Aimen Bucha
Introduction
Feminism like any other political movement stands at a precipice where there are hard decisions to make and distinct paths to choose. Over the years we have seen the strengthening of capital with one most evident result: co-option of political movements and their subsequent depoliticisation. Feminism too has been affected and morphed to serve capital’s agenda through the variations of ‘corporate feminism’ or ‘lean-in feminism’. These modalities configure feminism’s success as women gaining more power or in other words more women captains steering the ship of capitalism by exemplifying women CEOs driving cut throat competition on the backs of men and women workers or women politicians driving the imperial agenda with an iron fist ordering drone attacks and supporting iron-clad borders.
At the other end of the spectrum we have a feminist politics that finds its roots in calling-out an oppressive economic structure and tying in that oppression with the one brought forth by the patriarchy. These two distinct voices carve two distinct paths. At one end there are those who are building feminism as the handmaiden of capitalism. They see equal opportunity of domination by ruling class men and women as a win for gender equality. In sharp contrast to this liberal, corporate and lean-in feminism we see one which is trying to nurture roots that find themselves grounded in the how oppression is multi-faceted and propagated by an insidious nexus of capitalism and patriarchy (Luxton 2016). This feminism questions working conditions, unpaid carework, war, terrorism, borders, prisons, and much more. It finds its roots in socialist feminism with most movements proudly bearing that label while others not bearing the label but still fighting for similar goals.1
These two choices present a fork in the road where we are pressed to decide which path we choose, while bearing in mind that the path of corporatism might mean gains for particular women but ultimately for the collective it leads to the destruction of this planet and the erosion of our humanity. To mindfully make this choice we are confronted with the need to have open and empathetic discussions, create revolutionary feminist scholarship, and build bridges with those who stand on the fence about participating in politics. We need to be honest with ourselves as political workers that individualism propelled by capitalism has infiltrated our souls limiting our imagination and making revolutionary political work seem like a utopian fallacy.
To address this fork in the road and possibly think through what lies ahead, this essay situates the various strands of feminism between liberal feminism and anticapitalist feminism while briefly highlighting the Pakistani context within that discussion. This discussion by no means represents an exhaustive list (I leave out key debates around sexwork, pornography, queer theory, and many more), as it is not possible to encapsulate the entire essence of the feminist movement and its politics in a few pages.
Feminism: The Liberal vs. The AntiCapitalist
Capitalist Co-Option of Feminism
These two opposite ends of the Feminist spectrum base their fight on two opposing principles: (a) the liberal end in the simplest words believes that in the current capitalist mode of production if women are in key positions of social, economic and/or political power then that translates as a win for women and a win for feminism putting us on the path of gender and sexual equality; while (b) the anticapitalist end recognises that the current mode of production is a death sentence for this planet and for all human faculties, and any political agenda needs to address plummeting living standards, emboldened racism (on the basis of race and ethnicity), impending ecological disaster, and a sexual crises (increasing violence, repression of non-heteronormative existence, increased alienation-driven loneliness etc.).
Historically we have seen feminism grapple with these issues as it has developed its theory and politics.
The movement has worked towards self-critique and forged newer ways ahead. I will be talking about the Euro-American development of feminist politics while discussing the varying frameworks within feminism. We see feminism emerge as a struggle to secure legislative civil rights for women demanding: the right to vote, access to education and the professions, to have legal rights of property ownership, rights in marriage and divorce and so on. The Suffragette movement across Britain and America is hailed as the first political step in launching the ‘women’s movement’. However, these struggles largely negate colonial existences of these nation states and the currents of a changing mode of economic production and focused on securing rights within the system (Mohanty 2003).2 Moreover, this Euro-American view negates the women’s participation in anti-colonial struggles in our part of the world and how the brown women of the subcontinent were speaking against the imperial rule of both white men and women. Furthermore, while this literature and subsequent political action takes place in the late nineteenth century in Britain and America, we see Bolshevik women coming up with literature of another sorts. We see the likes of Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollontai among others speak about not only women’s place in the communist revolution but also taking leads in defining communist politics and modalities of the revolution itself to emancipate the working class from the clutches of the bourgeoisie. Kollontai’s work in the early twentieth century focused on discussing the sexual crisis – tying in materiality with sexuality. Her work recognises the relationship between eroding intimacy and capitalist mode of production while also discussing sexual mores as dictated by patriarchal gender roles. Her work helped forge communist theories of love and sexuality which propelled sexuality out of the arena of being a ‘frivolous issue’ by expanding its meaning to be beyond the act of intercourse and including questions around the family, care work, chastity, sex work, and violence (Kollontai 1921).3 The voices of Bolshevik feminist theorists and political workers have been largely pushed back by the neoliberal academia that has over the decades worked to obfuscate, if not co-opt revolutionary ideas.
Therefore, we see that the conversation around women’s bodies and sexuality is largely credited to the advent of radical feminist in 1960s-70s in America. This politics had an infamous slogan: ‘the personal is political’. For feminists of this era the key site of struggle was the female body itself – its representation and the meanings attached to the bald fact of biological difference. Issues such as the family, abortion, sexuality, the sexual division of labour, rape and domestic violence became central. These feminists were participating much more in the economic arena and therefore questioning their gendered existence in their homes much more. Black feminists intervened in this scholarship and politics to call in to attention institutional racism and its relationship to capitalism and patriarchy (in the American context). These feminists challenge the dominant voices of white women in the radical feminist movement by bringing their attention to intersectionality, defined as situating women’s oppression within different intersecting marginalised identities; for example a Black working-class woman in America is not only disenfranchised because she is a woman, she is subjugated because she is a woman who is Black and belongs to the working-class (Crenshaw 1991).4 This line of thinking also marked a shift for Marxist feminists as they moved away from classic Marxist principles to a consideration of how gendered relations could be entered into a class-based analysis of power.
The affect of the radical feminist movement can be seen in Pakistan as well where during Zia’s regime we see ‘the personal is political’ becoming a key mode of analysis and political action for the women’s movement in Pakistan as they went on to challenge draconian laws that disadvantaged women by maintaining the sanctity of the private sphere and laying the burden of proof on women in cases of rape, while also making them culpable to being punished for zina. This movement oriented its focus towards demanding rights for women within the legislative ambit to bring into question the increased amalgamation of the state and the mosque. It grappled with the question of Islam and secularism as the Zia regime imposed hudood laws based on a disputed interpretation of Islam (among feminists as well). Even though the movement of the 80s recognized the importance of pushing for a secular agenda and most socialist feminists today agree with this stance, the challenge still remains that how does one engage with the masses in Pakistan without addressing religion, and that too especially when it comes to the rights of women. The movement was critical about the class question, recogninsing that most of the lead activists were from affluent backgrounds, however this mindfulness in many ways failed to translate itself on the ground in the shape of a coherent politics that looked at the intersecting realities of class, gender and sexuality. We have seen legislative gains from the women’s movement and also the possibility of feminist politics in our context; however, in my opinion we are yet to see a coherent and longstanding feminist movement in Pakistan that looks to dismantle structures rather than work within them.
As the capitalist pogrom progressed and we saw global deradicalisation of politics and subsequent depoliticisation of younger people post 90s era we saw a more insidious face of liberal feminism crop up. I say more insidious because it completely abandons the critique of capitalism and a struggle for social justice and strictly focuses its attention on individual expression, culture, the struggle for power and careerism. Hegemonic capitalist forces that controlled mainstream media and social media in an increasingly globalised world propelled this feminism. Therefore, we see its narrative as widespread and something that any revolutionary feminist political worker needs to counter continuously within and outside of leftist political circles.
It’s not just an analysis of corporate mores or the insides of the workspace that this feminism pushes back; it is also about the culture of individual advancement it propagates taking the political bite out of feminist politics. The advent of the ‘social-media celebrity’ is one repercussion of this co-option where words on social-media are given more space and credence than on-ground political work. Feminism becomes confused with the ascent of particular women and the particularities of these women too are defined by capitalism and patriarchy, while regressive policies are hidden in the cloak of progressive vernacular. The most concrete example of this we see is how women are encouraged to join the workforce and work for capital but at the same time are also edged into being the ‘homemakers’ and the exciting yet docile sexual concubines of male partners. Global popular culture and the advertisement industry is built around these subliminal messages where women are shown as confident and bold for stepping into the capitalist world while also shown as demure and image-conscious to assuage the demands of patriarchy.
Moreover we see the advent of another modality of feminism: ‘choice feminism’, where a woman’s choice is considered a feminist act in itself and therefore enough. This hides away one the most essential questions around choice, and that is of capacity. For example, as per the law of Pakistan women are given the right to choose their partner in marriage, however, in reality this choice due to patriarchal norms lies not with the woman but with her family, and making a choice in this case may lead to sanctions of which the most severe is brutal violence leading to murder. At the same time, another mode of analysis is left out where we fail to critically look at the choices available to women. These choices are constructed within the system of patriarchy (and capitalism as well). Do I truly choose to marry (a partner of my choice) or is the choice of marriage one imposed by patriarchy through social conditioning? Even if I am marrying out of choice, I will still be met with a family system constructed and governed by patriarchy, for example, expecting me to move into my husband’s home and also have him recognised as the head of the household by the state intrinsically binding my identity (and existence) with him. Is that emancipation because it was my choice?
The younger urban Pakistani woman with access to the Internet is part of this global current, continually negotiating between her existence within this context and her voice and placement in the global current. This negotiation coupled with decreased participation on grassroots politics creates gaps in how we understand situations and the questions we are asking. The best example of this is evident in the #MeToo movement, which emerged as a seemingly social media trend. Even though Tarana Burke, a black activist from the US had been working with abuse survivors for years was the one who started the trend, we saw it gain traction only when women of Hollywood brought forth their stories of sexual harassment. This highlights the currency neoliberal fame rather than grassroots political work holds. Since its emergence online and transpiring into global phenomena, we have seen #MeToo impacting academia and politics along with the entertainment industry. This movement brought with it generational anger that women have felt as silent survivors of abuse which in its own right is an essential component to propel things forwards as such massive collective anger signals towards a pervasive problem that cannot be ignored anymore. However at this juncture we are faced with real political questions around the ‘collectivity of survivors’ and justice:
On collectivity of survivors:
Who is the ‘we’ when we talk about ‘us survivors’ of harassment and abuse. Is it the women of Waziristan who talked about harassment at the hands of the personnel of the most powerful institution in Pakistan? Is it the working class women whose survival trumps everything else? Is it non-binary folks? Is it male survivors abused by women? The “we” is complicated but as Audre Lorde said understanding our differences and building bridges between our similarities is what is essential – we may experience violence differently but what it is connected to is the same – the structures of a capitalist patriarchy. In imagining this systemic violence as a shared problem, it must be clear that our risks are not equal and within this emerge questions around differences brought by class and ethnicity within the context of Pakistan.
On Justice:
The fear with #MeToo has been with regards to it in one part challenging the dominion of men, while in the other part being a neoliberal stunt used by corporations to protect their dividens. Corporations have used harassment policies and actions against abuse as means to soften their image and hide the ugliness of labour violations under the veneer of gender justice. We have to ask ourselves, is #MeToo to be a revolution or merely a series of attempts at retribution? If we are going to spend all our energies on only identifying bad actors and their individual punishments we are distracted from breaking down structures that create, nurture and enable such actors of violence. Moving us further and further away from critical analysis of structures that make violence systemic results in actors of abuse facing public disgrace and professional exile (if we are lucky enough to have the case pushed) but the structures that generationally breed these actors remain out of the focus. In this we neglect questions around the rise of militarism and fascism globally and specifically in the context of Pakistan when speaking on increased male violence.
The aforementioned are some of the questions contemporary urban young feminists are facing in our context, with many trying to tie in the question of materiality with gendered and sexual realities – this, however is a small minority. We continually fall in the trap of believing that feminism is an identity rather than a political framework. This in turn leads us to consider feminism’s analysis to be limited to women’s bodies and individual rights. In our organisation’s gender becomes a check box that needs to be covered rather than it being a political category that reorients the way we look at the world. In part these impacts are of progressing capitalism and the liberal feminism it heavily markets and advertises, and partly the fault lies with the Left where even now battle lines are drawn to push for feminist organising and political work, leading to exacerbated exhaustion of feminist (mostly women) activists.
Anticapitalist Feminism: Emancipatory Politics in the Hardest of Times
The intermingled realities of those who have found themselves in the feminist movement in one way or the other across class lines in varied geographies have pushed for the class question within feminist politics over and over again. We see this in the interventions made by Bolshevik women, Black women in America, South Asian feminists particularly from India bringing in the question of caste to talk about gender discrimination and marginality. We see this play out in urban Pakistan as women formulate feminist political organisations with some figuring out their politics while others holding on to staunch socialist principles and beliefs. With the recent Aurat March in Lahore (I speak of here as I was here) we see feminists who had previously not politically organised and those who had with the Left come together to discuss ideas and build bridges. The class question gained attention but more in terms of inclusivity rather than a concrete political strategy based on material analysis, however, there has been continual commitment to think more broadly and moving beyond the complacency that has been pushed down on us by corporate liberal feminism and moving towards thinking through and building an anticapitalist feminist.
Those who are pushing for anticapitalist feminism here and globally recognise that we do not need a feminism that celebrates women in capitalist power; we need a feminism that abolishes capitalist power as that power feeds into patriarchy creating an insidious nexus that marginalises women in multiple ways. This has remerged as a concern as we in today’s time are facing a crisis of social organisation where we are struggling with questions around the survival of the planet, the surge in all forms of violence, and the diminishing of democratic rule.
With these there is a greater understanding (or a possibility of one) around how capitalism not only exploits our capacity to work but also seeps into the ways we structure our lives and communities making them hollow and devoid of empathy. For example, the lynch mob mentality emerging in blasphemy allegations we vociferously criticise in Pakistan is not just a by-product of religious intolerance or extremism, rather this intolerance and extremism are by-products of a generational use of religion to serve the political aspirations tied intrinsically with capital interests of the elite political class and the military establishment. It is the beginning of conversations like this that are propelling us to look at the relationship between our material reality and social structuring. The conversation is reorienting itself and working towards defining a possible anticapitalist feminist agenda that does not fall into the trap of progressive-neoliberal posturing or dogmatic class reductionist left politics, albeit the progress in our part of the world has been very slow as we battle militarism, war, religious conservatism, ethnic struggles, capitalist hegemony, and violent patriarchy all at once.
I know that I do not offer a coherent conclusion but that depicts our current standpoint in terms of feminist politics locally. We are still figuring out our strategies and ways in which we want to move forward. However, at this point I do stand fervent in one belied, we have spent too many energies assuaging the (unconstructive) critics both from the Left/progressives who organise or don’t organise politically and it is time feminist political understanding and organising does not extend its energies to convincing those who will never put in the work to understand. With this paper I just wanted to jot down some of the thoughts that go through my own head when thinking of feminist politics and where it stands today. This is just my two cents in the beginning of hopefully a concrete conversation on feminist political strategising in Pakistan.
References:
- Luxton, Meg. (2016), Marxist Feminism and Anticapitalism: “Reclaiming Our History, Reanimating Our Politics. ↩︎
- Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (2003), Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Duke University Press. ↩︎
- Kollontai, Alexandra (1921), Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle, Alexandra Kollontai, Selected Writings, Allison & Busby, 1977, Translated by Alix Holt. marxist.org ↩︎
- Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams (1991), Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour. Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul., 1991), pp. 1241-1299 ↩︎
Hartmann, Heidió (2003), The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism, Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives.
