Not All Feminist Ideas Are Equal: Anti-Capitalist Feminism and Female Complicity

Journal of International Women's Studies Journal of International Women's Studies

Volume 16

Issue 1

The 10th Anniversary of the FWSA

Essay Competition: New Directions in Feminist

Studies - Emotions, Activisms, Intersectionality

Article 6

November 2014

Not All Feminist Ideas Are Equal: Anti-Capitalist Feminism and Not All Feminist Ideas Are Equal: Anti-Capitalist Feminism and

Female Complicity Female Complicity

Giuliana Monteverde

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Complicity.

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Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 16, No. 1 November 2014

Not All Feminist Ideas Are Equal: Anti-Capitalist Feminism and Female Complicity

By Giuliana Monteverde

Abstract

This paper advocates a more explicit feminist discussion of female complicity by

demonstrating that existing discourses on women’s participation in patriarchal practices are

inadequate. By looking at two contemporary anti-capitalist feminist texts—One Dimensional

Woman by Nina Power and Meat Market: Female Flesh under Capitalism by Laurie Penny—I

show that these feminists acknowledge the disrupted sex binary, but have not produced texts that

reflect this understanding. Whilst these authors admirably concern themselves with structural

reasons for inequality—rather than blaming individual women—their treatment of complicit

women is wavering. They are scornful of powerful American Republican women and of ‘fun’

feminists, but sympathetic or unconcerned with women engaged in performed hegemonic

sexuality. I argue that a consideration of female complicity is linked to the reimagining of

categories for future feminisms.

Key Words: Complicity, Anti-Capitalist Feminism, Postfeminism

Introduction

This essay seeks to show that a study of female complicity is a worthwhile new direction

in feminist studies and a useful paradigm from which to analyse various strains of contemporary

feminist discourse. By outlining what I mean by female complicity, I hope to show that feminism

should move from a submerged approach to a more explicit discussion of the ways in which

women participate in the construction of sexism and the upholding of a patriarchal, or kyriarchal,

society.

I will look at two recent anti-capitalist feminist texts—One Dimensional Woman, by Nina

Power, and Meat Market: Female Flesh under Capitalism, by Laurie Penny—in order to

examine their approaches to the notion of female complicity. I conclude that this perspective,

with its focus on political action and systemic explanations for inequality, does not concern itself

enough with the actions of individuals (which is opposite to the approach of liberal mainstream

feminists, who focus too much on the actions of individuals). The authors are open to the idea of

female complicity, highlighting that women are not inherently better than men, and that they do

objectify one another, but do not offer any conclusive statements on how to deal with this

theoretically. These feminists do acknowledge the disrupted sex binary by criticising ‘token’ or

‘decoy’ women, but do not extend this to articulate how this affects the traditional categories of

feminism.

I argue that focusing mainly on the paradigm of work and women’s relationship to it

(both inside and outside the home) leads to an incomplete stance on female complicity. Whilst a

sustained political critique and awareness of intersectionality is a positive aspect of this type of

Giuliana Monteverde is a second year PhD candidate in the school of English and History at the University of

Ulster, Coleraine. Her doctoral research is on representations of complicity in contemporary feminist discourse.

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feminism, these authors do not fully explain the issue of complicit women or treat them in a

consistent manner. Whilst a structural analysis of power does implicitly suggest that individual

action is less important than collective effort, an exclusion of individual female voice means that

various categories of women (powerful, sexualised, domestic) appear ambiguously in these texts,

undermining the false binary of men versus women, but not offering an alternative model.

Of course, the books discussed here have their own goals, and therefore it is

understandable that the authors’ approaches to complicity are somewhat problematic given that

they are addressing issues of their own. Regardless, it is necessary to critique this particular

aspect of their work, with the intention of setting the groundwork for further research and

discussions on this issue.

The focal point of both Power and Penny’s work is the strong link between feminism, the

situation of women, and capitalism—including the feminization of labour, prostitution as sex

work, commodified femininity, and unpaid domestic work. Their work contains a sustained and

scathing critique of late consumerist capitalism and the hierarchical class system (including sex,

race and sexual orientation) stemming from the power inequalities inherent in it. These two texts

serve my purposes of looking at the representation of women perceived to be complicit and the

treatment of the notion of complicity. Where some authors represent women perceived to be

complicit in a problematic way, (e.g. Ariel Levy and Natasha Walter), Power and Penny do so in

a less problematic and more varied way. Power and Penny directly address the idea that women

aren’t inherently pro-woman in a political and academic manner rather than a sensationalist one;

the content of these books is therefore interesting for work concerned with ideas of complicity.

Furthermore, Power and Penny’s work can be conceived of as politicised popular feminism,

which is a fairly uncommon genre, and therefore worthy of attention.

I begin by outlining my understanding and application of complicity. I then give a brief

overview of contemporary feminism to show why it is necessary to adjust current feminist

approaches in line with broad changes in feminist thought. I contextualise the political milieu

that Power and Penny are writing in and responding to, and then look at various examples of

complicit women in the texts, showing that the differing approaches used by the authors reveal

an uneven picture of female complicity.

Complicity

The definition of complicity advanced here refers to the broad notion of participation in a

practice, belief, behaviour, or understanding that can lead to oppression, discrimination, or

exploitation of your own or another group (group here is a loose term referring to identity

politics; I acknowledge that all people cross several identity groups). In its traditional legal

meaning, complicity refers to participation in wrongdoing (legal or moral) where someone

knows about a crime but does not report it. This suggests somewhat more activity or awareness

than my use of it here. Complicity here can refer to inadvertent, passive or apolitical acts (as in,

acts carried out with no express political intention, rather than acts with no political meaning), as

well as more intentional, active and political ones. An example of commonplace female

complicity is the use of cosmetics: women that wear makeup do so not because they actively

want to be beauty objects in order to maintain gender inequality, but because of habit,

preference, or because there are certain social outcomes for women who look particular ways.

Additionally, I accept that particular practices have different meanings in different contexts, and

therefore I do not suggest that cosmetics, for example, are unequivocally oppressive. There are

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other examples of complicity where women are more explicitly and actively complicit in

patriarchal structures. For example, some conservative women who seek to promote traditional

heterosexual nuclear families by reducing access to contraception or abortion. This example is an

active political action that reduces the status and rights of women. My application of complicity

is not absolute, and there are many exceptions within these extreme examples. I do not assume

that feminists are not complicit in patriarchy, or that they are wholly distinct from the women

they write about.

It is important to stress that I do not consider any individuals to be culpable of their own

oppression; I refer to inadvertent collusion with the system. I also consider everyone to be

complicit with the various social systems they live within. As people living in particular

societies, we must fulfil certain roles to be a good employee, a member of a social group, a

romantic partner, a daughter, and so on. It is not possible to act always—or ever—in total

accordance with one’s sincerely-held political beliefs, and for many people, this is not ever a

consideration. With this in mind, I recognise it is impossible to never be complicit with

patriarchy, heteronormativity, white supremacy or capitalism, and that individual or group

interactions within culture are a process of negotiation and navigation. Talking about a “culture

of resistance,” Patricia Hill-Collins says “I suggest that such cultures contain contradictory

elements that foster both compliance with and resistance to oppression” (18). bell hooks defines

feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” (viii). This

definition focuses on sexism, regardless of who perpetuates it, as hooks says:

[T]he movement is not about being anti-male. [My definition] makes it clear that

the problem is sexism. And that clarity helps us remember that all of us, female

and male, have been socialized from birth on to accept sexist thought and action.

As a consequence, females can be just as sexist as men. And while that does not

excuse or justify male domination, it does mean that it would be naive and

wrongminded for feminist thinkers to see the movement as simplistically being

for women against men. (viii)

Overview of Contemporary Feminism

Feminism has undergone significant changes in the last fifty years, moving from

gynocentric scholarship that upheld and celebrated apparently inherent female characteristics, to

contemporary work that examines gender in relation to other systems of oppression. Where

feminists used to describe “female experience” or “female psychology,” they now go to great

lengths to unravel the multiple identities and subject positions from which humans operate. This

transition towards intersectionality and diversity means that feminism is no longer clear-cut in

terms of whom it supports. Whilst feminists still want to challenge gender roles and improve the

lives of women worldwide, they no longer champion sisterhood as something of fundamental

importance. Because of this shift, feminism is not supportive of all women merely by virtue of

their reproductive organs, but is intertwined with particular progressive politics—often a radical

one—that includes LGBTQ rights, environmental concern and class struggle.

The male/female binary has been disrupted by postmodernity, and contemporary

feminism has been left with a language and categorization problem. Contemporary feminism is

highly aware of the intersections of gender, class and race (among others) and has a constant

discourse of ‘privilege-checking’ that seeks to redress historical and contemporary inequalities.

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Because of this conceptualisation of gender, which was influenced by a postmodern fracturing of

the subject, contemporary feminists are extremely hesitant to talk about women as a category

with shared experience, suffering or qualities. It is difficult then to advocate for women as a

group when it is acknowledged that women are not a group with common characteristics.

Additionally, different types of feminists disagree on what a woman is, with some welcoming

male-to-female transsexuals and others banning them from ‘women-only’ spaces. This confusion

over categorisation contributes to a situation in which people in the category ‘woman’ are not

necessarily woman-identified, and feminists are no longer simply pro-woman.

Similarly, in feminist discourse, some words refer to characteristics that are seen as

socially constructed, but the use of these words maintains an essentialist position on certain

categories. Feminists often use words like ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’ even though they are

actively opposed to the idea that gender correlates with biological sex. This linguistic shorthand

is understood by those using it, but it halts discourse in a sense. To say ‘feminine’ and mean “the

socially constructed characteristics understood by society to be attributed to women” cannot be

the ideal way to theorise and articulate feminist issues. This language and categorisation problem

leads to feminisms that understand women can be sexist, but texts that do not convey this

awareness. This is symptomatic of an ever-changing field where language does not always match

understanding.

Postfeminism

Academic descriptions and critiques of postfeminism are highly relevant to a study of

complicity—both because of the aforementioned changing meanings of gender, and because of

representations of gender and gendered behaviour in popular culture. Power and Penny write in

and about a postfeminist society, and their references to playboy bunnies, Girls Gone Wild,

decoy women, and self-help feminism demonstrate this.

In her seminal essay on the subject, Angela McRobbie characterises postfeminism as

both taking feminism for granted, and considering it to be finished and therefore irrelevant. She

says that the “taking into account-ness” of feminism by contemporary mainstream culture means

that it can be dismantled and discredited (28), leaving a landscape devoid of collective political

feminism but rife with imagery of so-called female empowerment.

Interestingly, McRobbie alludes to notions of complicity when she refers to the

“participatory dynamics” in leisure and daily life wherein young women “endorse (or else refuse

to condemn) the ironic normalization of pornography” (34). McRobbie suggests that ideas of

“cool” are linked to this “participatory dynamic,” and so assumes that young women are aware

on some level of feminist criticisms of pornography. She says (emphasis mine):

There is quietude and complicity in the manners of generationally specific notions

of cool, and, more precisely, an uncritical relation to dominant, commercially

produced, sexual representations that actively invoke hostility to assumed feminist

positions from the past in order to endorse a new regime of sexual meanings

based on female consent, equality, participation, and pleasure, free of politics.

(34)

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Here we can see McRobbie’s frustration with representations that “actively invoke hostility” to

feminism, but more interestingly, with a lack of engagement from young women who embrace

notions of cool, knowing that they relate somehow to feminist positions, yet remain “uncritical.”

It is important to note also the persistence of othering and subsequent blame in more

recent feminisms. Second-wave feminism is criticised mainly for its white-centric middle class

focus—for focusing on liberation via the workplace, ignoring the fact that many women of

colour and working class women had been working for decades, suffering different injustices and

stereotypes than white middle class women. These problems prevail today, though there is more

of an established body of work outlining precisely the standpoints of women who were

marginalised not only by mainstream society, but also by the Women’s Liberation Movement. It

is an ongoing and serious problem that many white feminists now understand and namecheck

these criticisms, but have been unable to transform their perspective to accommodate less

privileged views. Recent Twitter hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen showed the extent to

which white feminists still exclude women of colour, working class women, and non-straight

women, and several articles that followed regrettably showed that many white women consider

discussions about race within feminism to be infighting and therefore pandering to the

patriarchy.

Post-Noughties Anti-Capitalism

Both Power and Penny have a post-2000 anti-capitalist outlook that is qualitatively

different from traditional Marxism or socialism. This body of thought is a response to the

neoliberalism of the late Twentieth Century and encompasses various re-examinations of Marxist

theory. This arguably post-post Marxism (as it draws upon Virno and Marcuse) is different from

traditional Marxist thought in that the subject is no longer a working-class industrial

revolutionary, but can be a range of identity formulations. Also, the economic system is no

longer considered to be the unequivocal explanation for how human society functions. Whilst the

economic system still has pride of place in post-Marxist feminist critique, the influence of

feminist thought means that patriarchy, as well as white supremacy and other types of privilege

(depending on discipline and viewpoint) are important nexuses from which to view inequality.

Post-noughties anti-capitalism is a response to a variety of political and cultural events, including

the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the 2008 economic crash and

subsequent bank bailouts, on-going environmental damage, increased worldwide consumption,

and an ever-growing gap between the world’s richest and poorest.

From the time when these two books were written, there have been numerous radical and

revolutionary uprisings in countries around the globe, not necessarily in direct opposition to

capitalism—as demands differ across countries and cultures—but in opposition to the status-quo.

The ‘Arab Spring,’ which started in 2010, was an uprising of the masses which demonstrated

civil impatience with economic decline, poverty, human rights violations, and political

corruption. The 15-M Indignados movement in Spain in 2011 saw 130,000 protestors on 15

May alone, and thousands more in the following months. Most famously, inspired by these

previous protests, the Occupy Movement began in 2011 and in several months had spread to over

95 cities across 82 countries.

Power and Penny are indicative of this post-2000 anti-capitalism and so are contemporary

in terms of political leftism, and progressive in terms of modern feminism (however focusing

more-so on issues of class than of race). Whilst both authors write accessibly, their ideas are

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theoretically grounded and both are interested in “a political imagination” (Penny, Oxford

Debate) that offers more than the patterns of life laid out today.

Complicit Women

Interestingly, Power directly addresses the issue of blame in her introduction. She says:

[this book] tries to avoid straightforward assertions of blame—of capitalism, of

women themselves, of forms of feminism that do little to address the real

questions—because it is never as simple as uncovering a ‘better’ mode of

existence behind the illusion. Such forms of revelation presuppose that the writer

is somehow in a privileged position vis-à-vis the dumb, unenlightened masses. (3)

Whilst Power does seem to blame the groups named above to some extent, it is admirable

that she does not claim to have the answers but instead advocates collective analysis and critique

of the current situation without being overly simplistic. Power’s book intends to identify and

discuss “material obstacles to equality” (3). This echoes Marx’s historical materialism,

suggesting that ideology within moral, social or political avenues is based on the economic and

technological substructure of society. Virno refers to “an objective foundation that reinforces and

reproduces deception” (3), referring to the ways that the power dynamic in society is naturalised

and made invisible through the economic system and the ideology that constantly legitimates it.

Virno maintained that whilst one’s perception of life may be false in a sense—in that it is

influenced by numerous outside factors—it is also grounded in some material reality. Explaining

post-Fordist semblance he says:

I refer to the ensemble of mentalities, images of the world and of oneself,

behaviors and beliefs which, while false (that is, semblances) nonetheless

originate in and derive a certain legitimacy from certain quite real and persistent

aspects of today’s mode of production. It’s not a question, in other words, of

subjective errors produced by the dominant culture, but of representations

forcefully suggested by a very concrete condition. (1)

Power invokes Virno to point out that ideology “runs deeper than the hopeful might have

previously imagined” (3) and she uses this in some way to permit her critique of other feminisms

and various groups of women (although this is not the primary goal of her book). By recognising

ideology as grounded in some reality (even if it did not originate in reality), Power can give

space to, and rationalise the behaviour of people not active in or aware of her political cause. By

seeing ideology in this way, Power shows the need for a more radical approach in feminism, one

that moves beyond “turning the tables or changing the language” (3), thus discrediting liberal

feminism.

Because of the strong political undercurrent in their feminist analyses, Power and Penny

are not content with the success of any woman in any field, but with a politically minded,

egalitarian person (ideally a woman) that will further their cause and enact some kind of

widespread societal change. For them, feminism is not a case of sex, categorisation, and

sameness, but of politics. Corrupt men and women are contemptible, but to get rid of them, a

gender (and race and class) perspective is necessary.

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There are a variety of women portrayed as complicit in Power and Penny’s texts and I

will discuss them individually in the pages to come. The groups are: high-powered American

Republican politicians; sexualised women, as described in Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs;

‘fun’ feminists like Jessica Valenti; and women who do domestic chores.

Additionally, in Meat Market Penny suggests a level of complicity from everyone living

in a patriarchal capitalist society. In an email exchange between Power and myself, she too

suggested that everyone is inevitably complicit:

I’d begin by suggesting that in many ways it is impossible NOT to be complicit in

some sense with capitalism and capitalist culture: almost everyone has to seek

employment in order to pay for rent, food etc. The way in which employment

demands a certain kind of ‘worker’ means that people are forced to play roles they

might not want to play - the smiling receptionist, for example.

She goes on to say that she is not particularly interested in women “dressing in a certain way that

might reinforce gender norms” as “all gender is a performance, even the most “obvious” kinds.”

Here already we see varying approaches to the idea of complicity, with Power focusing more on

work-related complicity than gendered aesthetic incarnations.

Powerful and Privileged Women

Nina Power considers some high-powered political women (Sarah Palin, Condoleezza

Rice, Laura Bush) to be complicit in furthering damaging gender stereotypes, actively working

to restrict equal rights for women (particularly with regard to reproductive health), and

appropriating the rhetoric of feminism for pro-war or anti-choice ends. Power begins by talking

about token women or “decoys” (6), to use the terminology of Zillah Eistenstein. Power’s

controversial stance, following from Eisenstein, is that these decoy women (or people of colour,

non-heterosexual people, working-class people) use representation to pretend to be progressive,

and then espouse political opinions in direct opposition to those that would benefit people in the

groups they come from. She says:

It has long been clear that we need to extend the concept of tokenism to take

account of the fact that often these ‘exceptional’ women and minorities are not

just included in positions of power, but come to represent the worst aspects of it.

(6)

Eisenstein’s thesis is that imperialist democracies use representation to pretend that

society is fair and equal, thus corrupting identity politics in the process (Power, 6). Seemingly

there is an issue of individual versus general here, one that Power handles admirably. She singles

out some women by name—powerful women in this case—and shows that she is willing to

criticise them. Whilst this may otherwise seem anti-woman, in the context of a book that is a

theoretical and political reclamation of contemporary feminism, it is not unnecessarily harsh.

Perhaps the key is that the women mentioned are powerful and privileged, and therefore worthy

of criticism. It is feasible that some feminist responses to female complicity depend on the

platform and attitudes of particular individuals, rather than general assumptions about an entire

profession or political group.

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In Sexual Decoys, Eisenstein elaborates on her understanding of gendering. She points

out that the inclusion of women in spheres they previously did not have access to (in the Western

world), such as the military, leads to a destabilization of “entrenched gender meanings.” This

brings up the aforementioned issue of language in feminism, when words like “male,” “female,”

“black” or “white” do not have a stable definition. These terms often refer to particular socially

constructed or historically played out characteristics, but are understood by those that use them

to deny any essentiality or naturalness related to the words. “White” has a particular historical

and social meaning, yet those that use it do not assume “white” to be a characteristic only

ascribed to white people. In terms of gender, this is related to complicity in that women can be

sexist, and men can be feminist. Eisenstein says:

Men can be either male or female, white or ‘other-than’. Racialized gender

operates as a decoy. Men can be male-identified males or females given that there

are male- and female-bodied men. As such, there are more than two sexes and

more than two genders and yet politically we are said and made to be male and

female, man and woman. (xi)

In relation to Eisenstein’s explanation of “male- and female-bodied men,” Power uses the

word “colonized” (13) in reference to these powerful American politicians, saying “the meaning

of feminism must be clear… [it has been] colonized not only by war-mongers, but also by

consumerism and contemporary ideologies of work” (13). Colonisation is an apt term for the

appropriation of masculinist qualities by women, and for the invasion of feminism by anti-

woman women, or male-identified women. By viewing masculinity and femininity as not

directly related to sex, both Power and Eisenstein open up the possibility of female complicity in

patriarchy.

Sexual, ‘Sexualised,’ or Self-Sexualising Women

Sexualisation has been a pertinent locus of feminist discussion in recent decades. What

began as a feminist enquiry into new modes of representation, is now a morally tinged term,

frequently used in the mainstream media. Rosalind Gill was interested in the representation of

women’s bodies in the media and public space (64), and also “in the way in which some young

women seemed to be taking up or even championing these modes of self-presentation” (65). She

refers to this as “sexual subjectification” rather than objectification (65). This idea was

popularised in mainstream liberal feminist spaces by journalist Ariel Levy in her polemical book

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Levy’s book typifies the way

feminist discourse on sexualisation was taken up in less academic terms, and is a bridge from

more academic work like Gill’s, to the moral panic on sexualisation in right-wing and

conservative spaces (a recent Daily Mail headline declares that, “Raunchy, hyper-sexualised

popstars like Miley Cyrus and Rihanna damage girls' self-esteem - and could harm education and

job prospects”).

In Female Chauvinist Pigs, Levy shames women for presenting themselves as overtly

sexual, and also criticises career women for not participating in an imagined sisterhood. She

writes from a liberal feminist stance, and ultimately advocates for more choice for women than

the narrow commodified options currently on offer. The main issue with Levy’s text is that she

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positions herself as different from the complicit women, and does not offer any overarching way

to reunite both groups, or to suggest what has caused the split in the first place.

Whilst Power clearly acknowledges the reality of female participation in patriarchal

practices, when discussing Female Chauvinist Pigs she does not criticise the women in Girls

Gone Wild videos. Both Penny and Power are much more critical of the companies that promote

this monolithic notion of female sexuality than the women involved. Whereas Levy suggests a

certain amount of naivety or immaturity on part of the women in Girls Gone Wild videos, Power

instead focuses on the symbolic meaning of the company’s actions:

When the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ team hand out hats or t-shirts in exchange for a shot

of breasts, or the performance of a snog with another woman, the logic is right out

in the open: we’ll give you something obviously crap in exchange for a kind of

performance that reveals that there is nothing subjective, nothing left, hidden

behind the appearance, that you are simply commensurate with your comportment

in the world. You are your breasts. (24)

In contrast to liberal feminists such as Levy and Walter (particularly in Living Dolls: The

Return of Sexism), neither Power nor Penny are concerned with “sexualisation” in the sense that

it might cause young women to have sex. Rather they are concerned with the framing of the

debate and the origins of increased sexual imagery. Again, Power openly acknowledges female

complicity; in reference to whether women sexualise one another she says—“they can and they

do” (32). She clarifies this point by saying, “clearly there is nothing inherently nicer about

women than men,” reiterating the position that actions rather than biological body are deserving

of recognition, even if the actions are for the rights of a group defined by biological body.

Penny also does not discuss young women in Playboy t-shirts (as Levy does), but instead

mentions poststructuralist theories of sign and simulation (9). In a more postmodern approach,

she (like Power) suggests that teenagers are fully aware of their gender performativity, rather

than totally subsumed in their gender construction—“the pastiche of sexuality adopted by

ambitious young people is nothing if not ironic” (13). Penny describes mainstream coverage of

‘sexualisation’ as “gleeful horror at female promiscuity” (6). Regardless of whether there is an

increase in porn-derived sexual imagery, and whether it does negatively affect people, Penny

believes that the topic is judged in self-righteous, aghast tones, without any feminist context.

This more detached and sympathetic approach from both Penny and Power differs from Power’s

take on privileged women; neither author is particularly distressed about performed hegemonic

sexuality, and definitely not on the same scale as Levy and Walter in Female Chauvinist Pigs

and Living Dolls.

Furthermore, both authors’ treatment of sexuality is attentive to structural inequality,

historical context and feminist theory. Penny treats beauty rituals in the same way she does

domestic chores, by categorising the two woman-centred activities as undervalued and unnoticed

work that should be recognised. Rather than seeing beauty practices as solely oppressive (radical

perspective) or empowering (lipstick feminist perspective), she sees them as work:

The sexual sell is real labour, propping up a socially mandated measure of erotic

capital. From the working hours devoted to the purchase and strategic application

of clothes and hair and beauty products, to the actual labour of dieting and

exercise, to the creation and maintenance of sexual persona, self-objectification is

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work, first and foremost. Female sexuality, which everyday becomes

increasingly synonymous with objectification, is work. (17)

This approach is particularly sympathetic to women complicit in propping up ‘the beauty myth.’

Penny sees these women (who make up a particularly huge group, presumably including Penny

herself) as victims of a sexist double standard that constantly sells beauty products to women

while complaining that they are too image focused and superficial.

In an article in The New Statesman, Penny reiterates that the issue of beauty should be

seen in relation to work:

We love to talk, as a society, about beauty and body weight—indeed, many

women writers are encouraged to talk about little else. What we seldom mention

are the basic, punishing double standards of physical appearance that are used to

keep women of all ages and backgrounds in our place…it’s an expensive,

timeconsuming [sic] and painful rigamarole of cutting, bleaching, dyeing,

shaving, plucking, starving, exercising and picking out clothes that send the right

message without making you look like a shop-window dress-up dolly.

Penny’s use of active verbs reflects the effort undertaken by women in order to maintain

particular conventions of female attractiveness. This post-Marxist position relates to Marcuse’s

notions of repression in Eros and Civilisation. Marcuse states that citizens in late-capitalist

societies do not know that even their leisure is work, and that “the promotion of thoughtless

leisure activities” and “the triumph of anti-intellectual ideologies” highlights this (74). By seeing

beauty practices as activity, rather than superficial, oppressive, or innocuous, Penny invokes the

post-Marxist frustration with the pervasiveness of alienated labour in all corners of Western

societies.

Penny, in line with most feminists, considers all women to be on a continuum of sexism

and misogyny, with prostitutes and transsexuals suffering the most violent abuse of all. By

seeing all women as suffering inequality by various means, including the participation of most

women in some sort of traditional adornment, she absolves them of overt and intended

complicity in the same way that Power does with her interpretation of Virno. If women live in a

patriarchal capitalist society and suffer inequality in various ways to various extents, then

everyone is complicit in upholding the status quo in some way. Perhaps this approach would

benefit from some judgement from Penny herself on the practices discussed. Her presentation of

beauty as work reveals the effort and energy that women put into it, but does not make an

assessment on whether aspects of it are broadly positive or negative.

‘Fun’ Feminists

A target that does bring overt criticism from Power is Jessica Valenti, and other ‘fun’

feminists guilty of obscuring feminism’s radical roots. Power’s anger with Valenti and other

mainstream feminists lies in their apolitical stance and failure to discuss “the C word”—

capitalism (Manifesto, 1:30). In her introduction, Power says “this short book is partly an attack

on the apparent abdication of any systematic political thought” (1), and goes on to accuse

contemporary feminists of using the same empty rhetoric of empowerment that consumerist

culture does. Power refers to Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism as a self-help book, but not a

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feminist one, saying, “the political and historical dimensions of feminism are subsumed under

the imperative to feel better about oneself” (7). In a talk about contemporary feminist literature,

Power critiques the “aesthetic and moral discourse” of feminists like Natasha Walter and Kat

Banyard, saying they provide a description of the symptoms of the problem, rather than a

meaningful analysis of it (Manifesto, 1:50). Power does direct her criticism at the tone and

content of these feminist works, rather than the women who wrote them. A textual analysis then

absolves the authors somewhat, enabling Power to reject aspects of particular texts but not

portray Jessica Valenti as akin to Laura Bush. It is noteworthy however that these feminists are

portrayed to some extent as complicit by Power (because they are contributing to feminist

discourse), whereas other women (namely sexual or ‘sexualised’ ones) are not.

Domestic Women

Domesticity has always been a significant topic in feminist debate, and has often been

positioned as oppositional, or at least, in conflict with feminism. The domesticity debate is

problematised by the fact that many women of colour and working-class women have been

juggling a double workload for decades, as well as facing different issues about their

representation as mothers and wives in the media. Whilst domesticity does not have the

centrality in feminist thought as it once did, some contemporary feminists (Penny included) are

starting to look to the glamorization of 1950s housewives (cupcake classes, knitting clubs, Mad

Men, 1950s fashion and interior design) as a worrying retro-sexist trend. Another aspect of this

debate, and one that is important for anti-capitalist feminists, is the issue of immigrants and

women of colour as nannies and cleaners for white women that are successful in the public

sphere. For an anti-capitalist feminist, this is further proof that liberal feminism does not do

enough.

In Meat Market, Penny says “adult men and women have colluded” (58) in keeping men

oblivious of basic skills required to survive. It is interesting that Penny focuses on men, pointing

out the irony that the most powerful member of the family (and society) is believed to not know

how to prepare a meal or wash his own socks. She recognises the scope of female complicity in

this domain, saying, “One of the most difficult things for feminists to acknowledge is the real

harm done by women as well as by men in the domestic sphere” (53). She goes to great lengths

to highlight the participation of women in this area, at one point suggesting that mothers train

their daughters in feminine duties out of the “consequence of hard-packed resentment at cultural

isolation and forced drudgery” (53). She extends this analysis of complicit home-runners to

include the additional exploitation of migrant workers who are drafted in to clean and cook for

the white Western women that can afford to pass on the burden of work inside the house. She

says, “very many women would rather be complicit in the exploitation of other, poorer women

than confront their own partners” (60). The important aspect of the domesticity debate is that it

makes all (or almost all) women complicit in the upholding of patriarchy, in much the same way

beauty does. Many feminists have strong political views on a variety of issues, but domesticity

and beauty practices are activities enshrined in day-to-day life for most women, and often passed

down and perpetuated by women themselves.

Whilst Penny does discuss female complicity in the domestic sphere at length, she clearly

extends this analysis to other areas too. Talking about eating disorders, she encourages female

readers to “take responsibility for our part in the cruel machine” (29) and asserts that “women are

not powerless beings without agency” (29). The solution for Penny then is to politicise women,

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particularly in a way that categorises prostitution, beauty maintenance, childrearing and domestic

chores as valid, necessary work, seen as equal to jobs undertaken outside the home. There are

calls for protest and resistance throughout the book and she reiterates Carol Hanisch’s classic

feminist mantra that “the personal is political,” saying that women’s bodies are “a collective site

of material production” that must “collectively refuse to submit to capitalist body orthodoxy”

(65). This position is crucial, again showing that sisterhood is not necessary just for the sake of

itself, certainly not based on a biological essential, but because as a collective (yet disparate)

group, women are a sex-class that suffers numerous injustices.

Literary Features

Penny pokes fun at contemporary attitudes—“Even babies are now born with the Playboy

Bunny image tattooed onto their eyeballs. Their fault, the little tarts, for daring to look at the

future” (5). This comment is not just a dig at the mainstream media, or the conservative right, but

also at mainstream feminists who focus more on Playboy than capitalism. Penny parodies the

morally horrified voice used in more liberal, mainstream feminist texts. She does not quote

individuals to indict them or to aggravate the reader, and her use of irony, hyperbole and free

indirect discourse is rhetorically different from Walter and Levy’s use of direct speech. She also

uses the passive grammatical voice to literalise accusations of passivity: “women are

commanded,” “we are obliged,” “it is made clear to us,” “it is far harder to challenge that

culture,” (22) “we are bombarded,” “corralled into rituals” (1). These words demonstrate the

strength of certain ideological messages, yet also insinuate apathy on the part of female citizens;

this is further accentuated by the use of the passive voice, which evokes passivity in a linguistic

sense.

Penny’s language is very telling in terms of her portrayal of institutions versus

individuals. The title of her book is reflective of her visceral, corporeal presentation of humans,

which contrasts with the sterility of the society they inhabit. When talking about sex (‘real’ sex

as opposed to sex depicted in pornography), she talks of “ooze and tickle”

(6), “fumbling,

awkward, sticky revelations” (14), and “the panting border between dream and secretion.” This

materialist depiction of sex harks back to 1970s feminism (particularly Greer), which expressed

the reclamation of the natural female state through imagery of bodily fluids. Through this

language, Penny emphasises the chasm between reality and media representations of reality—

between signified and sign. She presents humans as dirty, sticky, sexual beings that are resisting,

or being squashed by, the squeaky, mechanised corporations of consumerist capitalism. The

following quote shows how she refers to humans in terms of their bodies, as a way of delineating

them from dehumanising media depictions:

The eroto-capitalist horror of human flesh, and of female flesh in particular, is a

pathology that can and must be resisted. If we are to free ourselves from this

pernicious fear of flesh, we have to learn to live in our own meat. (16)

Penny’s representation of society versus humanity makes it possible to criticise some women.

Her depiction of systems as being mechanical and sterile, and therefore sinister, allow for human

error. This is similar to Power’s use of Virno at the start of One Dimensional Woman.

The literary techniques used by these authors do not reveal a consistent picture of female

complicity. At times the authors are sympathetic, understanding that women (and men) operate

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in a certain society and are limited by the traditions, ideologies and norms of that society. At

other times, the authors are outright mocking of complicit women—particularly fun feminists

and powerful political women—though, this could be because these women have substantial

privilege, power and platform to respond.

Conclusion

Power and Penny represent a feminist position that sees the oppression of women as

intrinsically linked with class, consumerism and consumption. This stance, whilst politically

informed and critical of more liberal ‘fun’ feminisms, has some issues with emphasis, in that it

mentions but does not elaborate upon the issue of female complicity. Both Power and Penny say

that women are not inherently better than men, and that they are complicit (but not to blame) in

objectifying each other and doing the brunt of domestic work (amongst other things). Power is

openly critical of high-powered women and the work of other feminists, but neither author has a

sustained position on the idea that women maintain and further patriarchal practices or beliefs.

Anti-capitalist feminism, by definition, is concerned with the intersections of class and

sex, and these pamphlet-like polemics promote collective action for revolutionary change. This

approach does suggest that individual actions are secondary to collective ones, and the binary of

male and female is broken down by frequent criticisms of women. However, the work is only

half done; Power and Penny know that women are not feminist or progressive by default, but

offer no model or means of understanding this in the context of anti-capitalist feminism.

By looking at two texts within a particular genre of contemporary feminism, I have

shown that there is not an overt discussion of female complicity within this area—and I argue

that considering recent changes in feminist thought, it is vitally important to address the ways in

which women participate in the construction of sexism in society. Other genres of feminism also

do not have a stance on female complicity—including liberal and radical feminism—and moving

forward with this paradigm would lay the groundwork for a new direction in feminist studies that

acknowledges the fluidity of gender, and the intersections of gender with race, class and sexual

orientation. A more complete feminist awareness and acknowledgment of female complicity is

linked to the reimagining of categories for contemporary and future feminisms.

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