Michael Eriksson
A Swede in Germany
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What happens if feminism loses all credibility?

There are claims that there are many women fleeing the feminist folde. This is good and proper—and not entirely surprising.

However, what will happen in the long term if feminism loses all credibility and support, considering the many women (and a few men) who have vested themselves into it, the strong influence it has on politics and media, how much money is made out off it (by indirect means like women’s “shelters” or divorce lawyers)?

Quite possibly that feminists move over and co-opt more neutral women’s movements or pseudo-liberal or socialistic movements—and go on more or less as before.

Consider what happened to the Swedish Communist Partyw after the fall of the Soviet Union: Within just a few years they had removed the word “communist” from its name and corresponding references from their official agenda—and many of the members now claimed never to have been communists! This despite most of them being members even before the make-over, often long before.

Similarly, the ruling party of East Germany, SEDw, responsible for the near complete oppression of the East-German population, including suppression of freedom of speech, harassment of dissenters, and the atrocities around the Berlin Wall, was renamed in several steps and became a pseudo-legitimate political party in the unified Germany. Sufficient efforts were taken to hide the connections that the naive would be fooled and the forgiving offer a second chance, while not endangering the support of the true believers. While the party has invariable legitimately changed in the course of the years, it is still the same entity from a logical POV. The first post-SED leader and, arguably, even today the unofficial center figure of the party, Gregor Gysiw, was a long-standing SED member and Stasiw collaborator; further, while the son should not be blamed for the sins of the father, it is still noteworthy that his father was one of the more prominent SED members, even having a stint as minister of culture. One of the two current co-chairs, Lothar Biskyw is another long-standing SED member and Stasi collaborator—and, born in the West, actually voluntarily moved to the East at a time when most others migrants were fleeing in the other direction.

I strongly suspect that similar statements can be made about communists in other countries. Therefore, I believe that if feminism becomes too tainted, the phrase will be abandoned, feminist organisations will re-brand themselves, with an ostensible greater weight on equality, deny ever having been feminist, etc. Behind the surface, however, it will be mostly the same people, the same agendas, and the same interests.


Side-note:

Interestingly, while the connection between Marxistic and feminist ideas is clear, some have made an even further going connection, and depicted feminism as the way that Marxism “escaped” in the West. Feminism could then, it self, be seen as an example of the above communist re-births.