Unbinding Power Feminism

It’s easy to envision feminism as female CEOs breaking the glass ceiling, or an upper class woman who seems to “have it all” and lets nothing in her way. Many think of this as evidence that feminism is pushing women closer to equality to men. However, they forget that this is only pushing certain (and privileged) women towards equality. As with any other movement, the voice that everyone seems to hear in the feminist movement is the voice that has the most power. Privileged (often white, upper class, and educated) women seem to shape what the mainstream view of feminism is, pushing the voices that strive for equality not only in terms of gender, but also race and class. This creates a “feminism” that works within a system that caused oppression in the first place. This “power feminism,” while it helps achieve equality for certain women within the already-standing system, it also promotes the oppression that system caused in the first place.

The definition of unbinding is formally “to release from bonds or restraints.” When I think of feminism unbound, I think of it in terms of unbinding the traditional idea of feminism, “queering” it in the sense that normative views and ideas on feminism are released from bonds or restraints. Everything goes beyond the surface of its normative definition and in this case, feminism and mourning can be related in terms of unbinding traditional definitions of the two. Mourning on the surface is grieving the loss of something or someone that meant something to you. Mourning an idea sounds like it is making a mockery of the process, how can you mourn something that was all in your head? Unbinding the traditional sense of mourning offers that mourning can be a process done by anyone for anything that has been lost.

     The first wave of feminism was characterized by its overwhelming strength and empowered voice for the women who had been oppressed by the male gender.  During that era, feminism became a radical notion supported by women who would not be silenced by a ruling class.  Since then, the dynamics of feminism have changed to focus on intersectional identities as a more inclusive method of removing a broader oppressive force.  However, a negative stereotype concerning feminists has persisted, enforcing the idea that anyone who identifies with a feminist policy is automatically a flaming radical who harbors a deep hatred of the male gender.  While many feminists still fight against a traditional, male-dominated society that is still present, post-modern feminists are beginning to focus their attention on a more general entity that is being oppressive.  This new sector of modern feminists looks less at oppression in terms of gender but as a force brought on by anyone suppressing a voice or opinion.  It is time for the negative stereotype surrounding feminists to be deconstructed and unbound so that the feminist movement can be accessible to all intersectional identities.

Introduction

Within feminism, there is an extension known as Black feminism. Black feminism was developed with the belief that sexism and gender oppression are not the only issues that bind women together. It instead argues that sexism along with classism and racism are all interconnected, forming an intersectional identity. When the Black feminist movement was developed, many people felt that there were feminists out there in the mainstream who wanted to overcome sexism along with classism, but left race out of the equation. Black feminists wanted to show that race could be used against women as a tool for discrimination. It is therefore unique in the fact that it was started by unbinding itself from the second wave feminist movement. I’ve decided to explore two layers of feminism unbound by examining how black feminism itself had been unbinded. In order to do this I will be referencing a video-recorded conversation that I had with my Mom about her experiences with black feminism as a teenager in the 1970s and comparing it with my experiences from today.

Feminism Unbound/Black Diaspora

In March of 2013, New York Magazine posted an incredibly controversial trend piece titled The Retro Wife by Lisa Miller. The article features the stories of two progressive, “neo-traditionalist” women, Kelly Makino and Rebecca Woolf, who have decided to become the primary caretakers, also known as “homemakers” or “housewives,” of their families. The narratives of Makino and Woolf were aimed at exposing an alternative and empowering path for women, one drifts from the Lean In feminist mentality presented by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. Miller believes that Sandberg’s book “argues that the new revolution needs to start with women themselves, that what’s needed to equalize U.S. workplaces is a generation of women tougher, stronger, wilier, more honest about their ambition, more strategic, and more determined to win than American women currently are” (Miller). Shortly after this description, we encounter Miller’s complete doubt and hesitation to support this manifesto, stating that not all mothers can sacrifice the urgent demands of their families in order to become workingwomen. At this moment she reveals the true intentions behind the article—to promote and commemorate modern day “feminists” who make the decision to not pursue a demanding career.

Patriarchy and feminism rely on sex, gender and power. Even as the definitions of sex, gender and power change, patriarchy is still the power of one sex over others, and feminism is still a fight for equality and the end of that power. The words and are bound together. What could happen to the system of oppression and the force trying to fight that oppression if their definitions were stripped away? If sex and gender were pushed to the background of society and the subconscious, if mentally, a switch was flicked across the globe and gender was recognized only as a self-chosen identity, there could be two ways of interpreting the new, unbound patriarchy and feminism. Either patriarchy would represent all oppression and feminism all efforts to equalize people, or those two ideas, currently so strong, would have no existence in a world freed from gender and sex, and the power defined by them.

Since there is no global switch that can be turned on or off, a more realistic occurrence would be a movement involving policy and ideological change that accepted that sex is not a category that can be used in power structures to dominate. The problem is that practically, if the equality of all sexes was recognized legally, efforts to alleviate discrimination that are based on the existing inequality in society would become invalid. In order to fix problems involving discrimination by gender, one must work within the system, sacrificing the idealistic acknowledgement of equality, or the unbinding of gender.

            It took me a while to really understand the concept of “feminism unbound,” and alas I am sure there is still much more to learn and understand about it. What does it mean to unbind feminism? In the simplest sense, “feminism unbound” is feminism after we have problematized the ideas of sex and gender, after we have realized how difficult it is to define the category “women,” after we have acknowledged that sexism affects everyone in infinite ways and that feminism is not a movement for women, but for humanity. There are many places one can look to find and promote feminism unbound, but I would like to focus in on one particular place: the theater.

For years, one of feminism’s great quests within pop culture has been the call for stronger female leads – for women who have a life of crime-fighting or crime-perpetrating or otherwise some sort of death-defying singular agency. It’s evidenced in the current trend of fiction-derived films released – Catching Fire gives us Katniss Everdeen, hellbent on destroying the oppressive system that forces her to kill again, and Thor 2 in turn supplies Lady Sif, ruthless and deemed by Thor himself as stronger than most of the male warriors. Of these, I chose to see neither – they’ll be on DVD someday, I can save myself the movie ticket now and watch it later. No, when I left campus to spend some time with a friend before buckling down to work, we instead went to see a movie that had been causing me internal conflict since its inception: Frozen. I braced myself for the worst, the complete elimination of the original tale’s feminist qualities for the sake of a traditional Disney template. When I left the theatre, however, I found myself pleasantly surprised, as well as questioning what comprised a female character. I entered the theatre wishing for a protagonist who would gladly take up the burden of a fight without necessitating any outside assistance, accepting the responsibility as her own, and I still thank the directors for taking the opposite direction.

I am really intrigued by this idea of "unbinding" things. It allows everyone to trully think critially about everything in a new light. It allows me to pose new questions and form new ideas. When I first began thinking about parenting unbound I used Daddy Day Care the movie as an example/an example to get me thinking about what it meant to "unbind" a concept. I decided to dig deeper into that idea using Daddy Day Care as an example: 

Parenting Unbound (economics)

In our society we have encouraged women to stay at home while men work. Are women staying at home because they truly are the best-fit parent to do so or is it solely because of their gender? Through a parenting unbound lens we are able to look past a woman and a man and think critically about roles imparted on both genders. Women shouldn’t stay at home solely because they are mothers but rather because it’s the most economically sensible decision. If a man stays home with his child it shouldn’t be frowned upon but rather encouraged if it is the most sensible decision. We need to encourage women to do more than be house wives but to begin careers and encourage men to put their families first. Due to the fact that we have been so fixated on gender and sex when it comes to parenting, we judge and sneer at households that aren’t necessarily “conventional.” Thus, in order to discontinue the seeds of patriarchy we must begin to reform the dynamics of parenting.