CITYSCAPE OF NEW FEMINISM
By ROSA MARTINEZ. Flash Art nº 214. October, 2000.
If we writte the word "new" before the word "feminism" would some people still be suspicious or even afraid?. They should not!. New Feminism is an inclusive movement that gathers a series of radical but flexible strategies to reinvent the emotional, sexual, economic and geopolitical distribution of power. New Feminism believes in humor, love and in a balanced ethics of sharing. New Feminism promotes imaginative and sensual ways of seduction and a polymorfic re-creation of identities. New Feminism is aware of the strong role of women in economic development of their societies and asks for a better distribution of benefits. New Feminism aims at putting an end to the patriarchal propaganda that equates feminism with lesbianism in an attempt to belittle the legitimate political struggles of women. New Feminism questions the backlash of the nineties that still pretends that equality betwenn men and women has already been achieved. New Feminism resists the uniformity imposed by globalisation and questions all means of patriarchal domination through the deconstruction of established ideologies.
New Feminism is supported by a wide number of women and men. Some of its principles can be synthesized into the followings maxims:
1. Be sexy, very sexy (inventing different ways of glamour or radical chic, and being extremely critical with the models imposed by the mass media).
2. Be rich, very rich (with has nothing to do with accumulating capital but with being economically independent an able to deal with finances).
3. Share (responsabilities, lovers, friends, knwoledge, worries and other matters).
4. Be skilled in the new technologies.
5. Constantly deconstruct gender discourses.
6. Explore our wide capacity for pleasure.
7. Enjoy irony: "guiltlessness", meditation (Buddhism is wonderful); Olympus paganism; anti-dogmatism, and many other things.
WHY SOME TRANSVESTITES ARE NEW FEMINIST
The Feminist theory and practice has come a long way since it´s beginnings (Poulain de la Barre & Mary Wollestonecraft), and it has developed a huge variety of perspectives, so what is this new feminism thing now?. I understand it just as an eye wink more than anything else. When Rosa Martinez told me about her project I thougt it could be a very interesting way of critisisim to reveal new struggles that affect the transvestite/transsexual comunities and feminism. For instance, the definition of what a woman is, the issue that has given a lot of headaches to boththe feminist scholars and politicians. Feminists and transvestites/transexuals have a long history of prejudices against each other. And a new one could come because at the end of the 80´s feminist theorists change positions to explain oppression from the sex/gender system to the sex/sexual system, arguing that primary discrimination came from the body mark, because sex, the body category, is also a thinked category. I absolutely understand and agree with this new field of study, but my concern is that, so often, they seem to have forgotten their unvaluable work about gender. Gender could not be the only origin of sexism but, still gender by itself it´s enough to raise sexist attitudes. The transvestite/transexual comunity knows that well. My opinnion is that a feminist is not just a woman or not only a woman, but a woman "aware" of her situation within pathriarcal hegemonic societies. To be a feminist is a political statement, and a feminist is a political activist in order to change those social relationships. This is why some transvesties/transexuals, as some women, can be and are feminists. I am a feminist, or at least a "new feminist". I am "aware" that our own and women´s discrimination come from the same root. And most important of all, I do my best to "change" this society from this point of view.
Xabier Arakistain. Art Curator.
