FEMINISMS

The issue is not between ‘old’ and ‘new’ feminism. (The is no such thing as ‘new’ feminism, just as there is no such thing as ‘new’ freedom. There is freedom; and there is tyranny.) The issue is between feminism - equalitarianism - and that which is not feminism.

Elizabeth Abbott Woman’s Leader 1927*

For me, thinking about what feminism is and what it is not is learning to see men’s oppression of women. The reason I, as an adult woman, am having to find, from scratch, for myself, a language - a way of thinking - that can explain my experiences as a woman, when that language was already developed by a previous generation of feminists (and the generation before them, and so on), is that we, as women, are denied a history - it’s part of the raw deal. When we each start to become conscious of our subjection as women, we begin to develop a feminist perspective. I believe that each woman’s perspective on male supremacy is shaped by her relationships to men and their interests.

I believe that the notion of different types of feminism stems from those differently shaped perspectives and I don’t believe that those differences in our perspectives are in any way a reflection on that which we are perceiving - our subjection; that there should exist as many variants of male domination as there exist feminisms. Instead, I believe that these different ‘feminisms’ ultimately reflect the different extents to which we are able or willing to hold men responsible and I don’t see this as something to celebrate: I don’t think we should accept any limitations on how disloyal we will be to men and their interests.

What feminism is (and what it is not) is a question I keep coming back to and one I’d like to speak to other women about. I regret that it is so difficult to bring up: sometimes by its being confused with questions about who is or isn’t a feminist - as if it were a club - and sometimes because the very idea of all women united against male domination is dismissed as impossible for the supposed reason that women, as a class, because of our diversity, do not exist.

I have begun to understand that I, to an extent, conceptualise my experience of male dominance through a male lense. This is something I have to overcome; to do so would be to see male dominance - how men exercise and maintain their power over women - from women’s own perspective. This, I think, is central to what feminism is because it is a refusal to accept men’s lies about why we are deserving of their violence against us.

*This quote is included towards the end of Sheila Jeffrey’s The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930.