It isn’t “taking your power back” and it sure as he’ll isn’t feminist.
If the very structure in which woman have been deemed into two categories of either a subservient housewife or a sexulized objects, to claim you have now the regained power by merely consenting to be used for solely male purposes, is not empowering.
You are free as any individual to do what you want and make your decisions but can we stop with the mental gymnastics and double think logic of turning every choice into a feminist choice. Because as long as you participate in a system which devalues you and deems you as less than if you exert your choice outside of these two categories, you cannot claim that there even is a free choice.
You aren’t “empowerd” by chosing the safe way. You are merely following the established system.
There is a diffrence between your personal life choices, which your are free to do and applying an ideology to it which is meant to dismantle the very system which has robbed woman of any agency outside of these two categories.
Stop bastardizing ideologies and movements to deal with your personal cognitive dissonance.
Comments
Reminds me of a few years ago when it was apparently fashionable to wear bondage gear. Girls barely out of their teens wearing corsets and tight leather because someone told them it was “empowering”, no love it 3C outside and you;re clearly freezing cold
Very well said. Just because you’re a feminist and you made a choice does not make it automatically a feminist choice. And that’s fine – we’re all different people with different experiences, backgrounds, comfort levels, etc. The pretending is what makes it annoying.
I don’t agree.
What is feminism if it isn’t about choice?
Is it really feminist to call other women sluts with the euphemism of “appealing to the male gaze”?
Are lesbians appealing to the male gaze? Do lipstick/femme lesbians dress for the male gaze? Are they looked at by lesbians with the male gaze?
I don’t think it’s feminist to shame another woman for her choices. Or to revoke her feminist card because she dressed too slutty.
The entire thing sadly reminds me of purity culture and the component of benevolent sexism.
I think feminism is about women’s liberation, and right to choose. Choosing how she dresses, choosing what she wants to do, choosing how she lives her life.
I don’t think it’s feminist to shame another woman’s authentic choice. I don’t think it’s feminist to insult her conscious agency and authenticity by appealing to some unconscious socialization and “internalized male gaze” which is somehow only present when a woman is too sexual or revealing.
I spent a few hours the other day reading up on Feminist Chauvinist Pigs and Raunch Culture (levy 2005). While interesting, I’m still not convinced. If a woman is feeling pressured to be more revealing than she’s comfortable, ok that isn’t feminist.
But to take away the agency and label a woman’s choice inauthentic just because she chose to be too slutty, that isn’t feminist.
It’s empowering to make a choice solely because it’s what you want, without consideration for oppressive norms. We can’t really know what’s in a person’s head to judge their motivations. We can’t really say which it is for the artist; we can only say how it makes us feel. There should be space for people to say it makes them feel empowered and there should be space for people to say it makes them feel objectified, and we shouldn’t really be dividing into camps over this, should we? Infighting over who does or doesn’t like an album cover does more to support the patriarchy than the photo itself, doesn’t it?
The photo isn’t feminist or anti-feminist, it’s just risque. The songs on the album can have either a feminist message or not, and we can either like them or not. We can find them empowering or not, and hopefully discuss it without drawing lines in the sand.
agree, there’s nothing empowering about trying to be the best servant
Yep, exactly this.
Having values means making value judgments. If every choice a woman makes is somehow feminist, then feminism is meaningless. Like, this is kind of a basic facet of categorization—what use is a category so broad it encompasses everything?
We all make regressive choices sometimes. They are in fact broadly incentivized by our culture! It’s not groundbreaking to follow the status quo. If it makes you happy, cool, but let’s not pretend it’s something it isn’t.
Like, if I tell someone to do something and they say, “well I’m going to do EXACTLY what you said to do except for MY reasons because I CHOOSE to!” I’m not going to feel particularly challenged or slighted by that, I’m just going to shrug and go, “okay, whatever, as long as it’s done.”
>as long as you participate in a system which devalues you and deems you as less than if you exert your choice outside of these two categories, you cannot claim that there even is a free choice
I’m a lesbian. By this logic I should stop participating in society in general because in my country (USA) we are devalued, demeaned, and actively discriminated against. As a woman I don’t have full bodily autonomy. As a lesbian I’m waiting for the supreme court to revoke my ability to get married. As a member of the queer community I am watching an absolutely sickening assault on the rights of my trans family across the entire country.
Attacking a woman for not being feminist enough because she’s “participating” in a system which oppresses her isn’t harming the oppressive system, it’s attacking a fellow victim of the oppressive system. Stop doing the patriarchy’s job for it and save your critiques for people who are actually working to strip away our rights.
I don’t really understand why so many women like to use the word “empowering”. I’ve never heard men use the word to justify their choices.
I agree. I support free choice, but not all choices are feminist just because a woman makes it. That kind of rhetoric is part of why marginalized groups have trouble policing their own internalized isms. It’s the “we’re all victims of the system, thus we cannot perpetuate the system ourselves in various ways” and it just isn’t true. That’s like saying, well I can’t be ableist because I’m queer. And telling me something I do is ableist, is homophobic.
I think one of the biggest traps we’ve fallen into is treating feminism like a matter of personal branding—like it’s about how you feel about your choice. But feminism was never meant to be about individual feelings. It’s a collective movement. It’s meant to ask: who benefits from this system, and why are certain kinds of femininity constantly rewarded while others are erased?
It’s not about whether one woman feels empowered by posing a certain way or liking a certain aesthetic. It’s about why those are the dominant expressions of “empowerment” to begin with. We have to stop pretending that individual desire exists in a vacuum, untouched by the systems we live in. Most of what we call “empowerment” today has been carefully shaped by industries that profit from women performing sexiness, compliance, and marketable rebellion.
And that’s not about blaming the women. It’s about refusing to applaud a system that gives us only two roles to play: the perfect submissive or the perfect sex object—and then gaslights us into thinking it’s freedom when we choose between them.
The idea that “everyone should just do what makes them feel good” only works if we pretend patriarchy doesn’t exist. But it does. And it punishes women who step outside those narrow lanes. If feminism is going to mean anything again, we need to stop focusing on whether one woman felt powerful and start asking whether all women are becoming freer.
You’re not a bad person if you enjoy things that happen to align with patriarchal norms. But let’s be honest about what those norms are—and let’s stop treating any critique of them as a personal attack.
This isn’t about you. It’s about all of us.
Excited to see someone decide not to reply in this thread, but create their own so that their voice is the first everyone hears. Oh wait hey
And yet, the “all female choices are legitimate choices/criticism is bad” mentality seems prevalent on this very sub
I’m so glad we are finally talking about this. It’s really infuriating and sad that young girls are “choosing” to be sexual objects and then branding it with feminism. You’re still giving men exactly what they want, whether you decide to call it something else.
Women don’t have power as a group so they sell us this watered down bullshit ’empowerment’
yeah I still don’t understand how handing a man a leash to walk you around with is empowering you, especially because we always forget to discuss the mans perspective…no matter whether she consented or not, a man is getting pleasure from treating a woman like a dog. And we’re supposed to be cool with that?