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?

FWIW, many of my positions would differ from radfems because I'm a classical liberal - I think liberal principles limit how much we can regulate against certain collective harms due to individual actions.

But I align more with radfems than libfems because we agree that the harm exists - we would only differ on the response. There's no correct answer, only trade-offs, and you can differ on that.

Libfems seem to want to deny any collective harms. They're neoliberal and only believe in individual choice, and wouldn't acknowledge the existence of a liberalism-vs-collectivism trade-off.

@NecessaryScene exactly - you sum it up very well. A liberal feminism which saw itself as part of a tradition of classical liberalism would have many positives, and ones which most of us would agree on. Crucially, they might occupy exactly that centre ground of individualism vs utilitarianism that is the hallmark of traditional liberal-democratic ideals. In themselves they might tend towards social-democratic forms of capitalism simply because of that.

However, what we tend to call now “libfem” positions are more like a neoliberal form of liberalism - entirely aligned with a market-based capitalism that sees individual economic choice as sacrosanct even if it causes broader harms (which it actually pretends don’t happen at all).

Interestingly many “intersectional” feminists see this neoliberalist ideology as left-wing, where we might traditionally see it as right-wing in its privileging of markets and money. It’s as if economic marketisation has become so ubiquitous it’s actually disappeared from view as something that’s ideological and not just a natural part of life.

Hence why older women look askance at pro-sex-work “liberal” feminists - because to us, it seems obvious that to be all for individuals’ right to sell themselves in an unregulated market is a right-wing ideology. But people who regard individual choice and economic markets as a natural good see it as a form of freedom (where radfems, who are closer to both classic liberalism and Marxism, don’t see the market as a form of freedom at all, but the reverse - as either something to be controlled in the public interest, or something that is disguised exploitation).

Presumably the Jane Fae essay in the OP of this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4268405-Goldfish-eh

Interestingly many “intersectional” feminists see this neoliberalist ideology as left-wing, where we might traditionally see it as right-wing in its privileging of markets and money. It’s as if economic marketisation has become so ubiquitous it’s actually disappeared from view as something that’s ideological and not just a natural part of life.
Well said. The issue with this new branding of libfem is that they don't seem to be willing to consider big social structures and concepts, or give much weight to the systemic oppression of these structures.

Modern libfem feels very nice. If feminism did a hug in a mug it would be modern libfem. It feels nice, you post clichéd empowering quotes on social media and tell your friends that dressing in a way that conveniently matches the male gaze is actually all about the empowering the sisterhood. No tricky questions to deal with, no difficult topics to wrestle with, no awkward personal reflection to contend with because you're an empowered woman, right?

At one point I was sucked in my the idea of the nice feminists who are all for choice and the bra burning angry feminists. Then I did more reading and more listening and realised that feminists should be passionate and there's a lot out there that still needs challenging. It increasingly seems like modern libfems aren't interested in societal change.

Thanks everyone. I'm going to take some time to read all these replies - lots to take in!

Very interesting to see how others describe it.

I was going to be a bit flip and say lib fem is being apolitical and focuing on lifestyle

So depening on which generation you are born into you might have been a ladette and know you would be a vegan.

But as others have described more seriously, all of it very much defined by the dominant consumer culture of the time.

In my opinion there's not really a thing called 'gender critical feminism'.

There's gender critical views but what does that mean?

If it's the old definition- gender is the social role and position in society etc imposed on you because of your sex.

Then lots of feminist waves have been gender critical. As in, women and men and girls and boys should be free of the expectations on them due to their sex.

Gender in this sense is the entire mechanism of female oppression the world over forever, and limits men as well.

The second wave was the 70s type stuff. About equality in education and work opportunities. About liberating women and girls from the prescribed gender role. It was about looking at the mechanisms of oppression. Class analysis. Not about individuals but about dismantling the systems and structures that kept women and men in their narrow prescribed roles.

That's the radical feminist view. Radical not meaning extreme but from the root. To get rid of the structures systems that kept us in our place as a class. Everything from family set up to religion to VAWG to government policy etc.

Libfem came in the 90s I think. The spice girls, 'ladettes', it was about the 'empowerment' of the individual. The late 80s onwards- society became much more about personal success. Right wing ideas I suppose, the legacy of Thatcher.. Not just feminism but everywhere.

It was and is the idea that women as individuals are empowered by choosing to do as they wish. And the second wave isn't about criticising individual choices but looking at things across the board.

You see it with eg porn.

Second readers wavers will look at is as a whole, understand that there's loads of exploitation, and say, porn is a bad thing.

The libfemn response thinks of individuals. Her body her choice.

The two approaches are not compatible.

Libfem ties in well with capitalism and in the end imo challenges nothing.

It's gok wan saying if you look good you feel good that's empowering. Now take off all your clothes.

It's dove flogging stuff by empowering women by having ads with lots of different women. All in their underwear again.

It's burlesque and feeling sexy feels good and confidence is empowering. Why not do a strip tease.

And so with trans stuff this is where the differences arise from.

Second wave types say I'm interested in women as a class. Whoever they are. In prison, in hospital etc. It doesn't matter if some women are ok with whatever.. Because others are vulnerable. And so as a group this need addressing.

Also how can you do class analysis with no words for the class.

The libfem individual approach thinks of individuals. I'm ok with that so it's fine. I know one trans person who is lovely and this feels like an attack on them personally. And that you decide how to do you,. Your choice. And choice being prevented (I identify as) is automatically regressive and disempowering.

Hth!

I think an example of Lib Fem is when female models/popstars for example say it is empowering to pose almost naked because it is their choice.

Thanks again. Just acknowledging all your posts, because I haven't had time to thoughtfully read them, just been skimming. Hugely helpful though.

To me 'Liberal feminism' is about choice, but only in specific circumstances where it won't affect males negatively.

So a woman making a 'choice' to be a sex worker - great!
A woman making a 'choice' to campaign against males being allowed into women's spaces - baaaaaaaad.....

Broadly, first wave feminism was broadly in sync with classical liberalism: post-Enlightenment liberal humanism.

Second wave feminism comes out of a fundamentally Marxist mode of class analysis, which is interested in how oppression is rooted in economic systems which perpetuate inequality, and are cemented in place by social norms. So second wave feminism sought to radically rearrange the economic and social base of women’s oppression and society as a whole, especially around childcare, work, education, race and class inequality. (Ironically, while it often gets classified now as “white feminism”, it was actually informed and written by many women of colour, lesbians and disabled women.)

Liberal feminism is generally in sync with contemporary, post-1980s market capitalism - it is interested in changing behavioural norms and language, but not interested in the economic systems that underlie oppression - in fact it often doesn’t “see” these or acknowledge their effects on the broader scale. Individual agency is seen as a key social good, even if individuals might make choices that are not good for others (or even themselves…)

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

Or by asking yourself why men generally don't paint their nails. I don't think it's always so much about doing it to actually appeal to men (another woman is much more likely to notice or care whether my nails are painted than a man would). It's more about the fact that we have been trained by a patriarchal society to want to look generally decorative and to be willing to spend a lot of time and money in order to do so.

My (limited) efforts at being decorative are definitely influenced by advertising, social media, seeing what other women wear etc. They are 100% not influenced by wanting to appeal to men. A sudden absence of men in the world wouldn't influence my personal grooming one bit tbh.

Thanks cakedays - that's helped clarify it a bit for me. I hadn't quite spotted the 1st-vs-2nd wave distinction.

I see it as 'choice' feminism. Anything a woman chooses to do is feminist if she chose it. It's lacking in a certain dimension of analysis that way.

For example, the radfem position would be that cosmetic surgery is a product of patriarchal beauty ideals and harms women. Libfems would take that as a critique not of the system but of the individual woman having the surgery, and say instead that if she chooses to have it and feels empowered by it, it's a feminist thing to do. All agency, no structure.

My own position would be that a woman is certainly free to have the surgery if she wants, but that doing so isn't feminist! The act, that is. Not the woman, who may or may not be a feminist.

Liberal feminism is also only tepidly critical (if at all), of the kind of things that we might recognise as clearly bad for women (in that they perpetuate and strengthen social norms that cement women’s oppression - porn, cosmetic surgery, sex work, and so on).

Because in neoliberalism, individual worth is signalled primarily by money and social status, and market capitalism is thought of as an intrinsically natural, good state, it is often difficult for liberal feminism to acknowledge that some parts of the (like the “freedom” to buy and sell porn, cosmetic surgery, etc.), might in fact be harmful, or that women’s “choice” to engage in them might not be liberating or free.

Gender ideology appeals to liberal feminism not because of its content, really, but because it is part of our wider social discourse that tells us that self-actualisation is always a good thing, that doing what one wants and “creating” one’s true self is a social, even a moral, imperative.

Ironically, of course this ideology tends to favour white, healthy middle class women and men, because they have more economic and social power and are likely to experience less of the more extreme inequalities and restricted choices that poor people do.

So despite the surface imperative to be “intersectional”, liberal feminism still privileges the individual, and individual desire and financial power, over the interests of women as a wider group.

I saw an analogy by Gail Dines recently that I thought was really good. It went something like this:

Patriarchy is men having the whole pie.
Liberal feminism demands that women get half the pie.
Radical feminism rejects the pie as bad and wants to bake something else.

She was making a distinction between what she called liberal feminism and neoliberal feminism, in that talk though.

That’s interesting @InspiralCoalescenceRingdown - do you have a link to the talk or where that was from?