Postfeminism: what it is and what it brings to the gender question

This feminist approach led to the adoption of a more pluralistic view of the concept of "woman".

Under the name of Postfeminism, a group of works are grouped together that assume a critical stance towards previous feminist movements, while claiming the diversity of identities (and the freedom to choose them), beyond heterosexuality and the sex-gender binarism.

Postfeminism emerged between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, and has had an impact not only on rethinking the feminist movement itself, but also on broadening the ways in which we identify ourselves and relate to each other in different spaces (in relationships, the family, the school, health institutions, etc.).

Below we review some of its background, as well as some of the main proposals.

Breaks with previous feminism and some antecedents.

After several decades of struggles that had been important in advancing equal rights, feminism pauses and realizes that, for the most part, these struggles had focused on grouping women together, as if 'woman' were a fixed and stable identity and subjective experience..

From there, many questions open up. For example, what is it that makes someone considered a 'woman'? Is it the sexed body? Is it the practices of sexuality? While we have fought in the name of 'woman', have we also reified the same binary structures that have oppressed us? If gender is a social construct, who can be a woman? Y... And, before all this, who is the political subject of feminism?

In other words, Postfeminism was organized under the consensus that the vast majority of previous feminist struggles had been based on a static and binary concept of 'woman', with the result that many of its premises were quickly oriented towards an uncritical essentialism. A new path of action and a new path of action and political vindication for feminism, based on rethinking the identity of women.based on rethinking identity and subjectivity.

Poststructuralism and feminism

Under the influence of poststructuralism (which reacted to structuralist binarism and pays more attention to the latent of the discourse than to the language itself), the subjective experience of speaking beings came into play for feminism.

Post-structuralism had opened the way for a "deconstruction" of the text, which was ultimately applied to thinking about (sexed) subjects, whose identity had been taken for pre-established.

In other words, Postfeminism questions the process of identity construction, not only of the sexed subject, but also of the sexed subject.not only of the sexed subject 'woman', but also of the very relationships that have been historically marked by the sex-gender binarism.

Thus, they consider that this system (and even feminism itself) had settled on heterosexuality as a normative practice, which means that, from the outset, we are installed in a series of exclusive categories, whose purpose is to configure our desires, our knowledge and our links towards binary and often unequal relationships.

Faced with a subject that is dispersed and unstable, feminism, or ratherFeminisms (now in the plural) also become processes in permanent construction, which maintain a critical position towards feminisms considered as 'colonial' and 'patriarchal', for example, liberal feminism.

The plurality of identities

Postfeminism ends up uncovering the multiplicity of signifiers that mean that there is no uniqueness in "being a woman", and neither in "being a man", "being "feminine", "masculine", etc. Postfeminism transforms this into a struggle for freedom to choose an identity, to transform it or experience it, and to to have one's own desire recognized..

Thus, it positions itself as a bid for diversity, which tries to vindicate different experiences, and different bodies, desires and ways of life. But this cannot happen in the traditional and dissymmetrical sex-gender system, so it is necessary to subvert the limits and norms that have been imposed.

Feminists themselves recognize themselves as constituted by different identities, where nothing is fixed or determined. The identity of sexed subjects consists of a series of contingencies and subjective experiences that occur according to the life history of each person; beyond being determined by the physical traits that have been historically recognized as 'sexual traits', the identity of sexed subjects consists of a series of contingencies and subjective experiences that occur according to the life history of each person. that have been historically recognized as 'sexual traits'..

For example, lesbian and trans identity, as well as feminine masculinity, gain special relevance as one of the main struggles (which had gone unnoticed not only in patriarchal and heteronormative society, but also in feminism itself).

Queer theory and trans bodies

Society is a space for the construction of sexuality. Through discourses and practices normalize desires and bonds that to a large extent legitimize heterosexuality and gender binarism as the only possible as the only possible one. This also generates spaces of exclusion for identities that do not conform to its norms.

In the face of this, Queer Theory vindicates what had been considered 'queer', that is, it takes sexual experiences that are different from the heteronormative ones - the peripheral sexualities - as a category of analysis to denounce the abuses, omissions, discriminations, etc., that have delimited the ways of life in the West.

Thus, the term 'queer', which used to be used as an insult, is appropriated by people whose sexualities and identities had been on the periphery, and becomes a powerful symbol of struggle and vindication.

For its part, the intersex, transgender and transsexual people's movementThe Queer Theory, questions that masculinity has not been exclusive to the heterosexual male body (the male-sexed body); nor femininity something exclusive to the female-sexed body, but that throughout history, there has been a great multiplicity of ways of living sexuality that have been beyond the heterocentric system.

Both Queer Theory and trans experiences summon the diversity of identities of Biological bodies, as well as the multiplicity of sexual practices and orientations that had not been foreseen by heterocentric norms. sexual practices and orientations that had not been foreseen by heterosexual norms..

In short, for Postfeminism the struggle for equality occurs from diversity and from the opposition to the dissymmetrical sex-gender binarism. Its bet is for the free choice of identity against the violence to which those who do not identify with heteronormative sexualities are systematically exposed.