Why call it feminism?

Unequal odds: feminism and the persistent threat of sex-based subjugation

What makes someone a feminist? In an attempt to deliver an answer that describes the breadth of the feminist project without being so broad as to fail to distinguish feminists from non-feminists I came up with: A feminist is someone who opposes sexism, and who additionally thinks moving towards an improved gender equilibrium is an important priority—one which informs their views and actions. This definition is wholly gender neutral, which left some commenters asking: “why call it feminism then?” 

This is a fair question. While I maintain that feminism is consistent with anti-sexism, including anti-misandry, feminists have, and continue to, primarily focus on issues relevant to women. The feminist project has almost entirely been the result of women organizing, theorizing and writing on behalf of women and about issues that most directly affect women. The fight for women’s legal equality was necessarily a fight focused on the demands of women. And although feminist theory on the restrictive nature of socially enforced gender norms raised issues relevant to both men and women—sometimes even resulting in feminist activism on behalf of men's rights, such as with the push for rape laws which protect men equally—these issues were largely examined through a female lens, and with a primary focus on women. (Ironically, despite feminists being responsible for many of the legal protections men now have against sexual assault, they are nevertheless accused of “not caring enough” about male sexual assault. Who, I ask, cares more than the feminists? Because it certainly doesn’t seem to be the straight men.)

But the focus on women was not random! All that theorizing and consciousness raising was in response to a social environment which, even after granting women equal legal rights, continued to see their rightful role as a supporting one. One in which they would nurture, care-take and ready the stage for others—their husband, their children—to succeed and to pursue their individual passions. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with taking on such a supporting role, in fact the core motivating drive for many women (and many men!) is supporting and bettering their family and community, whether financially or emotionally. But in a culture that is deeply invested in rigid gender roles and reinforces them constantly, taking on such a role wasn’t a real choice for many women.

As an aside, I think the attempt to normalize women prioritizing individual pursuits, and in particular to reduce the stigma faced by mothers who pursued meaningful goals outside of their family, arguably went too far, flipping the script so that we started to react to SAHMs with pity, automatically assuming they’re burdened by ‘false consciousness’. These assumptions only served to devalue the work SAHMs performed and the contributions they made to their families.This ties into what I call the ‘paradox of feminist self selection’, where feminism disproportionately attracts gender non conforming women. These women then struggle to fully recognize or attend to the issues most relevant to the median woman, since they and most of the women they associate with are outliers in terms of personality and lifestyle preferences.

But this is all in the past, should someone like me, in 2024, continue using the gendered term feminist, or adopt a more neutral term, something like anti-sexist? I’m not totally sure. Much of my writing is pretty squarely anti-sexist, not necessarily focused on women as a special interest group. In fact at least a few of my posts “defend men” for lack of a better phrase, or contextualize apparent evidence of women’s oppression in light of what I believe is good evidence for small average sex differences in abilities and proclivities. 

But still, if you went through all my posts you’d likely notice I’m more focused on issues relevant to women, even if my message is sometimes to encourage them to be stronger, or to push back on what I think is an unreasonably uncharitable view of men. This focus is not born out of female supremacism or because I think it’s obvious that women are clearly worse off than men, but mostly because… I’m a woman and so have more to say about things that matter to women. It’s also because a reasonably large portion of the content which informs my views is clearly feminist. It might be that anti-sexist is a better descriptor for my writing than feminist, but beyond my little blog I think there remain reasons to support the existence of a feminist movement, focused especially on how sexism affects women and which articulates women’s concerns.

As I argue in Do be a feminist, if you believe that women’s underrepresentation in business, politics and other centers of power is not wholly the result of explicit discrimination or limiting gender norms, but is related to average sex differences in abilities and proclivities, compounded by the differential demands of motherhood vs. fatherhood, then it seems like you should expect that a movement which identifies and communicates the issues most relevant to women would have social value.

I see myself as primarily committed to anti-sexism. But I think it would be dishonest to reject my feminist identity, not only because my writing on gender issues often builds on ideas and thinkers that almost everyone would agree are feminist, but also because women’s equality seems to me precarious. I see a lot of misogyny and a lot of misandry given the spaces I interact in online. But the truth is that the misogynistic content is more threatening. 

Misogynists can write about why we need to repeal women’s right to vote as if it’s a live issue because it actually is way closer to being a live issue than the reverse. Women were “granted” the right to vote, and implicit in that “granting” is the threat that it could be taken away. People act like it’s absurd to worry about such things, to worry that women’s rights could be rolled back, as if a few decades of legal equality eclipses millenia of subjugation. But it’s not random that women’s freedom was restricted and not the other way around. Men and women aren’t equally at risk of a future in which their liberties are restricted on the basis of sex. And feminists know this just as well as male-supremacists do.

In We Should All be Feminists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie answers precisely this question:

And when asked why use a gendered term, feminism, rather than focus only on gender equality: Some people ask, "Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?" Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general – but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should acknowledge that.

I have to agree. Men are physically stronger, sexually less vulnerable, men don’t give birth or nurse babies. Their sexual expression is not limited by the threat of pregnancy, something women have only recently gained any meaningful control over. Men did not historically spend significant portions of their adult lives tied to their babies and therefore vulnerable, and with less ability to produce for themselves, leaving their welfare in large part dependent on whether they were lucky enough to have kind and respectful men in their life. 

Most historical societies have not denied rights to men on the basis of their maleness, have not taken away their agency and given it to their mothers. Have not transferred that agency to their wives, upon marriage to a woman they did not choose and who would feel empowered to rape them when they pleased, because that was was his duty to her, after all. Men have not universally been expected to efface themselves in order to stay in “their place”, a place that supports and enables the goals of others and rarely their own. In other words, patriarchal, not matriarchal, societies have been the norm across diverse civilizations throughout history.

While women in patriarchal societies also reinforced gender roles and the sexist beliefs used to justify the legal and economic restrictions placed on women, it was also women in patriarchal societies who fought for their rights. In some cases at great personal sacrifice, with suffragettes enduring horrifying force feedings in British prisons, and sometimes resorting to militant tactics.

This is not to say that men have generally had it easy nor to claim that gender has been the only or always the most relevant axis of oppression. I’m not going to attempt to do the utilitarian calculus for how bad going to war was relative to childbirth, or how bad men’s working conditions were relative to women’s or to try to determine whether men’s negative relative utility in particular areas justified refusing to grant women liberty.

Of course men, throughout history, were also given limited and often unappealing choices around work and marriage, were expected to perpetrate violence, and were more likely to die a violent death, whether in war or through working in a dangerous occupation along with many other hardships. There were many axes of oppression, class, race etc., which affected both men and women. But it is to make it very clear that men and women do not have equal reasons to fear their liberty being restricted on the basis of sex. And the term “feminism” is, in part, a recognition of that fact.