This collection examines what feminism means and how it operates in the contemporary moment. What we are calling the âfeminist contemporaryâ is constituted by action and self-reflection as well as by uncertainty and self-criticism. This volume regards these characteristics as integral to the circulation of feminism in the present, specifically in feminist modes of activism, media, and cultural representation. With this in mind, and thinking about feminismâs ongoing self-critique, this volume treats the feminist impulse as an orientationâa tending-towards and for a future without patriarchy. The fact that feminism can never be quite placed or fixed makes it compatible with the idea of orientation. In this book, the authors ask how feminism orients our responses to cultural events, happenings, and representations in recent times.
The chapters in this volume engage with media, activism, and cultural representationâthe organising sections for this bookâin order to do feminist work. The authors address elements of organising, representing, and articulating feminist politics. Orienting this politics involves locating feminist moments, highlighting feminist responses, and then opening these up for debate. This is not a straightforward process. Because feminism is not an object nor simply a label or a definition, orienting feminism also investigates how feminism movesâhow it refuses that âthingificationâ so often demanded in, and by, academic and political discourse. In other words, one of the best traits of feminism is that it never stays still.
Feminism circulates. It moves through and is moved by academic discussions, popular think pieces, and Twitter storms. Feminism circulates and in its circulation, it materialises in diverse ways: the âlean inâ culture of the corporate world, protest marches such as the Womenâs March of 2017, and events such as SlutWalk (discussed in Chap. 6). Feminism also appears in social and political collectives that operate on and off-line in meetings, blogs, articles and social-media posts (see Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7). And yet, for all its appearances and work, feminism can also be very disjointed and undecided.
While feminism remains compelling and widely discussedâit is in no danger of disappearingâits discourse has also become more and more fragmented, contradictory, and reduced to catchphrases. For instance, feminism turns up as numerous commodities with slogansââFEMINIST AF,â âIâM A FUCKING FEMINIST,â and âTHIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE.â âFeminismâ even became a banner to BeyoncĂ©âs performance at the 2014 MTV Music Awards. Feminism is working a double shift here because while feminism circulates, appearing on t-shirts, reality TV, and Instagram, it is also reduced to a catchphrase and in many instances, functions as a fashion accessory.
Double shifts seem to come naturally to feminism. We have heard of the double shift for women who work all day then labour at home in their âleisureâ time and of the double shift for the woman at work who not only completes her own job but works as emotional support for colleagues. And now we have another kind of double shift where âshiftâ is a verb. Here feminism shifts or moves from manifesting in demonstrations and actions, which we might think about at university or discuss in terms of âlive politics,â to becoming a commodity (Chaps. 3, 4, and 9). Of course, this other double shift is always part of the entanglement between politics and capitalism. Does one orient the other? Does the upsurge in feminist politicsâcondemnations of rape on social media (Chap. 7), events like SlutWalk (Chap. 6), and representations of feminine âgirlâ politics on screen (Chaps. 2 and 3)âorient its reification into a commodity? Of course. Opposing commodity culture to idealised âon the groundâ realpolitik can be nostalgic and unhelpful. Instead, it feels important to acknowledge that feminism has always been grounded in the material and the everyday. So, as the chapters here indicate, this material orientation needs to account for and engage with the ubiquity of the commodity in the current context.
On the one hand, this movement into the world of the commodityâthe world of the popularâis surely a sign of feminismâs continued relevance and importance. Indeed, with feminism seemingly everywhereâthe word, the banner, and the hashtagâthe opportunity to view the persistence of patriarchy and gendered violence is growing. However, while this double shift demonstrates feminismâs capacity, this everywhere-ness of feminism also risks flattening the general message: âBeen there done that wore the pink pussy hat, got the feminist t-shirt.â This feminist tourism, and the consequent dilution of feminismâs potency, makes analysis, by which we mean an orientation to gendered politics in culture, all the more pressing. Responding to the urgency or now-ness of feminist activity, this collection presents many cultural orientations: from reality television to advertising, from social media to poetry, from self-defence to pornography.
While feminism appears worldwide, we continue to see it most clearly in the West. Similarly, as a movement, feminism is dominated by the middle-class, white, liberal ethos, which we might call mainstream feminism. However, there are multiple feminist voicesâdiscourses running alongside this mainstream feminismâthat are testament to feminismâs force and multiplicity. Some of them are represented in this collection.
In response to the dominance of mainstream feminism, this collection does not return to hackneyed unanswerable questions such as what is feminism? Or, can feminism be unified? Instead, it aims to orient multiple voices working as a broad-fronted force on problems of feminist activism, for example, around âfeministâ self-defence (Chap. 5) and the demonstrations that took place after the rape of Jyoti Singh (Chap. 7); feminism in and of the media, such as representations of transwomen in reality television (Chap. 2) and of the vagina in fashionable graphic design (Chap. 4); and cultural regulation of womenâs bodies in, for example, the creation of feminist pornography (Chap. 9). This collection also spreads out horizontally addressing local, young, and queer concerns that help orient hegemonic modes of liberal feminism in diverse ways.
These kinds of orientations are part of way-finding and way-making. In this sense, to orient feminism means to look for ways to operate and to create ways or paths to follow. Neither way-finding nor way-making are, of course, without obstacles or mistakes. So, yes, feminism circulates, but its multiple uses and expressions are not without contradictions, disagreement, separation, and negotiation from within and without (Chap. 5). This collection tracks some of these contradictions and negotiations. The authors in this book orient feminism in relation to different positions and articulations in contemporary culture. The chapters ask us to consider the intersections among feminist politics, everyday life, and our use of languageâwhether linguistic, visual, or physicalâto place feminism in context.
The areas that Orienting Feminisms unpacks are âMedia,â âActivism,â and âCultural Representations.â The opening section, âMedia,â brings together voices that address representations of gender and feminism in popular media. In Chapter 2, Joanna McIntyre discusses the ascent of transnormativity through an analysis of recent representations of transwomen in the docusoaps I Am Cait and I Am Jazz. Kevin Fletcherâs work, in Chapter 3, also turns to televisual representations in his description of My Little Pony in terms of post-feminist politics. Here we see some of the tensions that erupt when commodity culture and feminism share co-ordinates. In Chapter 4, Leigh Paterson considers the ever-proliferating presence of the vagina in graphic design. She tracks the visual representation of vaginas over time considering well-worn sites such as Courbetâs Origin of the World and NASAâs Golden Plaque and more recent instances such as the âsnatch grabsâ in advertising.
The following section, âActivism,â includes chapters that look at how feminism makes its way through activist spaces. Bell Murphyâs chapter addresses the politics of feminist self-defence. She asks if the seemingly liberal individualist logic of self-defence is at odds with a collective feminist politics and, particularly, what this means in a settler-colonial context such as Aotearoa/New Zealand. In Chapter 6, Jessamy Gleeson tackles the global phenomenon of SlutWalk. She offers an account of SlutWalk Melbourne from her perspective as an activist-organiser, and in so doing she makes palpable the connections between feminist activistsâ emotional labour and activist burnout. In Chapter 7, Paula Ray regards âfourth-waveâ feminist activism and asks whether the orientation of âwavesâ is useful for a decolonising feminist movement that accounts for feminists of colour. She discusses Indian activistsâ use of social networking sites as a means for organising new and effective modes of feminist action.
The final section of this collection, âCultural Representation,â considers what is at stake in contemporary feminist culture. This section opens with Siobhan Hodgeâs chapter on Sappho. Hodge asks what the stakes are when Sappho, the archaic Greek poet, goes online. In particular, she considers the potential for posthumanism in feminist, lesbian, and bisexual uptakes of the poet on sites like Tumblr and YouTube. In the collectionâs ninth chapter, Zahra Stardust considers the orientation of online pornography and its shifts from public to corporate regulation. In particular, she looks at how corporate porn censors non-normative female and queer bodies, and sex practices. Closing the collection, in Chapter 10, is Melanie Beres, who focuses on the concept of sexual consent in visual media campaigns, especially on Canadian university campuses. Her chapter looks at how legal and political issues of consent are challenging to navigate and publicise.
Within this orientation, we do not claim to capture feminism as a stable, solid object. Rather, we hope that the following chapters raise provocations and questions for readers and offer a glimpse of the many lively sites of feminist life today.