Dear Emma Watson,
I’ve always been a fan of yours, despite the fact that you audaciously stole the part of Hermione from me when I had gone to the immense trouble of sending Newsround a picture of myself wearing a cape and armed with a quill and the family cat. The fact that I was too old to be Hermione, and can’t act, did not deter me, but I now feel that I am able to be a bigger person and tell you that you completely deserved the part. Brava.
And now, in 2014, I’m very pleased to be seeing you play an altogether different part – that of the public feminist. Your incredible speech at the UN this week was a real watershed moment for me, as I’m sure it was for all the other feminists who are reeling from just how far we have come. I was 23 when I first felt comfortable using the term “feminist” about myself, and the same is true of many women I know, because when we were younger, nobody close to approaching our age ever used it. The notion that a world famous actress followed by millions of young women in their magazines and on their screens would proudly call herself a feminist was unimaginable to my generation. To us, feminists were shrill, angry separatist lesbians intent on destroying the male sex, or at the very least intent on chopping their bollocks off. Feminists didn’t look like you, or me, or Beyoncé, or indeed the many girls I’ve visited in secondary schools who have set up feminist societies and feel passionate about the issue of gender equality. “Feminist” was a caricature we were all keen to avoid.
Of course, you pointed all this out in your excellent speech when you said that the myth that feminism is equivalent to man-hating has to stop. You said that your feminism includes men and boys, that gender equality is their issue too. So many of us are with you on this need for a more inclusive, and therefore more powerful feminism, but as you have discovered, some people are against you. Like so many others, I was sickened when hackers threatened, in response to your speech, to release nude photos of you on the internet. “She makes stupid feminist speeches at UN, and now her nudes will be online,” one insecure yet vengeful chronic masturbator supposedly said.
2014 has shown us many things, not least that feminism can be, and seems intent on becoming, a mainstream political endeavour – just look at you, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Ellen Page, Lena Dunham, to name just a few women who have “come out” recently. But 2014 has unfortunately also shown us that the lot of any woman who dares to exist in a public space is to be potentially “undermined” by a horrific invasion of her privacy by a few pathetic little bigots who are threatened by female empowerment. These are the bitter revenge tactics of a few small little men who cannot bear to see women asserting themselves with the poise, confidence and intellect that these sociopathic hackers lurking behind their screens, are entirely lacking. I am sorry that they are now targeting you, Emma, and I am sorry that it may prevent other young women for speaking out for fear of similar “reprisals”.
All I can say Emma, is: fuck them. It makes me furious that these men, these boys, are attempting to grind you down, in the same way that similar men have tirelessly attempted to grind down the emergence of our gender as a viable political threat for generations now. Fuck them. I know that you will not let them stop you, just as we other feminists will not let it stop us.
As Laurie Penny has said, a woman’s opinion is the short skirt of the internet. They will say that you deserve it. You do not deserve it: no woman does. And I will wear my short skirt with pride, and I have no doubt that so will you. Keep fighting the good fight: feminism needs you.
In solidarity,
Rhiannon
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