This is something that I have been thinking about and going back and forth on with a close friend of mine.
Here’s the deal: Feminism, or at least the Third Wave is supposedly all about telling stories, raising voices and finding a space of inclusion through deconstruction. Much of what is happening as a result of this ‘new feminist activism’, however, is more alienation and division than ever before. We are now living in a world where womanists, ecofeminists, liberal feminists, socialist feminists, radical feminists, post-colonial and third world feminists, french feminists, post-structural and post-modern feminists, multiracial feminists, libertarian feminists, and the list goes on and on, all claim to be true feminists, who have adopted the ideology that will free women and make for the best society, while attempting to silence all other “feminist” voices as not being as productive or meaningful as theirs.
The theoretical beginings of the feminist movement, and its third reincarnation, spout off idealistic rhetoric of a full standpoint, within which all aspects of an individual’s multitude of momentary and long-term idenities are brought into a senes of critical and optimal consciousness to deconstruct all power relations within the heirarchies and ideologies that intersect to construct societies. There are not many problems with standpoint theory its self that I would want to note, but instead wth the attitudinal practice that is using this theoretical approach to silence those who disagree with not only feminist mindsets and limited consciousness, but also with the dominant racist, capitalist patriarchy we like to call ‘the norm’.
At the point where those who believe in and follow the teachings of theorists like Sandra Harding, bell hooks, Kenneth Burke, Micheal Foucault, Jean-Franscois Lyotard and so many others are looked down upon as bigoted and oppressive, because they do not look specifically at subsets of the population — whether it be gay Asian males, straight black females, or any other of the innumerable possible combinations of labels that come together to form some one’s false conception of static identity — the ideals that have made the very foundations of the feminist movement have failed.
Now, it’s not just about whether you believe women are equal to men. It’s not just about defying ‘the man’ and forcing him to accept your need for a room of your own. Feminism is quickly becoming just another label, just another way to create an other where an ally once stood, and to make strangers from those who were once our closest friends all under the guise of equality and progress.
I once had to defend myself from all the attacks I would get for claiming to be a feminist. Now, the more I think about it, read about it, and see how ’sisters’ continually put each other down in the same breath as using the theoretical backings for patriarchy — dominance, power, control, correctness at ‘the other’s’ expense — to make their points, and if necessary create a whole new movement rather than launching discourse and helping a current one thrive ad grow, the more I feel the need to instead say: Fuck labels. I have beliefs. I have opinions. Ask me about them independently, but no, for the moment, I’m not a feminist.
