What happened to the salience of feminism?

[Dan the Roman]

Feminism split between a representational wing and an ideological one.

The representational wing was determined to maximize female representation everywhere whether through quotas or other mandates.

The ideological wing wished to transform societal structures to make them less sexist.

The representational wing's focus on quotas left it very vulnerable to TERFism and a general rightward shift, because quotas presume a finite supply of positions, and therefore require rigidly safeguarding who is entitled to them. Hence for this wing, female sports exist so that women can win, so defining who is a women is existential. In turn, because they assume everyone else views the world in the same zero-sum terms, they assume the motive for anyone else entering must be that, and not say affirmation or community.

The ideological wing fell into the same intersectionality black hole the rest of the activist left has over the past five years. It probably talks more about Gaza than abortion in Georgia.

In short, most feminists are not really talking about anything people in 2011 would really consider feminist issues.  

[Dan the Roman]

I disagree with parts of Beet’s post but overall he gave a decent synopsis of the feminist movement over the past 10 years.

An underrated aspect of 2020 is how Hollywood lost credibility in terms of leading social movements. Whether it was #MeToo, BLM or the general anti-Trump fervor the public no longer looks to Hollywood for moral leadership.

Pay attention to how few celebrities endorse for president this year.

Part of this is a consequence of the reduced independence of Hollywood talent. The old Disney Channel model of indentured servitude has not been adopted whole scale, but agencies/studios have adopted an approach of grabbing young talent early from foreign markets, while the rise of streaming means the talent pipeline is closer to the network model.

The younger actors/actresses are products, not major figures in their own right, and when corporate lost interest in having them in effect do progressive product placement it largely ceased. But it won't matter much because a lot of what ceased was counterproductive because it was so self-evidently progressive product placement.