Demystifying Femininity
Jahanvi Rao reminds us that committing to radical feminism means rejecting gendered shackles—not redefining them.
By Jahanvi Rao
The theory that femininity can be a vehicle to help women gain power is pervasive, to the extent that it is a source of horizontal hostility within the feminist movement. The premise suggests that rejecting femininity is internalized sexism, and the heated polemics in defense of femininity argue that as roles and behaviors associated with the feminine are devalued economically, socially, and culturally, women can reclaim it and give it currency which can be used to gain equality.
It stems from the mistaken belief that by playing into the very tropes and oppressive roles made for us, we are somehow subverting them. That if we embrace and confidently “own” being objectified and reduced to things that are desired by men, we can gain power over them. We are told that it is our fault for resisting femininity, that by viewing femininity as a denigrating role which demands obsequiousness and gradually erodes your sense of self, we are masking our resentment towards our own sex. That we need to redefine what femininity means and embrace it. Paint your shackles pink! Put a bow on it! The shackles are protecting you, really.
“You become what you don’t resist”
— Liberalism and Death of Feminism, Catherine MacKinnon (1990, p. 5)
What is femininity? Passive, intuitive, nurturing, graceful, harmonious, and empathetic are popular descriptors. Are there any descriptors that don’t define women in terms of how they should cater to the people around them? Descriptors that define women in relation to their biological functions? Or seek recourse to the natural and mystical? By enshrouding femininity in abstract terms and ascribing spiritual connotations, our society deflects any criticism, almost condemning anyone who dares to question the roots.
The concept of femininity neutralizes treating women as a monolith. Any deviations from this concept result in women being demonized. But what happens when a woman doesn’t want to be nurturing, or doesn’t want to give birth? Or can’t? What happens when she doesn’t want to be self-sacrificial or passive? What happens when she doesn’t want to center her life around pleasing the male gaze? Is a woman allowed to be anything other than desired?
It has always been normal for people who don’t perform their assigned gender roles or participate in heterosexual norms to be treated as invisible and ostracized in cultures that strictly adhere to the gender binary. This tactic of social isolation often leads to mental immiseration, and women are often expected to bow out of the public sphere when they don’t conform to their gender role.
In “Republicans think Kamala Harris can’t be president because she hasn’t had children,” written in 2024 and published in the Guardian, Moira Donegan writes about the alarming nature of seeing this played out so publicly in what is purportedly the most progressive countries in the world during their election cycles.
It can’t be a coincidence that we’ve seen a rise in primordial oppressive laws against women; Men’s Rights Activists the likes of which are sui generis; men in public spaces touting antiquated misogynistic statements around the same time there’s been a surge in tradwife content where a majority of the viewers are women.
How did we regress from the intellectualism that gave birth to the likes of Andrea Dworkin to collectively getting conned into believing pre-second wave feminist myths about the glories of being a housewife and having kids early on? Where choice feminism is constantly evoked in defense of these choices? Is the throning of femininity and choice feminism simply a product of our post feminist world? Literacy was previously thought to be a useful tool to combat inequality, but the recent uptick of anti-intellectualism has repackaged ignorance, mental laziness, and a lack of intellectual curiosity as a disdain for elitism.
It will eventually come down to having a clear and concise understanding of femininity and erasing the misconception that femininity is innate, not a set of behaviors that we are aggressively socialized into. We must stop using it interchangeably with “woman” or “female”.
Every aspect of femininity means being less human, ranging from the physical — practices such as the removal of body hair and the tradition of foot binding, where we are supposed to resemble men less, all geared towards differentiating women as Other, inhuman — to the mental, with the encouragement of passivity, where we are expected to be okay with being bored and mentally sterile and unstimulated. Femininity requires that we remove our resemblance to humanity. To make any headway as feminists, we must acknowledge and reject the notion that women must conform to feminine standards.