Feminism’s Last Battle
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We are witnessing a kind of last battle, a feminist Armageddon that will determine whether feminism, as a movement centered upon the wellbeing of women and girls, will endure into the future or self-immolate. Only a return to realism can provide a stable definition of woman, the requisite ground for effective feminism.
Since its inception in the nineteenth century, feminism has been roiled by in-house quarrels. In the movement’s first wave, centered on the fight for suffrage, feminists disagreed among themselves about temperance and birth control. The second wave swirled into even more disparate eddies—Marxist feminists, liberal feminists, lesbian separatists, pro- and anti-abortion feminists—before crashing dramatically into the feminist sex wars of the 1980s.
In our current cultural moment, we are witnessing yet another feminist schism over the definition of woman: is a transgender woman a woman, or is a transgender woman a man?
Against this historical backdrop, the clash over the categorical boundaries of “woman” is nothing new. It’s simply the latest skirmish in a long civil war between shifting factions. From another angle, however, this latest conflict reveals itself to be more than just another domestic dispute. I believe we are witnessing a kind of last battle, a feminist Armageddon that will determine whether feminism, as a movement centered on the well-being of women and girls, will endure into the future or self-immolate.
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