Guest blog post by Genderheretic on Gender Identity Watch. Read full blog here.
“Like many radicals, I was once a liberal. Furthermore, I was once a liberal feminist. And like many liberals, I was once completely clueless (well, even more clueless than a liberal). My introduction to feminism came in the form of a call out from some much more evolved friends of mine at the time; I had been spouting rape myths and rants filled with internalized misogyny daily on social networks for all the girls to take note of and all the boys to approve of. Of course, the feminism that was initially offered to me was that of the mainstream variety, a sterilized and largely depoliticized version of the second wave feminism that made such large strides in women’s liberation decades before I was born. You can look at the neoliberal hijacking of feminism in two ways: it can serve as an apprehensive stepping stone into feminism for women who require a more palatable and slow-paced induction into women’s lib (or equality, in this case), or as a deliberate defanging of a movement which means to threaten and dismantle the current power structures to ensure our liberation. As for the latter, the defanging comes from both the dominant male class and the subordinate female class, even those with a semblance of investment in the movement…”