What is Feminism? and other tangents

My feminism is NOT one about women’s rights, and frankly, it really bothers me when the movement is reduced to women’s rights. I understand that it came out of “women’s rights” but I wish that the general movement were beyond that now, the way we are no longer about suffrage.

My feminism is “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression” (bell hooks). hooks tells us that this definition demands that we understand what sexism is.

So what is sexism? I think sexism is sex/gender essentialism— the idea that knowing someone’s sex or gender tells you anything useful and innate about any individual within that gender or sex category. For instance, sex essentialism tells us that if women are weaker than men, than any individual woman should be slower than any individual man, or it tells us that if women are naturally more nurturing than men, than any individual woman is more nurturing than any individual man.

But how do we know what to infer when sex and gender essentializing? In other words, how do we know how to complete the phrase: woman are _____ and men are _____. Ah, yes. From gender stereotypes. But stereotype is really just a word for “something that poses as a definition, but is only sometimes true.” For example, men don’t cry. Okay, so stereotypes are definitions that are not always true, they are definitions that we have already conceded are not really definitions. But what are some definitions of men and women that do hold true always? Stated otherwise, what is a man? What is a woman?

Because deconstructing biological gender/sex is a long and messy
business for a lot of people, let’s just stick to the social definitions
of men and women. Here are all the definitions or attributes of a woman
that I could think of off the top of my head: menstruates, can get
pregnant, has a vagina, (okay these are not exactly social…) is
emotional, nurturing, passive etc. Men are pretty much the reverse. But
you know what, looking at this list, I actually know a lot of men and
women who fall outside at least one of those parameters. Maybe
“definitions” of men and women are always just stereotypes. There are no
true definitions, there are only sort of fuzzy distinctions that double
back and contradict themselves. In fact, defining gender at all
necessitates stereotyping (delineating boundaries between men and women,
making “definitions). So really, this hard and fast binary of “man” or
“woman” is the problem. Talking about “woman” is if they exist as a true
category is PART OF THE PROBLEM. Categories should be treated as tools,
not TRUTH.

The other huge upside of this take on feminism is that it becomes
VERY CLEAR to EVERYONE that all genders benefit from feminism (the
movement that wants people not to be defined by or restricted by their
gender categories!) Suddenly, we see how a queer politics (that works to
weaken the power of NORMS. Or in “decolonized mind lingo”: denaturalize
and destabalize hegemonies/norms) is the happy extension of feminist
politics, and queer/ly gendered folks are feminist activists from jump.
They are living dream (albeit in a nightmarish reality)…

Okay, okay, let’s back up for a second. I believe in spaghetti
(Foucault) style power that wriggles around in many different directions
at once. So I am also in favor of resistance that works that way too.
Hence, I’m down with women’s rights. Not my string of spaghetti, but I’m
glad it’s there. That said, I just don’t like it when women’s rights is
the primary way that feminism gets described because that is SO not how
I frame it in my head.

Also, to be clear, I am not advocating a genderblind world. Like
Patricia Williams argues in Seeing a Colorblind World, I think we need
to becoming incredibly gender conscious before we can even think about
moving towards genderblind. But being gender conscious doesn’t mean we
treat sex and gender as natural orders, it means we study closely the
way those socially constructed categories have actively shaped and
regulated us as individuals, communities and as a society as a whole. It
also means that maybe we let people be the gender that they want/are,
rather than forcing them into our own boxes.

Related to this women’s rights business is the “Equality” paradigm
versus “movement against sexism” paradigm. Again, I appreciate
spaghetti, but I still want to make a case for the “against sexism”
paradigm over the “equality” paradigm because I think it is more
effective. Inequality is an effect of sexism, while sexism is the root
problem. Of course, inequality perpetuates sexism too, at least in so
far as inequalities are perceived as natural they are used to justify
sex essentialist ideas that deem men bigger, stronger, faster, better
than women.

Also, a small point–I have noticed that here at feministing we
sometimes fall into the “oppression Olympics” and warnings to “check
your privilege” abound. To be honest, I find this kind of talk more
often hurtful rather than helpful. Though I think it’s very important to
understand the concept of privilege, the way it has come to be used in
these circles, as a way to put others down, is really saddening. I need
to think through a bit more on why exactly I dislike conversations
centered on privilege so much, because I think there is more to why I
don’t see those conversations as particularly productive (and more
self-indulgent) but for now, this is what it has made me think–

Because that’s whats been happening, I am wondering if there
is a way that we can express our frustration in a way that the person
we are trying to correct, guide and help grow can hear, rather than
succumb to the (deep and justifiable) annoyance and anger that we feel
when we are disappointed by those who are supposed to know better.
Compassionately critical is a phrase my friend has taught me. I think we
should do our best to treat each other’s learning process with respect,
and to be compassionately critical.

That said, if we find that we are on the receiving end of “check your
privilege”, I hope that we can try to understand where the other person
is coming from, that this statement should not be taken offensively,
that we should take a deep breath and respond with love and openness.
And when I say not to take it offensively, I mean that we must
understand that none of us will EVER BE BEYOND CRITICISM. So let’s stop
being offended when the criticism comes. Let us welcome it with open
arms (I know this is difficult) as a learning experience. Let us try to
understand why it is that we were told to “check it”, and that
if we can’t immediately understand, we employ a suspensive ethic that
waits, wonders, and tries to understand again later

One last thing I would like to comment on–male bodied, female
bodied: could we please say instead male-assigned and female-assigned. I
think this gets at the constructedness of sex as well as that of
gender. Terms like male and female “bodied” leave the “innate” sexing of
the body unquestioned. For example, a friend of mine explained–“I was
female assigned but I am NOT male bodied. My body is a male’s body and
failure to recognize that is VEIWER’S error.”