Journal Entry #3 on Feminism
Annie Liu
Understanding the State in a Global Era
Student number: 11329871
Word count: 800
Feminists have diverging interpretations of the state. For some, specifically the liberal
feminists, the state is one which is benign and neutral, that can be shaped for the interests of
women (Kantola 2022, 132). For others, such as the radical feminists, the state invariably
remains an institution that is inherently patriarchal, with an omnipresent arm that reaches into
every aspect of a women’s life (Kantola 2022, 135). Therefore, oppression for women can never
be cured, only mitigated through dismantling patriarchal norms and institutions. Marxistfeminists view the state as being underpinned through capitalism, which in turn reinforces gender
inequality (Kantola 2022, 136). Such can be seen in the gender wage gap, unpaid maternity
leave, or the unpaid housework, which all are burdens singly weighed down upon women within
the system of capitalism. Socialist feminists combine the two above, in that think of the
patriarchy and capitalism in dialectical terms, mutually reinforcing concepts (Kantola 2022,
136). There remains some debate within the school of thought however, about the casual priority
of one over the other (Kantola 2022, 136). Other approaches can be more multi-faceted and less
particular. For example, intersection feminists examine feminism as a multivariate equation.
Different factors, such as race, class, and sexual orientation, multiply to produce the lived
experience of women (Kantola 2022, 137).
However, scattered the interpretations are above, feminists of all branches and types find
common ground on a key ethical debate: abortion. To them, abortion would be a strategic area
that they need to legalize to prevent the range of complications that follow, such as bodily harm
from miscarriages, child marriage, and truncated education time for girls. Therefore, when
Trump decided to evoke the Mexico City Policy, which sought to defund foreign organizations
from federal funding if they assisted with performance of an abortion, or actively promoted such
measures, feminists from all sides of the spectrum felt that they had regressed in achieving their
goals. Liberal feminists especially felt this as a blowback against their ideal gender-equal state,
because the structures within the policy will veer them off course from the variety of measures
they want to equalize – ones not limited but including education, income, and overall societal
standing. With such policy restrictions, progress of charting towards equality is no longer a
guarantee, and the state has been the agent responsible for this decline. Even more bad news that
may further disillusion them, is that the policy specifies that a mere advocacy for abortion rights
by these ngos will threaten their funding, which debunks the tenant of liberal feminism that the
American state (for the recipient countries) is malleable and can be shaped for the better.
Therefore, a perspective that provides greater alignment with the example may be radical
feminism, where the state is proposed as serving the interests of men, to unwittingly invade the
bodily autonomy of women, only to make sure activists cannot speak up about it. The fact that
this can silence women at all is broadly indicative of the imprints capitalism leaves on feminism
(restricting their movement and stamping out dissidents that are pro-choice) through economic
coercion of threatening to cut funding. As such, the Marxist-feminist perspective from the
monetary aid dependency on recipient countries, as it pinpoint capitalism as the virus that
shrivels the existing bodily autonomy women have left.
As much feminists are confident that the state operates against their will, the stated
intentions of policymakers that decided implement the gag order also need to be taken into
account. The American right, or Donald Trump as its microcosm, has frequently objected to
abortions on the basis that it harms human life. They define fetuses or embryos more broadly as
life, and equate getting an abortion with killing an innocent life, thus describing it as a barbaric
act. On the outset, this does look like a legitimate concern, and even if Donald Trump has made
misogynistic remarks in the past, it can’t be inferred that his irreverence for feminism or
women’s rights, was the exact cause of the gag order. In that case, the state could just be
favouring life over bodily autonomy, with priority placed the preserve the former rather than the
latter.
But as much as intentions matter, consequences do too. The installment of the act has
been empirically proven to increase the number of illegal abortions, especially in the global north
of the recipient countries, thus harming the interests of women. Therefore, a consequentialist
account would still insist that the gag order resulted in the state pushing women into the
alleyway, even if their intentions were not to do so, and at the end proves that the decisions that
the state makes will always be patriarchal, and harm women, even if it didn’t indent to be.
Works Cited
Kantola, Johanna. “Feminism.” Essay. In The State Theories and Issues, edited by Colin Hay,
David Marsh, and Michael Lister, 2nd ed., 131–44. Political Analysis Series. New York,
NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2022.