If there is one thing that unites the French at family meals, it is the taste for debate, preferably political. And everything is a pretext for a good altercation:elections, government management, or broader societal debates such as immigration, veganism or… feminism. However, the dividing lines in these areas are often generational:terms borrowed from Anglo-Saxon theory, new demands... the older ones are lost in the jargon of the younger ones, and the latter are exasperated by what they perceive as positions dusty. If a common desire for emancipation unites them, the current may therefore have difficulty in passing between a veteran grandmother of family planning and her granddaughter - or her grandson, because fortunately, feminism is less and less less of a women-only concern — wearing a "Men are trash" t-shirt.
Because ultimately, although we always talk about feminism, the plural would be more appropriate as it is a set of currents with different objectives, theories and methods. There is still a long way to go to achieve real equality in fact and not just in law, but at least on the theoretical level, activists have not been idle. If you are lost and do not understand the issues of feminism for your grandchildren, here is a brief guide to see more clearly.
To begin, let's do a little historical review. There are generally three main waves of feminism. The first spans the first half of the 20th century, and is often summed up in the idea of universalism — the idea that citizens are born free and equal in rights, to use the formula of the Declaration of Human Rights. 'Man and Citizen. Following this idea, women should have the same rights as men:this is the period of the struggle for the right to vote, access to education and the world of work... a struggle which is far from over, especially in view of wage inequalities, and which can be described as reformist:this feminism does not seek to change the system, but simply to integrate women into it.
A second wave develops in reaction to the first from the 1960s. Revolutionary and of Marxist inspiration, this one sees the oppression of women as inherent to the functioning of the capitalist system - an oppression of which it is the counterpart, and which is systematized under the name of patriarchy. One of the great contributions of the second wave is, for example, the notion of reproductive work, which designates household chores, the birth and raising of children... all these tasks traditionally attributed to women and unpaid, and yet essential to life. maintenance of a labor force and its reproduction. Convinced therefore that the private is political, the feminist struggle is now invading this terrain. The fight against domestic violence, seen as a systemic and not an individual problem, is a legacy of this.
Finally, from the 1990s a third wave developed, which can be described as postmodern. In concert with the philosophy that sees the end of the 20th century as a period of crisis, atomization and relativism, and discharges concepts hitherto taken for granted, this feminism deconstructs the categories of sex and gender as well as the idea of a fixed and essential identity. This is therefore accompanied by an individualization of the struggle - the political and social structures disintegrating in a postmodern society where everything that could unite in the past is precisely deconstructed and questioned - which moves on the field of culture and identity.
Since it is difficult to summarize more than a century of feminist advances in a few paragraphs, let us tackle more concrete concepts. It is not a question here of declaring them guarantors of a "true" feminism, but of enlightening those who can confuse feminists of another era.
One of them is the concept of intersectionality. Based on the observation that everyone can be a victim of one or more types of oppression (depending on gender, sexuality, race, social class, disability, etc.), this concept establishes the need for the convergence of struggles. One of the reproaches leveled at "mommy" feminism is indeed that of ignoring all the other forms of oppression, because having often emanated from white women who are relatively well off socially - feminism, and the investment of time and energy in the fight, was a luxury that many could not afford. The struggles of these relatively privileged women were therefore naturally distorted by their particular prism, and ignored the claims of their less privileged sisters.
Another associated concept is borrowed from "subaltern studies". This Anglo-Saxon discipline seeks to approach the history of colonialism from the point of view of the colonized - the "subalterns" in question. People in a position of subalternity would ultimately be better able to know the social world:they are both in a position to understand the point of view of the dominant, since it is hegemonic, and that of the dominated, since they live it. . Borrowed by second-wave feminists, this point-of-view theory emphasizes the need to let women speak, the theory being constructed in struggle and the material experience of domination. The non-mixed meetings that we talk about so much today in the context of the fight against racism are basically a feminist invention.
The question of the veil is a good example. From the point of view of women who have fought for their emancipation, this can indeed be likened to a step back and a disavowal of their struggles. Nevertheless, and while this debate is used more to stigmatize Islam than out of a real passion for the emancipation of women, in the end everyone is allowed to express themselves on the subject, with the exception of the first interested parties. However, the question is ultimately not to know what we ourselves think of the wearing of the veil or of the position of women in Islam. It is about the very autonomy of these women. Speaking for them, denying them the right to dress as they wish, violates their right to self-determination — precisely the criticism of the veil.
In the same vein, if men are increasingly declaring themselves, and not without pride, as feminists, the best way to prove it for them is still to step back. However, even in struggles that do not concern them, many men feel entitled to give their opinion – which in itself is not reprehensible, provided that they do not speak in the place of the first concerned, the women. They reproduce their tendency to manspreading, a portmanteau for the posture, legs wide apart, of certain men in public transport.
This tendency to physically appropriate public space is indicative of a difference in socialization between the genders. Since the #MeToo movement, women's voices have been released, and each milieu has its own wave of revelations:cinema, music, politics... However, many accused men do not believe they have made a mistake:their dominant point of view blinds them to the point of not distinguishing the heavy dredge from the assault — a habitus which emphasizes the systematic nature and internalization of patriarchal domination (which is in no way an acceptable defence).
This young feminist generation is generally very close to the LGBT community, since it deconstructs gender norms, which are considered oppressive. Deconstructing these categories is however a dilemma:how to unite politically without rallying around a question of identity, how to free oneself from a binary vision of man/woman without at the same time reinforcing them by pointing fingers at the subordinate position of women? The TERF (Trans exclusionary radical feminist) movement, for example, essentializes women in the name of a radicalism that poorly conceals a crass transphobia.
Some nowadays mock feminism, reducing it to a semantic bickering over spelling. Feminists would do better to focus on narrowing the wage gap than carrying out barbaric attacks on the French language — in essence. This is a non-debate with misogynistic overtones, since it itself seems to seek to gag feminists by reducing all their struggles to a simple question of spelling. Whatever one thinks of inclusive writing, it is obvious that changing one's way of writing only constitutes a minimal investment and in no way prevents one from fighting against much more violent oppressions and having other claims. In short, the only people responsible for inflating the role of inclusive writing in feminist struggles today are its opponents.
Nevertheless, this debate has the merit of reminding us that politics does not stop at the text of the Constitution, and that the private sector and culture are eminently so. Hoping that you will now be better equipped to exchange with the youngest at the next family meal. And by the way, who prepared this meal?
