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

Postfeminism emerged between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, and has had repercussions not only in rethinking the feminist movement itself, but also in broadening the ways 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.

Ruptures with previous feminism and some history

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

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

In other words, Post-Feminism was organized under the consensus that the vast majority of previous feminist struggles had been based on a static and binary concept of ‘women’, so that many of its premises were quickly oriented towards an uncritical essentialism. It opens then a new way of action and political claim for feminism , based on rethinking the identity and subjectivity.

Post-structuralism and feminism

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

Poststructuralism had opened the way for a “deconstruction” of the text, which was ultimately applied to thinking about the (sexed) subjects, whose identity had been assumed to be pre-established.

That is to say, Postfeminism wonders about the process of construction of identity , not only of the sexual subject ‘woman’, but of the own relations that have been historically marked by the sex-gender binarism.

Thus, they take into consideration 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.

Before a dispersed and unstable subject, feminism, or rather , feminisms (already in plural), also become processes in permanent construction, that maintain a critical position before the feminisms considered as ‘colonial’ and ‘patriarchal’, for example, the liberal feminism.

The Plurality of Identities

With Postfeminism, the multiplicity of meanings that cause there to be no uniqueness in “being a woman”, and neither in “being a man”, nor in “being feminine”, “masculine”, etc., becomes clear. Post-feminism transforms this into a struggle for the freedom to choose an identity, to transform it or to experience it, and to make one’s own desire recognized .

Thus, it positions itself as a commitment to diversity, which tries to vindicate the different experiences, and the 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 rules that have been imposed.

Feminists themselves recognize that they are made up of different identities, where nothing is fixed or determined. The identity of sexual subjects consists of a series of contingencies and subjective experiences that occur in accordance with the life history of each person, beyond being determined by physical traits that have historically been recognized as ‘sexual traits’ .

For example, lesbian and trans identities, as well as female masculinity, take on special relevance as one of the main struggles (which had gone unnoticed not only in the patriarchal and heteronorm society, but also in feminism itself).

Queer theory and trans bodies

Society is a space for the construction of sexuality. Through discourses and practices , desires and bonds are normalized that to a great extent legitimize heterosexuality and gender binarism 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 ‘rare’ (in English), that is, it takes sexual experiences that are different from the heteronormed ones – 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.

On the other hand, the movement of intersex, transgender and transsexual people , questions that masculinity has not been something exclusive of the body of the heterosexual man (the sexed body in masculine); nor femininity something exclusive of the sexed body in feminine, but that throughout history, there has been a great multiplicity of forms of living sexuality that have been beyond the heterocentric system.

Both Queer Theory and trans experiences call for the diversity of identities of biological bodies, as well as the multiplicity of 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 opposition to the dissymmetrical sex-gender binarism. Its commitment is to the free choice of identity against the violence to which those who do not identify with heteronormative sexualities are systematically exposed.

Bibliographic references:

  • Alegre, C. (2013). The post-feminist perspective on education. Resistance in school. International Journal of Social Science Research, 9(1): 145-161.
  • Wright, E. (2013). Lacan and post-Feminism. Gedisa: Barcelona.
  • Fonseca, C. and Quintero, M.L. (2009). Queer theory: the deconstruction of peripheral sexualities. Sociológica (Mexico), 24(69): 43-60.
  • Velasco, S. (2009). Sexes, gender and health. Theory and methods for clinical practice and health programs. Minerva: Madrid.