the best bad argument for feminism by daud
I do not agree with some of the views in this article. Take your pitchforks elsewhere, or better, come at me.
What explains why some women are disavowing a social movement that intends to benefit all women? Is feminism just about women’s rights? Or about gender equality? Both? Neither? Are these the same things? Can men and women be equal? Do rich women understand poor women issues, better yet, can they? Can men be feminists; can they define the movement? Can they criticize the moment? Does fighting for women’s rights have to be coupled with fighting for sexual liberation for all peoples? What about Beyonce, or Madonna, are they feminists? What has either of them done for women? Is the issue the patriarchy? What even is the patriarchy, men? Are their good feminist goals and bad ones? What about the Aurat March, what about their manifesto? Were some posters ‘indecent’’? What is an indecent poster? Maybe this is a social justice issue. But how do you measure social justice? If people like their brother more than their sister, is it because she’s a woman? Or is she just a shitty person? Philosophically feminism is sound, right? But as with many philosophies, has feminism been taken to its extreme? Has feminism come to contradict many of the very premises philosophical feminism was built upon? Does feminism, in the name of fighting shame and oppression, shame and oppress views that contradict its own? More importantly, how did we get here? What is feminism and why is everyone’s feminism something different? Can I ask any more rhetorical questions in this paragraph?
Now that I hope you all feel confused, and lost; I want to make two disclaimers. Firstly, below, I am going to give you a version of feminism, what I think of it is irrelevant, the more relevant point is, it’s a version, but before that version you’ll need some backstory. Two, yes, I understand that have committed social suicide by talking about this.
Backstory, setting the scene.
After the 1960’s, the world changed. Capitalism had triumphed over communism, Marxism was in retreat, Post-Modernism was on the rise, there had just been an era of feminist and civil right victories in USA, legislation had been passed, abortion was legal, racism was illegal, you know, all the good stuff.
Also, importantly, the feminism of the 60’s — the feminism that had won these victories — was essentially anti-capitalist. In the 60’s most second-wave feminists believed capitalism as an inherently exploitative, oppressive, and patriarchal economic system entwined with the subjugation of women. Historically, sexism and racism have been a core part of strategies of accumulation in capitalism. Sexism makes women’s unpaid labor in the home, which is essential to society, appear natural, a labor of love. The patriarchy was intertwined with capitalism. So there wasn’t a way of defeating one without the other.
Anyways, moving swiftly forward, we start 1990’s on a ‘high for feminism and civil rights’, but with all this success came some issues. The old slogans of the 60’s and 70’s were not applicable anymore. ‘My body my choice’, ‘Equal pay for equal work’, these goals had been achieved, legislation had been passed. Women had no reason now to come out in the thousands and march, and if they did they would need new issues to rally behind. But, while civil rights had been granted, racism still existed in the United States, real life conditions for the Blacks had not changed. The same was true for women, they still felt the pressures of society, felt marginalized and felt that the ground realities, the “real life” conditions had not changed, which they hadn’t. Similarly black women felt the pressure of being black as well as being women.
Back story over, the rise of modern feminist thought.
Judith Butler in my opinion lays groundwork for modern third wave feminism. To her, woman is not inherently a woman, in the sense that, as a woman grows up she is taught certain practices, mannerisms, and ways that woman in her society act. And what she is taught, this ‘womanization of a woman’, this socialization, of how to behave gives rise to the woman gender role. So sex is masculine or feminine, but gender depends on your socialization.
Now, if we take a look at the female sex, she is marginalized because her social role has been reduced to the birth and upbringing of children. She is marginalized due her biology, and this biologically essentialist view of a woman, has dominated the female gender role.
And as to why, why has society at large done this? Well, millions of reasons, be it religion in religious countries or Hegel’s concept of ‘otherization’, where when one individual sees another, he inevitably tries to objectify them and impose his will on them to solve the sudden crisis of recognition that arises of having two distinct individuals existing. Anyways, point is, that women are viewed increasingly through the lens society has opted to wear for them. And as time passes, women behave a certain way, society functions a certain way, women behave in a certain way again, and soon enough with this iteration, we get a nice, tightly packed gender role for women, that fits their biology and integrates well within the fabric of society, win-win.
Similarly males get their gender role, and all is well. The worst thing you can do now is, if you are individual of a certain sex, with an already defined gender role in society, is do anything that does not fit in the gender role. For example things like, men don’t cry, women aren’t logical, men aren’t good nurses, women shouldn’t be sole earners for a family, and a billion other things. Also interesting thing to point out, is that most of women’s roles have been defined with respect to men. A great feminist thinker, Simone de Beauvoir said that the history of humanity is the history of men, women have always been described in their relation to men, where men’s ambitions and actions were studied, those of women were concealed under this false aura of mystery because, “that’s just how women are, enigmas!”.
Anyways, so now, if we are to work towards, equality of the sexes, we first must begin with smashing this idea of the gender binary. Not breaking, smashing. Cause all the problems in society, are because we have people who fill certain gender roles, they look at others who fill their respective gender roles, and these two groups ally with one another against any group/person who steps one small toe outside their gender role. And it seems that a lot of well intention-ed and otherwise nice people have agreed with the people who have decided these roles are set in stone, because well: I am just going to quote Machiavelli from The Prince, “Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them”.
The only way forward, the only way where people can be free to be whoever they are, for men, women and anyone in between, to just be themselves, is to smash this gender role binary, and just acknowledge that no one is fully male and no one is fully female, and once we come out of this thinking, only them can we make some meaningful progress towards equalizing this imbalance of power. This is the best reading possible(that I can come up with), of posters at the Aurat March, saying ‘khana khud garm karlo’, ‘apnay mozay khud dhundo’, it’s all trying to redefine the ways we have thought certain genders act.
That’s one idea: about how the gender binary needs to go.
Second idea: Micro-politics takes precedence over normal politics.
Where old politics was on some objective basis, pushing forward some ideology good or bad. In this post-modern era, and if anyone reading this does not know what postmodernism is, here is an as fast as possible summary.
1. There is no such thing as a truth. There is no objectivity. Everything is a matter of perspective. Science is not the only truth and neither is it as objective as it may claim. 2. Power lies in language and those who control it. Language here means literal language, as well as the concepts of thinking and how we define things in the world. 3. Reject notions of abstractions, determinism, and any attempt to explain anything concretely.
Anyways, this postmodern thinking, fuels much of the micro-politics centered approach of modern day feminism. Micro-politics is a new type of politics which does not value science, and objectivity (because objectivity does not exist), but rather values the subjective perspective. If you are in a hierarchy, as you most probably are, your position in that hierarchy affects the views you hold, and the higher you are, the more control you have over the way narratives are framed in your hierarchy. And the more lower down you are, consider that from your subjective standpoint, you see an entirely different system that the one you’d see if you were way high up. And also further consider, the more lower down you are, the more your views, do not matter, and if they do, you must attempt to adapt them according to the dominant narrative in order to even be heard. An example of this would be a someone who has to defend themselves in court in English, where they do not speak English (bad example, but you get the idea). They must adapt and conform to the dominant narratives framework. Similarly, intellectual ideas from those lower down in the hierarchy must conform to the intellectual standard of those higher in the hierarchy.
Now, if you know where this is going, congrats. If you don’t, it’s all good, no worries. In the end all you need to know, is that what really matters is to modern feminists is perspective, agency and inclusion. And here, perspective means all perspectives, agency means absolute agency and inclusion well, can’t mean anything but absolute inclusion.
The basis for oppression of women is not monetary, governmental or legal. These things are superstructures, under which sexism thrives in the minds of the people living in these systems. This ‘intellectual’ basis, the convincing of the masses that they know what is good or bad for another person, what dress is appropriate, whether a women is doing sex-work because she want’s to, or is doing it because of the implicit forces within society forcing her to do so, is the basis on which modern feminism is fought.
It is not fighting anything, or anyone, it asks that each of you fight the societal conditioning that exists inside your minds, and in doing so, it fights for everyone, with everyone.
I would like to add an end note here:
The modern feminist movement lets women define feminism for themselves, and in that spirit I am not trying to define anyone’s belief for them, or put them in a box, even though unfortunately, I think this box of beliefs is better than most feminist beliefs immediately around me. Personally I do not agree with most of the conclusions that come out of this lines of thinking, however I have tried to, in one place, to give a my best shot at explaining the feminist thought I see around me.
This article is of course, horribly short because honestly, learning about feminism is exhausting, and I have better things to do with my time.
References
this vox article, this article, and this, and this
Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto, by Jessa Crispin
Taimur Rahman feminism videos link
a bunch of wikipedia.
