A confusing idea rolls around: that feminism tries to impose a way of being for women. I get bugged when I see this kind of confusion, but I understand that it exists. Many people, with the good intention of undoing this knot, will affirm the more political side of feminism, since many things have been disseminated that interfere in the personal sphere when we talk about this movement. That's right: movement.
Feminism is not an ideology, it is not a doctrine. Feminism is a movement.
And, as it is a movement, it has many trends of thought, especially with regard to tactics for achieving equity. I see feminism as a political and philosophical movement. Why?
A political movement, because according to the book “Feminism for the 99%, a manifesto”, by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser, “feminism for the 99% seeks a deep and far-reaching social transformation. (…) whether fighting for environmental justice, free high-quality education, comprehensive public services, low-cost housing, labor rights, free and universal health care, or fighting for a world without racism or war”. That is, feminism seeks to build deep, real and radical equity. For bell hooks, an American sociologist – and her name is written in lower case – feminism involves all of this because we are, fundamentally, questioning domination. That is, feminism questions this idea of strong versus weak, privileged versus underprivileged, dominant versus dominated. She places the debate in this key, because she works precisely at the points of society that are articulated and, in this way, she removes this idea that women cannot also dominate. With this, bell hooks seeks to deconstruct this idea of men as enemies and women as victims. One example she uses is the domination, for example, that a rich white woman can exercise over a poor black/indigenous/etc. woman, or even the relationship between mothers and children. bell hooks has an article about this called “feminism: a transformative politics”, in which she says
“To understand domination, we need to understand that our ability as women and men to be dominated and dominant is a point of connection, a convergence”.
From a philosophical point of view, because feminism seeks transformations that also involve our way of thinking, seeing and acting in the world. Returning to bell hooks, feminism is the “political movement that most radically addresses the person – the personal – mentioning the need to transform the self, relationships, (…)”. Feminist practice, in this sense, involves a change in our behavior, it proposes that we rethink assumptions, that we question the “natural” as social constructions. And this all involves how we think about how we care and how we love. That's why I said that feminism is and isn't about whether or not we can set the table.
There is tremendous confusion – some out of ignorance, others out of bad faith – to say that feminism would mean a change that would impose another way of living. On the contrary,
Feminism defines equity as a possibility for freedom. Feminism, precisely, defends that you are not obliged to do anything for the simple fact of being a woman. Feminism does not question that you set the table.
He questions that you are solely responsible for this task under a purely sexual division of labor and established by domination, which creates superiors and inferiors. Feminism questions that you earn less, when you perform the same function as a man, for being a woman. Feminism questions that you don't access certain positions and jobs because you get pregnant. Feminism does not question your right to mother, on the contrary! If today we have minimal advances in some countries that guarantee stability at work, maternity leave, it is because feminism has made this claim. What feminism questions is that society forces you to be a mother, because not all of us want to be.
Feminism does not question your willingness to take care of others, as long as this is your will and not an imposition because they invented that “women take better care”, when, in fact, we were created for that.
Feminism does not question that you take care of the ones you love. But feminism questions that only women are taught to seek love, to create expectations, without any affective responsibility on the part of the male. Feminism is not against the masculine. But feminism questions toxic masculinities, which sicken and brutalize men and hurt and kill women. Feminism questions why women cannot have the opportunity to choose. Anything different from that, that wants to ascend spaces of power without questioning how this power works, nor transforming it and wants to invert the logic of domination, is simply not feminism. Feminism wants us women to be respected in our desires and choices, it wants another type of power, which is not coercive, but communitarian. Feminism wants relationships to be healthy and based on respect. bell hooks, once again, tells us about the importance of love. Not as something just of the intimate sphere, but that makes otherness exercise, that resists dehumanization and domination.
Feminism wants love as a practice of freedom.
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Juliana Borges is a writer, anti-punitivist, author of the book "Mass Incarceration", from the series 'Plural Feminisms'.
Text originally published in Cláudia Magazine .
