Thinking girl wonders if feminism has failed.
Has feminism become too academic? Has misogyny become more insidious,
squirmier, harder to pin down? Has feminism not changed enough to accommodate its critiques, particularly by women of colour? Is feminism
too fractured, too unfocused - do we need a new definition, a set of common claims about feminism? Has feminism been too radical? Not radical enough?
She is in a class with the stereotypical responses to "are you a feminist? why or why not?" which all leave the impression that feminism has/is achieved/ing nothing.
But lets stop to think about that really.
I can get an abortion. I can get a job. I can go to school. I am more intelligent than almost every male I have ever met - and they recognize that. I have power and strength mentally and physically. My boss is male, but 9 out of the 10 of his employees are female. My job entails recognizing the achievements, positions, power, strength, intelligent, depth and spirituality of women.
Because of these things - I don’t think feminism has failed. A lot has been achieved - and yes, there is still a lot to be achieved. Of course I would like to see more women in Parliament, engineering programs and getting paid equal wages. I would like to see the entire world have the same sort of access to abortions and women’s support that Canada has. Most of all I would like to see abuse put to rest. But these are goals. Simply goals that feminism has yet to reach fully.
As for women of color feeling excluded, I have talked about this before, but I’ll just briefly state it again. For the same reason that the liberals didn’t win in Canada in the last election, feminism is making progress slower than it should be. There is no cooperation. There is so much internal conflict that a) there is no firm ground for everyone to stand on together, no issues to tackle as one whole and b) the "enemy" sees the schism and doesn’t take it seriously, or uses it to their advantage.
Feminists fight with one another about what it means to be a feminist, and if we should shave our vaginas or not instead of coming together as one giant whole and storming the enemy on abuse. We bicker with one another about how feminist we should act in public, if we should wear lipstick, if the girls on maxim are slowing us down… etc. instead of discussing these things in the back ground a head of the movement. I think these sorts of discussions are important - but they shouldn’t be shadowing larger goals that we could be coming together on.
When you think about the amount of leadership that Feminist, Pandagon, Feministe… etc get - think about the people power that is behind that. Think about the things they could achieve if they started organizing giant campaigns. But they don’t. Instead there is just drama. Blog drama. Stupid stupid stupid blog drama. You know what Kos doesn’t have? Drama. That’s why it is taken so seriously on the political spectrum and why republicans shiver in their boots at the thought of Yearly Kos.
So do we need a definition for feminism to help this schism? I don’t think we can define feminism. Not everyone will be included that wants to be included. Feminism is for life. We can state our own individual wants and beliefs about what feminism is - but there should be some sort of idea for commonality, I don’t know how to get to that. I don’t think it’s about being radical, or not radical enough. It’s about being loud. You don’t have to be radical to be loud. The quietest person can make a large impact by organizing the right type of thing.
Personally, I think this starts are first accepting that men and women are different. But that men and women can fight together to bring all sorts of men and women to an equal level. I hear "We are the same as men!" No, we’re not. We’re really not. It’s not even social dichotomy. We’re different. I don’t have a penis, and my estrogen overwhelms any amount of testosterone that may be in me. But, I will fight beside a man, and accepting him as an equal if he is willing to accept me as his equal. This goes for women as well. All women are not the same. I’m not black. I’m not spanish. I am not a visible minority. But I will fight beside all other women to achieve common goals.
…Then, once everyone is fighting for life beside one another - feminism and more importantly humanism has been successful.
Raaaamble much?
Back on track — Feminism has not failed. Feminism is 3/8 way done its course. At this point, claiming that feminism has failed is like me saying that I’ve failed my religion class… Its starting to get tough, I’m losing a little bit of faith in my abilities to do it… but I know with some refocusing and effort I can get past it, and not fail.
We can’t say that feminism has failed, because feminism isn’t over. If the feminist movement comes to a complete halt, if Jessica Valenti stops fighting for her right to party (shes got a wicked flickr find), if we all resort to stay-at-home lives, if all of us feminists and women just stop. Then yes. Feminism has failed. But we haven’t done that. We’re still fighting. We are gaining rights, strength, louder voices and power. … So no, feminism definitely has not failed.
