While my love affair with the left has been plagued with anger and frustration, I remain not only convinced that progressive movements must include the dismantling of patriarchy as a key element of their analysis and action, but that a neo-liberal feminism, that is, a feminism that is disconnected from the left, is a feminism that is hardly worth fighting for.
In a time when some of our hardest fought for rights and freedoms are under threat, when unions are under attack, when American privatization is leaning heavily on our doorstep, when safe housing is treated as a privilege, not a right, when we are told that concepts like universal daycare and decent social assistance programs are inconceivable, mainstream feminism seems to be hacking away at its own knees. It’s as though we are so afraid of losing everything that we’ve decided to fight for nothing.
Read the whole story by Meghan Murphy at Rabble.ca.