Introduction - Is Feminism Dead?
YouTuber Khadija Mbowe pointed me in the direction of a new Vice video where a group of different women debated some contemporary feminist issues. As you might expect (given that it’s Vice we’re talking about here), it was something of a shitshow; a selection of liberal, moderate, and conservative women were selected on the panel and then asked to answer broad questions within mainstream feminist discourse with very light facilitation or clarifying questions from the moderator, so that the majority of the video is women with vastly differing political perspectives talking past each other instead of articulating their similarities and differences in opinion. The overall impression is not that feminism is a serious topic that is inherently worthy of discussion, but rather that its value in our current post-feminist society is at best debatable and at worst actively harmful, merely a tool used by crazy, unreasonable feminists to push incoherent arguments. These types of “debate” programs are why the very concept of having a public political debate has become delegitimized for a lot of people: it’s obviously not a real conversation, and prevents us from learning and really honestly discussing our differences of political opinion. In most respects, this program is a waste of time and distracts us from the substance of the topics being debated, much less the actual issues.