But, if feminism becomes a politics of identity, it can safely be drained of ideology. Identity politics isn’t much concerned with abstract ideals, like justice. It’s a version of the old spoils system: align yourself with other members of a group—Irish, Italian, women, or whatever—and try to get a bigger slice of the resources that are being allocated. If a demand for revolution is tamed into a simple insistence on representation, then one woman is as good as another. You could have, in a sense, feminism without feminists. You could have, for example, Leslie Sanchez or Sarah Palin.
Ariel Levy’s commentary in The New Yorker about the identity politics of American feminism (focused on representation and an empty sense of community rather than valid social change) manages to bring up a number of vague points + issues I’ve been mulling about for a while.
Identity politics is always a huge part of any social movement; ‘we share something and are similarly disadvantaged’ is a great motivation for cooperation (and, we might note, a great motivation for marketing and advertising, as well.) Yet there’s a strange trajectory of the development of these — from bonding mechanism, to motivator, to, as is the point of the article and a big part of my discomfort with all of these things, something which ultimately leads to division, exclusion, and conflict.
It’s unsettling to think about the fact that obviously on some level Sarah Palin and Leslie Sanchez clearly agree that there are inequalities between men and women that they feel the desire to change, and understand that ‘feminism’ is responsible for many of the opportunities they have had in their lifetime — they just don’t want anyone to think they’re man-hating bra-burning dykes, because as we know, all women and men who care about women’s equality are by default man-hating bra-burning dykes. But don’t I reject that notion too, in a different way? I mean, hell, the posts here that aren’t about feminism and sociology and internet marketing or whatever are about $800 shoes and lipstick, and I don’t think that ‘cancels’ anything or ‘indicates’ any sort of ‘oppression’ or ‘shallowness’. I completely get off on being as glib as possible about being feminist and femme at the same time, and I think they only strengthen each other’s case. I just choose that dirty f-word as part of my identity; I just still align myself with that label, because over years it’s provided me with frames through which I was able to make sense of what I perceived as injustice.
It’s immediately obvious that identifying with any sort of -ism or demographic is more of a social/identity/marketing tactic than any real indicator of personal ideals or actions; Palin/McCain’s campaign spin largely consisted of appealing to empty signifiers of being “American” and “patriotic” and “traditionaly, essentially catering to people who align themselves with “nationalism” in the same way I would align with “liberal” or “feminist.” (I grew up in America, I want the best for this country, I have strong ideas about what it should be doing, which is certainly more ‘patriotic’ than total apathy. And yet I’m pretty sure the right would see me as a terrorist-loving bra-burning blasphemous traitor - an anti-nationalist, for them a dirty word, for me a concept of papers in some sociology class of yore - in the same way that I am tempted to condemn Sarah Palin as an anti-feminist figurehead of backasswards idea about women.)
Yet strangely, Palin’s expectation of support from all women who want to ‘break the glass ceiling’ IS, essentially, catering to its own twisted version of feminist identity politics, the notion that a demographic will bond together for a common cause, with the demographic being ‘women,’ and the cause being ‘having a woman in the White House.’ It is why my conservative father expressed indignant surprise (“I thought you would like her because you’re into that feminist stuff”) when I told him angrily that I strongly disagreed with all of Sarah Palin’s politics and on a personal level thought she was insane and not that bright; it’s what all this hoopla about Gloria Steinem’s rejection of Palin was about, and that impossibly brilliant little SNL bit which I’m still laughing at today. It’s the reason her “co-opting feminist dialogue” and reframing it as nationalist and conservative is so infuriating — because to some extent, SOMETHING is shared. (And because sometimes, she’s - I hate to say it - kind of right.)
Palin’s (and my father’s) expectation of female-but-not-feminist support is based on this (conscious or otherwise) decision to separate ‘wanting equality and opportunity’ from ‘being part of a movement.’ Jezebel brings up the infurating assumption in the 2008 elections that “men had the luxury of choosing candidates they actually agree with but women had to vote with their vaginas” — yet this wasn’t entirely some assumption that women are lazy or stupid. It’s an assumption that women’s rights is an important part of the identity of, presumably, a plurality of American women (since apparently the McCain campaign thought it would help win an election) despite the fact that most of those would reject the term ‘feminism’ and want to be ‘traditional.’ What traditions are we speaking about here? What rights? What feminism? Where did this incredibly bizarre double-blind come from? When did we split up into bra-burning radicals versus attractive and religious governor-moms from Alaska? Somehow Tina Fey and Palin’s absolute physical similarlity appeals to me as a metaphor here but I can’t quite put together how, and speaking of Tina, Mean Girls somehow factors in as well.
Levy’s self-critical notes about how we like to imagine the 50’s as a time where no women worked brings in the necessary metacriticism of feminism that Sanchez apparently chose to phrase as an attack rather than a constructive critique. Because isn’t the inverse of the ‘feminism without feminists problem’ that those of us who DO align ourselves as feminists may also find ourselves blind to reality? In other words, are ‘radicals’ now feminists without feminism? Is self-defining as ‘feminist’ in some ways an easy way out and a way to avoid any real issues, as pathetic as girls who swear off that dirty term for the sake of it sounding too aggressive, unsexy, and extreme — an easy way for me to identify and align with other similarly-minded men and women rather than actually create change? To what extent is my incorporation of “feminism” as an aspect of “liberal” identity politics part of the whole problem?
I’ve gotten riled up about a number of recent studies and their surrounding media ‘blaming feminism’ for ‘women’s rising unhappiness’ — a valid point (“hey, guys, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows, oh shit!”) which Levy makes more tactfully when she mentions that for many women, working isn’t an empowered choice but a financial necessity, especially in the current economy. Why, instead of analyzing this as a side effect of change and working to find explanations and solutions, do we chose to “blame feminism” or “defend” it? I hate to say that there is a grain of truth in the rants of asinine ‘pro-patriarchy’ or ‘men’s rights’ groups when they criticize feminists for ‘taking all criticism as a personal attack’ — but while they usually bring that up with some crap about estrogen and our natural imbalances and whatever, isn’t it possible that there is something else at the core of this? If this is so deeply tied to our personal identities, and thereby to the identity politics of the movement with which we align, is it hardly any surprise that critiques end up being so personally infuriating?
At the end of the day, despite the radical differences in our politics and my lack of support for their careers, don’t Sarah Palin, Lady Gaga, the rest of the “oh god no, we’re not feminists!” world, and I still share the same idea that women can, like, do important things too? And what does that say about any of this?
