Victim feminism
Victim feminism is a term that has been used by some conservative postfeminist writers such as Katie Roiphe[1] and Naomi Wolf[1] to critique forms of feminist activism which they see as reinforcing the idea that women are weak or lacking in agency.[2]: 393 [3]
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Roiphe, Wolf and "power feminism"
Self-described feminist Naomi Wolf uses the term victim feminism in her 1993 book Fire With Fire. Wolf contrasts victim feminism with power feminism. In her view, victim feminists present women as "beleaguered, fragile, intuitive angels" thus preventing women from taking responsibility for the power they actually have. Among various attributes of victim feminism, Wolf writes that it projects violence and competitiveness onto men or their patriarchy, while disregarding these qualities in women.[4]
Religious scholar Colin Grant describes Wolf's power vs. victim dichotomy as being rooted in differences in how feminists address the liabilities that women suffer: while victim feminism simply dwells on them, power feminism seeks to identify them, with the purpose to challenge and overcome them. Grant also mentions that Wolf herself appears to have embraced both sides: her book The Beauty Myth seems to be from the victim feminism camp, but with Fire with Fire Wolf transitions to the power feminism side.[5]
This dichotomy of "victim" vs "power" was criticized for being defined too broadly so that Wolf's argument became lost.[6] In addition it lumps together diverse and radically different feminist schools, and this confusion aids anti-feminists in their rhetoric.[7]
Wolf's Fire With Fire and Katie Roiphe's The Morning After garnered considerable media attention. They formed part of a backlash against the perceived domination of the feminist theme of victimization in the contemporary popular culture.[8] Victim feminism was viewed as a negative tendency by Wolf and those who built on her analysis.[5] The more positive tendency recognizes the distinctiveness of women's experience and views (regarding sex, morality, etc.) as a positive alternative in contrast to that imposed by the "patriarchal" views of men.[5]
One of Wolf's and Roiphe's arguments is that emphasis on victimization reinforces the stereotype of women being fragile and vulnerable. However it was argued that their solution in the form of "power feminism" is simplistic, because it fails to take into an account the systemic nature of women's subordination. Overall, the "victim vs. power" dichotomy was described as false and fundamentally inadequate, and leading to "problematic extremes".
Elizabeth M. Schneider criticizes the dichotomy of feminism in the form of "victimhood vs. agency" from the legal standpoint, arguing that the view of women as either victims or agents is incomplete and static. She points out that, first, both concepts are too narrow and incomplete, and second, they are not the opposite poles of a spectrum, they are independent, but interrelated dimensions of women's experience.[2]
"Agency-affirming" feminism
Gender studies scholar Rebecca Stringer writes that besides Wolf and Roiphe, other feminist authors have criticized the representation of women as victims and promoted a brand of agency-affirming feminism. These include Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, Natasha Walter, and Rene Denfeld.[9] Each of these authors wrote popular books in the 1990s about feminism framed as calls to action like earlier works by Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer.[9] According to Stringer, this trend of 1990s agitation against "victim feminism" is tied to the concurrent rise of neoliberalism.[9] At the same time, in her book Knowing Victims Stringer argues that these critiques of "victim feminism" do not affirm women's agency, but rather problematize women's capacity for agency and declare a lack of women's personal responsibility, which is, in Stringer's view, akin to victim blaming.[10]
References
- Heywood, Leslie; Drake, Jennifer, eds. (1997). "Introduction". Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-8166-3005-9.
- Schneider, Elizabeth M. (1993). "Feminism and the False Dichotomy of Victimization and Agency" (PDF). New York Law School Law Review. 38: 387–399. ISSN 0145-448X. Also available at HeinOnline.
- Primary sources:
- Goldberg, Carole (29 December 1993). "Feminist War Is Won". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 5 May 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
Fire announces a 'genderquake' – a resurgence of female political power. And it says it's time to reject the 'victim' feminism that casts women as powerless objects of male malevolence in favor of a new "power" feminism that enables women
- Beck, Joan (23 January 1994). "Feminist Indifference to Children a Key Weakness". The Buffalo News. Buffalo, N.Y. Archived from the original on 5 May 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
most women don't fully understand yet that a 'genderquake' has occurred. The time has come to shuck 'victim feminism' and its sexist whining and embrace 'power feminism,' the better for women to reach out and claim their fair share
- Pollitt, Katha (21 February 1994). "Subject to Debate". The Nation. Archived from the original on 3 May 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
The current attack on 'victim feminism' is partly a class phenomenon, a kind of status anxiety.
- Abrams, Kathryn (April 1994). "Review: Songs of Innocence and Experience: Dominance Feminism in the University" (PDF). The Yale Law Journal. 103 (6): 1533–1560. doi:10.2307/797093. ISSN 1939-8611. JSTOR 797093.
If these movements are not to work at cross-purposes, feminists in both genres ought to give thought to their inter-relations: writers like Roiphe, Paglia, and Naomi Wolf might have had more difficulty making a target out of victim feminism, for example, if academic feminists had ...
- Raven, Arlene (Summer 1994). "Judy Chicago: The Artist Critics Love to Hate". On the Issues.
Naomi Wolf, in her Fire with Fire, defines victim feminism as women seeking power 'through an identity of powerlessness.' Two features of victim feminism according to Wolf are: identifying with powerlessness even at the expense of taking responsibility for the power women do possess; and putting community first, hence being hostile toward individual achievement
- Goldberg, Carole (29 December 1993). "Feminist War Is Won". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 5 May 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
- Cole, Alyson Manda (2007). "Victims on a pedestal: anti-'victim feminism' and women's oppression". The cult of true victimhood: from the war on welfare to the war on terror. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. pp. 50–51. ISBN 978-0-8047-5461-3.
- Grant, Colin (1998). "A sex myth". Myths we live by. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. pp. 121–124. ISBN 978-0-7766-0444-2.
- Henry, Astrid (2004). "Daughterhood is powerful: the emergence of feminism's third wave". Not my mother's sister: generational conflict and third-wave feminism. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-253-11122-7.
- Hammer, Rhonda (2002). "Culture wars over feminism: Paglia, Wolf, and Hoff Sommers". Antifeminism and family terrorism: a critical feminist perspective. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 61–62. ISBN 978-0-7425-1049-4.
- Schneider, Elizabeth M. (2000). "Beyond victimization and agency". Battered women & feminist lawmaking. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. pp. 74–75. ISBN 978-0-300-12893-2.
- Stringer, Rebecca (2014). "Victims left, right and centre: constructing 'victim feminism'". Knowing Victims: Feminism, agency and victim politics in neoliberal times. Hoboken, N.J.: Taylor and Francis. pp. 17–18. ISBN 978-1-134-74601-9.
- Stringer (2014), p. 20.
