Second Thoughts on the Death of Feminism
by Elaine Storkey
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 64
Winter 1999

Introduction

There are those arguing that feminism has simply reached the end of its natural life span. Erica Jong calls this "the best time for women the world has ever known". The 'war' has been won. But if that's so, why aren't third world women joining in the victory celebrations?

FOR MANY PEOPLE, FEMINISM has long been on a life-support system: going through the motions of breathing, but in all probability dead. The debate is less about the evidence of life than about what has killed it. Cynics insist that it was only a matter of time before we all saw through its pretensions to vitality. Its moaning about oppression has slowly subsided as it dawns on us that, far from being victims, women are in control. They deserve what they get.

Slowly, a new orthodoxy has been emerging, promoted by television and tabloid newspapers alike, which ply us with stories about husband-beaters, boardroom viragos, female child-abusers and mothers who abandon their families. But those who are keen to push this view seem oblivious to the statistics: the wealth of evidence that violence is overwhelmingly a male problem is somehow just ignored. Apparently, it does not matter that no one ever turned up to claim a bed at the first shelter for battered men opened in England in 1992, whereas for 25 years women of all backgrounds have been crowding into refuges. Ten brutal women, it seems, outweigh a thousand brutal men.

The figures for child desertion, which show that the problem is, again, overwhelmingly male, are also ignored. The number of children abandoned by their mothers is small compared with the million-plus who have no contact with their fathers, and receive no financial support. Yet the opposite view is gaining currency. Feminism gets the blame, and its imminent demise is welcomed. We must, it seems, try to repair the terrible damage it has done.

Other observers are more charitable. They argue that feminism has simply reached the end of its natural life span. Its vision was lofty¾to rid society of inequality and prejudice¾but it has achieved what it set out to do. So, we must live not in the past but in the present, in which women can choose their own styles and claim their freedoms¾and give the old movement a decent burial. Others still are unsure whether to mourn its passing or not. Postmodernists sympathise with its aims but are sceptical about its assumptions. Feminism, they say, has long been moribund, for it belongs to modernity, that dim and distant time before we discovered Lyotard's "incredulity towards metanarratives".

The full text of this article is available at: Zadok Shop