Choice Feminism 101
Sit with THIS and tell me you didn't just get a boot in the gut:
"Choice Feminism is liberation in the eye of the beholder, celebrating the fulfillment of women’s personal desires over the dismantling of harmful hierarchies and ideologies. Author bell hooks once described feminism as 'a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.'
Choice Feminism isn’t that. It’s the belief that every decision has equal value so long as a woman makes it.
If a woman decides to do something, it must be feminist.
Choice Feminism flattens or obscures the complex factors that curate and curtail women’s existences: sexism, racism, occupational segregation, late-stage capitalism, economic inequality, and more. It seeks instead to make women feel empowered by will alone, a simple and intoxicating notion. In practice, Choice Feminism is too often about safeguarding privilege under the guise of individual liberty.”
- Seyward Darby, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism
YEAH. The last time I got slapped with a truth salmon that hard was when I read a tweet that said “radical independence is a trauma response,” and yes, I have taken legal action against both that Twitter account and Seyward Darby. You’ll be hearing from my attorneys from the firm of Oof, Yikes, and Why Would You Say That To Me, Esquire.
Choice Feminism isn’t new, but it is hitting me extra hard today. Maybe it’s a new Presidential administration that’s giving my “RED ALERT” button finger a break, and giving me more time to think about who we’ve always been, really. Maybe it’s the goddamn pandemic that’s widening racial gaps in school, work, class, health care, life and death.
If you’re a woman, and you picked it yourself, then that choice is feminist.
Hmmmmmm. Let’s slap this idea under a microscope.
I see the appeal. There’s something rebellious and empowering about saying, “I choose NOT to shave my armpits because I choose NOT to care about a patriarchal notion of what sexy armpits should look like.”
“Choice” is a big word in feminism. Many of my formative feminist experiences took place on the moving walkway of patriarchy, the one I was born on and made me believe there was really only one way to be a girl, then a woman, then a wife, then a mother... When I choose, daily, to get off that ride? Hell yes, that’s liberation. Isn’t liberation feminist?
Not to mention, “Choice for 800, the answer there: my body, my this.” Abortion and reproductive freedom are key gateways to young feminists. I remember when I first realized that I may someday be in the position where I’d have this conversation:
Me: I want to do this with my body.
Him: Not in this state, missy.
Me: Sorry who the fuck are you now?
It was a buzzing, animal, visceral rage-filled thrill.
I see the appeal of owning personal choices as feminist acts. I often think about the idea that when I choose not to hate myself, that’s an act of rebellion. I see the appeal. But we put this idea under a microscope, so let’s look a little harder.
Why is Choice Feminism appealing? Yes, it flies in the face of individual dehumanization, which isn’t nothing. It’s a lot, actually, to the individual being dehumanized.
It’s straightforward, empowering, and yields immediate, Instagrammable results.
But I think the real appeal to Choice Feminism isn’t the individual reclamation of dignity. It’s the ability to wrestle with simple, personal oppression, and feel like you’ve beaten it, without ever wrestling with the far stickier questions of complex, population-wide oppression.
Choice Feminism is the $50k private plane I charter to get myself to a clinic in Switzerland where they’re giving out Covid vaccines to jillionaires. I saved my life. My life is female. Does that make my choice feminist? (The answer there: No.)
Choice Feminism reaffirms the value of the individual, without ever asking that individual to interrogate the harm they may be doing to other people, which makes Choice Feminism is a self-help framework (and a myopic one), not a social justice framework. (In that private plane analogy, Choice Feminism says “Good for you, girl! #SelfCare!” while social justice focused feminism would say, “You could have spent that $50k supporting individuals, families, and small businesses in your community while you just stayed home and wore a mask though.”)
When you choose on a ballot, with your wallet, your time and energy and education - all those things can be feminist, and they’re damn sure healthy ways to live. But one person’s choice toward success and happiness is not feminism. Feminism is for everybody. Feminism is the understanding not just of how patriarchy hurts me, but how I hurt others. Shit’s complicated, people. Anyone telling you that feminism is as simple as a declaration of independence is selling a very bad book.
Not to mention, as Seyward Darby does, that Choice Feminism makes the assumption that feminists have, uh, CHOICES in the matter of their oppression. That’s a Level Four OOF right there. Sorry, did I pick patriarchy? Did I though? (You should hear my voice getting higher there.) Oh, so you’re saying if I, like, DECLARE MYSELF NOT OPPRESSED, I can just like “come out” as “post-patriarchy”? Is that a thing? Is it, though?
And more importantly, can people everywhere make the same choices that I can make? Can they, though? And if they can’t—because of financial, educational, physical, professional, or social constraints they ALSO did not pick—does Choice Feminism mark them as “not feminist”? Therefore making them complicit in their own oppression in the eyes of women who have the privilege of choice? And is that…. okay? Is it, though?
I totally started as a Choice Feminist, by the way. My toddler "You can't make me!" morphed into "I get to choose for myself!" which I applied to "My body, my choice!" And hey, it is my body, and it is my choice. The slogan speaks the truth.
The place where I started to go off the rails is when I applied "I get to choose for myself" to a larger framework than my corporeal form.
"My society, my choice," feels like a Level Seven YIKES for a couple of reasons - first... is it your society? Is it, though? Do you even want it to be?
And if it is... why is it your society? And, like, should it be, though?
And when I say “My society, my choice,” am I saying I get to choose how other people experience racism? Ableism? Transphobia? Fatphobia? Do I though?
“My society, my choice,” describes one choice and one choice alone: the choice to opt out of responsibility for the very world you choose not to inhabit.
Because Choice Feminism is an escape hatch. It’s a lifeboat with reserved seating. That lifeboat is making a helluva getaway from the ship in distress. It’s leaving thousands of souls behind to bail out the rising water, and leaving words on the wind: “I choose freedom!” So feminist.
It strikes me that Choice Feminism is a gateway ideology to multiple paths.
It can lead practitioners deeper into genuine feminism where they'll develop curiosity and commitment toward the movement bell hooks described, to end sexist exploitation and oppression...
or it can lead practitioners deeper into white supremacist entitlement, patriarchal power adjacency, victim-blaming, and willful ignorance of the hard-wired social systems that will never, ever ever ever allow any of us true freedom.
Think of it this way:
Choice Feminism is the day you spend volunteering at the Food Bank.
After you spend that day handing out food, you can go deeper into the community, learn more about the political and social forces that push so many families into food insecurity; understand the way food insecurity radiates into education, housing, health care, employment, and every other metric of stability; create relationships and work toward addressing those political and social forces to create a positive change...
… or you could go on a philanthropy tourist trip to Africa, spend two days digging a well and four days on safari, and make your FB profile pic a selfie with a brown child. Feel proud of yourself at the expense of real progress or systemic change, committed only to your own good feelings.
One of these paths is a lot more work.
One of these paths forces you to reckon with uncomfortable realities and make costly changes to your life.
One of these paths may cost you your sense of innate goodness.
One of these paths will last for the rest of your life.
One of these paths leads to genuine freedom.
One of these paths is feminist.