"Essential" Feminism

I agree with what Meghan Murphy said about Roxanne Gay's much-blogged about article about their being an "essential" feminism -- a sort of easy definition born from a lot of stereotypes about feminism -- and it makes me irritable, too, to think that the idea of "bad feminist" is still, in a lot of women's minds, someone who likes pink or weddings or babies or anything that is supposedly anathema to being a "good" feminist. Murphy provides a better all-purpose definition, I think:

"The point of feminism is to first recognize that a system called patriarchy exists, that it impacts the lives of women in a particular way, then to challenge and work towards an end to that system. Of course this can mean different things to different people, but the fact that, as individual feminists, we may or may not like dresses and makeup is not reason to beat ourselves up or feel ashamed. It certainly doesn’t mean we are ‘bad feminists’."

The truth is I struggle with the feminist label myself, but not because I shop at Sephora and still watch Project Runway. It's because I'm not sure feminism wants me, or someone like me. Feminism has moved from a grassroots cause to something more academic and alienating to a lot of women. If there is an "essential" feminism, it's one that's largely white, young, educated, and middle-class. The more superficial problems of feminism, its image as a cabal of hairy-legged man-haters, shows how far we haven't come if we haven't been able to yet transcend that stereotype. And I should point out that there's nothing wrong with being that kind of feminist either. Most of them will tell you that it's not individual men they hate, but the systems in place that privilege maleness.

Feminism is far from perfect. It's just sad that we're still fighting a bunch of timeworn stereotypes rather than its very real exclusivity problems.