Idiocy and feminism on Working Women's Day

Feminism in NZ - and elsewhere - has had a strong tendency to degenerate into non-political and highly personal issues at the expense of any real struggle for women's liberation. After all, the leading creed is 'the personal is political', which originally had some significant meaning, but eventually just became an excuse for navel-gazing and the drift away from progressive politics. Around the time of International Working Women's Day - March 8 - some of these absurdities normally surface. It's not often the feminists deal with this tendency, but in the UK Guardian, Zoe Williams is outraged that 'a day that once stood for women's liberties has been hijacked by yoga, spices and animals in art'. She says This is idiocy, not feminism. In NZ, the day tomorrow will inevitably be somewhat more political than usual due to the recent police rape cases.