Liberal feminists have long struggled with this question: if women make choices that align with patriarchal ideologies, how do we understand this choice? Should it be seen as reflective of women’s internalization of dominant ideologies and thereby, an example of false consciousness? This would imply denying women’s agency and imposing a standard for the fulfillment of feminist choice. The alternative is privileging the experiences and negotiations of women with patriarchal structures. This runs into the risk of uncritically accepting and privileging the voices of women without considering its implications for structural reproduction of patriarchy. But this dichotomy is problematic. It sets up a false choice between women’s ability to make independent choices in critical arenas of their lives and their ability to enjoy status within the family and community. In reality, it is likely that women strike what Kandiyoti called a patriarchal bargain and enact forms of negotiated autonomy.
In my conversations with young women from elite urban backgrounds, however, I am struck by their tendency to override these complex questions of agency and instead assert the reality of women’s oppression. Questions about the dynamics of this oppression and how it has manifested in their own life is met with a stoic silence. How can we understand the substitution of feminist debate with the insertion of an overarching and unfalsifiable statement about women’s oppression? I posit that this reflects an alarming trend in the feminist discourse, caught up in identity politics and a selective version of gender relation. With the increasing importance of social media, important discourses about sexual harassment at the workplace and gender based violence are carried out over online platforms that privilege reductive and emotive discourses.
In discussions over social media there is greater incentive to identify yourself through categories and identities rather than make a more nuanced point about
gender-based oppression. But social media is probably just a symptom and not the
cause of the fall in the level of discourse. Jonathan Haidt points to the decline in
diverse political views and sanitization of the political discourse on American
university campuses. As part of this “new” normal, students and academics alike are
not encouraged to engage in open ended debates and discussions about the specifics of gender-based discrimination or talk about the blind spots in our endeavor for gender equality. Instead, we are incentivized to toe the line and reiterate purported truisms. For instance, a normative narrative on gender to emerge during Covid-19 is that the pandemic has translated into women carrying out a disproportionate burden of caregiving duties. This emerges as a well acknowledged pattern but what is left unexplored is, how does this larger finding play out in the everyday lives of differently positioned women? Are some women in a better position to negotiate equitable caregiving arrangements with their partners? Has the pandemic also spurred a renegotiation of household responsibilities with men taking on more housework (there has been some evidence for this)? These questions are rarely probed and what emerges is a homogenous, reductive and sanitized version of feminism, with all its messy bits thrown out. How does any of this matter, you may ask? Given that women are structurally disadvantaged, using a less nuanced view of feminism may aid in making it a more transportable rhetoric. While that may be true, it is important to acknowledge that this comes at a cost.
The cost of privileging the politics of feminism over the impetus for feminist debate, is the next generation of women. If we are unable to have the unconformable discussion and ask the difficult questions, we are teaching our young women that feminism is a normative ideal rather than a highly contested discourse with multiple interpretations. This will and has implications beyond feminism. Feminism much like any other socio-political ideology does not offer easy answers; it offers a framework to probe complex realities. The reduction of feminism to a fashion statement, where it is all about who wore it better, who made the right noise and made it more attractive contradicts this purpose. If we begin to use platitudes as a stand in for reality and a tool of projection rather than engagement, we are not only doing a disservice to the spirit of feminist debate, we are fostering a public discourse that is incapable of pursuing the project of substantive equality.
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