By ZOYA PATEL
This piece was originally published at Lip magazine, and is republished here with full permission.
There is a problem with modern feminism. This will come as no surprise to anyone, considering all I ever hear about feminism are the various problems associated with it. Whether people are debating the true meaning of the word “misogyny”, or whether or not feminists are humourless bitches, or whether or not we should shave our legs, or whether or not men can be feminists, basically all that is ever discussed about feminism are its perceived problems.
At some point in the last two decades, the focus of feminism has been drawn away from its true aims as a movement and into a prolonged identity politics debate that detracts largely from what I consider to be the point of it all.
The big questions used to be about tangible, practical things – should women have the right to vote, to the contraceptive pill, to equal pay? Now, the “big” questions are introspective, self-absorbed questions that result in nothing productive, like ‘do women even need feminism anymore’? Is Beyonce a ‘real’ feminist? Is Tony Abbott a feminist? What constitutes modern feminism? What is post-feminism?
Frankly, I don’t care who calls themselves a feminist, so long as important feminist work continues to occur. Lately, I feel as if something has gone wrong, that we’ve been driven drastically off course by all of this soul-seeking. Real issues continue to face women globally, but the issues that get the most airplay are those that have the least impact.