What is Lib Fem?

[ThursdayWeld]

I've seen the term Lib Fem mentioned on a couple of threads today, what is it?

It seems to be counter to what we're currently calling Gender Critical?

[OhHolyJesus]

Liberal Feminist.

People think it means different things.

For me it began sometime in the 90s

Girl power
Get your tits out for the lads
Sex work is work (not prostitution and women like doing it as a job)
Sex positive (don't link shame)

Also described as Choice Feminism.

Also sometimes described as being a 'pick me' feminist. As Julie Bindel explains, she is a feminist, not the fun kind.

Gender critical means different things to different people too.

[NecessaryScene]

I think it's epitomised by Everyday Feminism, as skewered by Magdalen Berns in this video.

[OhHolyJesus]

Bang on Necessary and a timely reminder from Magdalen. I had forgotten about this particular video.

[heathspeedwell]

Just came here to post that video! It explains liberal feminism perfectly.

[Potteringshed]

Intersectional and inclusive feminism. Tends to focus more on the ways that multiple vectors of oppression might impact women like sexism + racism. Less interested in "woman as product of her biology" and more as "woman as a social construct". Generally more into sex positivity. Is inclusive of sex workers and trans women. Probably more into choice so choice feminism is probably a fair description.

[NecessaryScene]

I guess that's really about "intersectional feminism", but there's a huge with "liberal feminism". Everyday Feminism is both. Both are more accurately described, as Magdalen does, as "not feminism".

[NecessaryScene]

Grr. Huge overlap, obvs.

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

It means healthy, middle-class graduates with loads of options in life and family to rely on telling us that a single mum in prostitution to feed her children because their father doesn't pay child support is empowered, and telling us that criticising a society that has put her in that position is removing that woman's agency.

This belief means they don't feel any need to campaign to reform child support payments, never mind pay higher taxes to fund a better welfare state.

[Quaggars]

I think (well this is my take anyway)
Women who support all other women, not just those with the same views.
So for example

• like the thread on here a while back looking down on women for painting their nails, apparently you're only doing it "for the lads" or because you've been brainwashed into thinking you need to look pretty by the patriarchy.
  You can't possibly want to do it for yourself.
  You just think you do 'cos been told to.
  Whereas lib fem would be more like women have a mind of their own, and support all women, not just those with the same views.

[PastMyBestBeforeDate]

It's the sort of feminism that doesn't want to piss men off.

[Helleofabore]

Can't beat Magdalen's video!

[DifficultBloodyWoman]

Lipstick feminism!

[DeRigueurMortis]

@PastMyBestBeforeDate

It's the sort of feminism that doesn't want to piss men off.

This pretty much sums it up for me....

Intersectional feminism on the other had gets a back rap because it's original meaning has been hijacked.

From memory it was first coined in relation to an pay equality battle in the US (Ford???) where women argued they were paid less. The counter argument from the company was to demonstrate they were paid the same as black men - hence is was not an issue of sex.

The obvious counter was black women not only got paid less then men but their female white counterparts hence their intersection between their sex and race. That also evolved to include women who were subject to discrimination on the basis of sex plus religion/race/disability etc.

The focus however was always women until it was hijacked by Lib Fems to include trans women as being intersectional because they believe TWAW.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Thanks for the YouTube link, it made me sad though, remembering that she is no longer with us

[Artichokeleaves]

Whereas lib fem would be more like women have a mind of their own, and support all women, not just those with the same views.

Except supporting the women whose needs and intersections require single sex spaces and language and to be able at times to define themselves as a separate, sex based class. I've yet to see evidence that those women and those views are supported and included at all.

[ViperAtTheGatesOfDawn]

Liberal feminism has long historical roots, and liberal feminist ideas and campaigns have helped gained us many legal rights. Being politically/philosophically liberal means it is very much focused on the individual and individual rights, which is how for some it's morphed into the choicey choice empowerment model we see splashed across the media. What's often seen as 'libfem' today is far removed in many ways, and certainly it lacks the analysis of the foremothers of liberal feminism.

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

Indeed. The times I've seen women tell lesbians to get over their PTSD so they can shag transwomen, it's been liberal feminists doing it.

Where's the support for "all women" there? Seems like support for "women who agree with me" to me.

[altforvarmt]

Liberal feminism is the feminism men like and approve of, which rather confirms that it's not really feminism.

[MouseyTheVampireSlayer]

I painted my nails pre baby. Bleached hair and all that. Doesn't make me a lib fem.

I think sex work being normalised is harmful for individuals who have to resort to it. I also think minorities and victims need protections in law.
Boiling it down to make up choices shows how superficial your understanding is.

[SecondGentleman]

@Quaggars

I think (well this is my take anyway)
Women who support all other women, not just those with the same views.
So for example

- like the thread on here a while back looking down on women for painting their nails, apparently you're only doing it "for the lads" or because you've been brainwashed into thinking you need to look pretty by the patriarchy.
You can't possibly want to do it for yourself.
You just think you do 'cos been told to.
Whereas lib fem would be more like women have a mind of their own, and support all women, not just those with the same views.

I think this is missing a bit. Liberal feminism is more "women who support other women's choices as though every choice made is entirely a result of individual agency".

I don't think radical feminism (or whatever you want to call non-liberal feminism) is about criticising individual women's choices. It's about analysing the way that women's oppression as a class affects these individual choices.

So to use the nail polish example - radical feminism wouldn't tell a woman that she's wrong to paint her nails, it would say that her choice to paint her nails has been materially influenced by her being a woman. Liberal feminism would say that a woman's choice to paint nails is a choice entirely of her own that cannot be attributed to anything other than the fact that this woman wanted her nails to be painted.

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

SecondGentleman

I do often wonder why people who subscribe to that view think companies have advertising budgets...

[JustSpeculation]

Being politically/philosophically liberal means it is very much focused on the individual and individual rights,

Including, I'd imagine, the right to organise as a political class based on whatever criterion they want, such as sex. The woman in the video (the one with prints on the wall, not Berns) seemed closer to the "Angel in the House" position - everyone else comes first, and how selfish you are to think of yourselves when there are others who are so needy. Too self immolating for my taste.

[FOJN]

Liberal feminism would say that a woman's choice to paint nails is a choice entirely of her own that cannot be attributed to anything other than the fact that this woman wanted her nails to be painted.

You can test this theory by asking yourself if quite so many women would paint their nails if there were no men in the world (that is not a proposal), undoubtably some would but would it be enough to sustain a whole industry.

[cakedays]

It’s the sort of feminism that’s 1. perfectly compatible with what gets called ‘neoliberalism’ - capitalism-friendly, corporate contemporary discourse, all about earning more money and leaning in at work, relying on yourself and being empowered to earn more money, being able to buy stuff (and in which your worth is measured by being able to buy stuff).

It also 2. on a deeper level seems to be compatible with liberalism in its more abstract political and historical senses - Western, post-Enlightenment liberal society, which prizes individualism over collectivism, personal autonomy over collective duty, liberal democracy over other political systems.

Now in some ways liberal feminism’s growth partly out of that tradition of liberal democracy is a positive one, if you are broadly supportive of liberal democracy as an ideal.

However, it might be that what you hear referred to as “liberal feminism” increasingly has less of the latter tradition about it, and more of the former. So sex work is imagined as empowering because it earns women money; transgender ideology is empowering not just because it seems to promise freedom to individuals, but also because you therefore can and should be able to buy it as a form of individual self-improvement (cosmetic surgery being something that is both an individual choice and which exercises a commercial power of buying what you want to have/be). In this it goes along with the way that cosmetic surgery and self-improvement are thought of in contemporary liberal society more generally: as a double good, because you are exercising your economic power as a consumer and also creating a version of yourself which is “better” as an individual. You are therefore “empowered”.

When you hear “libfem” being used, it’s generally to signify not feminism which is a deep part of a philosophical Western liberal political tradition; it’s generally to show that it’s the kind of feminism which is largely focused on economic and social choices as purely the domain of the individual, not the collective or the class. On this analysis all “choices” must be supported if they are made by women, because the idea of “choice” being coerced, or forced by economic circumstances, or deluded, or actively harmful, doesn’t enter into the equation - individualism and individual agency is imagined as always a good. So Onlyfans = empowering even if other women feel it harms them, because some women feel they benefit.

[LolaSmiles]

Liberal feminism centres the individual and tends cone down to whatever an individual woman says or thinks or does is good by virtue of being a woman. It's seen on here when if women disagree on an issue, someone inevitably says "but what happened to the sisterhood?! It's not very feminist to question another woman".
In my experience Liberal feminists tend to be focused on telling individual "you do you", whereas other branches of feminism tend to focus on liberating women from centuries of systemic oppression. It's apparently not very feminists to suggest that individual women are making choices in a society that is stacked against women, because empowerment.

More often than I'd like Liberal feminists tend to take ideas and attitudes straight from the patriarchy handbook, but call them empowering and try to shut down discussion after that.

If you were a man seeking to promote and sustain the patriarchy then the latest version of Liberal feminists are your foot soldiers as they'll push your patriarchal agenda whilst also telling dissenting women to get back in their boxes.