Literary Essay on Feminism

Literary Essay on Feminism

How to be a feminist in the 21st century? A 2.0 approach to an eternally current militancy

Among the many social issues that at the beginning of the 21st century made their way into the so-called world 2.0, that is, in the social networks and other spaces for the formation of opinions, feminism figures, both for their benefit and for their detriment.

In the first place, because the communicative power of social networks and other massive areas developed from the Internet was unparalleled in human history, and thanks to this the feminist message can reach men and women of very different geographies, cultures, languages ​​and cultural contexts, in what undoubtedly constitutes one of the great virtues of the so-called TIC.

But at the same time that feminism becomes the talk of popular and diverse spheres, it happens that it is located on a par with speeches delusional and pseudoscientific, such as flat Earth, the anti-vaccine movement and other theories of conspiracy that swarm, unfortunately, in these new virtual public squares that lack almost all regulation.

And the latter impoverishes any attempt to massify the debate around feminism, diminishing its importance by making it coexist with discourses that are far from any practical and academic value. What, then, should be a contemporary strategy to promote the necessary debates around the fight for gender equality, and at the same time extract it from a harmful, toxic context, which ends up trivializing and making irrelevant these social debates so important?

Back to the book

In the first place, or at least that is our personal position, it should be remembered that reading is not an exclusive domain of the Internet. It is paradoxical that never before has it been so easy to have access to quality information, and at the same time so difficult to provide with her on the maremagnum of the World Wide Web, which is more like a garage sale than a library organized.

So sometimes it will be time to return to the book, electronic or paper, and forgo the convenience of fast, pre-digested and segmented information, to to enter the information slowly, demanding, isolated from the rest, that which to share on our social networks we must first transcribe on a sheet of paper of paper.

The virtues analog reading are not promoted enough today: the very limitations of the book, especially the paper one, which does not allow the magic of the copy + paste and requires us to forget about likes for a while, it becomes essential if we really want to learn about any subject.

Therefore, a strategy to promote the books of the great feminist voices, such as Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Alice Walker or Simone Veil, if not contemporary authors who openly address the subject, such as Margaret Atwood, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Gioconda Belli. Books, furthermore, that the internet itself provides to its readers, through legal or not so legal means, and whose reading is therefore perfectly possible. Feminism becomes more real when these works circulate from hand to hand (or screen and screen), than through sterile and toxic discussion on social networks.

The popular organization

The term “popular organization”, which seems to be taken from 20th century workers' manuals, is still in full force, even in today's digitized world. Organizing not only means building spaces for debate and mutual support that are on the fringes of unwanted intrusions (such as forums, subscription portals or mailing lists), but also the encouragement of the dialogue, (self) criticism and frank debate.

In the latter, contemporary feminism must evade totalitarian temptations and learn the most valuable lesson of the twentieth century: that the boundaries between movements They are generally porous, and it is impossible to understand the point from which an individual speaks without considering, not only her gender, but also her class, its religion, its geography. A feminism in the global era cannot be a feminism with an exclusive white and western imprint. On the contrary, it must be a dynamic, diverse feminism, up to the challenges of an unequal but interconnected world.

Create, improvise

Finally, we must remember that while feminism has a tradition dating from at least the eighteenth century, it is about something that goes beyond a militancy: feminism is a form of creation, a thought scheme that allows tackling new debates, new problems, new questions that have never before in history been peeked out. This is why feminism must be creative, too, and must not be afraid of improvisation, although it must steer clear of naivety and Jacobinism. If the problem had a simple solution, it would no longer be a problem.

References:

• "Essay" in Wikipedia.
• "Feminism" in Wikipedia.
• What does feminism mean? their historical and still ongoing struggles ”in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
• "Reasons the world needs feminism" in International Amnesty.
• "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Analysis" in the University of La Plata (Argentina).

What is an essay?

The test it's a literary genre whose text is characterized by being written in prose and by addressing a specific topic freely, making use of the arguments and the author's appreciations, as well as the literary and poetic resources that make it possible to embellish the work and enhance its aesthetic features. It is considered a genre born in the European Renaissance, fruit, above all, from the pen of the French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), and that over the centuries it has become the most used format to express ideas in a structured, didactic and formal.

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