4th
A good argument for why we need radical feminism in 2012:
“The past decades have seen the rise of a nominally apolitical marketing campaign masquerading as feminism, with Komen merely the most visible symbol. Komen aligns perfectly with what Linda Hirshman labeled ‘choice feminism’—a moral-relativist approach to feminism that tries to scrub the movement of politics and value judgments in favor of uncritical affirmation of all women’s choices.
In her statement of apology, Komen CEO Nancy Brinker said, ‘We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics—anyone’s politics.’ That’s exactly the fallacy—that somehow women’s health can be narrowed to an apolitical and innocuous agenda. Women’s bodies are the most politicized sites on earth. When women focus on a hyperfeminine aesthetic at the expense of issues of substance, we end up with a hot pink ghetto of goodwill that forfeits the conversation about rights, access and money to the menfolk.
For the past decade, this has been the feminist’s lament: How do we identify the line where feminism becomes a marketing strategy for the very patriarchy it nominally opposes—selling a non-threatening agenda that doesn’t buck the status quo?”
