The feminist mistake

When I say I’m a feminist, I bet you have a clear idea in your head about who I am. If I said I was a liberal, environmentalist, socialist, or activist, you’d probably also tick off a few boxes and have me neatly labelled. Is this realistic in a world where communities are no longer geographically bound, and whose members may have varying understandings of who they are. Are labels really useful any more?

In some ways they are. Firstly, it’s important to label yourself to categorise yourself as “not” something else. So when I say I’m a feminist, it might be because I don’t want to be seen as a chauvinist. So understanding what the opposite or alternate political position is helps you to understand what you’re for and against.

But in this categorisation method the difficulty arises. Sometimes some people label themselves and find one position to be opposed to theirs, while others who give themselves the same label don’t think so. For example, some feminists are for “raunch culture” and see it as pushing the boundaries of acceptable feminine sexuality, whereas others see it as the height of regression, and copulation with chauvinistic standards of femininity. (For a GREAT read, read Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy). So who is right? And how does the potential answer (everyone or nobody or a or b) influence our understanding of what a feminist is?

Perhaps definition by exclusion doesn’t work. Maybe we need to work on positive definitions. After all, part of the original feminist movement aimed at defining women as able, equipped and competent — the division between femininity and masculinity was problematised — and went from there.

Nowadays, people are quite comfortable being feminine and masculine and sometimes both at the same time. Is relativism the death of feminism? Or is there an objective feminist position to occupy? Is there a definition that can fit us all in, or is focusing on definition a feminist mistake?