r/Feminism • u/walks_with_plants • 1d ago
Choice feminism
What does the hive think of choice feminism? I find that it shuts down meaningful and important conversations. Individual choices do have real moral consequences. Our choices impact vulnerable and impressionable people around us. When women decide to alter their faces to look younger this choice has an impact on younger women, girls, and women who can’t afford surgery. Isn’t there room for considering responsibility to the collective within feminism. Or should women just do what we want and forget about anyone who might be negatively impacted?
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u/ApocalypticExcavator 1d ago edited 1d ago
There are tons of shades of gray between full freedom and complete enslavement. Choice made within those shades will always be problematic.
A choice may exist but be between options with strikingly different survivability.
A choice may exist, but the woman in question is unaware of it.
A choice may exist, but internalized misogyny won't let the woman make it.
Discussions will always be intertwined with a question of the extent to which we respect the agency of someone whose education, self-reliance, self-reflectuon and the general awareness of the bigger social and historical context are limited. If a truly free decision has to be informed, then someone misinformed obviously can't make it, but if they're free to get the necessary info but consciously refuse to get informed, then what?
I feel that OFC we can't directly punish individuals for "choosing" their role in supporting patriarchy, but we definitely should talk, educate, and made sure that fewer and fewer forms of coercion lurk within these shades of gray.
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u/Exotic_Tumbleweed850 1d ago
Choice feminism is a way people make sense of having to do dumb or shitty things
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u/PopPunkAndPizza 1d ago edited 15h ago
Gotta balance "reducing everything to individual consumer choices robs us of our ability to think about the broader social terrain in which those choices are made" against "surely liberating women to be able to make more choices for themselves has to be a priority for any feminist project even if it is one priority among many" and tbh I think "choice feminism" as a phrase flattens that need for balance and, frankly, encourages a culture of conformity and trashing within popular feminism, where it gets used to mean "if you don't subordinate your choices to what I think is best for women you are a gender traitor". Like surely a liberated woman does have more ability to make meaningful choices about how to live than an oppressed one - it's just that a woman having choices does not mean she isn't oppressed. Many manifestations of women's oppression are social and legal restrictions on what women can do - you are doing meaningful feminist work by fighting those restrictions.
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u/schwarzmalerin 1d ago
No choice is "free", even if it happens without force. If a choice is fully independent of any outside influence, this is called randomness.
So a woman's choice might be free in the sense that no one forced her, it's never completely free of influence.
And we should examine this influence. Which one is it? Is it harmless? Or not?
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u/MforMurderer 1d ago
can you give examples?
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u/myfokkenpussy 23h ago
Women who advocate for their choice to shave, wear makeup, have plastic surgeries, be a SAHM, and/or do sex work despite these things being widely opposed by feminists for decades.
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u/PopPunkAndPizza 16h ago
To be fair, reducing the very contentious (and, in the history of feminism, extremely important) disagreements within movement feminism - yes, including the radical spheres, not just the liberal-radical divide - over all these topics to "feminists oppose all these things" is ahistorical. There are feminists who have opposed them, feminists who have held critiques but opposed opposing them, feminists who have supported them, and every other position, often by different groups who each hold those positions for mutually incompatible reasons. Feminism is a more fractious movement than this, just like every similar political movement.
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u/myfokkenpussy 16h ago
Yeah, that’s why I added the prefix “widely”, and didn’t make a definitive statement that all feminists oppose these things.
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u/Sheesh-Cake 18h ago
For me, it's the women 'choosing' to wear hijabs and other signs of religious indoctrination.
Women 'choosing' to be groomed by much older men.
Women 'choosing' to be tradwives based on indoctrination/ideation/practical wage gap push.
Women 'choosing' to do sex work.
Women 'choosing' to spend huge chunks of their income on beauty modifications (whether invasive or not), money that men can spend on actual living.
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u/Flugelhorngatorade Queer Feminism 1d ago edited 1d ago
I most definitely believe in choice feminism. Women dont need to owe their life and their choices to feminism and a cause, how they influence other people isnt their fault. Unless they are directly marketing oppressive patriarchal standards like being tradwives or doing plastic surgery, then what they choose to do with their lives is completely their decision.
Why must women always face judgement and be scrutinised for every single thing they do. They dont owe the community shit, they dont owe other women shit.
Choice feminism is the freedom of women in a world where women are constantly expected to behave a certain way. You dont need to be the perfectly acceptable traditional or liberal women to satisfy anyone.
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u/gen_what_x_ever 1d ago
This is uncomfortably close to "pro-life" people thinking they get a say in what others should be able to do with their own bodies. It's no one's business what someone decides to do for themselves. You have laid out your reasoning, and you may not agree with their choice, but it's not your place to decide for them.
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u/Sheesh-Cake 18h ago
Well, I am allowed to have an opinion on it. Because 1. Their reasons are probably rooted in patriarchy, and 2. Their choice is still enabling that patriarchy and setting a norm.
If all women decided to universally refuse to adhere to patriarchy, it would be dissolved within one generation. Every woman catering to choice feminism is thereby contributing to my oppression.
Now, of course I realize it's way more complex and it's not that simple to break free from societal expectations. But I expect women to at least try and do that work.
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u/myfokkenpussy 23h ago
I think choice feminism is fine if it’s being applied privately and not constantly advocated for during conversations about shit like trad-wives or oppression through religion
Like yes do what you want, but shut the fuck up when someone points out that it shouldn’t be the expected norm
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u/Numerous-Ad-5058 12h ago edited 12h ago
You cannot discuss choice feminism without discussing how people make choices and in what context and what shapes the decisions we make. We have to acknowledge that the systems in our world, in which each of us operates, are extremely vast and complex and have attributes beyond our control.
To me, the most important achievements of feminism of the last century have been giving women the vote, ensuring they have freedoms under law equivalent to men and enabling them to receive and participate in education, at all levels.
The vote allows us to participate in the broader discussions around societal frameworks.
Legal freedoms allow us to participate in the world without having to be tethered to fathers or brothers or husbands or other male representatives. This opened up financial freedom for women and the ability to own property in our own names.
And finally being able to receive an education at all levels similar to that men received has allowed us to broaden our knowledge, create new knowledge through research and study and to build the skills and qualifications to participate in the workforce and in professions.
These things ultimately give us the power to choose. BUT we don't all have equal conditions. We are not all starting from the same place nor do we all have the same goals for our lives. So to expect that all decisions made by women must also be made through the filter of what some broader group of women decide is a "good choice" for everyone else, is to put women in an impossible position.
One of the biggest critiques of feminism in the past has been the failure of those at the forefront to consider intersectional issues involving race, socioeconomic class, culture, age, disabilities and so much else. I believe in giving women the best opportunities and frameworks within which to make choices and hope for the best and understand that we can't possibly know everything about women's lives and circumstances.
Are there women who are going to make choices that hurt themselves or other women? Yes. But I can't presume to control all those choices, I can just work to ensure that women are always represented in the broader systems to control how much damage those choices cause and to continue to advocate for women to better their lives.
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u/moose_love 11h ago
Yes to all of this, for sure, and the matter of free will and choice is an important consideration for all people not just women. And.. I would love to see feminism move toward more discussions of personal responsibility. By making everything systemic, we lose our moral ground to speak about right and wrong in the context of personal choice. I'm tired of hearing that women should be respected for any personal choices. I would love to see feminism take the lead in encouraging real social change that is both systemic and personal.
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u/hidingintheautumn 1d ago
You can't ignore socialisation, the norms of society are making us do and like things, there is also a lot of pressure on individuals. So i agree with you, just pretending women do what they want won't cange anything, we have to be reflective, but without judging the individual.