Feminism vs. Folk Feminism
“Nothing Personal: There is No “Toxic” Masculinity as there is No De-Toxified Masculinity, there is Patriarchal Oppression and Both Extreme Poles of the Gendered Experiences Can Benefit from its Abolition”
— Katarina Kolozova
— Katarina Kolozova
“There Is no Perfect Symmetry in the Subjection as Misogyny is the Glue That Holds the House of Patriarchy Together”
— Katarina Kolozova
— Katarina Kolozova
Feminism is scholarship (also when it’s political action)
There are competing philosophies, and one can choose one tradition, or one can combine elements of different traditions as dictated by the object of analysis.
One takes a stance based on one’s acquired knowledge and new ideas stemming from the studied traditions, but one does not embody, and cannot embody a philosophy; no one ever has. One can live based on convictions emerging from one’s philosophically formed worldview but one cannot reduce themselves to flawless implementers of said worldview.
In fact, one can be fully subjected to patriarchal oppression, endure misogyny and comply because one has no choice as we are first social beings and society is a structure, machine, automaton (of “making sense” or Language). We are not voluntaristic self-sufficient monads.
We live primarily by the inertia of our embodied cultures, which we challenge to a certain extent, but we cannot create an entire floating transcendental universe of values we alone inhabit, detached from our socio-material conditions.
Socio-economic conditions include culture but are not reducible to it.
There is a school of thought in feminism that emerged coincidentally with global neoliberalism and cultural postmodernism (late 1980 to 1990), grounding the episteme of poststructuralism.
This is the norm in gender studies that we all know from school, media; the folk-feminist believes that’s the only feminism there is to know. To the masses, the epistemic core of this school of thought became more easily accessible through the concept of “intersectionality.” In its application, the latter term has come down to cultural relativism whereby culture and its undergirding religion are the paradigm that legislates gendered rights. (I am not sure that was the intention of the scholar who coined it.)
Cultural relativism retained the supposed secular quasi-universalism even though it banned the term (universalism) as “evil” for camouflaging Western hegemony. Nonetheless cultural relativism has performed as de facto universalist feminist discourse othering the orientalised cultures.
After 2006, the rise of speculative realism, (left) accelerationism and xenofeminism, feminist materialism, Ljubljana school of feminist Lacanianism combined with Kant, the niche contributions of non-standard philosophy, universalism is being restored as a feminist value. Yet, this epistemic shift, strangely enough, hasn’t stirred much controversy, and authors still easily combine Judith Butler with Zupančič.
Folk-Feminism is not Feminism
Feminism is not:
— About affirmation (of gendered difference) as an end in itself, it is not symbolic and performative empowerment; it is not about hiding the “shameful” truth of oppression and exposing the anatomy of misogyny. (In other words, it is more feminist to denude the reality of Dogville than to present us with Supergirl.)
— About denying that conventional gender norms are oppressive to both sexes, and, conversely, both sexes are complicit in the perpetuation of said oppression. Neither of the sexes and neither of the two dominant genders should be charged with the sin of “toxicity,” as said “toxicity” is greater than the realms of each of the two poles.
— About an individual(ist) endeavour.
Reclaiming Universalism
Feminism is a complex set of ideas as to how systemic discrimination against those subject to somatic capture for the purposes of patriarchal exploitation could be overcome. Not all of them see themselves as women, so I will avoid gendering, but all of them have been subjugated and exploited as somatic mass serving the reproduction of the Patriarchal Machine. Many of the early feminists did not identify with either womanhood or femininity, yet they fought for equality of the female human beings with the male ones. There was a presumption of equality within a certain universal category.
Femininity is indeed gendered and produced by patriarchy serving the self-reproduction of phallic sameness through the exchange of femininity as currency, to paraphrase Luce Irigaray. That position has been, by definition, occupied by bodies under a transcendental vector (Laruelle) enacting somatic reproductive capture; and secondarily, by everyone that could be reduced to femininity (the currency in the exchange of women, as per Irigaray and Levi-Strauss).
©2026, Berlin/Nicosia
hello@becoming.press
@becoming.press
Prolegomena
Impressum
Submissions
Distribution
Imprints
(un)Becoming
Agenda
Contact
Newsletter
Subscription
Events
Radio • On-Demand
ÊT/RE • Soundcloud
Materials
Immaterials
Seminars
Cinematics
Nodes
Search