I recently learned the word misandry (men hate), i
am not sorry to say it is laughing material... and "men rights"
activists - I know hilarious - use it a lot against feminists to the extent
that sometimes feminists ideology in some mainstream discourses is highly tied
with men hate. I will not contest or agree to it, whether feminists love men or
hate them, because feminism is not about men, no matter how much they are
trying to make it about them, just like everything else in the world.
But i have to highlight here that misandry is being
used as a scarecrow nowadays to wave in the face of killjoys everytime we want
to talk about structural violence, institutional oppression, social and
economical inequalities etc,. So here here, I don't care if my feminism to
you means I hate men, I don't care if your feelings are hurt when I
make feminist arguments and your misandrist claim does not scare me, again,
feminisms is not about men, it is about structures of power; which liberal
politics and a lot of human rights discourses (not all of them) managed to make
them about men in order to preserve the status quo of centering men around
every argument - so you either love them or hate them where eventually
conversations move from discussing structures of power, to discussing men's
emotions.
Misandry and hurting men's feeling have become a
tool of silencing against feminists, patriarchy it seems, keeps inventing new
ways of silencing feminists, and misandry i can argue (for hours) is the new
form of trial to silence feminists, among many other tools that were used
historically such as fear and violence. But now it's not modern to beat women
up if you are a liberal male - at least not in public or in political leftist
spaces, so you just accuse them of hating men and thus you think you discredit
them.
And here's the point I am trying to make, the
liberal depoliticization and demonization of feminism that praises women rights
and gender equality over feminism have managed to a certain extent to erase from
the mainstream conversation about feminism, the layers of structural
inequalities and power hierarchies that lead to the emergence of feminism as
social and political ideology/ tool to fighting these inequalities in the first
place. The fast food activism modules of gender equality, for example, "He
for She" and "women are human beings too" and many others have
opened the space to avoid talking about structures of power, while it made it
about collecting men alliances instead of talking about historical and
institutional male privilege for example. He for she, for example, wants to
include men in lobbying for gender equality, okay fair enough IF the
conversation was more profound; IF the conversation was actually about
structures, laws, social pressure, privilege, economical powers: wage
inequality, affect labor as labor, traditional roles, masculinity & femininity,
heteronormativity, colonialism, domestic violence, harassment, rape, wars,
capitalism, race, ethnicity and many others. I call it fast food activism
basically because its core is centered around catchy words that can launch a
fast impact advertisement campaign, does some noise around the subject and then
degenerates leaving nothing behind it but more ways to glorify inclusive women
rights/human rights discourses simultaneously demonizing feminism that many
argue is not inclusive. Women are human beings too? No kidding! I thought given
the specificity of the historical moment we live in, it is already established
that all humans are humans, but what make them matter or disposable is a mass
amount of gender, politics, nationality, class, race, borders, capital
etc.
Feminism or some of the Marxist, intersectional,
queer feminism is the ideology that fills the gap of the present neoliberal
politics that are constantly highly depoliticized and empty from political discourse
that makes any social movement very fragile. Fragile political ideologies
collapse easily in the face of neoliberal policies and capitalistic approaches
of absorption. And this is why feminism is highly resisted and fought, it
is not because it is not close to the masses to understand, it because of those
liberal depoliticized ideas and mass production of easily consumed ideologies
that demonizes feminism merely by existing and turn feminism it into a
scarecrow that is highly fought. This is one of the main points of intersection
between patriarchy and capitalism nowadays, fast consumption, mass consumption
of everything. Ideologies are not 5 minutes ready made burgers that you can
grab and go, they are rooted in people's lives, ideologies form policies,
ideologies are political whether we like it or not. And feminism is not an advertisement
campaign that wants to sell a product, feminism is about our lives, and for
some of us it is the essence of life anyway.
1 comment:
L-O-V-E your brain!
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