Opinion

Are you a feminist?

I’m a FEMINIST.

Now that the burning question on everyone’s, or at least those who like to throw the question at women who have a platform to voice their opinion, mind, has been answered, let’s move on to the big picture: FEMINISM.

The ever trusty Wikipedia defines feminism as “a collection of movements and ideologies which share a common stated aim: to define, establish, and defend equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women.”

Within feminism, you have your mainstream feminists, your sex-positive feminists, your black feminists, your Muslim feminists, your queer feminists and so on. Each branch’s activism centres around issues relevant within their group. Feminism, it must be noted, is not a monolithic movement with a single unified goal.

Feminism, over the years, has evolved beyond women’s rights and gender equality within the binary gender paradigm. I think a much more accurate definition of feminism can be found in the 'Achieving Transformative Feminist

Leadership' toolkit by Srilatha Batliwala and Michel Friedman:

“Feminism today stands not only for gender equality but for the transformation of all social relations of power that oppress, exploit or marginalise any set of people on the basis of their gender, age, sexual orientation, ability, race, religion, nationality, location, ability, class, caste or ethnicity.”

In other words, feminism today is intersectional. Intersectionality, a term coined by the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, refers to “the view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society.”

Intersectionality, in the context of social justice, looks at differences that set one person’s circumstances apart from another’s. Just as how no two people are identical to the core, neither can the oppressions faced by two individuals be alike.

Discrimination, marginalisation, silencing and violence are all forms of oppression, and we know that oppression has everything to do with power. George Orwell even wrote a timeless classic on the topic. There is always a power disparity when there is more than one party or individual involved – only its form may differ from case to case.

Within the context of power disparity, we can examine discrimination, marginalization, and violence across various intersectionalities: race and gender; class, race and gender; sexual orientation, class, race and gender;and so on.

A blanket approach to assumed oppression does no one any favours. Yes, this does mean that FEMEN’s brand of “activism” is not only Islamophobic, but it is also arrogant and misguided by their own privilege.

It took me a few years and a whole lot of soul searching and reading to realise that my worldview and values aligned with intersectional feminism.

Personally, feminism has been a growing process for me – one that I believe is ever evolving with time and my lived reality.

The best part of intersectional feminism is that it forces you to check inwards just as critically as you look outwards. In the process of adopting intersectional feminism, you start to identify, address and work on our own problematic attitudes, stereotypes and perceptions. By we, I totally mean me.

And yes, I am working on my issues, which are aplenty and that may take time to fix as they have been ingrained in me for decades.

Oh, in case you were wondering what prompted my loud and bold declaration besides it being the honest truth; I was asked that very question on an online radio interview once.

“Would you call yourself a feminist?”

To which I replied “I don’t think there was ever a time when I was not a feminist.” What I am is a woman who aligns herself with intersectional feminism. To me, intersectional feminism is not just an identity, but an ideology for social change that I apply in my daily life.

This column of mine in The Malaysian Insider would be exactly that – my observations and analysis of what is happening around me through intersectional feminism. I ask you to join me in this exploration of ideas and the questioning of status quo, and perhaps somewhere along the way we may examine the clutch of neoliberalism and patriarchy on our collective existence.

I’d like to leave you with this nugget of wisdom from Laurie Pennny from her book "Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies, and Revolution": “... feminism isn't an identity. Feminism is a process. Call yourself what you like. The important thing is what you fight for. Begin it now.” – January 11, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.

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