Our individual fashion choices communicate a lot about us
Being feminist means more than just organizing under the singular goal of “smashing the patriarchy.”
It also means understanding and acknowledging the ways that race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability, global location, and citizenship or national identity affect how patriarchy impacts each of us differently.
Funny how it’s only and always feminism that is told to be about everybody else’s concerns as well as women’s. Funny how it’s only and always women who aren’t allowed to have a movement that’s about their own subordination and othering. Funny how it’s only and always women who are constantly offering up their masochistic refusal to say their own movement is about their own oppression.
And what’s all this preliminary self-abnegation in aid of? A po-faced discussion of fashion choices. That’s Everyday Feminism for you – so “intersectional” and so frivolous right at the same time.
It’s no secret: Our individual fashion choices communicate a lot about us – both intentionally and unintentionally – from our gender identities and class backgrounds, to our personal beliefs and subcultural affiliations.
Our personal fashion choices also affect the people around us deeply – both intentionally and unintentionally as well.
Spoiler: all this heavy breathing is about camouflage clothes. Don’t wear them, because soldiers kill brown people, and that’s not intersectional. That’s what being feminist means.
I’m not at all sure that what someone wears affects anyone around them. That’s like blaming rape victims because of what they wore. Different people like and want to wear different kinds of clothes. Why isn’t that okay? Why isn’t that enough? Why, for example, can’t a man wear dresses and high heels and makeup if he wants to? That whole foof about Hillary Clinton’s gunny sack $12,000 Armani jacket was nuts. As long as she’s wearing something, it doesn’t matter what it is; it’s the substance of her policy positions that counts. What she wears doesn’t affect that in any way that I can see.
This appears to translate to: ‘draw speculative conclusions from someone’s clothing.’
Unless I am wearing something like a white hooded cloak, or a political slogan to indicate my stance on something, fuck right off.
Why don’t we just call it “equalism”? /s
Also, don’t wear camo because it’s tacky and godawful, “intersectionality” be damned…
This is a particularly egregious example of the throat-clearing of modern liberal apologia, yes, but that has little to do with the ridiculousness of the article’s premise. And while it’s worth guarding against that apologia being turned into a weapon against women as a group, that doesn’t invalidate the need to keep the concepts shorthanded as “intersectionality” in mind—namely that treating a given group as homogeneous, or treating a particular example from that group as representative of everyone in that group, can do real harm to people in the group who face different challenges than the “generic” member.
Women as a class face all kinds of barriers simply because they’re women in a misogynistic society, yes, but those barriers don’t look the same for all women, and strategies for breaking down one kind of barrier aren’t necessarily going to work to break down other kinds. That’s the core behind the idea of intersectionality. That it is poorly articulated or poorly applied doesn’t mean it’s worth abandoning–it means it’s worth articulating and applying it better.
My favorite camo t-shirt of all time said (in white letters on camo background): Shhh! You can’t see me!
Why don’t we talk about *why* it is bad that fashion’s revelation of our class and gender “affects other people”, i.e., allows them to stereotype and discriminate against others? That’s something would could do instead of pretending that what *is* is what *should be* and then playing fashion police on women for not prioritizing others when they get dressed.
But Everyday Anti-Feminism Masquerading as Feminism isn’t going to take the feminist route to fashion critique.
Blood Knight #3 … I dunno. I’m secretly (well, not so secretly now, but it’ll be okay if you don’t tell anyone) — where was I? — I’m secretly drawn to the blue camo patterns. If I got up the courage to wear it, I bet it would deeply affect the people around me.
“This means not only showing up at your local Women Take Back the Night rally, but also committing to advocate against imperialist campaigns, acts of colonial violence, and military occupations of any kind.”
“I’ll say it again: As feminists, it’s important that we oppose imperialist war, colonial violence, and military occupations of any kind.”
“As feminists, it’s important that we oppose borders, the police state, and all forms of institutionalized racism.”
Firstly, why does this person think that she can gatekeep who is allowed to be a feminist? Secondly, would she oppose military intervention to prevent IS from spreading throughout the middle-east. She seems to be saying that we must oppose all military action. As well as borders, apparently. If you don’t agree with the removal of all national border, you are not a proper feminist.
I notice EF doesn’t have comments enabled, which is a shame because its a website that could do with some healthy scepticism and reasoned debate.
The suborning of ‘progressive’ efforts into cynical support for bogus ‘communities.’ Its been around a long time. All those feminists wearing keffiyahs in solidarity with gangsters like Arafat, Hamas etc.
Credulity, and short attention spans, are not ‘intersectional.’ If anything, they show the same kind of chowder-headed thinking that Trump’s sentences do.
Quixote @8, “I’m secretly drawn to the blue camo ostterns”, have you seen that the Navy is replacing blue camo with the more standard camo?
Wasn’t there already a name for a combination anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homo & transphobic movement before anyone even thought of “intersectional feminism”. I thought it was just called social justice.