Amen, sister

[omorka]

Get your classism/ableism/heteronormativity out of my feminism: Experience and "choice feminism".

Can we all just agree that the ways in which we respond to and resist the kyriarchy are myriad, and claiming that someone else's resistance is "wrong" when it isn't hurting you is denying them the reality of their lived experience? Yes, some choices are harmful, but the One Right True And Only Way is the kyriarchy's, not ours.

Comments

[wyldraven.livejournal.com]

OK, you made me go to Google for that word (kyriarchy). Thank you for sharing this. I have tried many times to explain this to the feminists who are so convinced that choosing "traditional female roles" is by definition anti-feminist. That was an excellent piece on the topic.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I think the term "patriarchy" expresses something important. On the other hand, maleness isn't inherently the problem, and neither is fatherhood - and too many people get only one of those two ideas out of the term. "Kyriarchy" better encodes and expresses the interlinked power dynamics, I think.

[doctorcaligari.livejournal.com]

I suspect that some privileged-in-every-way-except-for-misogyny women have trouble distinguishing between fellow privileged-in-every-way-except-for-misogyny women who are simply attempting to defend their internalized oppression with bullshit arguments (which I think is something that people DO sometimes do, I've done it myself); and women who are experiencing additional oppressions and facing constraints of which the former women understand very little, and whose landscapes of choice and empowerment therefore may look very different.

I definitely agree that "choice feminism" is now an inherently suspect term because it's so often used as a rhetorical bludgeoning device with which to bruit all who do not follow the One True Feminism (which is indeed usually the uninterrogated feminism of white-het-cis-able-middle/upper-class women).

Good link...thanks for posting.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Something I love about my flist is that every now and again, it (they?) hit me up with a new word. Usually that's just sort of an intellectual thrill.

But.

This time--wow. You have NO IDEA how much I've needed some word OTHER THAN "patriarchy" to express that concept.

Thank you.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Isn't "kyriarchy" a great word? It puts the emphasis of the problem on the power dynamics embedded in the masculine and feminine roles (among others) rather than the physical bits of maleness and femaleness. As I said above, fatherhood is not inherently the problem; it's the social conditioning.