I ran across a (decontextualised, and I’m running with that) quote of Yale political science and philosophy professor Seyla Benhabib’s a few weeks back:
[…] contemporary feminism has shifted its attention from social analysis to discourse analysis, from power itself to the politics of its representation
I’m wondering about the extent to which this is true, and what the truth of it can mean.
What does it mean when we take the focus off actual social power to talk about its representation? Well, it’s important to talk about representations of power. Inevitably we have to negotiate through representations; that’s a good bit of how power relations are delivered. But I’m thinking about how that can become the easy way out.
It’s important to talk about symbols and prominent representations. But when we talk about media representations of social problems as a substitute for talking about those social problems, that’s when we have a problem. When we take a TV show as absolutely representative of an issue it covers, we’re doing something important, but it needs to be conducted in conjunction with real life work. If analysis becomes all about representing those representations of power dynamics, we’re missing so much of how those dynamics can manifest. Media stories and such are absolutely vital to analyse – they form so much of how power dynamics are shaped – but they’re not power dynamics in and of themselves. Representations help us form pictures of power dynamics, but that’s just it, they’re representative: they aren’t the be all and end all of what there is to know about a particular site of analysis.
And I think that this is particularly a problem when we talk about representations of feminism itself at the expense of feminist issues. That is, ‘Why does feminism have such a bad image in ways that don’t match up with the realities of feminism?’ is the wrong question to be asking. By referencing this question, I don’t mean that feminism doesn’t deserve some of its bad image: it has been ineffective and actively harmful in so many ways for the most vulnerable women (co-opting the stories of women in developing countries, instigating violence against trans women…). I’m referring to feminists wondering why feminism is widely thought of as dead, or silly, or the domain of “shrieking harpies” wanting to take over the world. I think we should be focusing on the issues at hand; investing in the issues feminism is meant to solve, not the image of the movement itself. When we become concerned with feminism’s representation as something to be overcome, when feminism becomes about defending the identity rather than doing the work, that’s when we have a big problem. It’s good to know that “this is what a feminist looks like,” but looking like a feminist shouldn’t come at the expense of doing feminist work.
What happens when we simultaneously distance ourselves from power and tie up our personal power and identities in its representations? And what do we risk losing?
What happens when we simultaneously distance ourselves from power and tie up our personal power and identities in its representations? And what do we risk losing?
The whole reason this happens (this worry about the representations, and redirecting of energy towards image concerns) is because the work itself isn’t being done. And you have USian feminists to blame for most of this, because this really got under way after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment. When ERA did not pass, energy went towards image-changing the feminist movement. Sure, there were always powerful women within the feminist movement (jockeying off the power granted by their other identities—race, social class, educational background) who were concerned with feminism’s image (see: Betty Friedan and the “lavender menace”)….but that wasn’t the main push of feminist movement. It was assumed that of course feminists are going to be subject to ad hominem attacks and distortion of image, because we were a threat to the status quo—a threat to power.
But after ERA, when the mainstream feminist orgs were licking their wounds and trying to figure out Where We Went Wrong, the idea that feminism wasn’t “pretty” enough, or mainstream enough, and that was why ERA was defeated. That if feminism did a better job of selling itself as a brand, then it would find success in the marketplace of ideas.
Which is exactly bass-ackwards. The reason feminism ever had the successes that it did was when the focus was entirely on results. The results made a difference in the lives of women, which made them/us think about this thing called “feminism”. After the failure of ERA (due partially to the full-court press of conservative enemies, the failure of the feminist leadership of the time to triangulate the natural divides of the Religious Right, and the daunting task of constitutional change in the US due to wildly differing demographics in the various states), there was a concerted effort by mainstream feminism to make sure that its spokeswomen were model-pretty, highly educated, Junior League types. The type of women who would be acceptable to those already in power.
The type of women guaranteed to alienate the overwhelming majority of everyday working women. Yes, I’m saying it. The so-called feminist movement washed the working class right out of its hair, and then wondered where the hell the “movement” went.
What do we risk losing? Warm bodies that can woman-up phone banks, write letters, talk to one another, hold committee meetings, march in the streets, create and present a viable organized force against sexism in the courts, the legislature, city hall, academia, religious bodies, even union halls.
Chally and La Lubu, you both articulate the point so well – that feminism has lost its way because it has become so invested in maintaining and hyping Brand Feminism.
Hence why I left Brand Feminist behind a few years back. Speaking from my own perspective as a white USian trans/genderqueer woman, I felt then, and still feel now, like trans women are at best tolerated, trundled out by Brand Feminism when it needs to shore up its image, then relegated to the shadows when we become too inconvenient (such as when we start getting uppity and asking to be let into women’s rape and DV shelters, or G-d forbid maybe gynecologists learn how to care for the reproductive health needs of trans women).
I remember, some five or so years ago, when a group of primarily lesbian / queer women from the synagogue I was attending at the time, invited representatives of Planned Parenthood (Philadelphia, PA, USA) over to pitch a fundraising drive. I mean, here’s 15 or so lesbian / bi / queer women, most of them working-class (including a lot of women in social work…and we know how well *that* pays, especially w/o unions) and in walks two obviously straight women, dressed to the nines in expensive suits with expensive colognes. I couldn’t understand why they both had their blouses open down to there? Maybe that’s how they dress anyway, but I couldn’t help but feel that they felt that they could somehow connect to blue-collar and social-service workers by … I dunno … sexing it up?
The disconnect was jarring. I felt like the PP reps weren’t even *trying* to meet us half-way, like they weren’t even *trying* to understand what it was like to be, for example, a queer woman with disabilities doing social work for far too many hours a week (no unions) for too little pay [this was a friend of mine] or a trans woman whose career was in free-fall since transitioning and listening to these white, upper-class cis het women completely erase the experiences of the women (and men and those of other genders) that they were trying to raise funds from. They didn’t even try to *dress* a little bit more like us – we were basically a jeans-and-tshirts crowd, and even the more femme women wore fairly plain dress.
And Brand Feminism wonders why they can’t rally more women to their cause … when their cause is focused so much on the needs of USian white professional-class cis het women?
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I think your words are basically saying that feminists should not be worried about this ‘representation’ and focus on the real issue at hand, yes? I have to say I disagree with this, with a negative representation showing in the media stereotyping feminists in a way that ‘doesn’t match up to the realties of feminism’ as you said, will result in false assumptions and misconceptions of feminists. Although you may think that this has no effect and should not be worried about I believe that the feminist movement becoming unpopular due to a false understanding because of representation is a very real problem indeed. If there an attitude of hostility, or a lack of seriousness towards feminism because of this representations would that not make it very difficult for feminists to achieve their aims? I believe that representation is a very powerful, manipulative weapon that, being used against feminists is a major hindrance.
No, that’s not what I’m saying, and media hostility towards feminism is a problem.