Somewhere in there I lost the majority of my internalized and externalized female/femme hatred. I had been part of the problem. And I still am, probably. That is the skepticism and cynicism that keeps me going, because it simultaneously provides a skepticism and cynicism of a repugnant stasis, as well. If you’re going to have any success/joy in life as a Social Justice Warrior (SJW, usually used pejoratively), your whole world needs to revolve around uncertainty. Let me explain.
The first source of uncertainty is undoubtedly the movement itself. There is no one completely united social justice movement. The feminism that I identify with, that I find in our school feminist group and the feminism that controls the few blogs I religiously follow is a good one, but is by no means the only one. The feminism that I identify with is trying to learn from past mistakes, and it’s greatest tenet is intersectionality. However, even different people and different blogs handle intersectionality and inclusivity differently, so no two feminists handle issues the same way. I read just as many feminist critiques of other feminists as I do feminist critiques of misogynistic assholes. Each of these adds a little more critical thought to my worldview, teaches me to question a few more things that I might take for granted.
For example, this story went viral in the last few weeks. While the sharing of stories like these make me feel a little better about whether anyone gives a shit about women being killed every goddamn day, I kept looking around and found this explanation from a SJ website that makes more sense. So while my general distrust of the whole world makes it easy to believe that Texas law treats non-contracted services as “property”, the truth often takes a little more digging. In this case, the truth (as far as I can tell, as the second article seems to be more logical) feels a little better and is a little more just. Sometimes that isn’t the case, but without some digging you won’t get to the truth (or the truth “as far as you can tell”).
So even today, with all our modes of communication across borders, different folks who declare themselves “feminists” treat just about all of feminism very differently. So how is it that they all claim to fall under this same label? And how is it that plenty of folks who claim to be feminists and plenty that wouldn’t dare claim the label end up with the same actions and beliefs? bell hooks (perhaps the mother of intersectionality [intentionally not capitalized]) argues that folks calling themselves or others “feminists” creates a sense of identity based very much in exclusivity and privilege. There’s a whole few great pages on this in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, but I’ll just choose some tidbits:
“Despite sexist discrimination, exploitation, or oppression, many women feel their lives as they live them are important and valuable. Naturally the suggestion that these lives could be simply left or abandoned for an alternative “feminist” lifestyle is met with resistance. Feeling their life experiences devalued, deemed solely negative and worthless, many women responded by vehemently attacking feminism. [...] Often emphasis on identity and lifestyle is appealing because it creates a false sense that one is engaged in praxis. However, praxis within any political movement that aims to have a radical transformative impact on society cannot be solely focused on creating spaces wherein would-be radicals experience safety and support. [...] To emphasize that engagement with feminist struggle as political commitment, we could avoid using the phrase “I am a feminist” (a linguistic structure designed to refer to some personal aspect of identity and self-definition) and could state, “I advocate feminism.” ”Summary: there is no one way to “be a feminist”, and fighting against oppression takes a lot of different forms. Keeping yourself separated from the “non-feminists” is damaging to the cause, frankly because the folks suffering from the oppression you’re trying to end are most often “non-feminists”. If the only road to salvation is my road of 70k in student loans, tumblr, and occasional fearless haircuts, revolution won’t be coming anytime soon.
The second source of uncertainty in social justice movement is a long history of shitty activism. The first wave (suffragettes) and to a degree second wave (“bra burners”, who never actually did that at all btw) were bad people sometimes. Their battles were focused completely on well-off white women, so while it is easy for today’s generation to look back and thank the flawless Susan B. Anthony for all she did, it doesn’t take much of that truth-digging I mentioned earlier to find out what a big racist she was. That being said, I am grateful to the suffragettes for moving things a little bit forward, considering their positions, but I am completely unable to accept any of them whole-heartedly as perfect women heroes. Odds are all great people of history sucked a little bit, and you can never be sure anyone is totally great (for example, every example). Then-feminism and now-feminism hardly seem related anymore, and plenty of folks say that modern SJ movements should go under a broader term like “humanism” instead. After all, my feminism is in big part influenced by queer inclusivity, so claiming a title that focuses on only one of many genders seems detrimental. In the end, though, humanism is stupid and other people have written about it, so feel free to go dig around in that.
So now, my feminism is infused with a lot of self-doubt. I’m always sure I might be leaving someone out. For example, when I watch a movie and grumble the whole time about the Bechdel test and then only at the end realize that there were no characters of color. Sometimes, it even creates a sense of self-loathing. Intersectionality, to me, is about helping out whoever has it “worst”. There is no ranking of privilege or oppression, to be sure, but staying aware of the exact modes and extremities of inequality is necessary. If white women make 79% of white men’s income for equal work, black women 68%, and latina women 60% , there are going to be a few different courses of action needed to get everyone to 100%. So yes, Lean In was probably fine or informative or something, but it does not interest me, Sheryl is already doing okay. Sheryl left a ton of people out when she talked about modern struggles, and maybe she didn’t mean to include all of those people, but those are the people whose struggles interest and motivate me (related).
The last major source of uncertainty, for me, is scale of impact. Critical theory, another major tenet of modern feminism (which I really know very little about), I take to concern the fact that racist, heteronormative, cis-sexist, classist, ableist bullshit is all around us. Every time someone on the street yells at me and every time someone uses the r-word, it’s all related, and it all makes a difference. The question is, “how big of a difference?”
The beginning of SJW maturity is filled with rage - enter “angry feminist” archetype. “I’m not humorless, you’re just literally not funny”. Every movie you see, most classic novels, ads, casual conversations - suddenly it’s all total bullshit. You just want to limit your intake to the feminist-approved tv shows, find safe spaces. And a lot of the time, that’s very important, self-care is number one. But staying in that isolation, as bell would say, leads to absolutely zero change or impact. Having cozy, self-affirming discussions with other feminists is not praxis. Even if you’re mad! Whodathunk, being mad doesn’t even make a difference!
When I was going through my mad stage (not that I don’t still get mad now, it’s just a sadder mad now), someone meekly and correctly pointed out to me that mad doesn’t do anything. That if I’m mad, I should actually do something, take action, like other folks we know. I had a poster in my home bedroom that said, “be the change you wish to see in the world”, a gift from one of our very most liberal family-friends, I don’t think it even attributed it to Gandhi. I loved the art on it, but, for most of my staring at it, couldn’t think of any changes I much cared about and certainly didn’t know how to be them. Now it all makes more sense.
See, because here’s where impact really comes into perspective - when I read negative stories about awful things happening, even if they are new (more shitty abortion laws, etc), they are on-the-whole indicative of the status quo. The world has always been at least as terrible as it is now, even if it is only becoming more apparent now. However, positive stories and actions are indicative of change, of progress. Affirmations of the negative are persistent, obvious, and probable - but coming across good new actions and ideas is a DIFFERENCE. In my mind, a difference is always more impactful than a reaffirmation.
Revolution isn’t built in a day, and it certainly isn’t built by one isolated person. Now I see that every one step in the right direction is worth two steps sideways. This, of course, assumes that we, as a whole, are moving only sideways rather than backwards, but I’m pretty confident that assumption is correct. So now, though I’m not great at it, I’m much more motivated to take little steps, and know that there will be an impact. Raising money and volunteering for DV shelters, for example, where kyriarchal (like patriarchal, but including race/class/cissexism/orientation/ableism/etc) disparities are the most pronounced.
And I know I need to start doing it a hell of a lot more than I do now, if I ever want to cancel out as much socially-unjust stasis as I’ve mostly likely supported throughout my life. Do the occasional bouts of casual slut-shaming that I’m too scared to fight back against make as big of a difference as my constant social-justice tumblring? I could only guess.
This uncertainty comforts me. I can keep learning and looking around and digging, and eventually find things that reaffirm what I WANT to be true. If you go too far looking for what you want to see, it’s just bad science. But depending on the topic, and how you do it, it’s just fighting back against centuries of WORSE science. All I have learned has helped me to try to make a difference in the lives of other individuals and in my own life. I have personally benefited greatly from feminism, but have other people? To what degree? Is my unique brand of feminism doing the most good for the most people? I’m not sure yet, but neither is anyone else.
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