1 

Resisting Popular Feminisms:  

Gender, Sexuality and the Lure of the Modern 

 

Abstract 

This article tracks discursive and political use of gender and sexual equality in 

nationalist and popular accounts of feminism, focusing on the ways in which 

such discourses produce a particular linking of time and space in the articulation 

of ‘the Modern’ in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. It further explores the 

increasing popularity of feminism in some media and celebrity contexts that 

have historically been so hostile to it, asking for care in tracking how and under 

what conditions feminism is cited as “universally desirable” in light of this 

history. I suggest that feminism is partly reframed in this way insofar as it is 

newly sutured to femininity rather than masculinity, but also to singular rather 

than multiple or intersectional understandings of women’s oppression. A related 

claim of this article is that this shift of affective association with feminism is only 

possible when that singular cause of gender oppression is firmly understood as 

sexual oppression. I will be suggesting that if feminism is understood primarily or 

even only a fight against sexual oppression by men or heterosexuals against 

women or homosexuals then the oppositional gendered roles that allow for its 

tethering to nationalism remain intact yet simultaneously obscured. In 

conclusion the article calls for an appreciation of feminism as a minority pursuit 

attentive to multiple power relations and histories.  

 

 

 



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Introduction 

Those of us who inhabit the contested terrain of European feminist theory and 

politics are used to feminism being rejected or transformed in ways we are not in 

control of. We are used to feminism being cast as anachronistic, and its subjects 

being proposed as anti-male or masculine; and we are used to the paradoxical 

claiming of feminism for conservative ends, particularly as part of nationalist and 

militarist projects. This article tracks discursive and political use of gender and 

sexual equality in nationalist and popular accounts of feminism, focusing on the 

ways in which such discourses produce a particular linking of time and space in 

the articulation of “the Modern” in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. 

Claims that particular nations or subjects are Modern increasingly rely on 

propositions of gender or sexual equality as either imminent or having already 

arrived (Duggan 2003). Gender and sexual rights claims are thus consistently 

articulated with this “right to be Modern” at their heart, such that their pitch for 

the space and time of modernity is made with particular affective strength, as 

Leticia Sabsay (2016) has suggested. This article further explores the increasing 

popularity of feminism in media and celebrity contexts that have historically 

been so hostile to it, asking for care in tracking how and under what conditions 

feminism can be cited as universally desirable. A tentative argument is that 

feminism can only be framed as desirable to the extent that it has moved away 

from its association with both masculinity and intersectionality, to the extent 

then that it can be sutured to femininity and singular understandings of women’s 

oppression. A related claim is that this shift of affective association with 

feminism is only possible when that singular cause of gender oppression is 

firmly understood as sexual oppression. I will be suggesting that if feminism is 



 3 

understood primarily a fight against sexual oppression by men or heterosexuals 

against women or homosexuals then the oppositional gendered roles that allow 

for its tethering to nationalism remain intact yet simultaneously obscured. 

Whether freed from gendered and sexual oppression or continuing to be subject 

to it, women and men remain recognizably women and men: the universal 

appeal of feminism requires this clarity. While feminism is not only or indeed 

primarily marked by an increased appeal of course – indeed anti-feminism is as 

virulent as it ever has been (or worse) in many contexts in Europe and globally – 

I believe that where it is cited in those terms it is worth exploring the conditions 

and implications of that appeal because of what it tells us about current 

conditions of gendered power and authority.  

 The article begins with a reminder of some of the different ways in which 

gender and sexual equality discourses can be put to work in securing a fantasy 

global landscape of uneven freedoms within a nationalist framework. As a range 

of feminist, queer and critical race theorists have shown, these discourses 

frequently rely on gendered, sexual and racial norms, even while appearing to 

challenge them. It focuses on the temporal and affective features of these geo-

political fantasies and explores some of their most pernicious effects. My 

argument then shifts to explore several cultural examples that reframe feminism 

as desirable rather than anachronistic, with particular attention to the role of 

representations of femininity in launching and securing this appeal. 

Foregrounding the ways in which this universality relies on single-issue sexual 

politics, I query this popularity as a sign of success from a feminist perspective 

interested in both the exclusionary histories of such politics, and the importance 

of focusing on overlap and displacement within fields of power relations. 



 4 

 

The Lure of the Modern 

Participants in feminist theory and politics have acclimatized to the cultural and 

political heralding of postfeminism as signaling both feminism’s successes, but 

also the dwindling necessity of its aggression. Embracing the pleasures of 

femininity can thus be reframed as active not passive: actively inheriting past 

gains and actively inhabiting a confidently gendered womanhood (Gill 2003). 

Angela McRobbie (2009) discusses this cultural movement in terms of its 

generational myopias and representational limits, while Nancy Fraser (2013) 

and Sylvia Walby (1997) focus on the problems of a post-feminist ethos that 

lends itself to feminine surfaces over material and economic depths. While I am 

suspicious of forms of feminist critique that tell a singular history of loss of 

politicization and superficiality among the next generation (since its heroine 

never has to change her political mind), I agree that in many different post-

feminist moves, feminism can easily be relegated to the past and her subjects 

stereotyped as anachronistic in themselves. I am similarly exorcised by the 

multiple ways in which feminism can be folded into a progress narrative charting 

a relentless move away from inequality, since it is usually accompanied by claims 

that such inequality has been (almost) surpassed, and rarely takes account of 

enduring operations of power or critiques of the basis on which such equality is 

evaluated. As Anne Phillips (2007) has argued in the context of debates that pit 

multiculturalism against feminism, mainstreaming of feminist values may be a 

real achievement, but gains in one place can easily come to stand as evidence of 

continued backwardness in others, in ways that contribute to the failure to 

recognize inequalities in places deemed modern or progressive in gendered 



 5 

terms. In the process, feminism is appealing to the extent that it signals an 

embrace of modernity in a narrow mode, as Biljana Kašić (2004) has argued in 

the case of Croatia and Maria do Mar Pereira (2014) has shown in the context of 

Portugal. Importantly, such narratives and cartographies of progress suggest 

that feminism is envisaged more as a catalyst than a consistent presence, ideally 

displaced with the entry to modernity, an unfortunate part of the now-to-be-

transcended past. Crucially, for Phillips (2007), simplistic progress narratives of 

gender and sexual equality also pit members of cultures and nations not 

understood as developed against one another.  For transnational feminist 

geographer Uma Narayan (1997), this dynamic is not a one-way street, of course. 

A refusal of the Modern can be claimed as a core part of postcolonial nation-

building, such that women continue to be expected to inhabit gender and sexual 

norms as part of proving national ethnic and religious commitment, as she 

argues with respect to contemporary India.  

 The central role that women play as reproducers of nation is one reason 

why their perceived freedom is so crucial in discursive as well as material terms 

as a marker of national development and modernity. Postcolonial feminist work 

on nationalism and gender equality has long highlighted the importance of the 

promotion of racialised gender roles as part of a colonial civilizing mission, 

across multiple geographical sites (e.g. McClintock, Mufti, and Shoat 1997). 

Native colonized “others” are always framed as unruly and in need of 

governance, such that part of entering into Modern colonial or postcolonial 

recognition involves mimicking white gendered and sexual norms and cultures 

of respectability. As Merl Storr (1997) has so persuasively argued in respect of 

sexual governance, colonial regulation requires imposing rigid gender 



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classifications as a marker of civilisation, and within this schema only certain 

kinds of (feminine, but also white) womanhood will do. In other words, it is not 

just any kind of sexual and gendered difference or equality that signals the 

Modern, but those borne out of fantasies of violent racial superiority.   

 For Gayatri Spivak (1988), such discourses of colonial and postcolonial 

modernity are not merely static representations of geo-political power relations. 

They precipitate and justify a range of interventions through the active grammar 

of white men saving brown women from brown men. For Spivak as for others, the 

fantasy of white, Western rescue of passive brown female victims of 

unconscionable brown patriarchs is a key mode through which colonial violence 

is displaced and refashioned as ethical (see also Young 2003). Racism, we might 

say, has long been brought to life by discourses of gendered and sexual care. As 

M. Jacqui Alexander (1994) has noted, this colonial grammar can be adjusted to 

fit neoliberal versions of these relations very easily, displacing the devastating 

effects of structural adjustment and the development of tourist economies in 

poor countries such as Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas, and placing new 

demands on female subjects to be appropriately reproductive and respectable as 

part of postcolonial national resistance movements. And we are at this point very 

familiar with the citation of gender and sexual equality as Modern and desirable 

as a basis for nationalist, militarist intervention that masks capital and corporate 

interests in maintaining regional unrest and uneven financial development (Al-

Ali and Pratt 2009; Enloe 1989). As with earlier colonial narratives, so too 

gender and sexual “rescue” (framed as humanitarian) enacts racialised violence 

through this displacement. In an important intervention in the feminist work on 

(post)colonial inheritance, Kalpana Wilson (2013) highlights that recipients of 



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aid or development may now be encouraged to respond to these narratives 

through embodying agency rather passivity, chiming with the broader 

postfeminist concern about “empowerment” as a new form of subordination. 

With such discursive closure, women will be positioned – politically and 

critically – as de facto heterosexual in many contexts. In this light, it can be a 

pertinent intervention in itself to challenge that presumption, both as a way of 

interrupting the relationship between heteronormativity and nationalist or 

colonialist projects, but also to make visible queer lives. Yet as a range of 

commentators have elucidated, gay and lesbian equality is also folded into the 

question of the Modern. Lisa Duggan’s (2003) foundational work on 

homonormativity explored ways in which gay and lesbian lives of a particular 

kind (monogamous, coupled, white) have become central rather than peripheral 

to a contemporary US national fantasy of tolerance and (post)modernity. And 

Jasbir K Puar’s (2006) coining of the term “homonationalism” has highlighted the 

ways in which the “good gay” is frequently pitted against the “bad queer” as part 

of consolidating the figure of the perverse Islamic or African/Caribbean other so 

central to US domestic and foreign policy post- 9/11. As queer geographers Jon 

Binnie and David Bell (2000) have argued, while “homosexual” subjects have 

only recently been included as potential representatives of the modern nation, 

their status as ambivalent subjects of modernity actually has a long history. For 

Duggan and Puar, indeed, the “homo” in “homonormativity” and 

“homonationalism” is contingent, tolerated only insofar as it can be tethered to 

the broader project of maintaining sexual and gendered binaries in a racialised 

neoliberal geopolitics. The inclusion of gay and lesbian subjects is predicated on 

gender difference remaining clearly defined and homosexual identity being 



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framed through respectability, as Gayle Rubin (1984) insistent many years ago. 

And as Patricia Hill Collins (1998) sets out, sexual difference and the couple form 

as the basis of family have a racist colonial history bound up with 

heterogendered norms. Small wonder then, that trans* challenges to gender 

binaries are met with such hostility, despite (or perhaps because of) the fantasy 

of gender equality as having been achieved. Such challenges figure this equality 

as taking place between men and women, and not beyond their potent symbolics, 

of course. In turn, as Alyosxa Tudor (2017) has pertinently noted, without a clear 

intersectional, transnational approach to these heteronormative, colonial 

narratives, a space is cleared for conservative trans-nationalisms as well. 

As a short concluding note to this section, we should also be clear that 

none of the above mobilisations of gender or sexuality within coloniality or the 

framing of the Modern through sexual, gendered and raced respectability 

remains uncontested. It would be easy, perhaps, to look at the continued take-up 

of gender and sexual equality as part of a global corporate agenda, with its 

familiar racist history and impact, and think of feminist and queer social 

movements as having failed. Yet, as Bice Maiguashca (2014) insists, social 

movements for equality are continuously adapting to challenge as well as 

conform in their own right. Very recently, we have seen the Women’s Marches 

across Europe and globally to protest President Trump’s inauguration in January 

2017, and the call for a Global Women’s Strike in response to his administration’s 

racism, misogyny and homophobia. Activists for international and intersectional 

sexual rights such as Sonia Corrêa (2010) consistently struggle against the 

problems of ongoing co-optation of sexual rights gains, as well as the dangerous 

exclusions that such approaches can reproduce. And as Cynthia Cockburn’s 



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(2007) remarkable book on women’s anti-war activism transnationally affirms, 

while both gendered and sexual rights remain key to nationalist or militarist 

agendas, such efforts are also continuously resisted. 

 

Feminist But Feminine 

Thus far I have been tracing the importance of an approach that historicises the 

difficult relationship among gender and sexual equality and their entanglement 

in histories of colonial and postcolonial nation building and militarism. These are 

important discussions that highlight how gender and sexual equality work 

discursively both within and outside feminism, and at different scales, in order to 

reproduce the hierarchies necessary to justify enacting power and authority over 

another, or of one geo-political site over another. Yet to return to a point I made 

at the outset of this article, the question of “gender equality” as the basis of 

modernity at once relies upon and challenges existing gender roles, and 

“femininity” in particular remains unattainable for the majority of subjects in this 

(post)colonial minefield. The colonial construction of gender, race and sexuality 

mean that black and brown women are always ambivalently placed in relation to 

femininity. They are by turns hyper feminine in terms of presumed passivity in 

relationship to a patriarchy they need rescuing from, and hyper masculine in 

their refusal to meet the terms of white, (post)colonial femininity. The racialised 

and colonized woman can never actually represent gender, only its modification, 

excess or failure (Lewis 1996). Importantly too, those (post)colonial heroines of 

gender equality are also uneasily located at the threshold of ideal femininity. 

Pushing for rescue of more passive others, arguing for their right to enter the 

Modern through freedom from gender oppression of the worst order, those 



 10 

advocates risk taking up a masculinist position in relationship to those they seek 

to save. This is one reason why it has been important that feminism and gender 

equality are held apart: since feminism itself is characterized as un-feminine, it 

constitutes an unstable ground from which to make gender equality claims that 

leave a gender binary intact. Thus we might say that both the rescuer and the 

rescued loiter on the edges of a femininity appropriate to heteronormative 

modernity, and both need to relinquish perverse sexual and gendered 

respectability in order be allowed contingent access to that subject position (Puri 

2006). The conventional heroine of an apolitical postfeminism makes this 

dynamic plain, as she has been characterized by an excess of emancipated, 

feminine affect, and is as startlingly white as she is finally free of feminist 

repression (Gill 2003).  

It has been my argument thus far that holding feminism and femininity in 

tension is part of how the gendered and sexual alibis underpinning nationalism 

and the temporality of the Modern continue to function. But in the last several 

years, there seems to have been a cultural shift that accompanies these more 

familiar dynamics. This shift emerges out of a cultural and political arena of 

representation that is keen to claim feminism as universally desirable, a perfect 

accessory for the here and now rather than an embarrassing relic to be buried in 

the closet. Importantly for my argument here, this about turn in representation 

relies on the suturing of oppositional gender roles – and in particular femininity – 

to feminism, in a conscious inversion of relationship. As I will suggest below, this 

realignment is dependent on femininity remaining a binary proposition within 

which “gender equality” remains resolutely heteronormative, a proposition that 

is also key for its broad appeal. Let us look then at a couple of recent examples of 



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the ways in which feminism can be claimed as the new, caring position to take up 

if one is to be properly ethical and political, in contrast to feminism’s prior (and 

dominant) representation as marginal or old-fashioned. The few cases I analyse 

here are selected as good examples of the trend I am identifying, though they 

should not be thought of as representative of culture overall. My reasons for 

considering them significant rest on their presentation of feminism as a self-

evident, benign good, a feature I want to explore as an important aspect of 

contemporary depoliticisation of feminist politics.  

In 2014, Marie-Claire led with a special section headed “10 Signs That 

You’re a Feminist,” (http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a9142/10-

signs-feminist/ Feb 21, 2014) ironically yet surely integrating feminism into the 

lifestyle concerns that are the hallmark of women’s fashion magazines. In the 

same year, Elle UK launched its “Inaugural Feminist Issue,” 

(http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/december-feminism-issue-cover-emma-

watson-elle).with the actor Emma Watson as its covergirl, following her speech 

at the UN on gender equality. Both fashion magazines sought to give feminism 

the makeover she deserved, emphasizing the empowered contemporary 

woman’s embrace of femininity and romance in familiar vein. But there was also 

an important difference too, in the attempt to suture femininity and feminism.  

Marie-Claire’s title was followed with the subtitle “Hate to break it to you, F-word 

haters, but you’re probably more of a feminist than you think,” which retains the 

original grammar of distance represented by the phrase “I’m not a feminist, 

but…” only now with a rapprochement after the pause. The acceptability of those 

“10 Signs…” was underwritten by Beyonce’s endorsement underneath; her hype-

feminine lacey attire captioned with her determination not to be a domestic 

http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a9142/10-signs-feminist/
http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a9142/10-signs-feminist/
http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/december-feminism-issue-cover-emma-watson-elle
http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/december-feminism-issue-cover-emma-watson-elle


 12 

drudge (Fig 1).  Elle’s special issue claimed Emma Watson as the “fresh face” of 

feminism, referencing once more the assumption that feminism needs the kind of 

overhaul only a women’s magazine can provide, but branding itself more than 

capable of that contemporary update. These magazines signal a dual update 

then, in relationship to our discussion thus far. Femininity is rendered a hallmark 

of rather than a bar to feminism: indeed we can now see that it has been lurking 

under the surface waiting to be appreciated as feminism’s glasses are whipped 

off and its hair shaken out to reveal the shining beauty underneath. So too this 

femininity is not necessarily white, as the centrality of Beyonce’s hyper-feminine 

image suggests (Fig 1), as long as it is coded in familiar ways: here through a 

predictable reference to sharing of childcare, and a celebration of racial 

difference as another feature of empowered femininity. A recent exception can 

be found in Teen Vogue in which young black American feminists talk about their 

struggles with feminism and racism (yet even here, representations are of black 

feminism aligned rather than in tension with femininity – see 

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/black-feminists).  

Elle combined its feminism issue with a line of “This is What a Feminist 

Looks Like” t-shirts (http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/buy-elle-whistles-

fawcwett-feminism-unisex-tshirt), donating the proceeds to The Fawcett Society 

feminist campaigning group who coined the wearable phrase in the UK. What 

was so extraordinary about this campaign was the number of women and men in 

the public eye that they managed to persuade to wear and be photographed 

wearing one. Any lingering sign of embarrassment in actor Benjamin 

Cumberbatch’s or Labour politician Ed Miliband’s strained smiles appear to 

reference the subsequent scandal about whether the t-shirts had been produced 



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under exploitative labour conditions in Mauritius or not, rather than any 

ambivalence about feminist nomenclature. Rosie Boycott broke the story for the 

Mail on Sunday in her piece “Scandal of the 62p-an-hour T-shirts: Shame on the 

Feminists Who Betrayed the Cause,” in November 2014, which was then refuted 

by Chris Johnston in his article for The Guardian “Feminist T-shirts Made in 

Ethical Conditions, Says Fawcett Society,” also in November. Disconcertingly, the 

campaign was marked by general concern about our then Prime Minister David 

Cameron’s refusal to wear one – and one should perhaps be grateful for small 

mercies – prompting a somewhat surreal set of broadsheet and tabloid 

interrogations as to why he should be squeamish about embracing this 

affirmative identity. My own allegiances lie with Homa Khaleeli, writing for The 

Guardian on 27 October 2014, who insists that “given Cameron’s record so far, 

one thing is clear: this is not what a feminist looks like.”    

It is easy enough to be straightforwardly cynical of such cultural voracity 

as just the next marketing ploy to sell magazines (like everything else, it turns 

out that anti-feminism has a shelf life), but this fashionable feminist visibility has 

also been shared by the broadsheets, in which the question of feminism and who 

it includes has become consistent copy. While the debates are diverse, including 

arguments about trans* inclusion and intersectionality, the majority position is a 

feminism that departs from seeing women as victims rather than agents of 

others’ authority, and as rooted in an analysis of women’s oppression as centred 



 14 

 

in sexual violence or patriarchal control. Heterosexual gender binaries are 

crucial to sustaining this analysis of women’s oppression, and, as many have 

noted, this is also an arena of thinking and politics necessarily resistant to its 

easy reproduction of colonial and anti-migration discourse (Agustin 2007; 

Andrijasevic 2014). It chimes with the cultural claiming of “femininity as 

feminism” precisely because of its singular focus on relationships between men 



 15 

and women; oppositional though perhaps in flux, but most importantly fully 

relational. So at the same time as we are seeing resistance to contemporary 

nationalisms in the form of the Global Women’s Strike, which foregrounded the 

importance of connecting economic, racist and sexist power relations, a parallel 

investment in a universally appealling feminism that can be claimed from a 

familiar hetero-gendered location has considerable purchase.  

Let me provide some further context for this argument about the appeal 

of what I term sexual violence feminism, precisely in terms of its paradoxical 

confirmation of oppositional gendering. In the last few years, the UK has been 

beset with sexual violence scandals in which a whole slate of ageing celebrities 

have been accused, tried and found guilty of sexual abuse starting in the 1970s. 

These relentless and ongoing revelations have implicated other national 

institutions such as the BBC, the NHS (particularly mental health services), social 

services (particularly child protection), the civil service and government. The 

picture is one of rampant violence and misogyny that was overlooked and 

minimised at the time it took place, taking decades to emerge as those abused 

found the courage to speak out (again). Importantly, these transgressions are 

often presented as uniquely horrific, as though we could not expect anything else 

of the 1970s, and as though such abuses would not and could not happen today. 

The irony is glaring, of course, given that this progress narrative both writes out 

any feminist activism at the time, and erases the fact of rape and sexual 

violence’s grotesque under-reporting and under-prosecution in the present. See 

http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/cps_vawg_report_2014.pdf for 

Crown Prosecution Service statistics relating to increased reporting but 

decreased convictions for rape of women and girls in the UK, which suggest that 

http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/cps_vawg_report_2014.pdf


 16 

recognition of women’s experience of sexual violence is getting worse rather 

than better. This article is, indeed, being completed at the moment in which 

accusations of sexual harassment and rape against Harvey Weinstein and other 

celebrities and politicians in the US and globally have been met with women’s 

insistence that sexual violence marks their everyday experience as women in the 

“Me Too” campaigns (see: 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/women-worldwide-use-

hashtag-metoo-against-sexual-harassment). Feminist groups that focus on 

sexual violence (such as UK Feminista) are thus caught in the curious temporal 

plays underpinning fantasies of gender and sexual equality as almost if not quite 

yet achieved. Their cultural popularity reflects an investment in precisely the 

temporal distinction they want to challenge: their activism is a sign of living in 

times where women will no longer put up with sexual violence, as well as a sign 

of its continued cultural and social prevalence. Thus “sexual violence feminism” 

can ironically enough be framed as the one kind of feminism that everyone can 

agree on: one that identifies sexual and gender-based violence as the basis of 

gender oppression, while simultaneously positioning widespread sexual violence 

as part of the actual or (soon to be) past. As suggested, this is an oddly reassuring 

feminism that can confirm (as much as it challenges the consequences of) sexual 

difference, operating as the oppressive alternate side of the celebration of those 

differences in declarations of feminism as newly feminine. It is a performative 

feminism too, in that to embrace it is to make sexual violence passé in the 

moment of the claiming of its contemporary importance. Up until Trump, 

perhaps, men (no matter how they actually acted) would not want to appear to 

embrace the negatives of sexual difference represented by sexual violence – 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/women-worldwide-use-hashtag-metoo-against-sexual-harassment
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/women-worldwide-use-hashtag-metoo-against-sexual-harassment


 17 

precisely in order to inhabit the Modern. And insofar as the positive version of 

this binary and fatalistic story also reifies gender difference through suturing 

femininity and feminism, there do not even need to be outward changes in 

gender representation to signal such a political and affective shift. Post-Trump, it 

will no doubt be even easier to claim feminism; on the basis that one is after all 

not that much of a violent, pussy-grabbing misogynist.  

To return to the popularity of “looking like a feminist,” then, to don the t-

shirt might thus be said to be a way of marking oneself out as “not one of those 

old misogynists,” and to signal a break with anti-feminism (which would now be 

cast as both old-fashioned and pro-sexual violence; as though Trump were part 

of the past and not the terrifying present). But to take up this position is also to 

take up a pro-censorship and anti-prostitution position that has long 

characterised such forms of feminism. Again, this is uncontroversial for 

celebrities and politicians whose careers can be decimated with the smallest 

whiff of sexual scandal. But in the process, both sexual violence feminism itself 

and those who celebrate its new openness, rewrite history in yet another way, by 

simplifying the complex debates over the nature of sexual violence, the 

significance of porn, or the character of sex work, that have been central to 

feminism since its inception (Duggan 2006). So too the intersectional critiques of 

this strand of feminism – as perpetuating racial and classed stereotypes in their 

preference for marches in poor neighborhoods, or as ignoring the complex 

modes of oppression and freedom that different women and men face – are 

positioned as diluting a clear agenda in ways that tell a simple story of prior 

solidarity upset by successive desires for representation. Julie Burchill’s piece for 

The Spectator takes this familiar line, casting “intersectionality” as erasing 



 18 

socialist feminism’s proper politics 

(http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/02/dont-you-dare-tell-me-to-check-my-

privilege/). Nancy Fraser’s Fortunes of Feminism (2013) enacts a similar 

temporality, casting a politics of diversity as the main catalyst for fragmentation 

of an otherwise, and previously, united and effective feminist movement. That 

this movement was always multiple, and always thronging with people who did 

not see themselves recognized in singular accounts of feminist aims, is 

conveniently forgotten in such accounts. The subject of feminism, when 

oppression is understood as rooted in experience of sexual violence, is most 

often imagined as straightforwardly female too. Anti-porn and anti-sexual 

violence feminisms thus privilege “women born as women” over the experiences 

of a range of subjects targeted by masculine violence or objectification. The “Me 

Too” campaigns referenced earlier repeats this presumption, with challenges to 

a broader coalition of voices of those facing harassment in the face of masculinist 

dominance – cis-women, trans* men and women, gender non-conforming 

subjects, effeminate men and queers of a variety of stripes, all men, women 

trans* and queer subjects of color – in preference to a privileging of sexual and 

gender violence as the preserve of women who have always lived as such. The 

opportunities for coalition and solidarity in the face of sexual and gendered 

violence are thus displaced in favour of gender-opposed understandings of 

personal and political subjection. Understanding sexual and gendered violence 

as primarily experienced through a binary between men and women fits neatly – 

as it has done for over one hundred and fifty years – with the progress narratives 

of modernity and democracy that mark other contexts and cultures as uniquely 

patriarchal through their failures to place sexual violence in their own pasts, 



 19 

even when – or most especially when – this failure might be said to mark all 

states and cultures. The opportunities for an integrated, intersectional account of 

how violence works to position a broad range of subjects as outside 

heteronormative authority are briefly raised, only to be dismissed as part of a 

lamentable fragmentation that dilutes feminist politics and experience.  

 The reliance on gendered difference at the moment of reimagining 

feminism as universal does other work too. It naturalizes economic relations 

between women and men at precisely the point of heightened European 

austerity. Across Europe, the cuts in public funding are felt more keenly by 

women, who are both poorer earners in public sector work and who are already 

subject to the pay gap (Brah, Szeman and Gedalof 2015). Women are the ones 

called on to pick up the slack when social resources are withdrawn, and this is 

often referred to as “re-traditionalisation”: the turning back to older gender 

relations within kinship and community ties, as part of how economic 

downturns are managed, and as part of how women continue to be constituted 

as a reserve army of labour. The repeated – not so much precarious, but 

fundamentally temporary – nature of women’s access to the labour market has 

always required naturalization in order not to appear as it is: a privileging of a 

white, male breadwinner model that represents racialised, patriarchal and state 

interests. A discourse of re-traditionalisation risks participating in the same 

game, then, by reading current manipulation of gender norms as a return, a 

failure of the present to move beyond its unequal past, rather than as an 

enduring condition of gendered discourse. The desire to include women as full 

and equal participants in the public sphere (or to present them as already such 

participants) is necessarily contradicted by the creation of conditions that 



 20 

prevent them from being able to participate. It is these conditions – lower pay, 

lack of care provision, presumption of women as carers – as well as a continued 

failure to see these as naturalized aspects of cultural and economic 

heteronormativity – that underwrite the expectation that women will inevitably 

pick up the slack. This is, to my mind then, less a paradox or temporal lag, than 

the precise mode through which enduring inequality is naturalized and displaced.  

One reason why I think it is so important to track the appeal of a 

“universal feminism” that sutures feminism and femininity in some instance of 

contemporary representation, then, is that the citation of gender inequality’s 

temporality allows for a reinstantiation of gender difference, all the while 

appearing to challenge the limits such binarism represents. In other words, I 

want to propose that the linking of feminism and femininity domesticates the 

former, reifies heteronormative oppositions between men and women, and 

positions sexual violence as well as unequal domestic labour in (our Western) 

past (even when it remains very clearly present). Importantly, it is this made-

over feminist subject who continues to do the rescue work in relation to those 

female subjects imagined as hyper-terrorised: the cut; the veiled; the temporally 

stymied. Only this time our feminist heroine does not have to give up her 

femininity or her victimhood; she can be both victim and agent. While appealing 

in a range of ways, this complicated reinstantiation of gender binaries in 

(post)colonial discourse is one powerful mode through which gender inequality 

is currently perpetuated.  

 

Concluding Dilemmas 



 21 

The shame of wearing the “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” t-shirt did not 

derive from the mismatch between claiming feminism and doing no work 

towards the alleviation of gender inequality. It arose from being implicated in the 

global economic inequality that produced the t-shirts themselves, as though 

there were no relationship between these issues. On the one hand, we would 

want to encourage a take-up of feminism in the world, expecting surely that it 

will not necessarily mirror one’s own concerns. On the other hand, when 

“feminism” functions specifically as a trope through which ongoing intersectional 

gender inequality is managed or even ensured rather than alleviated, we face 

particular political and ethical dilemmas. If “feminism” is a reassuring part of 

national heteronormative pride in an era of cynical wars, displacement and anti-

immigration feeling and legislation, what are the possible next steps for 

feminists concerned to reside in a progressive Europe?  

 I want to propose two temporary responses: uncoupling feminism and 

gender/sexual politics; and insisting on feminism as a minority pursuit. In the 

first case, I have been experimenting for some time now with ways of 

disarticulating feminism from her presumed feminist subject. In “Affective 

Solidarity” (Hemmings 2012) I was interested in thinking about disappointment 

and unease with gender roles as a basis for solidarity, irrespective of what 

happens next in terms of politicization, repression or even hostility to feminism. 

I took this from the ways in which I share an affective critique of the limits of 

gender roles with my mum, even though she would never call herself a feminist. I 

was trying to think through a feminism that allows for both me and my mum, 

that would refuse to start from the assumption that I hold the upper hand, or 

assume that my identification as a feminist means I am more likely to challenge 



 22 

gendered or sexual norms than she is. In fact, now I reflect on these questions 

anew, my feminist identity has often meant I have hidden continued gender 

inequality in my own practices, since I am more ashamed of them than a non-

feminist might be. The concept of “affective solidarity” was intended to open up a 

feminism that contains feminist subjects and non-feminist subjects, starting from 

the appreciation of different locations within knowledge and politics and the 

recognition of the importance of dissonance whether or not it leads to a 

particular identity.  

Importantly, I do not think this vision is an entirely open one. It cannot 

contain anti-feminism, for example, even as it can contain subjects other than 

feminists. In this reflection I have been strongly influenced by my reading of 

Emma Goldman, whose role in a rethinking of the temporalities of feminism I 

have been grappling with over the last decade. Goldman was an anarchist activist 

(1969-1940) who centered questions of sexual oppression in her analysis of 

authority, and who linked that oppression to nationalist, militarist and capitalist 

interests (Goldman 1908). For Goldman, the sexual freedom necessary for 

revolution could not be articulated through the narrowness of feminist aims for 

“equality” with the most privileged (1910). Indeed, Goldman strongly dis-

identified from feminism, and I resist the feminist critical desire to reclaim her as 

a feminist despite her outspoken refusal to be so characterized. For me, it is 

more important for a contemporary feminism that Goldman did not – ever – exit 

the scene of gender and sexual politics: quite the opposite, she fought tooth and 

nail throughout her life to improve conditions for women. For Goldman, though, 

women and men needed first to focus on their internal demons in order to effect 

real and lasting change, taking responsibility for and struggling with their own 



 23 

conservative as well as radical desires in relation to others. In other words, while 

we might say that contemporary invocation of feminism is a mode through 

which inequality is secured; for Goldman, distance from feminism was a way to 

wrestle with deep gendered and sexual demons. Goldman’s prioritization of 

sexual freedom as a key to revolution challenged the complementarity of gender 

relations that privileges male authority while keeping it hidden. For Goldman, 

only the resignification of female capacity – as active, desiring and vital – would 

challenge a public/private divide that for her under-wrote all other social 

inequalities. We have much to learn from Goldman, I think, about the importance 

of going beyond gender ascriptions even as we resist the characterization of 

women as inferior to men. Importantly, too, for Goldman, this project of gender 

transformation was the only way to challenge nationalism and racism, both of 

which she understood as emerging from and reproducing narrow kinship 

investments (between 1927 and 1930).  

Consideration of both Goldman and my mum both point me towards the 

significance of thinking about feminism as a minority pursuit. Their shared 

grammar of dis-identification is the norm rather than the exception. One might 

say, indeed, that one thing that could be said to unite women across generations 

is their consistent rejection of and dis-identification from feminism. As a political 

movement and set of theories that (ambivalently and imperfectly) challenge the 

roots of femininity and gender relations as heterosexist, classist and racist, 

perhaps we should not expect feminism to be universally embraced. To do so 

may precisely be to undermine its critical capacity, may precisely blunt the 

ability to say: “you are wearing a t-shirt you have no right to, since you have 

evidenced no interest in analysing or transforming the horrors of contemporary 



 24 

gender.” One might add (and here we do of course have to wonder who is 

speaking) “Your continued wearing of this t-shirt in the face of this disinterest 

demonstrates your interest in maintaining the gender, sexual and racial 

inequalities you want to claim are already in the past.” Goldman was not afraid of 

judgment, and neither should we be, particularly not now when the relationship 

between feminism and racism/nationalism is so complicated and intense. So my 

second tactic might be to reclaim being a feminist as the very definition of a 

minority pursuit, one involving judgments of and struggles over the terms 

femininity and feminism, as well as their relationship to one another from an 

intersectional and historically attuned perspective.  

 

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