Victim feminism

Victim feminism is a term used by some liberal and libertarian feminists in the 1990s to contrast their visions of feminism with other feminists who they viewed as reinforcing the idea that women were weak and lacking in agency.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Naomi Wolf contrasts victim feminism with "power feminism". In her view, victim feminists present women as "beleaguered, fragile, intuitive angels" thus preventing women from taking responsibility for the power they actually have. Among various attributes of victim feminism, Wolfe writes that it projects violence and competitiveness onto men or their patriarchy, while disregarding these qualities in women. [7]

Colin Grant commented of Wolf's dichotomy in that the two sides of their attitude to women liabilities: while victim feminism simply dwells on them, power feminism seeks to identify them with the purpose to challenge and overcome them. Grant also mentions that Wolf herself appears to have embraced both sides: her The Beauty Myth seems to be from the victim feminism camp, but with Fire with Fire Wolf transitions to the power feminism side.[8]

This dichotomy of "victim" vs "power" was criticized for being defined too broadly so that Wolf's argument became lost. [9] In addition it lumps together diverse and radically different feminist schools, and this confusion aids antifeminists in their rhetoric. [10]

Victim feminism was described as a negative tendency in gender feminism. The more positive tendency recognizes the distinctiveness of women's experience and views (regarding sex, morality, etc.) as a positive alternative in contrast to that imposed by the "patriarchal" views of men. [11]

Naomi Wolf's Fire with Fire and Katie Roiphe's The Morning After, met with considerable media attention, were described as part of the backlash against the perceived domination of the feminist theme of victimization in the contemporary popular culture.[12]

One of Wolf's and Roiphe's arguments is that emphasis on victimization reinforces the stereotype of women being fragile and vulnerable. However it was argued that their solution in the form of "power feminism" is simplistic, because it fails to take into an account the systemic nature of women's subordination. Overall, the "victim vs. power" dichotomy was described as false and fundamentally inadequate, and leading to "problematic extremes".[12]

Gender studies scholar Rebecca Stringer writes that besides Wolf and Roiphe, other feminist authors criticized the representation of women as victims and promoted a brand of agency-affirming feminism. These include Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, Natasha Walter, and Rene Denfeld.[13] Each of these authors wrote popular books in the 1990s about victim feminism framed as calls to action like earlier works by Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer, but instead of agitating for political and economic change, they often argued in favour of the status quo.[13] According to Stringer, this trend of 1990s agitation against victim feminism is tied to the concurrent rise of neoliberalism.[13] At the same time, in her book Knowing Victims Stringer argues that these critiques of 'victim feminism' do not affirm "women's agency", but rather problematize women's capacity for agency, declare lack of women's personal responsibility, which is, in Stringer's view, akin to victim blaming. [14]

Elizabeth Schneider criticizes the dichotomy of feminism in the form of "victimhood vs. agency" from the legal standpoint, arguing that the view on women as either victims or agents is an incomplete and static. Her main points that, first, both concepts are too narrow and incomplete, and second, they are not the opposites of a spectre , they are independent, but interrelated dimensions of women's experience.[15]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Schneider, Elizabeth M. (1993). "Feminism and the False Dichotomy of Victimization and Agency". HeinOnline. p. 397. An earlier version of this essay was presented at a panel on "Victim Feminism" at the Law and Society Association 1994 Annual Meeting.
  2. ↑ Goldberg, Carole (29 December 1993). "Feminist War Is Won". Chicago Sun-Times. (subscription required (help)). Fire announces a "genderquake" - a resurgence of female political power. And it says it's time to reject the "victim" feminism that casts women as powerless objects of male malevolence in favor of a new "power" feminism that enables women
  3. ↑ Beck, Joan (23 January 1994). "Feminist Indifference to Children a Key Weakness". The Buffalo News. Buffalo, NY. (subscription required (help)). most women don't fully understand yet that a "genderquake" has occurred. The time has come to shuck "victim feminism" and its sexist whining and embrace "power feminism," the better for women to reach out and claim their fair share
  4. ↑ Pollitt, Katha (21 February 1994). "Subject to Debate". The Nation. (subscription required (help)). The current attack on "victim feminism" is partly a class phenomenon, a kind of status anxiety.
  5. ↑ Abrams, Kathryn (April 1994). "Review: Songs of Innocence and Experience: Dominance Feminism in the University". The Yale Law Journal Vol. 103, No. 6. pp. 1533–1560. If these movements are not to work at cross-purposes, feminists in both genres ought to give thought to their inter-relations: writers like Roiphe, Paglia, and Naomi Wolf might have had more difficulty making a target out of victim feminism, for example, if academic feminists had ...
  6. ↑ Raven, Arlene (Summer 1994). "Judy Chicago: The Artist Critics Love to Hate". On the Issues (magazine). Naomi Wolf, in her Fire with Fire, defines victim feminism as women seeking power "through an identity of powerlessness." Two features of victim feminism according to Wolf are: identifying with powerlessness even at the expense of taking responsibility for the power women do possess; and putting community first, hence being hostile toward individual achievement
  7. ↑ Alyson Manda Cole, The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror, pp. 50-51
  8. ↑ Colin Grant, Myths We Live by, p. 122
  9. ↑ Astrid Henry, Not My Mother's Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism, p. 28
  10. ↑ Rhonda Hammer, Antifeminism and Family Terrorism: A Critical Feminist Perspective, pp. 61, 62
  11. ↑ Astrid Henry, p. 124
  12. 1 2 Elizabeth M. Schneider, Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking, pp. 74, 75
  13. 1 2 3 Stringer, Rebecca (2014-06-20). Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times. Routledge. p. 17–18. ISBN 9781134746019.
  14. ↑ Stringer, p. 20
  15. ↑ ELIZABETH M. SCHNEIDER, "FEMINISM AND THE FALSE DICHOTOMY OF VICTIMIZATION AND AGENCY", 1993
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