We had a large discussion last week concerning Post Feminism and a very important question was raised: Who gets to be a Post Feminist. I have been thinking of this question a lot, especially throughout each of our discussions and I have finally found a personal conclusion.

My opinion is this: Post Feminism is for those who are comfortable or unconcerned with their position in the institutionalized patriarchy. I would first like to state that this belief concerns post feminists who ignore the patriarchy or pretend or even believe it does not exist. I consider these post feminists to be very dangerous to the cause of feminism. This is because I truly believe there is an embedded patriarchal system in our society that results in women being disrespected, underpaid, and objectified. And if a post feminist decides to focus on individual choices and ignores these embedded issues, then she does not help further the cause of disbanding these embedded beliefs. I think it is easy for most post feminists to do so because they are comfortable in their place in the patriarchy. For instance, a rich white woman falls pretty high in the social ranking of the patriarchy, so such a person who does not feel, or does not mind, a lot of the negative effects of a patriarchal society can easily say that she is a post feminist and try to focus on things on an individual level.

Perhaps this will make more sense if I relate it to post-racism. For those who do not have racism affect their every day lives it is very easy to say we live in a post-race world where “we are all human beings” and “the color of our skin does not matter”. For those who are affected daily by prejudices and the institutionalized racism of the society we live in, that concept is a joke. To me this is similar to post feminism. It is very simple for people who do not feel the presence of the patriarchy, or are comfortable of how it affects them to say that our society does not explicitly run on biases of gender and that we should not criticize media and life on the idea of gender. But for those who do not get that pass, it is very difficult.