How feminism lost its street cred
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Jennifer Mills
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Jennifer Mills' biography and other articles by this writer
“I'm not a feminist" is the first line of many a contemporary discussion of gender. The disclaimer isn't even followed by a "but" any more. Even purportedly progressive, youth-oriented publications distance themselves from the f-word. Instead, dragged across the pages of magazines like VICE are women's bodies, exposed, degraded, almost grotesque. VICE claims to be a satirical publication, but this is difficult to gauge from its tone. When it tells us that "all women want to be dominated", it's hard to see the irony.
Eminem, who raps lustily about the rape and murder of women, is cool. Earnest folk singer chicks with guitars and politics are definitely "wack". And on the dance floors of the world, young women strut stripper-style in an explicit performance of heterosexuality that has been dubbed "raunch culture". Those who object to the new misogyny are labelled prudish, restraining. As Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs (Simon and Schuster, 2005) writes: "Raunch culture, then, isn't an entertainment option; it's a litmus test of female uptightness."
Eva Cox, a feminist academic at the University of Technology, Sydney, says raunch culture "is not something to be deeply distressed about, it is not the end of feminism, it is about young women asserting themselves". But young women are under intense pressure to perform, and studies show that they do struggle with their sexual freedom, even as they act assertively. In Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality (Harvard University Press, 2002), Deborah Tolman finds that teenage girls do worry about being branded sluts, and many struggle under the pressure to be sex objects for boys and to express no desires of their own.
Somehow, our perspectives have been inverted. Empowerment is a series of sexually provocative dance moves. Feminism is anti-liberation, politically correct, sexually uptight and boring. Young women are buying into the patriarchal backlash in droves.
IN MY TEENS, WE WERE TOLD WE COULD DO ANYTHING. Many young feminists made zines, started bands, and created a DIY culture tagged as "riot grrl".
By the mid-90s, however, "girls can do anything" had mutated into "women have to do everything". Our mothers were exhausted from double shifts as career women and housewives. Riot grrl's brat sister swapped the genderfuck for a nice frock and grew up to be "girl power". The Spice Girls, marketed as 'tween role models, have demonstrated their empowerment by ending up either tragic bulimia cases or celebrity wives-andmothers.
It's the same old story, of course: youth rebellion is packaged and remarketed in consumer form. It happened to rock'n'roll; it happened to punk. But misogyny is more than a marketing ploy. The worrying aspect of raunch culture and other manifestations of patriarchal reaction is the complicity – even enthusiasm – of young women in discarding a social movement intended to benefit us.
What went wrong? Has feminism failed? For a generation raised with the expectation of equality, it is disconcerting to discover that only the shortest of inroads have been made. Women are grossly under-represented in positions of power and disturbingly overrepresented in global poverty. Our sexual and reproductive rights are still monitored and legislated mainly by men, and the more radical attempts by second-wave feminism to dismantle patriarchal social structures have done little to reduce the impact of these structures on everyday life. What changes were made have rapidly been stripped away by the neoconservative agenda: the last ten years have seen little but backwards movement in terms of women's participation and visibility in Australian politics.
Having been taught autonomy, it is disappointing to realise that sex is still considered your main source of social power.
The "new" misogyny, then, could be seen as an expression of hopelessness or rage: young women, by performing the aesthetic of gender oppression, are reappropriating power – much as black and queer cultures have done. This would be a comforting line to take, but if this cultural phenomenon is a tactic, it should at least be attempting to effect social change. It is not. If it is a postmodern strategy, a new "new wave" of feminist empowerment, it should display the characteristics of being a strategy – it should have a politic, or at least a critique that interrogates practice.