Postfeminism: what it is and what it contributes to the gender issue

Under the name of Postfeminism, a set of works are grouped who assume a critical position before the previous feminist movements, while claiming the diversity of identities (and the freedom to choose them), beyond heterosexuality and binaryism sex-gender.

Postfeminism emerged between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, and it has had an impact not only on rethinking the feminist movement itself, but also on Expand the ways of identifying ourselves and relating to each other in different spaces (in couple relationships, family, school, health institutions, etc.). etc.).

Below we review some of its background, as well as some of the main proposals.

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Breaks with previous feminism and some background

After several decades of struggles that had been important to advance equal rights, the feminism pauses and realizes that, in large part, these struggles had focused on bringing together women women, as if 'the woman' were a fixed and stable subjective identity and experience.

From there, many questions open up. For example, what is it that makes someone be considered a 'woman'? Is the body sexual? Are they the practices of sexuality? While we have fought on behalf of 'the woman', have we also reified the very binary structures that have oppressed us? If gender is a social construct, who can be a woman? AND... As? And, before all this, who is the political subject of feminism?

In other words, Postfeminism was organized under the consensus that the vast majority of previous feminist struggles had settled in a static and binary concept of 'woman', with which, many of its premises were quickly oriented towards an essentialism little critical. it opens then a new path of action and political claim for feminism, based on rethinking identity and subjectivity.

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Poststructuralism and feminism

Under the influence of post-structuralism (who reacted to structuralist binaryism and who pays more attention to the latent of the discourse than to to the language itself), the subjective experience of the speaking beings was put into play for feminism.

Post-structuralism had opened the way for a "deconstruction" of the text, which was applied ultimately to think about the (sexed) subjects, whose identity had been taken for granted. preset.

That is, Postfeminism wonders about the identity construction process, not only of the sexed subject 'woman', but of the very relationships that have been historically marked by the sex-gender binary.

Thus, they take into consideration that said system (and even feminism itself) had been based on heterosexuality as a normative practice, which means that, from the outset, we are installed in a series of exclusive categories, whose purpose is to configure our desires, our knowledge and our links towards binary relationships and frequently uneven.

Faced with a dispersed and unstable subject, feminism, or rather, feminisms (already in the plural), also become processes in permanent construction, which maintain a critical position towards feminisms considered as 'colonial' and 'patriarchal', for example, he liberal feminism.

The plurality of identities

With Postfeminism, the multiplicity of signifiers that mean that there is no uniqueness in “being a woman”, nor in “being a man”, being “feminine”, “masculine”, etc. Postfeminism transforms this into a struggle for freedom to choose an identity, transform it or experience it, and to recognize one's desire.

Thus, it is positioned as a commitment to diversity, which tries to vindicate the different experiences, and the different bodies, desires and ways of life. But this cannot happen in the traditional and asymmetric sex-gender system, so it is necessary to subvert the limits and norms that have been imposed.

The feminists themselves recognize themselves as made up of different identities, where nothing is fixed or determined. The identity of the sexed subjects consists of a series of contingencies and subjective experiences that occur according to the vital history of each person; beyond being determined by physical features that have been historically recognized as 'sexual traits'.

For example, lesbian and trans identity, as well as female masculinity, take on special relevance as one of the main struggles (which had gone unnoticed not only in the patriarchal and heteronorm society, but in the very feminism).

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Queer theory and trans bodies

Society is a space for the construction of sexuality. Through speeches and practices desires and ties that to a large extent legitimize heterosexuality and gender binaryism are normalized as the only possible This also generates spaces of exclusion for identities that do not conform to its norms.

Given this, Queer Theory vindicates what had been considered 'rare' (queer, in English), that is, it takes sexual experiences that are different from heteronormative ones. -peripheral sexualities-, as a category of analysis to denounce the abuses, omissions, discrimination, etc., that have delimited the ways of life in the West.

Thus, the term 'queer', which used to be used as an insult, is appropriated by people whose sexualities and identities had been on the periphery, and it becomes a powerful symbol of struggle and of claim.

For his part, the movement of intersex, transgender and transgender people, questions that masculinity has not been an exclusive thing of the body of the heterosexual man (the sexed body in masculine); nor is femininity something exclusive to the female sexed body, but throughout history, it has there has been a great multiplicity of ways of living sexuality that have been beyond the system heterocentric.

Both Queer Theory and trans experiences call for the diversity of identities of biological bodies, as well as the multiplicity of sexual practices and orientations that they had not been foreseen by the heterosexual regulations.

In short, for Postfeminism the fight for equality occurs from diversity and from the opposition to the dissymmetrical sex-gender binary. His bet is for the free choice of identity against the violence to which those who do not identify with heteronormative sexualities are systematically exposed.