femme
Girlboss, Interrupted
Image via This is Hell!
The author was just listening to Relay by Fiona Apple, if you wanted to know
I would not necessarily call myself an activist. In fact, I consider myself to be quite far from an activist. I’ve always assumed activism requires a degree of social awareness and passion that I find myself regularly lacking, even on a good day. However, there’s nothing that gets my blood boiling more than hearing the spiel of the average self-important liberal feminist who believes that “choice” is the end-all, be-all of the feminist movement. Don’t get me wrong, I am a feminist as well. Trust me, I once had the pins and the stickers and the graphic tees to prove it. High school me had RBG quotes committed to memory and an obsession with Margaret Atwood that would rival that of any insufferable contemporary lit major. However, I also have a brain and the god-given ability to perform critical analysis, so I am not the biggest fan of liberal feminism.
What exactly is liberal feminism, you might ask? Well, it can be concisely defined as the idea that the same patriarchy that oppresses us can unoppress us by granting us lucky women basic rights and freedoms. Once we have those freedoms, why bother to dismantle the oppressive patriarchal system? We’re too busy choosing to be #girlbosses who wear full faces of makeup and 4-inch heels into the office every day. Rightfully so, liberal Feminism faces its fair share of critique, with activists claiming that it is only capable of creating the most superficial types of change, which “create the necessary smoke screen to make it difficult for women realize the oppression and exploitation to which they remain submitted.” It’s pretty easy to see the truth in this, considering that all the feminist anthems released this year and promptly added to spin class empowerment playlists weren’t super helpful when it came to protecting Roe v Wade, even if their catchy lyrics made for some nice protest posters. Likewise, many radical activists argue that liberal feminism is toothless and pathetic, as a true feminist movement is one in which “women are not simply allowed to participate in the world as it already exists—an inherently corrupt world, designed by a patriarchy to subjugate and control and destroy all challengers—but are actively able to re-shape it.”
Image: The Magic Circle, via Wikimedia Commons
Why am I telling you all this? Why should you care? Well, because liberal feminism kills. With its glorification of sex work as an empowering choice, acceptance of BDSM as sex positivity, and willful ignorance regarding male socialization as leading factors of rape and domestic violence, this “movement” proves to be more harmful than it could ever be helpful. This is why I am choosing to use my, quite limited, soapbox as an academic citizen in order to educate the other young women in my class and inspire them to prioritize and support a movement that serves them rather than the status quo, that seeks to elevate women from their chronic condition of viewing feminism as nothing more than the subject of cute Etsy pins. We deserve to know the shortcomings of the current major feminist philosophy, and if we want to enact real, radical change that liberates women, we need feminism that isn’t afraid to bite.
femme 