A portrait of Woolf by Roger Fry c.1917<\/i><\/p>\n
How essential it is that we should realize that There appears to be something missing in\u00a0coverage\u00a0of the UK General Election: war and peace. It\u2019s understandable, given the recession and subsequent cuts, that the nation\u2019s\u00a0everyday suffering\u00a0is in full focus, but watching the news you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking that Britain is not in fact a military force with the power of life and death over thousands of women, men and children.<\/p>\n Both the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and the Labour opposition seek to replace our nuclear missile system, Trident, for\u00a0\u00a3100 billion\u00a0(the same money could fund 1.5 million affordable homes, or see 4 million students through university). Meanwhile, as some\u00a0900\u00a0more refugees died in the Mediterranean last week, we were reminded that it was the UK Government that cruelly\u00a0withdrew\u00a0funding for search and rescue missions.\u00a0Iraq Body Count\u00a0tells us that post-military intervention, civilian deaths are almost doubling year on year. A documented 137,248 – 155,338 civilians have died from violence since the bloody conflict began in 2003, 211,000 including combatants. The prevalence of violence is also bleak domestically:\u00a0two women\u00a0still die each week because of violence from a former or current male partner.<\/p>\n I carry this burden heavy on my shoulders as I head to The Hague today to report, with\u00a0openDemocracy 50.50, on the\u00a0centenary\u00a0conference of the Women\u2019s International League for Peace and Freedom. \u2018We still live in a world where women\u2019s voices and experiences are excluded, bringing continued violence and war\u2019 reads the programme.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve just reread Virginia Woolf\u2019s iconic essay,\u00a0Three Guineas<\/em>, and it\u2019s made me hopeful for the event. It conjures up another image of politics, one in which the private and public spheres speak to each other. One in which the imagination can make the leap to see how struggles at home are linked to struggles abroad. It\u2019s not just me, there\u2019s a buzz among women\u2019s peace activists in Britain since recent TV debates showed for the first time\u00a0three women party leaders\u00a0speak against nuclear weapons, environmental degradation and xenophobia. There\u2019s a common sense that we might be moving forward if only more women could \u2018get in\u2019.\u00a09.1 million\u00a0women failed to vote in the last election. That\u2019s one million women for each decade of freedom since women first won suffrage. Meanwhile, just\u00a022%\u00a0of MPs are women.<\/p>\n How can we convince women, in this context, of their power to change politics, stop war and forge new avenues for peace?<\/p>\n Going back to Virginia Woolf is not an obvious choice. At a time when social media has taken centre stage it can feel indulgent to go back to the past in search of inspiration. Meanwhile Woolf has fallen out of fashion. Although some young feminists still read her 1929 essay,\u00a0A Room of One\u2019s Own<\/em>, many ask, what can her white, upper class, dated perspective contribute to the intersectionality of modern feminism?<\/p>\n There are three main lessons that I take away from Woolf\u2019s essay which inspire me as a peace activist some 77 years on from its 1938 publication. The first relates to the relationship between culture, capital and war; the second to women\u2019s private and public experience of conflict and oppression; and the third to the relationship between conflict and patriotism. The essay reminds us that war cannot be stopped by the international actors alone, but requires a systematic shift in discourse and power in democracy domestically as well as abroad.<\/p>\n Culture, capital and war<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1920, Woolf wrote in her diary that her \u2018generation [was] daily scourged by the bloody war\u2019. The question that she seeks to answer in\u00a0Three Guineas<\/em>, many years on, is how are we to prevent war? She begins by locating the ubiquity of war in a society dominated by oppressive ideas of masculinity and commodity. Everywhere men are in power and the perspectives of women \u2013 rendered different by their experience of societal marginalisation \u2013 are ignored.<\/p>\n Tackling culturally imposed grandiose ideas of manliness is at the core of Woolf\u2019s message for peace. Her analyses of the media, run by capitalist tycoons who have an interest in maintaining conflict and competition, is\u00a0highly poignant\u00a0for today\u2019s feminist audience. She captures the power of discourse, arguing that reclaiming the media from the monocles of the super-rich is imperative to restoring independent thought. Throughout the essay Woolf takes us back time and time again to a newspaper image of the Spanish Civil War, of corpses so badly mutilated they are undiscernible as man, woman or pig. We are conditioned to see that as justification for war, she explains, but a different sensibility has been repressed by patriarchy. Similar debates continue to surface, as in relation to recent\u00a0media coverage of ISIS.<\/p>\n Yes, the culture of war remains dominant in today\u2019s society, in our\u00a0schools\u00a0and in the\u00a0public sphere. Though the British Empire has formally fallen, what Woolf calls its \u2018commodifying attitude\u2019 is now at the \u2018helm of modern capitalism\u2019. Anticipating strategies of\u00a0current activism\u00a0against neoliberalism, she calls for public divestment from the arms trade. More money should instead be channelled into funding for women\u2019s organisations, she argues. This is a\u00a0universal dilemma, for \u2018money makes it possible to speak without fear or flattery.\u2019<\/p>\n Woolf also answers a key dilemma of the modern feminist movement. At a time when we are telling young girls to\u00a0\u2018lean in\u2019, how can women succeed in public institutions and in politics without becoming part of the dominant culture?\u00a0 \u2018We too can leave the house, wear wigs and gowns, make money, administer justice\u2019, as she puts it, \u2018but on what terms shall we join that procession?\u2019<\/p>\n In Woolf\u2019s universe, enfranchising women is an opportunity to reinvent the institutions according to a different logic, of collaboration and peace rather than of competition and conflict. \u2018We can best help you to prevent war\u2019, she tells men, \u2018not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods\u2019.<\/p>\n Conflict in private and public spheres<\/strong><\/p>\n By linking women\u2019s domestic struggles to become educated and earn a living to the cause of challenging war, Woolf makes an explicit link between the private and the public spheres. For her, fighting for a living wage and paid care work are all part of the peace movement, a plan for enhancing democracy and liberty in the face of oppression and dictatorship. \u2018To help women to earn their livings…\u2019, she explains, \u2018is to help them to possess that weapon of independent opinion which is still their most powerful weapon. It is to help them to have a mind of their own and a will of their own which will help you to prevent war\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although it is now widely recognised that women and men\u00a0experience\u00a0conflict and peace differently, as spelled out in instruments such as\u00a0CEDAW, at the time of writing Woolf was bold to put the social segregation of men and women at the heart of her analysis. In 1938 the navy and army were closed to women, as were the diplomatic service, clergy and the stock exchange. Woolf felt, as many others have, that this exclusion from public life gave women an advantage to see a \u2018new world\u2019 free from the \u2018untrue loyalties\u2019 imposed on men in the public sphere.<\/p>\n Woolf also draws on poetry by Wilfred Owen on the \u2018unnaturalness of weapons\u2019 and the \u2018foolishness of war\u2019 to explore how men experience war in different ways, challenging the idea of \u2018the ideal solider\u2019. And women too, she explains, are embroiled in propagating ideas of military masculinity. \u2018Give not the white feather of cowardice not the red feather of courage, but no feather at all\u2019, she asks us. One can imagine that Woolf would have been an avid contributor to the\u00a0Everyday Sexism\u00a0project, because she saw the culture of violence as very much an assemblage of everyday experiences.<\/p>\n Patriotism and war<\/strong><\/p>\n Women\u2019s \u2018Outsider perspective\u2019, contends Woolf, not only gives us a unique vision of what peace might look like, but allows us to empathise with the oppression of others. \u2018Those who would keep women in the home are no better than Dictators\u2019, she decries. In a particularly bold passage, she asserts that \u2018the monster has widened his scope\u2019, tracing a historical genealogy of oppression that spans the family home and Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n It is the Outsider experience which prevents women from getting behind the patriotism of war and the duties of war. What does \u2018our country\u2019 mean to women as Outsiders, she asks. How much of England actually belongs to us? \u2018Throughout the greater part, history has treated me as a slave\u2019, she concludes, \u2018…as a woman I have no country\u2019. Ending war then, for Woolf, requires women and men to rid themselves both of \u2018pride of nationality\u2019 and the presumed \u2018superiority of patriotism\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n In almost a century much has changed in the nature of war and peace in Britain and abroad, leaving us to wonder what relevance Woolf\u2019s essay can still carry. Her letter, certainly, is remarkably forward-looking. She foresees many strategies of the women\u2019s peace movement, from\u00a0sex strikes, calls to\u00a0ban Page 3\u00a0and pressure on public institutions to\u00a0divest\u00a0in arms and fossil fuels. Her work was also, and remains, instrumental in placing women\u2019s, and to some extent men\u2019s, lived experiences of war and peace at the heart of analysis.<\/p>\n As feminists we often struggle to articulate the dialectic between our work at the everyday and ideological levels. But what Woolf reminds us is that war will not end while women are kept out of power. And similarly, war will not end while power is governed on the same historic terms which men have established in the absence of half of society.\u00a0Woolf concludes with a startling, leveling image.\u00a0Under patriarchy, we are all, she posits, ourselves the figure of the uniformed soldier. Adopting this identity is a source of hope for Woolf, \u2018it suggests that we are not spectators doomed to unresisting obedience,\u00a0but by our thoughts and actions can ourselves change that figure\u2019.<\/p>\n Jennifer Allsopp is reporting from <\/em><\/strong>WILPF's centenary\u00a0international civil society conference in the Hague, 27-29 April. <\/em><\/strong>Read more articles in 50.50's series Women's Power to Stop War.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A portrait of Woolf by Roger Fry c.1917 How essential it is that we should realize that unity the dead bodies, the ruined houses prove. For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions forget the private figure, or if we, in the intensity of our private emotions forget…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nunity the dead bodies, the ruined houses prove. For such will be our ruin if
\nyou, in the immensity of your public abstractions forget the private figure, or
\nif we, in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world.\u2019 <\/em>(Virginia
\nWoolf, Three Guineas<\/em>)<\/p>\n