I am trying to teach people about feminism, but I donât even know if I am a feminist. Or, I call myself a feminist, but I donât really know what that means. Nobody seems to really know what that means, because feminism doesnât really seem to be about anything anymore, except as a collection of aesthetic sensibilities (buying certain t-shirts, expecting a certain number of women to be in the superhero movies I watch, wanting people to mind what words they use when). This is not to say that there isnât feminist action happeningâyou only need look at the Herculean efforts of women in Argentina, Ireland, and First Nations women in Canada to know that feminist activity is aboundingâbut these are limited campaigns, limited actions with limited goals. Abortion, contraception, equal pay, employment rights, these are all the demands that serve as cornerstones of feminism (and have since its earliest days!), but they are just that: demands. They arenât strategies, they arenât tactics, they arenât ideologies, and half the time, we donât even know why we call these things feminist demands, just that we do, to say nothing of problematising whether or not we even should call them feminist.
And herein lies the crux of the problem: feminism doesnât mean anything anymore. Everyone, so it goes, is a feminist these days. The barrier to entry is nonexistent, with a gesture as simple as purchasing a $25 graphic t-shirt, you too can be a feminist. The âmovementââif it even merits that label, which Iâm not convinced it doesâis so amorphous as to be practically uncriticisable. Who do you hold to account for the lack of strategy, when all of us are equally as feminist as the next person? Is it Mary-Sue-Ann in the âI Drink Male Tearsâ t-shirtâs fault that the movement doesnât have a 5-,10-, or 20-year strategy? Is she more or less to blame than Cheryl Sandberg, or Angela Davis, or Gloria Steinem?Â
So why does feminism not mean anything anymore? Where did we lose our way? Feminist historians have lots of answersâas a lapsed one myself, I can certainly rattle off moments in history that feel like the moment it all went wrong: Womenâs Liberation Movement conferences gone awry, political campaigns that relied too much on the American legal system, the election of Margaret Thatcher⊠All of these feel like good answers to the question, they sound nice and clever, and importantly, they absolve us in the present day of any responsibility. The truth is, as bell hooks writes, far more mundane than any Singular Event, but rather the professionalisation and institutionalisation of feminism. âThe dismantling of consciousness-raising groups,â she writes, âall but erased the notion that one had to learn about feminism and make an informed choice about embracing feminist politics to become a feminist advocate.â When âfeministâ became a viable career choice, feminists who staked their livelihoods needed to ensure that those livelihoods werenât taken away from them; the radicalism inherent to feminism, a radicalism borne of criticising the status quo, or proposing, defending, and living out alternatives to patriarchy, all became untenableâitâs very hard to kick out against the structures of patriarchal oppression when it is the patriarchy itself that pays your bills. But thatâs a bad narrative, itâs an uncomfortable one, and it implies that, in some small way, feminism (and by extension, feminists, including the individuals who now cash their paycheques in its name) failed. Rather than radicalising feminism, it was necessary to universalise it, to make it palatable (and marketable!) to as many people as possible, to ensure that feminists could feel like theyâd succeeded even if in practical terms, they hadnât.
A fundamental rule of marketing is that you canât call your customer a cunt. Another fundamental rule of marketing is that you probably also shouldnât call them a moron. Unfortunately, these are both essential elements of intellectual debate, and have been since the very earliest days of the Enlightenmentâunpleasant, difficult, and often outright cruel discussions have always been a cornerstone of the development of intellectual and political movements globally and historically. Should that be the case? Maybe, maybe not, maybe we would get farther if we learned to be a smidge nicer to one another, but the parallel (and well-documented) conflation of disagreement with cruelty has stifled the evolution and course-correction of feminism, allowing it to be almost entirely hijacked by those who would see it turned into little more than a slogan on a graphic t-shirt. Donât get me wrong, Iâm not advocating for a return to the brutality of the 1970s Womenâs Liberation Movement (though I would argue that it has truly never left, itâs just that the women doling out the brutality are now the ones in power), but I am arguing that we need to throw off the yoke of marketability and get comfy with being uncomfy.
I donât say this to be pretentious, but the average person who calls themselves a feminist really shouldnât be doing that. They havenât done the reading, they havenât done the thinking and introspection, and they havenât exhibited the praxis necessary to earn that label. Yet poll a room of left-liberal people, and easily 90% or more of them will openly identify as feminists. Thatâs an enormous problem, a problem that should be getting far more airtime than it is. The truth is, I donât want peopleâhere meaning left wingers, I really couldnât give a fuck about liberalsâto feel comfortable calling themselves feminists unless and until they can argue back against principled anti-feminists on both the left and right. I donât want ten thousand people who call themselves feminists but subscribe to bad or meaningless feminism, I want a hundred people who subscribe to ideologically-rigorous feminism and can defend it as staunchly as they defend socialism. And the only way weâre going to get there is by teaching people about feminism, and then putting it into practice. Good feminism, not shitty, milquetoast, fits-on-a-bumper-sticker feminism. If I had to trade for a world where nobody called themselves a feminist but everybody did feminist things, I would make that trade in a heartbeat, because it would mean at lastâat last!âa recognition that political ideologies are instructions for action, not identity labels.Â
One of my biggest worries is that a focus on comfort and marketability has made it impossible to teach people about feminism. I am not railing against âwokenessâ generally, or the apparently-popular surge of support for increased sensitivity for the life situations of those around usâthose are broadly good things, and things I am happy to see more of. What I am worried about is that the emphasis on conflict avoidance over conflict resolution means that the extremely, extremely questionable tenets of liberal feminism are impossible to dismantle because it requires dealing with subjects that are, well, uncomfortable.
[...] Left wingers are content to make fun of liberals for frothing at the mouth over ugly shots of six women doing Tory power stances in billion dollar film franchises, but theyâre not content to make fun of themselves for having no viable alternative to that brand of feminism, except slapping âsocialistâ stickers on their âThis is what a feminist looks likeâ t-shirts. I need people to treat feminism as seriously as they would treat Marxism, and I need them to recognise that Marxismâs history is littered with bitterly uncomfortable disputes that ultimately led to better outcomes for Marxist praxis and theory. I need people to get uncomfortable with occasionally telling the women in their lives that theyâre bad feminists when they do things that represent acts of bad feminism. I need people to get comfortable being wrong, not knowing everything, and telling other people that they are wrong or donât know everything. I am trying to teach people about feminism, and Iâm struggling to do it because feminism right now is bad, and weâre all too scared to talk about it.Â
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