Feminism WTF

Director: Katharina Mückstein (Austria). Year of Release: 2023

An off-screen voice asks various questions, starting with the key one: why is feminism such a controversial subject? Nikita Dhawan’s answer is clear: “again and again, feminism is accused of wanting to bring the social order into a crisis. And this is true. That’s what we want.” Over the next hour and a half, a series of academics will try to answer similar questions about what women’s oppression looks like today, stopping only for the occasional interpretive dance (no, really).

But first, a performative interlude. A row of women carrying rubber hammers and chains. Some wear boxing gloves. They take it in turn to beat the shit out of a muscly dummy torso with a man’s head. I’m not entirely sure what the point of this performance is, but I dare say it has therapeutic value. Other interludes show bearded men ballet dancing with each other, and similar subversions of how men and women are “supposed” to behave.

Feminism WTF is at its strongest when identifying the problem, sometimes with the help of real-life examples. Two professional care givers are given 2 kids to look after – one has a boy’s name and is dressed in blue, the other a girl’s name, and wears pink. Despite their experience, the care workers discover that the boy tends to play with trucks and toys which he can control, while the girl prefers dolls and a pram, and activities which require her to show compassion and empathy.

After their replies, they are told that each kid has been given a haircut and name to suggest that they are a different gender to their own (if I remember right, the boy “Andy’s” full name was Andrea). The professional educators look flabbergasted. This example – which shows how prejudice is not just about the conscious ideas of irredeemable sexists – shows more clearly than any of the interviews how sexism is embodied the assumptions of our society.

At other times we are shown statistics about the prevalence of sexual violence and murder. However much you’ve seen it all before, the numbers are shocking. There is a discussion about what toxic masculinity looks like in practise and how it affects real people. We also hear about the systematic exclusion of women from the decision making process: “if certain bodies are missing, then so is the knowledge which is linked to these bodies”.

The film does not dodge the contested question of trans rights. More than one speaker talks about the binary illusion. Biologist Sigrid Schmitz argues that repeatedly asking about the “differences” between men and women is to pose the wrong question. She goes on to argue that the assumptions behind such questions are grounded in a belief in a biological binarity which is quite different to the way in which gender works in real life.

The answers do show a degree of intersectionality, that is a recognition of additional problems such as racism, homophobia and colonialism which means that oppression is felt more acutely by some women than others. Class is also mentioned, albeit usually as part of a list of Bad Things which cause inequality. There isn’t any real analysis about why these different oppressions are connected, or why the fact that different people experience oppression differently is important.

There are two films fighting for the soul of Feminism WTF. One is a righteous scream at every indignity and disadvantage that women are still expected to endure. The other is much less sure of itself, and is suffused with identity politics. It knows something is happening, but don’t know what it is. And this inability to understand, or even to ask, exactly why women are oppressed means that it is unable to provide much insight as to how this oppression can be stopped.

Early on, the film acknowledges that there are different opinions within the movement, listing a whole horde of different feminisms. If I remember rightly, there was marxist feminism, socialist feminism, and even post-structuralist feminism. I can’t remember if the list included bourgeois feminism, the theory that most people think of when they first hear the word. After this, there is little attempt to explain what distinguishes these ideas, and why there are so many of them.

The separation of feminism from social movements is reinforced by the way in which the film is presented. Each talking head sits alone in a room, where the furniture and (usually extraneous) decorations are carefully colour coded with their clothing. The interviewees do not talk with each other, nor do they engage with what anyone else has been saying. Instead we get a series of academics pontificating about ideas which are generally divorced from any political practise.

The result is profoundly pessimistic. Just before the end, each academic is asked to foresee the future, and their answers are universally without much hope. This in a film which started by claiming that feminism is the most effective social movement of the Twentieth Century. There is a case to be made for this argument – from abortion reform to the weakening of the family – but listening to most of the speakers for most of the time, it is as if nothing has changed.

What the film fails to grapple with is the Backlash, which Susan Faludi identified in the early 1990s, and which has seen a resurgence as the far right has adopted anti-feminism as an important battlefield. There is most certainly an attack on women at the moment, which provides justifiable ground for pessimism. But refusing to address the dynamic of the feminist movement – of its highs as well as its lows – means that you end up effectively accepting this as being somehow inevitable.

You can’t escape the feeling that this is an academic exercise carried out by women (and the odd man) who have professorships and are therefore fairly comfortably off. Some put the blame on capitalism, but it is hard to see what exactly they mean. It is less Engels explaining in Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State how class society and the oppression of women are inseparable, and more, sexism and capitalism are linked, cos they’re both bad, right?

On one level, it clearly true that capitalism and feminism are intimately opposed. Capitalism hates women and does everything it can to profit from their unpaid labour. But blandly mentioning this connection without further explanation fails to understand how capitalism can ideologically use feminism, for example to justify wars against “reactionary” Muslims. Yes, some forms of feminism worry capitalism, but don’t underestimate our rulers’ ability to co-opt most forms of radicalism.

All we are left with is some vague idea of patriarchy, which is equally vaguely defined. You’re also not really sure who the film has been made for. Director Katharine Mückstein has said that she hopes it is a film which many people see who have perhaps not encountered the arguments, but nothing about it’s form or content seems to appeal to such an audience. And to those who know the arguments already, for me at least there was too little intellectual or strategic curiosity.

It is a Good Thing that a film like this exists, as it attempts to address one of modern society’s most pressing problems, however superficially. We can only hope that its existence will kick off a necessary debate. If that’s the case, it will have served some purpose.