is causing some discomfort as well as getting me called a “privileged asshole” who “talks a good talk about class oppression but never does a single solitary thing to end it” – hey, thanks for your informed insight there.

I’d like to make a few things clear.

• I am not slagging off charitable work. I am more than well aware that, without volunteers, many organisations that support women wouldn’t be able to function as they are under-valued, under-funded and under-staffed. I know this from personal experience.

• I am not slagging off commitment to volunteering – two hours a week from someone who genuinely believes in the aims of an organisation achieves more than ten hours a week from someone who’s not that bothered. I also know this from personal experience.

• I am not criticising any individual – anywhere – for the type of voluntary work they do or the time they spend doing it.

• I am not coming from a ‘more feminist than thou’ perspective. (I don’t understand how that could even be read into what I wrote but if that’s how you care to interpret my disclosure about what it’s like for me, hey…what can I say?).

• I am not suggesting that volunteering within organisations that help women is unfeminist or that it doesn’t constitute activism. (Again, I have no clue where that interpretation came from.)

I am suggesting, however, that charitable works do not a feminist make. Not everyone who works as a volunteer with women approaches their role from a feminist viewpoint. For example: a counsellor volunteering at a women’s refuge (shelter) where the ethos was one of enabling women to realise their self determination asked of her severely traumatised client who was seeking healing from her experiences of abuse, “what about your husband’s feelings in all this?” A feminist approach? I wouldn’t say so.

I am aware that motives for volunteering are not necessarily always altruistic. It is my experience that agencies that work with abused women can attract a particular kind of abusive women both as paid and unpaid workers. Feminist? Again, my answer would be ‘no’.

To make my position clear (in case anyone should interpret this as me blowing my own trumpet): I’m a paid worker in a not for profit organisation that supports abused women and I spend a fair chunk of my spare time volunteering with another organisation that helps women overcome experiences of violence. Both organisations have charitable status. I am not criticising charitable works.

But let’s face it, I spend most of my time mopping up the mess. I spend most of my time helping women to pick themselves up, get their lives back together, start healing and moving on. There is an endless stream of women queuing up for the help offered by the organisations I work with. There are not enough refuge spaces to accommodate all the women and children who need them. Rape crisis and childhood sexual abuse counselling centres have waiting lists that are months, sometimes years, long. Thousands upon thousands of women in the UK alone are dependent on the work of voluntary organisations for their survival.

Mopping up the mess is ‘nice’ (to quote my previous post) when it’s done by voluntary organisations, charities, because it doesn’t cost the tax payer as much as it would were it a statutory responsibility and it goes some way in hiding a lot of society’s ills. By far the majority of women in refuges and women who use rape crisis centres have never involved a statutory agency. The British Crime Survey can only estimate the number of unreported incidents of domestic abuse or rape – both estimates constitute a far higher percentage of incidents than those that are reported. Those in power and those who choose to are enabled to downplay or ignore the extent of the problem by the simple fact that voluntary organisations struggle on, mopping up the mess.

Last year some government think-tank in the UK (I forget who now but I’ll find you a link if you need one) suggested that men who apologise for having beaten their partner should be considered dealt with. Was funding for refuge groups increased? No. Was funding made available so that more refuges could open? No. A Home Office Select Committee Report in 1976 recommended that there should be one refuge space per ten thousand head of the population. Are we anywhere near that thirty years on? No.

Rape Crisis groups are closing due to lack of funding while a tiny amount of government money is being put into Sexual Assault and Rape Centres – the all singing, all dancing, one stop shop for survivors of sexual violence – that women are frightened to go to because they believe they will be ‘encouraged’ to formally report a crime due to the police involvement in SARCs. What’s the point of going through all the trauma of examinations, statements and a possible court case when the odds are your rapist will walk – conviction rate in the UK is around 5% – and that’s if it even gets to court. Police have recently been criticised for “no criming” allegations of rape and sexual assault without completing a proper investigation. Statutory agency recovery services for women affected by experiences of sexual violence? Virtually nil unless you come to the attention of the mental health professionals who will simply offer drugs; no talking therapies.

And all the while more and more women are seeking the help of women only voluntary organisations because that’s where the best help is.

I fully acknowledge that the work I do doesn’t change a damn thing in the great scheme of things. Individual lives, maybe, yes – but that’s about as much as any of us can do. It doesn’t stop the numbers needing help from rising though. It doesn’t do anything stop the violence and brutality occcuring in the first place. It doesn’t even make a dent in ending the oppression of women. Nor does it make me a feminist by virtue of the fact that I do it.

If any of this makes me a ‘fundamentalist’ well then, hey, I guess I must be. But, like I said, nice just doesn’t cut it.

I hope I’ve adequately addressed any misunderstandings.