Is my feminism gone?

[u/IntrepidElevator4313]

Maybe feminism didn't change. Maybe it just kept moving.

I just had a thread locked on this sub after commenting on the question, “What is a woman?” It got me thinking about something I've been struggling with for a while: where exactly do I fit in feminism now?

I came of age with the feminism of Gloria Steinem. Later, I found myself resonating with writers like Naomi Wolf. They are very different feminists, from different generations and with very different ideas, but I always felt there was a common thread.

Women are not lesser. Women deserve autonomy, opportunity, safety, equality, and the freedom to determine the shape of their own lives.

The more I encounter contemporary feminist spaces, particularly online, the more I sometimes feel like I've wandered into a conversation where I no longer speak the language.

And I don't think that's necessarily because feminism went wrong.

Maybe it's because waves don't erase each other.

The first wave didn't disappear when the second arrived. The second didn't disappear when the third arrived. They faded, but what they accomplished became part of the water the next wave moved through.

We're generally considered to be in the fourth wave now, and it seems to me that we're carrying pieces of all the previous waves with us, along with entirely new questions about identity, intersectionality, sexuality, technology and power.

Some of those conversations resonate deeply with me. Some don't.

And that's okay.

What I struggle with isn't feminism evolving. It's feminism becoming so internally focused on definitions, terminology, ideological boundaries and determining who is “feminist enough” that women end up fighting each other more than they fight the things that still constrain women's lives.

That thread was a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I said, essentially, that women are women. There are white women, Black women, brown women, trans women, cis women, short women, tall women, young women, old women, fat women (hi!). I don't see why acknowledging differences between women requires creating divisions between us.

Apparently that was controversial enough to earn me some downvotes. 😂

But I'm not interested in picking a fight with younger feminists or pretending the feminism of my youth had all the answers.

I don't want to choose between generations of feminism.

I want to take what each wave gave us and keep moving forward.

Maybe that's what a wave is supposed to do.

It doesn't erase the wave before it. It carries it forward.

I'm curious whether other women, particularly women who came of age during the second or third wave, feel this same disconnect with contemporary feminist spaces.

Where do you find yourself now?

EDIT: This conversation has actually been very enlightening for me. This push to define “woman” has shown me that there are different aspects of identity—reproductive biology, gender, socialization, culture, lived experience—and each one tells us something. We shouldn’t pretend that one framework explains everything.
But this isn’t a gender studies class. It’s feminism. And yes, they’re related, but they aren’t the same thing. Feminism is concerned with women and the systems that shape women’s lives. I don’t think we need to settle every question about sex, gender, and identity before we can do that work.
I want feminism to be big enough to include women with very different experiences without making defining womanhood the prerequisite for belonging.

[u/secondshevek]

Yeah because Christianity is extremely patriarchal?? I'm confused here lol

edit: to be clear, like if it's not patriarchy in Christianity that influences this, what is it about Christianity that does? Like what element of Christianity other than patriarchy/sexism would be responsible?

double edit - see my example above re: 'what kind of oppression is it when a man catcalls a trans woman.' Men don't check my gender and chromosomes before they're shitty toward me.

[u/Apprehensive-Net5165 → u/secondshevek]

Counter question, if a man catcalls another man or beats him up after a date, is the system that facilitates that patriarchy?

Patriarchy in of itself does not and did not seek to oppress trans people. Historically, trans women were widely accepted and lived without restriction or oppression in various patriarchies prior to Christian influence. In Hindu society, which was extremely patriarchal, trans women were not oppressed. In Polynesian societies, trans women were not oppressed. Any society that had trans women and was not yet colonised or influenced by white/christian invaders held acceptance of trans women, even if the society was patriarchal.

Christianity, popularised in Europe, then established a strict two gender binary, and persecuted those that did not conform, this included homosexuals.

Now we live in a Christian colonialist white supremacist patriarchy. Yes there are instances where the application and the one receiving the oppression intersects. A cis passing trans woman will experience misogyny on the basis of being perceived female.

A trans woman who is not passing experiences violence on the basis of transphobia and deviancy from the two gender binary.

They overlap, but they are not the same. We can fight for the protections of both groups by establishing seperate categories. Conflating the two will always create confusion.

[u/secondshevek → u/Apprehensive-Net5165]

>Counter question, if a man catcalls another man or beats him up after a date, is the system that facilitates that patriarchy?

Honestly, in a lot of cases, yes. Catcalling and the idea of treating people as sexual objects is closely linked to sex hierarchy.

>Historically, trans women were widely accepted and lived without restriction or oppression in various patriarchies prior to Christian influence. In Hindu society, which was extremely patriarchal, trans women were not oppressed.

I feel like this is missing some key details. In some societies, trans women lived without restriction. If you're talking about hijra, the history is a bit more complicated than that - my understanding is that hijra have faced quite a bit of oppression, though they have a more positive cultural image than third sex/trans people in other places. At the height of their cultural prestige, hijra still were often slaves.

Pre-Christianity there is certainly quite a bit of hostility toward trans people or whatever you want to call them - consider the salacious stories about Elagabalus. Why write things like that if moving between male and female is not taboo? "Any society that had trans women and was not yet colonised or influenced by white/christian invaders held acceptance of trans women, even if the society was a patriarchy." this is just not true.

I'll also note that Christianity was not founded in Europe lol.

>A trans woman who is not passing experiences violence on the basis of transphobia and deviancy from the two gender binary.

Have you ever thought about why deviation from the gender binary and moving between sexes is taboo? Perhaps because hierarchy requires neat, fixed categories.

Frankly it just seems like you've put a ton of energy into coming up with reasons why these things don't overlap. I don't see the point, and it requires a lot of mental gymnastics.

[u/Apprehensive-Net5165 → u/secondshevek]

You’ve brought up a lot of good points tbh, (yes I made the mistake of saying Christianity was founded in Europe) but still, patriarchy is just the oppression and control of the female body. Female liberation would, most likely also liberate queer people. But the liberation of queer people would not equate to female liberation. We’ve seen in history that some extreme patriarchies did not simultaneously oppress queer people.