The problem with "choice feminism"
I think a lot of humanity’s problems come down to the fact that most people cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.
Some people are ideologues. They see the big-picture. They like rigid ideologies, clear rules, and systems. They’re very motivated by what they think is moral.
Other people are activists. They like practical politics, action plans, white papers, studies, surveys, and polls. They’re very motivated by what they think will work.
These two types tend to misunderstand and hate each other.
For example: feminism.
A lot of people don’t know this, but Big Feminism forces every feminist to choose between “choice feminism” and “radical feminism” before engaging with The Feminist Discourse.
Radical feminists invented the term “choice feminism” because “normal, well-adjusted, default feminism” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Choice feminism has many advantages over radical feminism. For me personally I’m not a radical feminist because I think sexism is bad, dumb, and immoral whether it’s against men, women, trans folks, or non-binary individuals. I also tend to be skeptical of ideas so good they need to be mandatory.
In addition, choice feminism, aka Lean In feminism or girlboss feminism, is easy-to-understand. It’s palatable. And it genuinely helps a lot of people.
Performing masculinity in a culture that hates women and femininity is often a winning strategy. Surprise surprise. Girlbossing has helped a lot of women make more money. Lean In was full of genuinely good advice.
Radfems do have a point, though. The big problem with choice feminism is that it’s a fundamentally solo project.
Girlbossing and Lean In operate at the level of the individual.
Neither say much about why “bossing” has a gendered valence. They gloss over root causes. While they help individuals solve individual problems, they ignore the sexism that creates the need for the advice they peddle.
The concept of gender is why girlbossing often backfires.
We penalize women for performing femininity. But we also punish women who violate gender norms by negotiating like a man.
Choice feminism gets more mainstream approval than radical feminism for a few reasons. First, because it is just better than authoritarian bigotry and dehumanization. Second, as I said, it’s simpler and more palatable. Third, individualist ideologies are more attractive and legible in individualist cultures.
The fourth reason is that choice feminism ultimately protects the sexist status quo and powerful people like that.
Sexism hurts most people on-net – male, female, and non-binary.
Like most inefficient and morally dubious systems, it continues to exist because it helps the people who are currently in power stay in power.
People in power prefer smooth sailing. More at 11.
They don’t want anyone to even so much as name, much less address, systemic inequalities. You mean the things that got me where I am and keep me here? No thank you. I’m fine.
They like their lessers to simply accept their lot in life. But since some plebes will always try to gain status, elites try to steer us toward individualist strategies.
Because when people work together, they often end up naming, critiquing, and attempting to undermine the systems that prevent upward mobility.
Girlboss feminism doesn’t require systems thinking. In fact, the more a person understands gender, sexism, and patriarchy, the dumber girlbossing sounds.
Choice feminism does work, oftentimes. But it inevitably fails most women, particularly the less privileged, because telling people how to work around their ankle weights will never work as well as simply removing them. And when individuals fail to fully escape the pitfalls of patriarchy, the powers that be just tell victims its our own fault for not girlbossing hard enough or well enough or long enough.
Obviously, the better solution is to band together to overthrow the entire ruling class and remake society from the ground up to build a genderless, non-hierarchical luxury gay space communist utopia, right?
I mean, no. Sadly. Unfortunately. Despairingly, no.
We know what happens to societies that eschew patriarchy, violence, and hierarchy. They become part of societies that don’t.
Maybe I’m just blowing smoke up my own ass here. It’s happened before. But I strongly suspect that what a patriarchy supporter really hates to see coming is a feminist who can do both. The sexist status quo hates a feminist who can identify the shortcomings of a feminism only concerned with the individual and of a feminism that has nothing to offer that can actually help anyone anytime soon in the world we actually, currently inhabit.
It takes a lot of mental agility to recognize that the systems we live under do hurt the marginalized to benefit the powerful and also they generally arose and stuck around because they also do other things, some of which are necessary and good.
I don’t hate to see those feminists coming, though. I love it. Y’all can come sit with me.
