“The structure imposes its constraints on both terms of the relationship of domination, and consequently on the dominators themselves, who can benefit from it while remaining, in Marx’s words, ‘dominated by their domination’.”
— Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination.
The recent advance of feminism is one of the most significant political and social developments for left-wing projects in recent years, with some of the widest-reaching effects. In step with the major women’s mobilizations that have taken place in recent years across various countries, feminism has gradually permeated social life, reaching its most everyday spaces and producing a tectonic shift in common sense. The hegemony of feminism has been evident in its ability to break out of academia, out of books and expert talks, out of the most militant spaces or political organizations – in short, in its power to become something popular.
Many more women, from our grandmothers to teenagers, know that feminism has to do with them. At the same time, as the scope of feminism expands rapidly, the question of its subject – where its limits lie and whether its boundaries need to be safeguarded – becomes increasingly pressing. Feminism has become hegemonic, but at the same time, the tensions that certain strands of feminism face in accepting a project for the 99 percent, are becoming increasingly evident.
Some current debates – such as the one between a segment of feminism and those demanding trans rights – reveal deep ideological fractures and confirm a return to essentialism on the part of certain feminist currents. This conservative inertia is part of a broader picture: a generalized retreat into identity politics, a commitment to strong and clearly defined identities – a logic that is permeating our political struggles and social movements. Political subjects assert their specificity to the point of solipsism, and essential, metaphysical, and insurmountable differences multiply, rendering us irremediably alien to one another. The assignment of our political causes to certain supposedly essential and natural subjects, the assumption that these demands belong exclusively to some – who have the authority to act as their legitimate owners and deny entry to others – is contrary to the process of cross-pollination and the multiplication of alliances that constitutes the construction of a radically transformative collective project of the majority.
Feminism, also immersed in these identity-based logics, is today, therefore, the ambivalent stage for two different and opposing forces of inertia. There is a feminism with the will to integrate others and, therefore, with the potential to become one of the most powerful and transformative political and social struggles of the 21st century. Just as there is also a feminism submerged in an exclusionary and counterrevolutionary inertia that is moving toward a centripetal movement of political contraction. This ambivalence represents a crossroads, and given how much depends on it, one cannot help but take a stand. In the choice of which feminism we defend, the power of one of the main fronts of struggle for the left in our current historical moment is at stake; we risk the possible retreat of feminism, its return to the status of a particular and subordinate cause that only addresses or mobilizes a part of society.
Others Are Knocking at the Door. Will We Let Them In?
As Wendy Brown states, “the deconstruction of the subject provokes an evident panic in feminism,”1 and in the debate on the trans issue, it becomes clear to what extent certain feminisms condition the very viability of any feminist political project on a crystal-clear delimitation of its subject and a sharp, unambiguous definition of what “women” are. The return of certain current discourses to biology as a criterion for policing the boundaries of the political subject is a symptom of an essentialist regression. The truth is that we come from decades in which feminist theory, from different perspectives, subjected the notion of “woman” to critical analysis to highlight its social construction – “one is not born a woman, one becomes one,” in Beauvoir’s words – and, therefore, its profoundly political nature. Even Celia Amorós, a leading theorist for many of the feminists most critical of trans laws in the Spanish context, stated, “We must acknowledge that Butler’s dialectic of construction and deconstruction of the category ‘women’ undoubtedly raises problems (and that) this should lead us to accept the ever-revisable nature of the category’s definition and its problematicity.”2
Now, beyond the fact that, indeed, a non-essentialist perspective must renounce the claim to a definitive delimitation of that concept, the question of feminism’s limits – and, therefore, its capacity to become a struggle of the 99% – is not resolved solely by expanding the subject of “woman.” Of course, in the face of the most exclusionary versions, it may have political power to assert that “trans women are women,” but that should not serve to reignite an exclusionary logic that renders us incapable of integrating that plurality of subjects who will continue to knock on the door. The intersection of the trans issue with feminism raises much deeper questions about our capacity to renounce, as Butler proposes, an identity-based subject. For are not all trans people part of the subject of feminism? Will feminism exclude trans men from its political subject? Will feminism make trans people’s right of access – many of whom do not ascribe to a gender identity category as either men or women – contingent on their gender identification? Will feminism demand (gender) identity cards as a condition for being part of this revolution? Ultimately, is feminism a struggle solely of and for women?
In our current context, the trans issue is one of the points where the question of feminism’s subject emerges and the contradictions of identity-based feminism come to a head; yet, clearly, another concern is now opening up with the question surrounding men. And this question becomes politically relevant not only because many men today find themselves facing it, but because it is a question that some political forces are answering in a reactionary manner. The new far-right parties – are recruiting an army of men angry at feminism, which they describe as an exclusionary project that has declared war on half of society. We should not underestimate that this framing, though Manichean and deceptive, is proving worryingly successful; one of the most characteristic features of the vote for the new far-right parties is its extremely high proportion of male voters (men make up, for example, 76% of Vox’s electorate, a far-right party). The question, therefore, is which feminisms enable us to understand this landscape and combat these inertias. Are the new right-wing movements, to a large extent, a reaction to women’s demands for equality? Would these years of feminist progress explain the violence with which the reaction has arisen?
To address these questions, we need to move beyond the identitarianism in which some feminist perspectives are stuck. Under the framework of a feminism that is always on the defensive due to the blurring of its identitarian subject – that is, women – issues related to masculinity are often understood as a matter foreign to us and one that concerns others entirely. That disengagement, often defended as a victory, is, in reality, a major surrender. It means abandoning a social problem that feminism is precisely in a position to think through clearly and address effectively. The temptation of an essentialist perspective is even to naturalize the male backlash, to take it for granted, not even needing to explain it, turning it into an inevitable fact. And so, we might end up asking ourselves, with satisfaction: To what extent are all those men who vote for Vox simply the automatic consequence of the fact that we are dethroning them? Their outrage can easily be mistaken for evidence that we’re winning, and so the male backlash we are witnessing today may itself come to seem like proof of how much progress we are making. However, these kinds of perspectives are dangerously uncritical and shut the door on the possibility of asking ourselves these questions: What is happening to men today? What male discontent is Vox politicizing? What issues are we failing to name? How can we convince men? How can we help them change? What kind of feminism can defuse this reaction?
A Question of Class as Well
The densification of women’s identity has led, as we know, to feminist perspectives that are ill-equipped to understand how gender also intersects with class or race. We feminists who oppose the essentialist views of certain feminisms challenge the tendency to homogenize and over-equalize women, and we assert the need to fracture the “woman” subject precisely to bring to light the differences and inequalities that run through us. The other side of the coin, and an essential part of any intersectional perspective, is to also question the excessive homogenization of men and to highlight the hierarchies and relationships of domination and inequality that also exist within the realm of masculinity. bell hooks is, perhaps, one of the voices that has most forcefully argued that a class-conscious feminism cannot view men solely as winners and that it is problematic to maintain the idea that men – all of whom are privileged relative to women, yet equalized among themselves by patriarchy – share equally in their political, economic, and social superiority. “Women with class privilege are the only ones who have perpetuated the idea that men are all-powerful, because often the men in their families were indeed powerful.”3
In fact, if reflecting on masculinity from a feminist perspective is politically transformative, it is precisely because it can reveal not so much the successes as the shortcomings, the gaps, or the failures to which men are subjected in a capitalist and patriarchal system. As bell hooks says, the narrative that domination over women always brings privileges, successes, and benefits to men serves precisely to indoctrinate men; to recruit them, this narrative must conceal all the failures and hardships that a patriarchal society imposes on them. Thus, “the idea that men had control, power, and were satisfied with their lives before the contemporary feminist movement is false.” Patriarchy generates loneliness, silence, lack of communication, violence, suicides, and deaths among the male population, and feminism must politicize all these ills in a transformative way. If not, the far right will do so. How is it possible that it is reactionary voices that speak of the high rates of male suicide, fatal traffic accidents, or violent deaths suffered by men? How can it be that the ills that patriarchy itself generates in men are used as an argument against feminism rather than in its favor?
Moving beyond identity-based frameworks therefore implies recognizing that men’s contemporary malaise is not (at least primarily) an effect of feminism’s advances. It is, in fact, the reactionary movement that perpetuates this myth, and that should give us a clue as to why we cannot accept it. Michael Kimmel4 suggests that to understand the emergence of reactionary, racist, homophobic, and sexist movements, we must trace men’s fears in a society where economic precariousness has made it particularly impossible for men to meet the demands of traditional masculinity. The role of the family provider has been undermined by economic forces that either push men (and women) out of the labour market or condemn them to precariousness. What kind of failures await those who have been raised to be family men who guarantee protection and stability for their loved ones? Is it possible to remain a “real man” in a context of widespread impoverishment of the population, unemployment, and the constant threat of losing social status? Kimmel’s thesis is that the new American far-right movements, a prelude to Trump’s victory, knew how to politicize this male frustration – characteristic of our late-stage capitalist societies – by directing it against scapegoats: feminist women, LGBT people, or migrants.
The question, then, is what feminist frameworks can help us direct that anger at those actually responsible. Faced with those who seek false culprits, we have an essential task ahead of us. And it does not involve dismissing male discontent as someone else’s problem, much less taking it for granted or even celebrating it as a side effect that proves our success, but rather understanding it – which, of course, is not the same as justifying it – and giving it meaning. Politicizing male discontent against those at the top – switching sides, and making feminism a struggle where men and women fight together against both gender norms and their associated violence as well as capitalism and its violence is one of the main challenges of any political project that aims to successfully confront the rise of the far right.
A Structural Perspective
The refusal of certain feminisms to incorporate men supposedly stems from a fear that inequality will be obscured. It seems as though the inclusion of men as objects of patriarchy – subsumed and trapped within gender norms as well – would relativize their responsibility for the domination they exercise and inevitably lead to an underestimation of their privileges. These frameworks, however, present a paralyzing dilemma: either we are objects of power, or we have responsibility and agency. Thus, to be objects of a patriarchal structure – a role supposedly reserved for women – we must be passive victims of its mandates. Whereas to be responsible agents – a role supposedly reserved exclusively for men – we must be pure subjects, absolved of structures and free from all domination. But is this necessarily the case? Are men the agents of patriarchy but not its victims? Do men, as external architects, invent patriarchy, or are they rather part of that system, products of it, and remain bound within it?
Identitarianism produces an invasion of the moral and a regression of the political: it requires pure victims – as purely innocent as they are purely powerless – and pure perpetrators – as essentially guilty as they are apparently powerful. There is, therefore, an exaggeration of men’s individual agency – to the detriment of the weight of the structural – and a paralyzing passive victimization of women, who are stripped of responsibility and, therefore, also of room for action. The rising identity discourses tend to produce a depoliticizing effect to the extent that the structural weight of patriarchy as a system of domination disappears. That it is a system or a structure means, precisely, that all subjects who are part of it are subject to that system, subsumed, produced by it, and that, consequently, both men and women are objects of a domination.5
The radical nature of feminism as a social theory rests fundamentally on this issue: the analysis of an enormously powerful and insidious social structure of which we are all a part. Men are beneficiaries of certain privileges and, at the same time, objects of structural determination. Women, the primary victims of a structure of social inequality, may also participate in the maintenance of the gender imperatives that a patriarchal society imposes on both men and women. Contemporary feminisms that are focused on safeguarding and policing the boundaries of their political subject and need to solidify a strong identity of “women” are contributing to an essentialist sanctification of the victim – a “politics of victimhood,” in the words of Wendy Brown – where the political subject (women, supposedly the sole victims of patriarchy) is endowed with truth, purity, and goodness but deprived of any margin for emancipation. They also open the door to contemporary discourses on masculinity that restore an implausible subject endowed with a classically masculine and neoliberal autonomy, self-sufficiency, and radical independence. If holding men accountable involves turning them into subjects external to the structure and absolving them of the system of domination, we will, paradoxically, be dissolving the power of gender, the significance of patriarchy, and its structural nature.
Collective Emancipation or Reclaiming Freedom
One of the challenges facing the left in the 21st century, both in the face of emerging far-right movements and the neoliberal imaginary, is to reclaim the idea of freedom. Thus, another question is to what extent one of today’s main fronts of political struggle – feminism – is capable of successfully waging this contest. Or, to put it another way, which form of feminism can redefine the notion of freedom beyond neoliberal frameworks. The issue is that feminisms trapped in identity politics promote discourses of grievance – centered on the pain and harm suffered by victims, who are only a part of society – rather than on collective freedom. It is from this focus on a politics of the aggrieved victim – turned into the political subject – that it is considered incompatible to denounce male privileges and, at the same time, to say that feminism has good things to offer men and that it also fights against the forms of servitude that oppress them. And it is precisely those feminist discourses that always emphasize the privileges men have to lose, but never the freedoms men have to gain, that adopt frameworks shared with the reactionary stance: either them or us. This zero-sum logic, where if some win it is always at the expense of others losing, is part of the ideological corpus that sustains patriarchy. But, moreover, it is in line with an extremely limited and negative notion of freedom that redefines it within the frameworks of neoliberalism.
The struggle for the idea of freedom is possible from within feminisms but only by moving beyond essentialist and identity-based frameworks. Beyond them lies a more ambitious and revolutionary idea: that the freedom of some requires the freedom of others, and vice versa. And, once again, only in this way can we understand the emancipation promised by feminism, if we understand patriarchy as a structural problem. If the feminist struggle must confront a gender system that indoctrinates men and women differently and prescribes different behaviors and social destinies for men and women – what we call “gender” – to what extent can that system of oppression be fought without challenging all gender mandates? Could women possibly free themselves from the gender system and patriarchy if men do not also free themselves? Can men be freer without fighting alongside us against inequality?
There is nothing more mobilizing and transformative than involving everyone in a political project where reversing inequalities means working together for our own freedom. It is within this framework that far-right discourses cannot recruit men against women, where we escape the liberal logic that always views the freedom of some as limiting the freedom of others. It is within these perspectives that discourses on masculinity can represent a significant step forward in the transformation of our society. But we can only move forward on this path – with a politics that refuses to take refuge in the comfortable identity guaranteed by a feminism that is solely of and for women. Confronting the far right today – as well as the precarity and fears that sustain it – requires a firm commitment to feminism for everyone.
- Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
- Celia Amorós, La gran diferencia y sus pequeñas consecuencias para la lucha de las mujeres (Valencia, Cátedra, 2005).
- bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York: Atria Books, 2004).
- Michael Kimmel, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era (New York: Nation Books, 2013).
- This idea is excellently explained by Pierre Bourdieu in Masculine Domination (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).
This article was originally published by Jacobin Revista; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.
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