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Yeah, the article doesn't pass the Bechdel test. That's par for the course for Elle, if I correctly remember my brief interest in popular women's mags during my teenage years. The articles (such as they were, between pictures of simpering semi-nudes) alternated between how-to-get-your-man and you-don't-need-a-man-(but-you-do-need-these-shoes).
This isn't feminism in any meaningful sense of the word. Any decent feminist (or someone passing the ideological Turing test for one) would recognize this as an instance of internalized heteronormative cisgender patriarchy, and those more atuned to the zeitgeist would also spot the glaring colonialist paternalism.
(Weirdly enough, I think I can actually defend all those terms as they apply to the OP's summary of the article. I have no desire to read the article, because musings of a woman who realizes that an open relationship isn't so great lacks any element of surprise.)
I'd agree that it would probably not fit into any of probably dozens of strains of academic feminism. However I think it was Louise Perry or somebody of that thought who half-jokingly defined the practical, Elle style of modern feminism which actually fits:
Women can do X and its opposite and if you criticize anything, then the defense of both simultaneously contradictory positions is feminism. As an example, women can be soldiers and our army will be strengthened by it - which is feminism. But at the same time women should be not compelled or even shamed into military service, or even subject to same physical standards and that is also feminism.
I think there is grain of truth in there, feminism in current day-and-age is mostly a tool of how to prevent any semblance of judgement for whatever behavior women engage in.
High school or so was the first time I was exposed to the "a feminist is someone who wants equal rights for men and women" definition - published in the school paper. I am a proud feminist in public because I behave in the manner expected of me. But, since in truth I am not a feminist, it begs for defining: what really is a feminist?
It is a definition's strength that proponents and opponents agree on it, so "women wanting to take everything from men and step all over them" is probably off the table.
Feminism is raising women's status.
I think this properly distinguishes how the term is actually used, and gets to the heart of disagreement. I saw a post on twitter a couple days ago, but can't find it. It was saying that more and more young men growing up have lived their entire lives being told the world meant for them put them in charge (and that's problematic) and to not believe their lying eyes (scholarships, or that most boys' authority figures are their female teacher)
It's not feminism, it's gynosupremacy. Just as destructive as racism, comes from the same place as racism, the practitioners are the same personality types. The social dynamics are the same as what allowed racism to exist in the first place.
The feminists are trivially correct: discrimination is power + privilege. It's why their entire movement is built around denying the obvious truth (that it applies to them)- and I can't reduce it any more than that, nor have I ever heard a correct refutation of that point (other than "but androsupremacists also exist").
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The word "empowering" no longer means anything, if it ever did. Women raising their children is empowering; women getting abortions is also empowering. Women posting thirst traps on social media is empowering; women posting deliberately unflattering selfies to combat "toxic social media beauty standards" is also empowering. Women putting their career ahead of other things in their life is empowering; women deliberately refusing career opportunities in order to focus on their "mental health" and practise "self-care" is also empowering.
If a woman does it, it's empowering - except (for some reason) daring to suggest that a person with a penis isn't a woman, or that Hamas squaddies raping Israeli women is bad.
Aside from abortion, what if we change this whole statement from women to men?
"Men raising their children is empowering." "Men posting thirst traps on social media is empowering." "Men deliberately refusing career opportunities in order to focus on their 'mental health' and promote 'self-care' is empowering"
Etc.
Does the word "empowering" still mean nothing if the genders are reversed?
Feminism is a memeplex that functions as a tool to let women do whatever they want to do and be shielded from the negative consequences of those actions. That is the common thread that binds all the different feminisms together. Calling something empowering is to demand that a woman doing that thing should not have to face any trade-offs for doing it and/or should receive resources to reduce the cost and to increase the benefit of doing it. A man doing something can't possibly be empowering. That's a category mistake.
As for the post you are responding to: Complaining that this tool elevates different types of action means you do not understand its nature.
"So a hammer is for building things but then also for smashing those same things? How does that make sense?"
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This side steps the larger point.
"Empowering feminism" lets women run away with some of their base instincts without consequence. Yes, I'm talking about sex. No, I'm not talking about normie casual sex. I mean the fact that "feminists" say that stripping, OnlyFans, and prostitution are "empowering" for women. This is plain insanity.
Society has taken about 2000 years to get a real handle on policing men's base instincts. If you're a dude who immediately defaults to physical violence on a daily basis to solve your problems, you are not "empowering yourself" you are "entering a plea." You are - and should be - recognized to be an anti-social criminal who can't be trusted in society.
An interesting thing to do is to ask women in your life (friends and families, this isn't flirtatious talk) when they became aware that they had some measure of sexual influence over men. Then answer is going to be around puberty. From that time forward, most women known they could use that power but generally that they ought not to for trivial things or with deceitful intent. Again, most women are smart and morally competent.
The corollary for men is when they became aware that physical violence, or its implication, would be a part of their daily life. Again, the answer is somewhere around puberty. Again again (again?) Most men do not walk around everyday eager to throw down for minor displays of disrespect - but we're aware of it in our heads.
These two domains - sex and physical violence - inform a lot of intersexual dynamics. In the West, the closest thing we have to a societal consensus is "men shouldn't use violence to resolve disputes." There's maybe some folks who want to bring back mutual combat and honor duels, but that's hyper fringe. We do not have anything close to consensus on female sexuality. In fact, a lot of the "discourse" is inherently contradictory, changes rapidly with perspective, context, and circumstance, and is often motivated more by emotional self-preservation than a society first mindset. Hence "feminism is whatever women do" or, more to the point, "feminism is unquestionably supporting anything that women do."
Should we enforce female sexual behavior in the same criminal justice construct as male physical violence? No, because there are some categorical differences; male physical violence can result in immediate loss of life and it is coercive in that it does not take two party consent for it to happen most times. Female sexuality won't kill you right away and, although female-on-male rape does happen, it is nowhere near as frequent and occurs in drastically different circumstances as male-on-female rape. Women who use sex are mostly using it with willing partners. Generally speaking, women who do use sexuality for deceitful and manipulative purposes use it as part of a larger game of deceit and exploitation. Men who use physical violence are mostly engaged in a singular immediate conflict with unambiguous resolution.
And when you can't, or have great difficulty enforcing behaviors in a criminal justice construct, you (that is, society) resorts to cultural and social regulation. The above topline post on University of Alabama sororities does a great job illustrating this. To those girls, to be ostracized by their sorority sisters for being "too provocative" at a party is a fate equivalent to a 4 year prison sentence. Making a value judgement that this sort of voluntary in-group policing is "oppressive" is really just a rejection of that value system overall. You might see it that way, but the participants in it might see it another way, perhaps even beneficial to them ... or their society.
To tie this thing off and get back to the comment I was responding to - "empowering" in the feminism context is meaningless because there is not only no clear criteria for when to use it, it is applied to anything and everything even when self-contradictory. It also, sneakily, reveals that being empowered - which one would presume to mean having power - is the ultimate goal. That's in no way a marxist dialectic right, right?
I think its interesting you draw a parallel between violence and sex. "Women have sexual power over men, and they know it" is the bog-standard water I live in, and if pressed to provide a parallel for men, I'm not sure I would have thought violence. (To be fair, I wasn't given very much time to think about it).
It reminds me of something I posted over on Scott's new blog, although it didn't get much engagement because I do not fit into Scott's comment demographic as much anymore. Reposted for convenience:
Introspecting -- at no point during puberty did I ever become aware of myself as a "violent being" (to appropriate the term "sexual being"), and even today I don't think I've ever used threat of violence as a bargaining chip. I suspect the same is true for the stereotypical incel-type. I think I agree with your taxonomy.
Thanks!
It's definitely "harder" to see because Men, in the west, are taught that violence is almost never appropriate outside of self-defense situations*. There's also the decline of violence adjacent physical work - most pointedly agricultural work. If you're working with various kinds of livestock larger than a chicken, you're going to spend time literally coercing a living thing with your physical will (we don't negotiate with
terroristsheifers!). But that's the kind of thing I meant when gesturing towards men and puberty. It would be odd and bad if most guys came online at 13,14,15 with the thought of "Oh, I can go kick somebody's ass now!" But I still think guys at that age think, "Hmm...I can like, do stuff with my body"More options
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Tangentially, would you say that for a man to train in BJJ, or boxing, or firearms is empowering?
I don't disagree with the various criticisms of feminism and its habitual maneuvering to wriggle out of apportioning some responsiblity for women's choices to women themselves. But the motte of empowerment is simply that these decisions that women make are now made by choice. Being obliged or pressured to take a job, or have kids, or get a divorce, or pose naked isn't empowering. Being allowed the choice to do those things is where the claim of empowerment comes from.
It's not meaningless. It's just that it's only trivially meaningful. Women have been empowered to choose what they do where previously they weren't (or weren't seen/believed to do so). Being empowered to vote doesn't mean you have the same power as the winner of the election, but it's better than having no say at all. The confusion is that empowerment is spoken of as if it were akin to exercising power itself rather than exercising a limited choice. "Girl power!"... to choose between working a hundred hours for one boss or working one hour for a hundred bosses. Either way you're going to work.
Yes. Also working out and becoming fit. A man's brain works better with these things.
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I've never seen a cis man being praised in those terms for the latter two.
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Yes, it still means nothing. It's just that very few men would even use the word, or have those experiences described in such a way in pop media.
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There may be an ideal form of feminism tucked away in a corner somewhere in the Platonic realm but if it is, its shadow is nowhere to be found in the material world. Feminism is whatever most benefits the woman doing the feministing in any given situation.
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