Reframing Feminism

As feminists, we need to be honest with ourselves about our movement.  There is a major problem with contemporary feminism (“third-wave feminism”).  It is the insistence on the homogenous constructs of gender that span time and space.  Many outlets on the internet serve as platforms for people to contribute ideas on gender, politics, and feminism.  But without a self-examination of the ways we approach certain topics and the historical development of these particular approaches, we will never be able to ground our analyses in historical reality, leaving it to freely float around in the obscure discursive realm and be utilized by many people, especially feminists, who only provide trivial platitudes on serious issues.

For example, you might hear the term “patriarchy” used to describe the type of oppression that women face in society as well as in most societies throughout history.  This term is never defined or put into any historical context, however.  It is solely a term that is relentlessly invoked in order to explain differences between men and women (men and women are always seen as legitimate, distinct categories).

Because there has been a shift in feminism away from political economy and toward a set of cultural issues, many third-wave feminists will focus on current issues that women face in society such as sexual objectification, beauty standards, domestic violence, and street harassment.  The approach applied by many contemporary feminists to these types of  topics posit two competing teams in society: women (oppressed) and men (oppressors).  Unfortunately, this has become mainstream.  The website Everyday Feminism has published articles such as “Dear Men: This Is How You Should Be Approaching a Woman on the Street” and “Feminism Now: What the Third-Wave is Really About” that clearly exhibit such binary designations that fall strictly within the cultural sphere. Feministing can be guilty of perpetuating such reactionary ideas of gender, as well as race.  An article titled “Lori Discusses What Amber Rose’s SlutWalk Means for Black Women” provides a video with Lori Adelman giving her support to the SlutWalk.  However, “An Open Letter from Black Women to SlutWalk Organizers” takes a different perspective, criticizing the SlutWalk because of its inaccessibility and inconsideration for women of color.  This happens all too often within contemporary “third-wave” feminism, which positions men and women as distinct categories as is evidenced by the articles as well as most feminist discussion taking place today.
Intersectionality does infuse some critical analysis into feminism; however, similar to patriarchy, it is whimsically exclaimed without any contextualization.  Also, intersectionality tends to position race and gender as the main factors of identity.  This makes sense as it was cultivated in a time of identity politics.  Class is nominally mentioned, but rarely placed on the same level as race and gender.  Additionally, intersectionality only applies to women.  That is, women make 78 cents to a man’s dollar.  But Black and Latina women make less than that.  Women receive intersectionality.  Men remain one homogenous group.

Professor and feminist Chandra Talpade Mohanty writes in her essay Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses on this issue of categorizing genders into ahistorical groups.  She explains, The “focus on the position of women whereby women are seen as a coherent group in all contexts, regardless of class or ethnicity, structures the world in ultimately binary, dichotomous terms, where women are always seen in opposition to men, patriarchy is always necessarily male dominance, and the religious, legal, economic and familial systems are implicitly assumed to be constructed by men.”  The ahistorical reference to “patriarchy” in most feminist discussions leads nowhere in terms of progress or understanding.  As feminists, we must demand the practice of true intersectionality, where race and gender are not deterministic, but factors that operate under a neoliberal State (in the case of America) and the complementary culture that the State organizes.

Women and men do not constitute groups that act in an exploitative hierarchy.  The hierarchy is dense and complicated.  It cannot be disconnected from certain issues. We must remember that we are all historical subjects operating within each system. Therefore, politics, economics, culture, and discourse must all be included in an authentic feminism which situates every person at the unbreakable intersection of all of these systems. Historically, leftist strands in the women’s movements, Black movements, and labor movements have understood their shared source of oppression and formed common bonds to challenge it.  This can be observed throughout the Progressive era and most of the 20^th century.  It is only in the past 40 years or so that the disentangling of political economy from gender and race has dominated leftist movements. This stems from the State’s suppression of anarchist, socialist, and communist thinkers during the 20th century, along with the adoption of postmodernism as a form of resistance among those on the left.  People who adhere to the ideas of neoliberalism coupled with postmodernism and identity politics reified a discourse around categories of “men” and “women” who are at war in the battlefield of culture. Gender is the focus.  Neoliberal economic policies, political interactions and responsibilities, and philosophies of discourse are never discussed, and if they are, it is usually separate from gender.

“Third-wave feminism” is focused on individualistic (read: neoliberal) expressions of femininity, as it exists as a discursive structure.  An analysis of women who are acting within the political economy or the discursive construction of a gender is removed from mainstream feminist discussions.  Moreover, it is often policed by many feminists who ardently refuse to include these aspects for fear that it might delegitimize their own female voice by illuminating their complicity. In its place is a focus on gender roles, gender violence, and gender expectations. All are serious issues that can be addressed, but gender as a structure (not people) becomes the actor, the historical subject. However, this has little connection to historical reality. A simple, gender-deterministic binary remains and the dominant feminist narrative prevails.

Going forward, feminists must reclaim a movement that has been hijacked by those who perpetuate inequality by having a limited scope of how people acts in society.  By strictly adhering to a discourse of patriarchy, many feminists become blind to the inseparable relation of gender and the political economy, as well as how discourse operates. We must study these issues through a feminist lens, where gender is still a key component, but it is contextualized.  This contextualization will allow us to recognize the underlying causes of marginalization, leading us to take action against those causes, dismantling them, and replacing them with ethical institutions.