Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism: Six Global IssuesMy mission is neither to reproduce the history of the feminist movement nor to pro- vide abbreviated and therefore inadequate accounts of its primary figures. Instead, I have chosen a sampling of fairly narrow subjects, each intended to embody an aspect of a contemporary feminist theory, critique, and practice. Each chapter is intended to be read as a thread included in a complex weave of ideas and thinkers, as a complemen- tary, mutually reinforcing part of an evolving project. My primary aims are threefold. First, I will demonstrate the relevance of feminist theorizing to issues that may seem less directly about the status and emancipation of women––for example, terrorism, species extinction, or climate change –– but which, especially in a globalized econ- omy, are more relevant now than ever. Second, I will show how feminist thinking can usefully illuminate the conceptual, political, economic, and morally relevant links between a range of pressing contemporary issues: for example, the connection between ongoing environmental deterioration and the role of human beings with respect to nonhuman nature, or our attitudes toward reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization with respect to who has access to them or what role sexual identity, economic class, and geo- graphic location play in determining this access. Lastly, I will argue that a feminist theorizing that is adequately equipped to confront the issues of a young but rapidly changing century offers real hope to a future that is challenging, but by no means hopeless. These are familiar issues, of course, but I plan to show how a feminist approach can elucidate some of the key relationships among seemingly disparate issues that are likely to define the twenty-first century, and to demonstrate that such an approach has the power to unite its sister movements into a coherent, ethically defensible, emancipatory “not-quite-whole” (McClure 1992: 342). The point of philosophy, Karl Marx argued, is not merely to under- stand the world, but to change it––for the better.Yet, while I still think this is true, I also know that the world imagined by Marx is very different from the world in which we live; and moreover I know that what is absent, elided, distorted via what it means to have access to the Internet is itself an essential part of what we must come to understand if this change is really to be possible.What I’m after is no less the continuing revolution imagined by my foremothers, yet one that includes many a subject matter beyond what my foremothers could have imagined. Sexual identity and politics, reproductive technology, economic inequality, the culture industry, religious fundamentalism, and the status of nonhuman others –– why these six issues? The ways in which each issue has an impact upon human and nonhuman life has under- gone significant transformation, particularly with respect to technology.The technologies, for example, of sex reassignment have changed immensely over the last quarter-century and have become fully com- modified in a globalized market largely devoted to the reproduction of Western conceptions of sexual identity, attraction, beauty, and cul- ture. Similarly, the technologies through which religious fundamen- talism has become an exportable good––including communications technology on the one hand, and weapons of mass destruction on the other––have changed the very ways in which we think about religion and the implications of religious conviction. How we define what counts as “fanaticism,” for instance, intersects with questions central to the feminist and anti-racist movements, particularly in terms of the conditions that may help to create soldiers for God, foster the misogyny of the Taliban, or engender backlash against what is perceived to be unrestrained Western materialism. Much the same, of course, might be said for other issues –– say the continuing exploita- tion of women, girls, and some men, in pornography. But while pornography has certainly seen an incalculable expansion of its range via the Internet and other forms of communications technology, it has not,I suggest,undergone as revolutionary a transformation as,say, our thinking about climate change in virtue of our access to information about melting ice caps or vanishing polar bears. Access to pornog- raphy has become easier, and the amount of pornography has grown –– this is nothing to be underestimated, and there are some serious social consequences. However, the amount of information on climate change isn’t just greater, or access to it easier; rather, we start to think about the world in ways we may have never considered before, especially with respect to how our vision of the “good life” intersects and affects the environment and its dependents on a global scale. Some of the thinkers appearing in the following pages claim feminism as a way of life; others don’t, but they have had or may yet have considerable influence on future theorizing and activism. Some are well known within feminism and/or within philosophy; others are less well known but, in my view, deserve greater attention. Several are voices from the sciences. This work, then, is not really about feminism, but aims instead –– following the example of Wittgenstein –– to exemplify feminism as the critical practice of a life worth living. I am an unapologetic, politically active, ecologically oriented feminist; the following interrogates what such a position might consist of, and in that sense it might offer an example––though surely not an uncontestable one –– for my reader. In the end, my project is as traditional as Socrates’ exhortation to the examination of conscience, and as radical as Wittgenstein’s insistence that we “go look and see.” But there’s one more thing. While it might be tempting to read the forthcoming discussions of sexuality, gender, race, and economic status as “old hat” for a feminism long engaged with these themes –– as if most readers had largely settled all the relevant issues of equality and identity –– I think that would be a mistake. Had we settled these issues, a political figure like Sarah Palin would not have gained the attention –– even devotion –– that she has from the “base” of her party. Indeed, she’s wildly popular where I live.“Out here,” in rural Pennsylvania, “feminism” is deployed as a term of derision; “not- Christian” is readily translated into “minion of Satan,”“pro-choice” means “baby-killer,” and “environmentalist” means “whacko-tree- hugger.”“Gun culture” isn’t merely alive and well in my town; it sig- nals an entire way of life that revolves around a very narrow conception of a Christian god who determines the “place” of each member of “his” creation –– and its adherents shop at Walmart for ammo. My point is that change can count as neither progressive nor enduring until it comes here, that is, to the countless “heres” that characterize the hearts and minds of millions of people who, mostly just trying to get by, don’t have a lot of time to think about what “equality” means for women, non-Caucasians, even poorer people –– let alone nonhuman animals and the environment itself.This book, then, is not a manifesto –– that would be addressed to folks already convinced that the revolution is worthwhile. No, this book is about a modest list of topics that I think matter in ways that touch almost all of us in one fashion or another; yet, understood in the light of a theory and practice devoted from its inception to emancipation–– namely, the feminist, gay, environmental, animal-welfare, and civil- right movements –– these topics reveal some new avenues of analysis, and thus some new ideas for forming workable coalitions in pursuit of a more just future.
Deirdre Byrne
