Feminism b/w Preferences and Politics.
Feminism is a heterogeneous movement that works through different ideologies, perspectives, goals, and strategies, all towards ensuring that women’s welfare is increased. Some of these approaches are based more on the individual, while others focus on collective advocacy.
However, with the rise of liberal feminism, a subsidiary which has been termed choice feminism has begun gaining traction too. Choice feminism then focuses on a more individual-centric perspective of feminism by arguing that individuals can make choices between the different options available to them in order to empower themselves.
Choice feminism then looks like choosing between options regardless of their political and social implications, despite the fact that making that specific choice will result in hampering the cause of feminism or in endorsing patriarchal ideals. For example, practices like wearing makeup, or shaving body hair, which have been associated with patriarchal processes and how they create unrealistic beauty standards for women, are sanctioned under choice feminism, simply because the woman is choosing to wear makeup.
It then becomes important for us to investigate what choice means in this context, and think about if the choices that we make are indeed a function of our agency and autonomy. Here, it is important to understand agency as the extent to which women have the ability to choose between different options to the same degree, in the absence of any external influence that directly or indirectly coerces them to choose a specific alternative. Therefore, choice feminism functions on the premise that women are empowered beings who enjoy autonomy in present society to make informed choices for themselves without facing any repercussions.
However, this is far from the truth, because making a choice is not necessarily a reflection of one’s agency. This is because choices are always made within the limits of specific social contexts, such that there are always external forces pressurizing one to choose a specific option or else face consequences for choosing a different option.
Therefore, it becomes important for us to reinvestigate choice feminism and understand how it reinforces patriarchal values: for example, women need to look beautiful at all times. More importantly, given that women are not a monolith, but exist in different social groups, it is important for us to bear how women from socioeconomically vulnerable backgrounds have no avenues for exercising choice.
Choice feminism can therefore be posited as a way to delude women into becoming comfortable with making patriarchally informed choices. Instead of therefore looking at feminism with an individual-centric framework to maximize preferences, we need to look at it as a political collective, working for the total emancipation of all women.
