In Pursuit of Feminist Postfeminism and the Blessings of Buttercup

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking that the term "postfem-inism" is often and perhaps most frequently used—by the mainstream media generally and by actual people—as a kind of casual dismissal of feminism that comes implicitly coupled with the suggestion that the cutting-edge place to be these days, with regard to women, is the one where the old victim mentality has been sloughed off and a new flying-free-of-those-chains approach to gender in all its diversity and in all its equal opportunity has been boldly embraced. Given the terms of this unstated argument, any criticism of this postfeminism automatically slots the critic into the role of the relic, the leftover women's libber still fighting battles that no longer need to be fought. And who among us, standing in front of our students or our colleagues, wants to be seen to be so pathetically tilting at windmills? Only the bravest. Or the least self-conscious.

Because this form of postfeminism works to keep women quiet about their structural complaints and teaches them to interpret those complaints as being of individual rather than collective origin, it works as another new face of patriarchy. To publicly and proudly claim feminism, then, is to do what our female feminist forerunners have done for us and for decades: it is to combat patriarchy. As Rudyard Kipling suggested in his famous patrilineal legacy to his son, it is an act of courage to "keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you" (578).

I wish it were this simple. Raised in a world where individualist and masculine models like this one were valued, I've been conditioned to hunger after this role of the lone male hero fighting against great odds. I may have been born a female, but I want to die as Clint Eastwood or maybe Bruce Willis (or if not die at least ride off solitary and strong into the sunset). I tell my students to pay attention to this cross-culturally ubiquitous chosen-boy story, which has been reiterated so many times that it has become invisible as a narrative, some of its latest incarnations in the western world being found in the American film The Matrix and the English public-school adventures of Harry Potter. Strange how we never seem to get tired of certain stories and interpretations, while others, such as feminist understandings of the way the world works, are rendered tiresome after only a few renditions. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact, stunningly realized in the 1970s as the result of studies into mixed-sex and same-sex conversations, that, from certain male-centred perspectives, any talk from women is too much talk.¹

When I was a younger feminist, I used to think that all I needed to do to free myself of patriarchal dictates was to stay vigilant and be aware of how such dictates were delivered, through which narratives, codes of normality, sets of values. Now I'm not as confident about any individual's capacity, including my own, to rescue herself from entrenched systems of oppression, and I'm far more respectful of their tenacity. So I'm prepared to forgive myself for lapsing into such a weirdly hybrid fantasy as this one about being a lone feminist yet still masculine hero. And, by the same token, I try to be patient when my students, particularly the women, make it clear that feminism is something they no longer need, given that the war's over and we've won, and now we're entering this new triumphant stage of human history called postfeminism. I try not to be irritated or angry. Though I am. Often.

I have a secret identity. It's Buttercup from the Power Puff Girls, the one with blazing green eyes whose image stares out at me from the coffee cup I'm holding as I write this. Her perpetual anger occasionally makes her misuse her power, smashing buildings and such instead of...