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How did a philosophy that once sought liberation for women become about inclusion for men? This is the question Kate Phelan, a philosopher and lecturer of feminism at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, poses in her new book, Feminism Defeated.
The book presents her argument in two parts. The first half of the book shows how and why post-structural feminism, broadly known as ‘third wave’ feminism, displaced the political project of female emancipation that was central to second-wave feminism. The second half of the book explains the consequences of this self-defeat.
Academic feminism ceased to be grounded in women’s lives, merged with post-structuralism, and spawned Intersectionality. Intersectional feminism added layers of social categories, such as race and class, on top of the sex-based lens of feminism. By emphasizing social categories, the sex-based concern of women became just one concern among many. The coup de grâce came from the philosopher Judith Butler, who declared that gender was a social construct, an identity to be performed, rather than a natural condition of being.
By embracing the concept of ‘intersectionality’, academic feminists unwittingly created a new hierarchy of needs that ultimately defeated feminism. Every intersectional political turn will require some women to choose men over women until all women have eventually chosen men over women. So, for instance, solidarity with the ‘working man’ is an enemy relationship with the ‘capitalist oppressor’, a rich woman, imposing a hierarchy that derails the feminist project. Solidarity with the black man is an enemy relationship with a white woman, derailing the feminist project. This never, ever works out as liberation for women.
In the second half of her book, Phelan lays out the consequences of this self-defeat and explains why post-structural feminism would inevitably lead to the end of women’s rights by including men in the category of ‘women’ at the intersection of women’s liberation with transgender liberation.
If women struggle to envision themselves as a cohesive political class, perhaps the radical future envisioned by second-wave feminism remains unimaginable precisely because it is impossible: women cannot fully emancipate themselves from the men who built and sustain civilization while continuing to live within it. Kate Phelan suggests that Judith Butler was inevitable. She has written a convincing argument.
[Ed: Except civilisation was not built and sustained by men alone and it would quickly crumble without women. Indeed men are the destroyers of civilisation.]