Words by Lottie Minney
ARE YOU A TW/ Mentions of rape/assault
Feminism is for everyone!
No, really, are you a feminist? For all the AFAB/femme people reading this, I swear this is not a rhetorical question. I want you to seriously consider your answer. Pretend, for a moment, that feminism is more than believing in equality between men and women, or that women should be treated as human beings with dignity and respect. Pretend, if you can, that feminism is the man-hating body-hair-toting lesbians of the second wave, the bra-burners, the protesters, the women that went “too far”. Pretend that Marxist, socialist, and radical feminisms are the rule, not the extreme. Pretend that feminism isn’t a sticker on your laptop, but an entire movement built on the backs of activism, the majority of women of which were not at all involved.
Honestly, I really wish it wasn’t. This unveralisation is made worse by the fact that feminists themselves perpetrate this idea. I can, of course, understand why we want more of us, but it cannot be at the expense of the movement itself. Feminism was not made to be universal, it was made to be uncomfortable and earth-shattering. If everyone truly is a feminist, then by God we are doing a shit job of dismantling patriarchal capitalism. That is the goal, right? Oh, my apologies! What I meant to say is by God we are doing a wonderful job of, among other things: improving body positivity in the - inherently sexist beauty industry, letting women become CEO’s to their own slave-owning companies, and educating POC about how good girls shouldn’t wear hijabs. Above all, we have done a great job in making sure we can do whatever we want without feeling like a bad feminist, because that really sucks :(
Now, I ask again: are you a feminist? If you are, then good: we need more. If you aren’t, which I wager places you in the majority, I want to discuss why you think you are: or, most perniciously, think that you must be. It is no secret that feminism has been commercialised, watered-down and crushed into a barely-recognisable oblivion through capitalism. Worst of all, it has been universalised. Everyone is a feminist. It’s akin to claiming you’re not racist, or not transphobic: a passive rejection of the “bad side”. If you’re not a feminist, especially as a celebrity or public figure, you’re just not on the right side of history. God forbid you are a non-feminist woman. Those poor, poor things, they don’t even know that being a woman makes you a feminist automatically. Those silly, silly, conservatives, you arevoting against your own interests! 40
I won’t deny there have been leaps and strides in many of the first and secondwave feminist causes – as a white, middle-to-upper-class lesbian who has never been sexually assaulted or raped, many institutional freedoms have been awarded to my demographic. However, the issues that remain, especially those that concern POC and those in low-socio-economic groups, are actually fucking embarrassing in the face of feminist empowerment and girl power. A universal feminism will always benefit the ‘norm’ rather thanthe ‘Other’. If you are comfortable, you are doing feminism wrong. Worse, if you think there is a true monolith of feminist belief, a ‘correct’ perspective – if you ignore the writings of our
