Feminisms?

A couple of days ago, I was invited by my project supervisor to hear Alexandra Heller-Nicholas speak about her area of expertise: the depiction of sexual violence in rape-revenge films.

I found the whole seminar extremely interesting but because I am not exactly a fan of horror films (even most Disney movies are too scary for me!) it was more difficult to understand. However, one point Ms Heller-Nicholas made really stood out to me.

 Ms Heller-Nicholas suggested that we shouldn’t talk about feminism but feminisms. She claimed that “feminism isn’t a particular argument; it is a set of debates”, and “feminism is not singular, it is a plural idea”. In particular she said that the only thing that all feminists agree on is the idea of “gender difference as a site of power”.

In some ways, I think feminism is a lot like religion. Just like the way in which religions such as Christianity have a whole set of different denominations- so too does feminism. Some people don’t identify with a particular set of religious beliefs but take different things from different parts of religion and that’s just what feminists to do to.

I also think that the idea of feminism being a “set of debates” is just as important. Maybe the imperative thing isn’t having all feminists agree on a particular issue but having feminists openly and publicly debating issues. Surely just encouraging others to think about society differently will go some way to shaking up the patriarchy.

The idea of feminisms frustrates me, I must admit. I am used to having concrete definitions for the ideas I believe in and the fact that the different feminisms are so full of contradictions only makes things more difficult. But I think it’s just one of those things that takes a bit of getting used to. After all, it’s the part that we all agree upon that really matters to the cause.