At the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, American superstar Beyonce performed in front of a giant screen blazoned with the word “Feminist” in huge lettering. She said she did it because “people don’t really know or understand what a feminist is”.
She was right. Since then, we have seen over and over again how much of America have no idea what a feminist is and what feminism really stands for.
Over the past 10 years, we have heard of self-professed “feminists” who proudly declared their support for misogynist-in-chief Donald Trump. Newspapers ran think pieces on how there are many different ways of being a feminist, and how women can still be “feminists” while opposing the most basic tenets of feminism or supporting men who objectively harm women. Sex work became feminist. Objectification of the female body became feminist. Surrogacy, as it helped certain women “have it all”, was also declared feminist. In fact, it became clear that in the American discourse, “feminist” was any woman – or man – who claimed to be one, for whatever reason. People who clashed with sexist, conservative men on any given subject, no matter their positions on any other issue relating to women and girls, were also immediately accepted and celebrated as “feminists”.
Mainstream US “feminism” has become so individualised that every single woman there appears to define it only in terms of what the term means for her. This type of “feminism” does not translate into a collective movement, and therefore develops no principles, ethics or goals. “Feminist” in the current US context has become just another empty identity tag that serves no other purpose than political posturing and virtue signalling.
This is partly the reason why American progressive intelligentsia appears to be struggling to make sense of the left-wing, feminist backlash to the rapid mainstreamisation of “gender ideology” in the United........