What is Feminism?

What is feminism?
 
Feminism has been integral to my life and livability, to my political consciousness, to my work as an astrologer, an artist, and an academic. And yet it is also a contested term. There has never been a single, monolithic consensus as to the definition of feminism, so I want to share some of the definitions and descriptions of feminism that have been most important to my own:
 
bell hooks defines feminism as “the movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.”
-bell hooks, Feminist is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), viii.
 
Judith Butler writes, “For the most part, feminist theory has assumed that there is some existing identity, understood through the category of women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is pursued … Recently, this prevailing conception of the relation between feminist theory and politics has come under challenge from within feminist discourse. The very subject of women is no longer understood in stable or abiding terms. There is a great deal of material that not only questions the viability of ‘the subject’ as the ultimate candidate for representation or, indeed, liberation, but there is very little agreement after all on what it is that constitutes, or ought to constitute, the category of women.”
-Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 2.
 
Angela Y. Davis writes, “Feminism involves so much more than gender equality. And it involves so much more than gender. Feminism must involve a consciousness of capitalism … It has to involve a consciousness of capitalism, and racism, and colonialism, and postcolonialities, and ability, and more genders than we can even imagine, and more sexualities than we ever thought we could name … feminist methodologies impel us to explore connections that are not always apparent. And they drive us to inhabit contradictions and discover what is productive in these contradictions. Feminism insists on methods of thought and action that urge us to think about things together that appear to be separate, and to disaggregate things that appear to naturally belong together.”
-Angela Y. Davis, “Feminism and Abolition: Theories and Practices for the Twenty-First Century,” Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books: 2016), 104.
 
Marquis Bey writes, “Our feminism is inextricable from being able to live otherwise” (209).
Bey also writes, “Feminism, which is to say trans feminism—which is, more to say black feminism—is an agential and intentional undoing of regulative gender norms and, further, the creative deconstructing of ontological racial and gender assault; a kind of gendered deconstruction, an unraveling that unstitches governant means of subjectivation; feminism as the reiterative un/gendered quotidian process of how not to be governed and given from without. That is, feminism marks here the vitiation of imposed racial and gendered ontologies that then demands an abolitionist modality of encountering the racialized gendered world” (3).
-Marquis Bey, Black Trans Feminism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022).
 
Alexis Pauline Gumbs teaches us that “Black feminism is all about interconnection. Right, so Black feminism is a political imperative, it is an ethic, it is an intellectual framework, for me it’s also a spiritual practice, that says that we are simultaneously all that we are, and we are facing multiple oppressions as who we are. Right? That really is the genesis of Black feminism—in the tradition of Black feminism that I follow and really am created by.”
-Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Episode 3.1 – Pseudo-Objective Scientific Language and Black Feminist Lessons from marine Mammals with Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs,” 99 Questions Podcast, 20 April 2023.
 
Roxane Gay writes, “We don’t all have to believe in the same feminism. Feminism can be pluralistic so long as we respect the different feminisms we carry with us, so long as we give enough of a damn to try to minimize the fractures among us.”
-Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014), xiii.
 
While bell hooks offers, “You know that … I mean, one thing that, this is something that’s been on my mind lately, and it’s been disturbing me, is that, if feminism is all things to all people, then what is it? I mean, how do we locate it as a radical political movement in our lives if everybody just makes of it … which doesn’t mean that we should demonize, but we do have to be clear about: what are the boundaries? What is the line that you cross that you can in fact say ‘I’m a feminist’?”
-bell hooks, “bell hooks and Laverne Cox in a Public Dialogue at the New School,” YouTube.com, October 13, 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oMmZIJijgY.
 
So then, we might say that feminist is a movement to end oppression—including but not limited to sexism and sexist exploitation.
 
As such, feminism has historically been initiated by the interests of women—while the category of women and who is represented by such interests has been an open question that cannot be answered in any final, conclusive, and comprehensive way.

Feminism involves more than gender or gender equality. It involves a consciousness of capitalism, racism, colonialism, ablism, and other intersecting forms of domination and oppression.

Feminism impels us to explore connections that are not always apparent, thinking about things together that appear to be separate, and disaggregating things that appear to naturally belong together.

Feminism is inextricable from being able to live otherwise, a movement toward living in ways that are no longer constrained by regulative norms, demanding an abolitionist modality of encountering the racialized gendered world.

Feminism—particularly Black feminism—is about interconnectedness. It is a political imperative, an ethic, an intellectual framework, and a spiritual practice that insists on recognizing all that we are, as well as the ways we are facing multiple oppressions as who we are.

Feminism is pluralistic—we can affirm that there has always been more than one feminism, while also maintaining that feminism is a radical political movement, and if feminism is all things to all people, then what actually is it?

This is not an exhaustive account of what feminism might mean. But when I talk about feminism, these are some of the perspectives and priorities with which I am aligned.