Email with an art teacher
A teacher from an art academy writes an email to Kate about a debate at his school about feminism and KIRAC. He wants to give us a heads-up. They are not going to cancel the presentation, but a radical feminist strongly opposes our coming to the school.
Kate replies with her thoughts on the matter.
10 May 2018
“I hope the revolutionary feminist will be there too. Experience has taught me that people who object to our coming ultimately choose not to attend themselves. That would be a shame. I hope she will be there because there is a big difference between ‘KIRAC as portrayed in the media’ and ‘Stefan and Kate in real life’. You can ask us anything, and we can explain everything, on a human scale that is completely lost in the media image. Of course we play with that in our episodes because we consider it meaningful: in that sense, what we do is an art form using opinion as its material.
“I regard episode 9, about Harvey Weinstein, as a reflection on this kind of media representation — in this case, of Weinstein and the various women — which comes at the expense of the complexity of the story as a whole, and also at the expense of the complexity of female sexuality’s role in it. I regard that as a form of repression. It is interesting, for instance, that the main drivers of this Weinstein story are men: the New York public prosecutor and the journalist Ronan Farrow. What drives them? What drives the women to tell their stories, and what drives Weinstein? My account in the episode is therefore in no way an attempt to discredit the women or excuse Weinstein’s behaviour — I do think he is a very unpleasant man — but much more an expression of a desire to understand what is going on, both with Weinstein and those women and with the ‘Weinstein scandal’ as a cultural phenomenon. I distrust the imperative with which the MeToo movement presents itself as a positive development for me as a woman, not only because I wonder to what extent it is a short-lived phenomenon driven by opportunism, but also because it is a generalising movement that takes an interest in me only as long as I dutifully identify with my category of ‘being a woman’. I experience this intellectual straitjacket as a threat to my emancipation as a woman, since I regard the possibility of a critical attitude and individual development as an essential, indispensable part of emancipation.
“The same applies to my statement about the black woman artist [Zanele Muholi], which was in fact a criticism of the curator’s complacent attitude towards a black artist who cultivates her own stereotyping and thereby feeds the curator’s complacency.
“So I hope we can simply have this discussion, since I think I have more in common with the revolutionary feminist than she suspects.
“One more thing to reflect on regarding feminism: in the latest episode, Stigma, about the Rietveld, you see very clearly how three grown men on stage take turns trying to tell me that I should not have said what I said. None of the three addresses the substance of my explanation. The gist is that I should not have said it, even if my intentions may not have been bad, and that I am provocative. I do see this choice of words as meaningful here: a woman is characterised as provocative by three men, and therefore has to shut up. That happens to be precisely the kind of behaviour that really characterises the sexism that does exist in our society, and which you can shake off only by refusing to be intimidated, being your own person and thinking independently. Only then are you in charge of your own mind.”