‘Good’ Feminism and Where We Find It
A lot of questions, with not too many answers.
2nd February 2023
What makes an entire woman? At what point do we look at a woman, inspect her face and her life, and consider her complete? The women that we envy and the women that we are have roots in two separate realities. The woman that we apparently want to be is a simple desire. She wants peace, she wants beauty, she wants a hand in the important conversations. The women that we are tempts a much heavier question. Where do we poke holes? At what point do we cross the line between desired woman and rebellious woman? Who put that line there in the first place?
A lot of question marks, I know, but the process of understanding feminism and your place within it is embodied by questions. We aren’t typically taught the correct way to fight for our rights, or we’d uphaul the institutions within which we are taught it entirely. Our curriculums may touch on inequality as a thing of the past, allow us to pore over black-and-white photos of suffragettes chained to palace gates or thrown underneath a horse, faces characterised by an anger that cannot be taught but will be felt. Eventually. But who drew that line?
Feminism as a word sparks debate in itself. Take it apart. Your introduction to this concept is the first syllable: ‘fem’. So then it must be for women, for females. We approach it with the level of nuance afforded to a primary-school child trying to learn a new language. Masculine words, feminine words. One for this person, one for that person. So then where lie the people who don’t consider themselves one or the other, who sit in the middle or outside of that binary altogether? It seems childish how adamant people can be that this concept is not for them. But it’s for everyone. The systems that uphold the crisis of men’s poor mental health, the ideas at the foundation of young boys' failure in schools; it is rooted in patriarchy.
There are complexities that we cannot begin to understand before realising we’ve pulled the entire thing apart, finding every thought you’ve ever had lying around you, untangled.
The concept of masculinity directly opposes that of feminism (see again their first syllables). What makes a man? Is it his ability to fend off any oncoming threat, or his physicality that makes him dependable should that threat head in your direction instead? Change their path and deem you an easier target? This mould that we have of what a man should be is a steadfast feature of - in particular, British - society, it provides a rigid, immovable structure in comparison to the ever-changing idea of how we want to be seen as women. But this structure is flawed, it is rigid because they keep it so but that doesn’t make it any more correct than the elements evolving around it.
At what point does a man seek help? Does that point ever come? As the largest demographic of deaths by suicide, the answer to that is a clear, emboldened, underlined no. The weight of perceived masculinity is undeniable, and it sits atop boys and men as an obstacle disguised as a guiding light, a north star.
Those issues will manifest themselves outside the confines of a person’s brain eventually, they will find their way to the surface. Statistics speak for themselves in this regard. Patriarchy is killing men all whilst they think they’re aiming the gun at someone else. At women. The side effects of patriarchy in encouraging men to take part in what we call ‘risk-taking behaviour’ can be traced right back to this enforced masculinity. They’ll drink more, smoke more, and avoid the doctor when they need it. ‘Being a man’ shouldn’t equate to danger, but the journey to becoming ‘a man’ might as well bear a flashing red warning sign. The bullets that they’re firing are turning ricocheting back towards them. The longer they perpetuate this damage against women, the more they’re bleeding.
There is an inward battle when we see the people typically at the helm of perpetuating the issue, becoming prominent spokespeople for the cause. How are you supposed to react when the person who has caused the pain, becomes the champion for the solution? When white women head conversations surrounding the black woman’s experience, or a man somehow gets ten steps further when he offers a subpar take on something that his female counterparts have had to scream about since adolescence. Do men only listen to other men? Why is it that they get more exposure? Perhaps we have developed and encouraged a habit of praising the people who deem themselves to be outside of the problem, not leaning into the cause.
I’ve had a deep sense of guilt for holding cynicism when this happens, but I’ve since learned that I’m not alone in it. Where there’s cynicism, there is usually a pattern. I’ve grown up with these boys, I’ve batted off their comments and heard them say things about the girls and women that I love, so why are they now being praised for coming to terms with basic women’s rights? It isn’t unwelcome, and the tides are certainly changing, but the fight seems to be more widely recognised when the person defies the harm that they are supposed to perpetuate, even if they aren’t actively fighting against it. Oftentimes, we give people much more credit than they’re due.
And sometimes we see the other side of that.
When we see other women react adversely to our efforts in feminism, there is a sense of betrayal that sets off deep within us. I’m not sure where it comes from, but it’s strong, intense. There isn’t an immediate explanation as to why any individual who has grown up experiencing the same level of intrinsic hatred as the rest of us have, would be so blatantly and overtly rejective of the attempts to pull back some of that control? Then I remember the piles of articles and recommended readings that have led me down the path of recognising elements of misogyny and patriarchy. The little things as well as the big things, the things that I completely glossed over as a teenager. I remember the fact that some women will never experience the big things, and never be told that the little things are bad enough to hurt over. The small comments, the jokes you laugh along with because they’re directed at some other girl and not you, and you haven’t yet felt the consequence hard enough to harbour any guilt over participating. When men have a disdain for women integrated smoothly into their conversation starters and sense of humour, that doesn’t come from a place of misunderstanding, it’s an ignorance of their role in this world. Women who are rebellious against feminism are going in the direction that we have all been raised to adhere to; they are simply doing as they were told, and who are we to judge them for that? It’s hard enough to be aware of your position in society and fight it, who are we to rob them of that blissful ignorance?
When the painful reality is that one in three women experience gender based violence, the desire to return to a time when you didn’t know this grows stronger. A denial that that could ever be you making up the third of that statistics, that it could ever be you in that 97% of women experiencing sexual harassment. But denial doesn’t eradicate danger. The strain to be the first to make it, be the one to overcome the plague of misogyny despite it seeping into every facet of womanhood, is a futile one.
As historical of a perspective as feminism is, it isn’t a movement typically characterised in the 21st century. We know about first and second wave feminism, we teetered on the edge of third wave, but when our reference points are suffragettes and the apologetic aftermath of the MeToo movement, there isn’t a foundation strong enough to stand atop of and not feel the ground shake beneath us with every argument deemed too loud or radical. It isn’t a perspective rooted in intersectionality and care for every woman. It takes the word ‘woman’ and translates it into the figurehead of a straight, white, middle-class woman. The biggest problems aren’t always the most visible. They aren’t the ones that we protest for and write about, but the smaller elements contributing to those big, protest-driven movements.
So who is our North Star? That answer will differ for every person, and I’m not sure if it’s safe to place all of our faith in largely popular feminist figureheads. Celebrities, in particular, are the ones often taking on the title of ‘famous feminist’. The more we see them in the media, at protests, posting more Instagram stories, the deeper our trust in them becomes. Oftentimes, there aren’t enough notable professionals whose insight we value more than that of our favourite Instagram account or actor. Have we replaced theory with celebrity?
And if that is the case, who are we following?
Now, I know that Emily Ratajkowski as a figure is polarising. She represents something in our recall of 2010s pop culture (not of her doing, just our own bias), that directly opposes the causes that she fights for now. Whilst celebrities were jumping on the bandwagon of Johnny Depp praise, Emily shared the fears that so many of us felt in watching the remnants of progress in female abuse cases unravel before our eyes. The witch hunt that ensued from Amber Heard sharing her experiences of abuse is a sobering reality that women truly do not hold the power, in any way, when coming face-to-face with the power of celebrity. Even when they hold the truth, they do not hold the power.
Emily wasn’t the first to recognise this, but her TikTok was one of the first integrations of nuance on this topic in celebrity culture that I came across, and it shifted the conversation slightly. Her book of essays, ‘My Body’, had the same effect. There’s an air of surprise when a woman who is held in the public’s good graces because they can commodify her looks, actually breaks that fourth wall, tells you that she can see you, and she knows what you’re doing. Reading her book gave me an insight into a life that I have never experienced, a form of womanhood that isn’t mine. The subsequent debate surrounding this, once they couldn’t fault her intellect, scrambled to land on the fact that despite her opening this door into the world of celebrity, she didn’t have all of the answers (despite explicitly stating such at the beginning of her book).
When Emily recounted her experience on the set of Blurred Lines - again, a signifier of 2010s pop culture that many people hold as a point of nostalgia and, for some reason, struggle to let go of - it was in headlines for a week or so, but that experience sits ten years in the past and we have struggled to bring its depth of seriousness into the present. When does an experience expire? When is the truth credible? Perhaps the parameters to which we hold the currency of womanhood warps over time, devaluing it, making the weight of her words lighter.
Turn that coin over, however, and say we have a woman who does offer the answers, filling the gap that the other woman was discredited for leaving. When a woman bares her heart, goes above her right to complete privacy to share an experience, the response that she should be met with is complete compassion but when has that ever been the case? One example which has overtaken media outlets in recent months is that of Megan Thee Stallion and Tory Lanez. Lanez was on trial for shooting Megan in the foot, a fact that a plethora of evidence known to the public before the trial even began rang entirely true, but the vitriol directed towards her moved quicker than any outpour of support could. Evidence pushed aside, historic patterns slipping the memory, Megan was on trial outside of the courtroom and it was a jury of public opinion. Celebrities, influencers, and regulars alike unabashedly questioned the legitimacy of her claims. What does the mouth you want to hear from look like? Which do you trust? We expect these women to arrive at fully formed conclusions and opinions, all whilst they’re navigating the same waters that we are. Celebrity doesn’t give them access to the secret, it just gives them a different set of experiences, and the life of a celebrity handling such experiences with the added obstacle of the way the public treats Black, Asian, or Indigenous women is no easy feat.
I think a lot of the hatred expressed towards these women is an inner frustration that even the people you envy don’t have all the answers. Their life seems perfect, so what’s the trick? I assume they’re asking themselves the same question.
So what does make an entire woman? Is it her willingness to comply with the society in which she was raised, the one that discredits her stories and forces her to lose her voice shouting the truth before asking why she is quiet? Is it her outright rejection of the women fighting for her place in the world, pushing them down to stand on their shoulders? If so, where do we situate ourselves to avoid stepping on our own prospects, and what do we do with the fallout?
By Amelia Defeo.
