Core Post #2 Kimberly Henry

In her paper, “For White Girls Only?” Jess Butler goes out of her way to delineate between post-feminism and third wave feminism, while still drawing connections between them; while she defines post-feminism through McRobbie as displacement, she characterizes third wave as an at least partially self-aware critique and expansion of second wave feminism, although it remains expressly neo-liberal (). It’s Butler’s view of the third wave as neoliberal that makes me wonder at the blurred lines between post and third wave feminism today. McRobbie describes some of the main tenets of post-feminism as the valorization of individual choice, of femininity as a commodity for purchase, making the ideal female subject/citizen of post feminism an active participant in consumer economy. This description is neoliberal in essence, focusing heavily on individual regulation and consumer democracy. But it makes me question is question is how then do 1990s conceptions of post feminism differ from post-2016 (let’s say) embodiments of third (or does #MeToo count as fourth?) wave feminism?

 

Although current feminist ideology far from assumes guaranteed gender equality, the rest of the traits listed by Butler as characteristic of post-feminist rhetoric are front and center in contemporary feminism: Emphasis on “sexual subjectification,” self-surveillance repackaged as self-care, and activism as a purchasable commodity. Beyond these similarities, the figures of color which Butler listed as icons of post-feminism—or those who still maintain relevance—have transformed into “feminist icons.”

 

This point for me to the most intriguing—and in some ways troubling—development since the readings’ publications. The relative disappearance of post-feminism, least as a ubiquitous alternative to/displacement of feminism.  To claim gender equality has been achieved in a post-2016 America will likely mark you as naïve or one of the few women permitted on Fox News/OANN—ie. Conservatice. Instead of post-feminism, intersection, politically active (or rather performative) feminism is the presumed baseline, the new ideal of female subject-citizenship. This feminism, however, maintains the consumerist, representational focus of post-feminism, however, now it has absorbed the the radical/alternative practices of marginalized groups, such as magical thinking/ritual. Sage and crystals are all for sale on Instagram as self-care practice paraphernalia, along with shirts reading “Empowered Women Empower Women.” In some ways I find it necessary to counter my own point here, and mention that the products of these profits often purport to support some feminist political cause (as did my purchase of a Nasty Woman t-shirt in January 2017). However this consumer-feminist-activism only furthers the neoliberal trend of moving social/feminist welfare toward the private sector.