Postfeminism
is a term used to herald a time when equality is supposedly reached and when
feminism is then no longer required. Postfeminism can be thought of as an
epistemic break from the second wave, but most importantly it is played out in
the context of media culture and is often bemoaned as lacking a political
agenda. Postfeminism is contextually located in a neoliberal and globalised
first world space where there is a constant emphasis on choice and empowerment
through a language of the media and globalisation (Gill 2007a). Rosalind Gill
and Angela McRobbie warn us of taking this ‘choice’ discourse at face value and
try to critically think about the problems and implications of the constant
occupations with the self and the body. This move from sexual object to sexual
subject is not totally unproblematic (Gill 2007a). Rosalind Gill (2007b) argues
that one needs to look at the way power works in these contexts. One needs to
be wary of being celebratory of this media discourse of ‘choice’ and unpack the
ways in which it interpellates women into normalised roles.
Following
from Bartky’s reading of Foucault’s modernisation of power, Rosalind Gill
(2007a) looks at how the female body is overly sexualised and why one needs to
be critical of this move. At the same time, Gill observes a returning to the
traditional pleasures of femininity: the heterosexual family, giving up work,
taking the husband’s name among a few other things. Gill sees this as telling
us two things: one, the 'return of the repressed' and second as prefeminist
ideas being repackaged as postfeminism. These do not put into question
normative heterosexual femininity. The danger that Gill reads into it is that
all of this is packaged in the language of neoliberal individualism.
It
is in this postfeminist context that Rosalind Gill (2011a) argues that it’s
time to use the word sexism again and recover it from its previous meanings.
She looks at the new forms that sexism takes in the present context, where
equality is assumed and yet where men are privileged in various ways. These
inequalities are those which exist outside the strategies which are used to
challenge these inequalities: like anti-discrimination laws etc. Rosalind Gill
calls them unspeakable inequalities: “largely unnoticed and unspoken about even
by those most adversely affected by them” (Gill, 2011: 5). Talking about it in
the contemporary media workplace, she says that the new and mutated form of
sexism which exists works precisely through “the invalidation and annihilation
of any language for talking about structural inequalities. The potency of
sexism lies in its very unspeakability” (Gill, 2011: 5).
The
piece follows from this strand of post-feminism to look at the unspeakable
inequalities that work out in spaces which have a gender-neutral policy,
especially in educational spaces. What happens when one has formal equality
between boys and girls in educational institutions? What are the spaces for
resistance then based on gender discrimination? How do women and men negotiate
with these in such an environment?
Some
educational institutions in India follow a policy of gender equality, but in
practice there exist subtle forms of gender power relations and a disciplining
of the female body. Despite the fact that boys and girls study together, play
together, have access to the same resources, gender socialisation plays a role
in ways in which certain disciplinary norms are at work.
When
I turned 21, in my final year of college, I was gifted my first mobile phone.
It was a very basic model and only allowed me to make and receive calls and
messages among a few other basic functions like the calculator, alarm clock
etc. Some of my friends too had a mobile, and as young people in the first
decade of the 21st century, we gladly exchanged jokes via the medium
of messages. One such kind of joke which was circulating among my friends and
me during that time- mostly girl friends and a select few boys- were ‘non-veg
jokes’ or jokes with a certain degree of sexual content. One day I sent one
such joke, a witty one at that, to a girl friend. When she received my message,
she was intercepted by a male friend who on reading the message, immediately
exclaimed with much shock along the following lines “what a dirty joke, oh my
god, she sends these kinds of jokes!” And the news spread. Before I knew,
everyone knew that I sent and received non-veg jokes via sms. I was immediately
told by some friends that the jokes that I sent to a male friend in the hostel
was read by all the boys there. Boys started telling me that I sent dirty
jokes, and that they would not communicate with me through sms. It came to the
point where boys refused to have my mobile number because I sent ‘dirty jokes’!
At
that time I was amused at the whole incident. It did not really strike me as
basically problematic. But now I can read the complexities of the whole
‘harmless little’ incident.
The
reaction to the message came from the young men. And suddenly the very young men
who would watch porn slyly on the side, became scandalised by a young woman
exchanging a witty joke with sexual material with another woman. It was almost
as if, for the men in question, the woman who was worth keeping in touch with
or considering part of one’s social circle was someone who was devoid of any
interest in sexuality or sexual material. It was a subtle process of ‘slut
shaming’[1]
and excluding women who have any interest in sexuality. At the same time, it brought
to light the Madonna-whore complex at work in the young men’s minds and how
this binary of the good woman/bad woman orders everyday interactions.
And
this took place in a college which prided itself on being ‘equal’ to men and
women, which thought that gender identity was not imposed on any of its
students. But I’m sure if you ask the women, they would tell of many more such
incidents. But because of the gender neutral policy, the space to talk
meaningfully about prejudices was missing.
Merely
having a policy about equal access to resources does not make any space
gender-neutral or even gender-less, or equal. The socialisation of students
among themselves often betrays some amount of misogyny. It does not change how
a boy perceives women and categorises them into the binaries of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’
woman, or the Madonna-whore complex. For instance in a heterogeneous group
comprised of boys and girls, boys might prefer the fairer girls and thinner
ones and might exclude or shame the ones who do not adhere to a normative sense
of the feminine. When this happens, the space to protest, resist or seek some
form of equality and justice is suddenly missing. This is so because the school
space, which is supposed to be ‘gender-neutral’ or ‘gender-transcendental’ does
not recognise these every day acts of the disciplining of the female body. At
the same time, having a gender-neutral policy makes one incapable of literally
speaking about what has recently been coined ‘slut shaming’. ‘Slut shaming’ in a
gender-neutral college then renders the very act unspeakable. Those who protest
or dissent then carry the burden of being gendered, or worrying too much about
gender in a gender-less world, just like those who talk about caste
discrimination suddenly carry the burden of caste, absolving the higher castes
of any caste identity.
References
Gill,
Rosalind (2007a) “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility”. European
Journal of Cultural Studies,
10 (2): 147-166.
Gill,
Rosalind. (2007b). “Critical Respect: The Difficulties and Dilemmas of Agency
and
‘Choice’ for Feminism”. European
Journal of Women’s Studies. 14(1): 69–80.
Gill,
Rosalind. (2011) “Sexism Reloaded, or, It’s Time to Get Angry Again”. Feminist Media
Studies
11(1): 61-71.
[1] ‘Slut shaming’ is a way in which women who do
not confirm to gender expectations or who act on/acknowledge sexual feelings are
made to feel inferior and/or are discriminated against. This is done in
multiple ways and needn’t involve the use of the word ‘slut’ or any other
related word.
