By ZOYA PATEL
This piece was originally published at Lip magazine, and is republished here with full permission.
There is a problem with modern feminism. This will come as no surprise to anyone, considering all I ever hear about feminism are the various problems associated with it. Whether people are debating the true meaning of the word “misogyny”, or whether or not feminists are humourless bitches, or whether or not we should shave our legs, or whether or not men can be feminists, basically all that is ever discussed about feminism are its perceived problems.
At some point in the last two decades, the focus of feminism has been drawn away from its true aims as a movement and into a prolonged identity politics debate that detracts largely from what I consider to be the point of it all.
The big questions used to be about tangible, practical things – should women have the right to vote, to the contraceptive pill, to equal pay? Now, the “big” questions are introspective, self-absorbed questions that result in nothing productive, like ‘do women even need feminism anymore’? Is Beyonce a ‘real’ feminist? Is Tony Abbott a feminist? What constitutes modern feminism? What is post-feminism?
Frankly, I don’t care who calls themselves a feminist, so long as important feminist work continues to occur. Lately, I feel as if something has gone wrong, that we’ve been driven drastically off course by all of this soul-seeking. Real issues continue to face women globally, but the issues that get the most airplay are those that have the least impact.
Top Comments
Just got done reading on how we shouldn't try to identify or define feminism and scrolled down to the comments that have everyone's selfish own understandings. Disappointed society; disappointed.
In correlation to the article, I would like to ask how we can actually deal with such issues that actually matter with gender inequality. Rather than focus on equal job opportunity, which is unequal mind you due to the fact that women put in a high position can get pregnant and have intense mood-swings that could very well send the company spiralling downward, how about we talk about the aboriginal girl in Australia who was raped by 15 drunk aborigines and then speared by the okin man after they all drove home, crashed and died (speared for witchcraft)? How about clitoris mutilation in Africa (Lesbianism)? Are we even going to talk about how over 90% of U.S prisoners are male (your guess is as good as mine)? Drowning baby girls in China (you know why)? Women in poor areas of the western world seeing the world as something to acquire from some man's paycheck (who do I have to marry to get one of those)? Men feeling all-in-all disposable compared to women (see: Disposable Male Theory)? Guys? Anyone? Hello?!
The privileged women in society , the ones who have influence and a voice have got what they want. That is why we only here about more women in the board room and a load of trivia. The powerful women want the progress to stop because it would damage their privileged class interests for the pressure to continue to enable all able lower class women to get an education ( then they would want top jobs and get annoyed when they couldn't get them) and examine why a woman who is not privileged class cannot get a professional job even when she has the qualifications. Children are another distraction. Children's rights can be left until most women can get family supporting wages. Decent well paying jobs are the priority. And why has nobody noticed that the COINTELPRO sabotage directed at women's aid, feminist and lesbian groups never went away and were just rebranded secretly as gang stalking - and women-hating men continue to sabotage the lives of women who avoid abusive men and try to support themselves in their careers?