Discourses From the East
During my Ph.D. coursework examination, when I came across a question asking to critically analyze the irrelevance of feminism, it attracted as well as baffled me to the core. Although I have been personally pondering over the issue for a very long time, if not the irrelevance of it but the problems in its praxis in current academic discourses, the question caught me off guard, and it was because of this reason I did not attempt to write the answer and chose other easier and safer questions. This bewildering perplexity and the sudden queerness of such a question arises in a situation where most of the academic discourses around feminism do not want a cis-gendered heterosexual man talking, let alone criticizing, the practical implications around its praxis and its many nuances.
This essay, however, should not be perceived as a critique of feminism per se, but instead as a problematique of the discourse of feminism in its current praxis, narration and institutionalization. I write this as someone who is deeply sympathetic to the feminist cause yet feels uneasy with some of the dominant modes of its articulation that consistently risk narrowing the movement’s ethical and political horizon. Below I am backing my points through five distinct but interrelated arguments.
The Question of Exclusion: Who Gets to Speak?
One of the most extensive tendencies in feminist discourses of contemporary times is the evergrowing suspicion towards male participation in its domain. While this skepticism vis-à-vis rejection is rooted in long periods of male domination in knowledge production and hence remains totally comprehensible considering its historicity, the current articulation of it often veers towards categorical exclusion of men from being a speaking agents in the discourse and remains susceptible to the very fact the discourse aims to overthrow. Here, men are positioned and looked upon as either the perpetrators or as mere observers of women subordination, and rarely seen as capable interlocutors or even as an ally to the movement. This tendency has potential to act as a boomerang that hampers the very progress of the movement it aims to solidify.
Like bell hooks (see 2000), who always maintained that feminism ceases to be an emancipatory force when it’s a matter of identity and not ethic. Feminism, she argued, needed to be directed at patriarchy as a system rather than men as a monolithic enemy. In so far as feminist praxis excludes the presence of men speaking within the discourse, it tends to replace nuanced structural position bya mere moral simplification. This exclusion may offer temporary emotional solace, but at the same time profoundly betrays the transformative aspirations of the movement. Personally, I have come across certain comments, mainly on social media, that urged me to not give a ‘critique of the discourse’ since I do not have a female organ in my body. In this way, when it polices who should speak rather than what is being said, academic feminism may reproduce the hierarchies of power that it aims to take down in the first place. A discourse that is afraid to be examined from certain subject positions becomes a fragile one, bereft of intellectual rigor.
Algorithmic Feminism and the Social Media Model
Contemporary feminist ideas and its contemporary dissemination is deeply intertwined with the polarization-loving algorithms of various social media platforms. While they are platforms that reward outrage, suspicion and absolutist positions through algorithmic model, vulnerable women are often nudged towards and regularly socialized via such contents that portray as well as homogenizes men as inherently violent, disposable or despicable. Likewise, men too become targets of such polarizing algorithms that frames the very virtues of feminism as hostile or absurd. This mutual estrangement is by no means accidental, but is a structural functioning of digital capitalism, that constantly monetizes grievances by dint of algorithms and through capitalization of human emotion instead of actually dealing with nuances. Hence, when feminist ideas get entangled in this colloidal mixture of digital algorithms and human affection, they are radially stripped of theoretical consistency and practical depth and thus it automatically succumbs to merely being some antagonistic slogans.
The resultant effect is a type of feminism that travels broadly and thinks vacuously. It manufactures identification which is without direction and creates anger devoid of critical reflection or focus. For instance, while the British television series Fleabag presents a self-aware feminism which is rooted in ambiguity and complexity, much of the internet discussions around it regarding gender, femininity and feminism boils gender politics down into a simplistic zero-sum game. Within such a spatial environment in the digital sphere, feminism risks becoming merely a performance rather than being a practice.
The Blind Spot of Class and Labor:
One of the most troubling lacunae in academic feminist praxis is its lack of attention to working-class women and low-wage labor. Feminist discourse often talks for women’s rise to elite professions through a language of portraying empowerment as upward mobility. While these accomplishments matter, they are only a thin slice of women’s lived experiences. The feminist praxis in academia seldom talks about the simultaneous need for lower-paying or even low-qualification jobs for women, totally ignoring the fact that not every woman, like not every man, is equipped or willing to pursue a so-called ‘elite’ or ‘intellectual’ work. The persistent argument here that women can also be found in manual labor activities slightly misses the point. The problem in this case is not about visibility, but of advocacy. Hence, the question remains — do feminist institutions meaningfully engage with the rights of women construction workers, domestic laborers, agricultural workers or informal sector employees, or are these women invoked only as rhetorical evidence and tokenistic examples rather than being considered as political subjects?
Here, Silvia Federici’s (see 2012) treatment of reproductive labor always reminds us that feminism is prone to readily getting trapped in an ethically impoverished condition if it does not consider the material conditions of social life. A feminism that talks fluently about boardrooms but fumbles while talking about worksites, likewise, risks becoming radically disconnected from social life. It’s not all women who enjoy ready admission to elite spaces, and not all men either. Feminist praxis should reject that liberation is synonymous with professional accomplishment.
Capital, Power and Strategic Myopia:
Pierre Bourdieu’s (see 1986) framework of capital gives us an useful and insightful addition to an understanding of gender politics. There is no denying to the fact that in a patriarchal system, men have historically accumulated economic, cultural, social or symbolic capital at a very disproportionate level. This historical sedimentation of power cannot be tackled or removed through antagonistic sentiments between genders. This asymmetry is frequently underestimated in antagonistic feminism. Due to the historical accumulation of different kinds of capitals, men have a structural advantage in battles set up as ego wars or symbolic showdowns, since they have been controlling institutions, narratives and resources throughout. Hence, antagonism without tactics may have the potential to become only performative resistance rather than being an actual act of defiance. The warnings of Audre Lorde (see 2019) about not using the master’s tools seem especially appropriate to invoke here. Feminism needs to devise other ways of approaching the masses and invent new modes engagement here in order to not just continue mimicking patriarchal aggression. If it doesn’t, it risks generating and regenerating domination in the name of critique.
The Perils of Homogenizing Men:
Often we come across, mainly on social media sites, the claim that all men are inherently the same. While this emotional frustration is rooted in centuries of subjugation of women by men and hence understandable in its ontology, feminist ideology nonetheless cannot operate on a one-word-substitution logic. The assertion that ‘all men are the same’ is an emotional shorthand, not a critical insight. Even if it can express justifiable anger, it flattens and oversimplifies social complexity. Men are divided by class, caste, race, sexuality, disability, geography and even emotion or intention. To treat them as a monolithic block is to lose the very intersectional logic feminism once heralded. This homogenization is not only politically, or even ideologically, counter-productive, but also alienates those who could be potential allies and thus rules out the probability of solidarity-building. Feminist movements have historically gained traction and won battles when they welcomed solidarities across difference, not when they dismissed it. Moreover, here worth mentioning is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (see 2014) works that repeatedly demonstrates that feminism must reimagine and rearticulate masculinity, not merely condemn it.
Gender relations are not structured in the form of classical class antagonism. There are not spatially or socially segregated camps of men and women. They cohabit, feel love, rear children and share emotional economies. Like Nancy Fraser (see 1997) cautions against struggles that value moral visibility over structural change, patriarchal relations too cannot be overcome by a politics of permanent antagonism which not only transcends but also reproduces gender hierarchies and its subsequent internal subjugation. Strategically and in a sangunie way, men and women belong to the same ideological sphere. Not welcoming men into the discourse that the ideals of feminism vouches for and treating them as an external enemy, a practice which is rapidly growing in feminism’s contemporary praxis, instead of seeing male-allies as participants in the collective struggle against patriarchy, the movement itself risks being succumbed to merely being a symbolic warfare.
This, however, by no means suggests that we should ignore male privilege. Rather it suggests to highlight the fact that overthrowing patriarchy requires forms of solidarity between genders. The political imagination of feminism’s praxis must account for intimacy, dependency, and mutual vulnerability, not just antagonism. Moreover, the feminist discourse must critically tackle the growing tendency of online feminine outrage to move towards what Valerie Solanas aspired in her SCUM Manifesto (see Kashyap 2022).
Hence, while concluding this, we can say, perhaps more safely now, that the most enduring feminist victories have historically come when movements intersected with labor struggles, anti-colonial politics or civil rights movements—when they recognized that gender oppression is inflected with other forms of power. From intersectional Black feminism to transnational feminist organizing, progress has not been made by purity or homogeneity, but rather by coalition, dissent and shared struggle across differences. What emerges from these concerns is not a call to abandon feminism, of course, but a call to reclaim its critical ethos. The feminist discourse needs to be able to question its own exclusions, rhetorical nuances and institutional blind spots. A discourse that cannot handle internal critique and accommodate self-examination is one that’s in danger of getting stagnated. The threat of patriarchy is real and very much present in all of our ethos, but it cannot be dismantled just on the basis of suspicion alone. What it requires is intellectual humility, solidarity building and an ethics of listening and relearning. The great historical strength of feminism was its ability to name injustice while envisioning alternative futures. If it is going to sustain that legacy, it will have to stand up against its own inherent dilemmas and embrace complexity through reenvisioning a sense of solidarity among the genders. For the discourse of feminism to remain politically responsive and intellectually honest, its contemporary praxis must be questioned and critiqued.
References
Adichie, Chimamanda N. 2014. We Should All Be Feminists. London: Fourth Estate.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John G. Richardson.: Greenwood.
Federici, Silvia. 2020. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland: PM Press.
Fraser, Nancy. 1997. Justice interruptus : Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition. New York: Routledge.
hooks, bell. 2000. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics.: South End Press.
Kashyap, Niloy P. 2022. “Queer Right Movements: Antagonism, Elitism and Implications.” Doing Sociology, July 12, 2022. https://doingsociology.org/2022/07/12/queer-right-movements-antagonism-elitism-and-implications-niloy-pratim-kashyap/.
Lorde, Audre. 2019 [1984]. Sister Outsider.: Penguin Books Limited.
