The Autonomy of Feminism

My idea of feminism is that it is a fight for women’s equality with men. The key part being ‘with men’. We have to work together if we are ever to move forwards with the issues that we want to advance. The point, for me anyway, is to make a world where we can work together, rather than continuing to divide ourselves down a superficial binary that contributes to the oppression of one or other group.

Men have to change their ways, and women too. We can’t achieve equality if we reject men, put them down, and see them as inferior or different. It is this difference that allows for oppression, and if women oppress men, then we are not really achieving equality.

I don’t want to downplay the importance of women’s oppression, or the horrific things that our culture’s version of masculinity can encourage and sanction in men’s behaviour. But oppression is an intrinsic part of the whole system, upheld by masculinity, femininity and even feminists.

Feminism’s project to end women’s oppression is something which we will all have to work together if we want to change it. But my discussion is returning dangerously to a gender binary, so I will say again that there are many different kinds of masculinity and femininity. Sex and gender are not fixed categories but are constantly shifting and being re-defined based on our values. So lets not fight about hierarchies of exclusion. Let’s work towards a politics of multiplicity, and of inclusion. Rather than defining ourselves against an ‘Other’ who is ‘not like us’, who is inferior and who we want to be different from. For if we continue to make that distinction, we engage in the same politics that has oppressed women for centuries. So let’s work from within the system, with the help of the male identifying among us, to change it.