Can Liberalism Accommodate Feminism?
Liberal feminism was first established throughout the 19th century, and is generally considered to be the oldest form of feminist thinking out of the three major waves of feminism. Liberal feminism has helped to pave the way for women’s suffrage and thus has secured women’s rights to vote, to have access to education, and so forth. The movement is mostly centered around achieving women’s rights through legal and political reform. While liberal feminism has made many great contributions to the overall feminist movement, modern liberal feminism, however, has crippled the fight for women’s liberation and makes a mockery of everything women have fought to achieve over the past centuries.
The question as to whether or not liberalism can accommodate feminism shall be the focus of this article, and how it fails to do so. Liberalism and feminism are a contradiction within itself as liberal feminist approaches towards the fight for women’s liberation is too individualistic and western-centric, coupled with the fact that the movement seeks to empower women and girls through the same forms of oppression that we have faced since our oppression began. These approaches have proved to cause more harm than good for women and girls, and the issues that have since arisen since the start of the modern liberal feminist movement need to be questioned and heavily critiqued.
Liberal feminism is more focused on achieving gender equality for both men and women rather than striving for the overall liberation of women. In fact, liberal feminism has always seemed to focus on the inclusion of men in the fight for our equal rights rather than seeing to it that the movement is female-oriented. In the past, it may be said that this was a necessary thing for feminists to do. After all, it would have likely been much harder for women to gain any rights without the approval and assistance of our oppressors — men. However, in modern times, this inclusion of men has led to our oppression coming from within a movement that was meant to liberate us, not one which was made to cater to the oppressor.
In modern liberal feminism, we can observe that harmful mindsets which have been influenced by men are beginning to emerge. Examples of this include the culture of pro-pornography, pro-makeup, and pro-“slut culture”, all of which are things that feminists are rightfully attempting to fight against as their harms to society have been scientifically proven. Many feminists, in general, argue that men cannot be feminists to begin with as men do not possess the true experience of being a woman, thus it is problematic for there to be “male feminists” within the movement.
The core goal of the four waves of the feminist movement has been to strive for the liberation and overall rights for all women; to free us from the shackles of male domination and oppression. Liberal feminism, however, strives for the empowerment and liberation of the individual woman. They do not have the interests of every woman in mind throughout their activism, nor do liberal feminists seem to realize that the ‘empowerment’ that they are striving for is merely the same oppression that women have faced since the start of civilization.
Women have long since strived to empower themselves and other women by attempting to, and advocating for, the dismantling of the male oppressive systems that men have constrained women into. Take, for example, the modern feminist debate regarding makeup. A modern liberal feminist is very likely to argue that wearing makeup is empowering for the individual woman as it makes her feel good about herself; it makes her feel prettier. But how can a woman possibly be ‘empowered’ by giving in to the very same expectations that men have for her? The liberal feminist might claim that because the woman is wearing makeup not for men, but for herself, that she is empowered for thinking that she is not doing what men want of her, but only because she herself thinks that makeup makes her look prettier. Underneath this assumption still lies the fact that women have derived our beliefs surrounding beauty from what men have set in place as the ideal standard, which tends not to include the bare and natural state of a woman’s appearance.
Another problem within the liberal feminist movement is that it tends to rely heavily on the legal system to obtain their goals, as opposed to liberal feminists conducting critical analysis as to why and how it is that men have (and continue to do so) systematically oppress women through this very system that the movement relies so heavily upon. Because of this, coupled with the individualistic rather than universal approach that liberal feminism takes, a woman’s rights may be revoked and given for any means that the legal system (and even fellow women) see fit. It would be best to put this claim into more context, so to give another example, let us analyze the issue of pay inequality between men and women. Liberal feminists would see the issue of the payment gap and simply advocate for paying and hiring women more. They do not, however, tend to examine the underlying problem and cause as to why it is that women are paid less, and how this financial inequality affects women of various backgrounds. There is also the fact that ‘gender in/equality’ could have many different meanings amongst liberal feminists and how it is they intend on approaching this concept and fixing the issue.
To put this into another perspective: because liberal feminism seeks to gain women’s rights through legal and political reform, this leaves the possibility that women’s rights may be given and revoked as those in power see fit. And those in power happen to be men. We can see this happening in current times as the issue of abortion and women’s reproductive health lingers. In Texas, abortion was just recently outlawed over the period of six weeks, much sooner than it takes for most women to even realize that they may be pregnant. (Najmabadi, Shannon).
As Linda Zerilli points out in Feminists Critiques of Liberalism:
[…] the idea that freedom is a fundamental individual right and that any limitation on it must be justified (e.g., the social contract) is core to liberalism as a prominent strand of historical political thought. In this way, liberalism has been an invaluable resource for feminists in the long struggle for political freedom and against the arbitrary power of men over women. (Zerilli, 355).
Liberal feminism has no common ground with other feminists when it comes to major issues addressed within the context of feminism. As stated within The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, feminists once had to fight very hard to be seen as equals to men. Then, once we had a mere taste of equality, feminists seem to have forgotten that our fight for our rights and equality isn’t over just yet. (Alcoff, Linda Martin, and Eva Feder Kittay, The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy).
Liberalism does not bring forth any critical thinking and analysis for feminism and women’s rights. It is a movement centered around the so-called “empowerment” for individual women rather than fighting for the rights of all women. Liberal feminism is all about twisting the most horrifying aspects of womanhood into something that “empowers” the individual.
Perhaps it is a coping mechanism, or perhaps it is extreme ignorance. Either way, liberalism has shown thus far that its ideology is purely destructive to any progress feminists have made since the start of the movement. Liberal feminism is setting women back, not pushing women forward towards our goals of liberation and true empowerment.
