Many people have smaller and smaller attention spans, these days. It is very difficult to educate people on anything, because unless the lesson you want to impart has a strong emotional impact, people are unlikely to keep it in mind. The more stressed people are, the more the attention span narrows. Feminist efforts to educate the populace about gender roles are noble, but end up preaching to the choir. The prevalence of various popularisations of Darwinism means that those who feel stressed by their situations, but do not wish to do anything about the deeper reasons for their stress, (perhaps believing, wrongly, that there is not such thing as a “deeper reason"), tend to revert to the rhetoric: “Well, I’m just an animal, an ape. What did you expect?”
In such a situation as I have described, I don’t think feminism has much to lose by letting go of the motherly, educative role, at least in terms of trying to change the world. Such a task as educating others should be used only in support of those who are already aware that feminism is necessary, but do not understand the ins and outs of patriarchal oppression in enough detail to fight it back.
In relation to those others—the majority of people—who show resistance to understanding feminism, I think that little energy should be expended in trying to teach them right from wrong. Many people are willing to lap up feminist criticism, even if it is harsh, because they feel starved of attention. They will try to provoke it as a perverse way of feeling nourished. Due to this way of fulfilling a need, feminists can end up in a maternal role, which is just what isn’t useful.
I think that the strategy of feminism should be to veer away from identity politics, so that it becomes difficult to target women as a particular identity. This is where the backlash has succeeded and is still succeeding. Instead, feminism should employ an emotional detached logic, to show that the way in which anti-feminists are thinking is profoundly illogical and self defeating.
For instance, yesterday a man told me that he didn’t look deeply into the reasons for things, because he was “a man” and “men are simple”, he told me, like apes. So, I asked him whether it was impossible for “a man” to be an intellectual. Notably, what I said didn’t sink in, which is to be expected due to the complacency that anti-feminists develop within the popular cultural milieu.
In such a situation as I have described, I don’t think feminism has much to lose by letting go of the motherly, educative role, at least in terms of trying to change the world. Such a task as educating others should be used only in support of those who are already aware that feminism is necessary, but do not understand the ins and outs of patriarchal oppression in enough detail to fight it back.
In relation to those others—the majority of people—who show resistance to understanding feminism, I think that little energy should be expended in trying to teach them right from wrong. Many people are willing to lap up feminist criticism, even if it is harsh, because they feel starved of attention. They will try to provoke it as a perverse way of feeling nourished. Due to this way of fulfilling a need, feminists can end up in a maternal role, which is just what isn’t useful.
I think that the strategy of feminism should be to veer away from identity politics, so that it becomes difficult to target women as a particular identity. This is where the backlash has succeeded and is still succeeding. Instead, feminism should employ an emotional detached logic, to show that the way in which anti-feminists are thinking is profoundly illogical and self defeating.
For instance, yesterday a man told me that he didn’t look deeply into the reasons for things, because he was “a man” and “men are simple”, he told me, like apes. So, I asked him whether it was impossible for “a man” to be an intellectual. Notably, what I said didn’t sink in, which is to be expected due to the complacency that anti-feminists develop within the popular cultural milieu.
1 comment:
Excellent points here.
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