if women ran the world, nothing would be different.

not only does lisa jervis co-edit the fun and fantastic Bitch magazine, she apparently also likes to put the smackdown on the ridiculous notion of gender essentialism in her spare time. her article in LiP magazine (found via Roni), entitled "If women ran the world, nothing would be different,” well…it rocks my socks.

here’s the thing that bothers me most about gender essentialist arguments (and/or arguments with an underlying foundation of gender essentialism, regardless of how “go girl” empowering they may appear): it’s just the other side of the same coin. what is the goddamn point of arguing that “no, all women are not like this – all women are like this. and that’s better because of x, y and z.” what a waste of time! as jervis puts it,

But the problem with 'femmenism'[as opposed to feminism]...[is that] it’s founded on gender difference, it retains a strong investment in gender divisions. Not only will we never dismantle gender discrimination as long as gender divisions are philosophically important to feminism, but we’ll end up reproducing the gendered oppression we’re supposedly fighting against.

now we can get into arguments about the realistic nature of trying to overthrow the global corporate capitalist system another day (and don’t think i don’t have my doubts about whether this little feat is possible. che guevara, i am not). i do think, though, that critiques of sexism/racism/classism/etc. that focus only on a single –ism and miss the ways in which all of these “systems of oppression” (god, please forgive me, i have yet to purge all graduate school lingo from my mind) are connected are ultimately doomed and pointless. it’s not enough to have a handful more women as CEOs, or CFOs, or champion golfers, or even U.S. presidents, if we’re not working to change the foundations of the systems that created the inequality in the first place. unrealistic? perhaps. any other real alternatives to create real
change? i’ve yet to hear one.