Living a Feminist Life

“[I]f becoming feminist cannot be separated from an experience of violence, of being wronged, then what brings us to feminism is what is potentially shattering. The histories that bring us to feminism are the histories that leave us fragile. Feminism might pick up (or more hopefully pick us up) from the experiences that leave us vulnerable and exposed.”

In this quote, Ahmed argues that the process of awakening to feminist consciousness is linked to experiences of violence (physical, verbal, emotional) that women face in the world. She envisions feminism as both a consequence of that violence and the answer to surviving and making meaning from that violence. She also introduces the idea of fragility, which she returns to in Chapter 7.

“Girling is enacted not only through being explicitly addressed as a girl, but in the style or mode of address: because you are a girl, we can do this to you. Violence too is a mode of address. Being girl is a way of being taught what it is to have a body: you are being told; you will receive my advances; you are object; thing, nothing.”

The gender fatalism of “girling,” happens not only in the language society uses to describe and “name” bodies, but also in the violence enacted upon bodies that are labeled “girl.” Ahmed argues that girls learn they are girls through the experience of this violence.

“The personal is structural. I learned that you can be hit by a structure; you can be bruised by a structure. An individual man who violates you is given permissions: that is structure. His violence is justified as natural and inevitable: that is structure. A girl is made responsible for his violence: that is structure. A policeman who turns away because it is a domestic call: that is structure. A judge who talks about what she was wearing: that is structure. A structure is an arrangement, an order, building; an assembly.”

Ahmed disagrees with the concept that the personal and the political are separate issues, or that individual incidences of violence can be divorced from the social and political structures that enable, permit, and justify that violence. By demonstrating the way a life can uphold these political structures, Ahmed begins to hint at the opposite: that living can likewise be a feminist action of political resistance, introducing the theme of Living as Feminist Resistance.

“To become conscious of possibility can involve mourning for its loss. You can feel the sadness of what could have been, but was not to be. Maybe we realize: it would have been possible to live one’s life in another way. We can mourn because we didn’t even realize that we gave something up. The shape of a life can feel like a past tense; something we sense only after it has been acquired.”

In discussing the path of happiness, Ahmed describes the feeling of realizing that one has missed out on a life that would have made them happy if they had not been pressured into living the life that society believes should make them happy. Ahmed later adds that one can also choose to leave a life that does not make them happy.

“When you are alienated by virtue of how you are affected, you are an affect alien. A feminist killjoy is an affect alien. We are not made happy by the right things.”

Ahmed shows how an inability to be happy about the things society thinks one should be happy for can lead to disappointment in oneself, or anger with a world that promises happiness only for certain behaviors or under certain conditions. In those moments, the feminist killjoy becomes alienated from the world, as if they are a literal alien from a different planet.

“But our feminist ghosts are not only miserable. They might even giggle at the wrong moments. They might even laugh hysterically in a totally inappropriate manner. After all, it can be rebellious to be happy when you are not supposed to be happy […] An affect alien is made happy by the wrong things.”

This is an important aspect of Ahmed’s idea of the affect alien (See: Index of Terms): She wishes to make clear that an affect alien is not only unhappy. While she may not feel happiness for the “right” things, she can feel happiness for those things deemed wrong.

“Willfulness comes up in part as a mechanism for justifying violence by those who are violent. […] Why do you want so much? Why are you never satisfied? Why do you not do better at school? In other words, being judged as willful was a technique for justifying violence in the midst of violence. You are being punished for your subjectivity, for being the being you are. You can be beaten by a judgment. And then: you become the cause of the violence directed against you.”

Here, Ahmed describes a deeply personal moment of her father physically abusing her. Sharing her personal experience illustrates her point about the ways accusations of willfulness are used to justify violence.

“No wonder we must look to the arm, if we are to understand the history of those who rise up against oppression. Arms: they will keep coming up. Willfulness: how some rise up by exercising the very limbs that have been shaped by their subordination.”

Ahmed introduces her concept of the willful arm, a central metaphor throughout the rest of the book. She explains that while the original fairy tale was meant as a warning to be obedient, she sees hope in the image because it keeps coming back up. It refuses to stay buried, just like the feminist killjoy refuses to stay silent.

“When we have to think strategically, we also have to accept our complicity: we forgo any illusions of purity; we give up the safety of exteriority. If we are not exterior to the problem under investigation, we too are the problem under investigation. Diversity work is messy, even dirty, work.”

Ahmed argues that it is important for feminists to acknowledge their own privilege and complicity in the system, as she believes in The Importance of Intersectionality. Even as one works against a system, they must be aware of the ways they may simultaneously benefit from that system at the expense of others.

“You have to work the system by working out the mechanisms whereby the system is not transformed. You have to work out where things get stuck. Diversity workers could be described as institutional plumbers: they develop an expertise in how things get stuck, as well as where they get stuck.”

Though this is a minor metaphor in comparison with the willful arm and the brick walls, the institutional plumber is an image that illustrates how diversity workers work: They attempt to unblock a system of “pipes” (i.e., structural barriers), and therefore become experts on how and where those “blockages” (i.e., barriers) form.

“A norm is something that can be inhabited. I think of a norm as rather like a room or a dwelling: as giving residence to bodies. In this chapter, I explore diversity work as the work we do when we do not quite inhabit the norms of an institution. Not to inhabit a norm (or not quite to inhabit a norm) can be experienced as not dwelling so easily where you reside.”

In this passage, Ahmed gives the concept of “fitting in” a physical dimension it often lacks when one discusses institutional norms. The physicality of experiences is vital to Ahmed throughout the book, and imagining a norm as a room helps to explain how norms can make people feel uncomfortable and keep them out.

“To be questioned, to be questionable, sometimes can feel like a residence: a question becomes something you reside in. To reside in a question can feel like not being where you are at […] To be asked ‘where are you from?’ is a way of being told you are not from here. The questioning, the interrogation, can stop only when you have explained yourself.”

Ahmed illustrates the way even seemingly-innocent questions can be weaponized against anyone perceived as different or out of place. Being questioned like this can turn a person’s entire existence into a question, causing doubt, insecurity, pain, and a feeling of displacement.

“A meeting point is often a laboring point. If you are not white, not male, not straight, not cis, not able-bodied, you are more likely to end up on diversity and equality committees. The more nots you are, the more committees you might end up on.”

As questions can be weaponized, the word “not” can also be weaponized. Ahmed also shows here that when one does not fit some norm or another, they are more easily dealt with by being pushed into diversity positions, where their work becomes less-valued, leaving the valuable work for those who already fit in.

“Diversity workers become conscious of the brick wall as that which keeps its place after an official commitment to diversity has been given. Timing matters. It is the practical effort to transform institutions that allows this wall to become apparent. This practical effort, let us be clear here, is somebody’s effort: it is the effort of a diversity worker; of her blood, sweat, and tears.”

Ahmed here recalls the brick wall metaphor she has constructed throughout Chapter 6 to demonstrate the way The Dynamics of Power become invisible except to those who push against them. She also clearly states that the work of pushing those walls is not merely metaphorical, but a matter of real physical labor.

“A pattern is experienced as weight. We learn from this: to try to bring someone to account is to come up against not just an individual but histories, histories that have hardened, that stop those who are trying to stop what is happening from happening. The weight of that history can be thrown at you; you can be hit by it.”

Ahmed argues that the walls one comes up against are built from “hardened histories”—in other words, traditions, norms, and patterns of behavior that become more entrenched over time and function to keep some people out. Ahmed again points to the physical sensation of The Dynamics of Power when she states that one can be “hit” by a history.

“When something is wearing, you do not always feel worn down. Feeling worn down can be a retrospective realization that you have been or are being worn down. It might be that in order to inhabit certain spaces we have to block recognition of just how wearing they are: when the feeling catches us, it might be at the point when it is just too much. You are shattered.”

This passage implies that just as the damage of diversity and hitting walls can be invisible to outsiders, it can also be unnoticeable to oneself. Ahmed states that sometimes one does not perceive their own fragility in the moment, and only notices it when it becomes too much. This moment leads to the concept of feminist snap (See: Index of Terms) in Chapter 8.

“To hear feminist of color contributions as interruptions is not only to render racism into a breaking point, but to construe feminism as a conversation that starts with white women […] To talk about racism within feminism is to get in the way of feminist happiness. If talking about racism within feminism gets in the way of feminist happiness, we need to get in the way of feminist happiness.”

Ahmed posits that if certain kinds of (white) feminism view feminists of color as a problem, an interruption, a killjoy, then those kinds of feminism are flawed and need to be disrupted. As she says later, this kind of non-intersectional feminism is not deserving of the name, thus reinforcing The Importance of Intersectionality.

“The bonds we form are not exterior to ourselves; a bond is the loss of exteriority. Bonds are not something we can give up without giving up on part of ourselves, giving up on part of our own history. When you snap a bond it can appear to be an action directed toward someone else, but you can experience it as snapping at your own self.”

Ahmed highlights the importance of relationships and the pain caused to both sides of a connection when it is severed. She is arguing that feminist snap (See: Index of Terms) is not merely an action inflicted on others, but on oneself as well, which is why it becomes important for the feminist killjoy to understand when a relationship needs to be “snapped” and when it should be preserved.

“[S]o much violence does not become visible or knowable or tangible. We have to fight to bring that violence to attention […] Feminist snap: how we tell a counter-story, the story that we must tell still, a story that if it is to be told requires sharp and sudden movements to get through or to get out because of what is still; how willfulness is still used by the state to justify her beating, her death.”

In this passage, Ahmed builds on the example of a woman of color’s murder in the film Born in Flames. In the movie, the official story claims the woman died by suicide, though the audience knows she was murdered. For Ahmed, feminist snap is needed to break through the official stories in real life, to show the real violence and oppression beneath.

“Lesbian feminism gives us the tools to make sense of the sexism that becomes all the more striking when women exit from the requirements of compulsory heterosexuality […] For her to appear, she might have to fight. If this is true for women, it is even truer for lesbians.”

In Ahmed’s argument for the benefits of a return to lesbian feminism (See: Index of Terms), she first argues that lesbians offer an important insight into the ways sexism and The Dynamics of Power function. Since lesbians refuse to exist only in relation to men, they are uniquely qualified to see the ways the traffic flows and walls of society make that nearly impossible. Every women must fight to escape the traffic flow of patriarchy, but Ahmed argues that lesbians do so more than anyone else.

“This history of heterosexuality is presented as a history of broken hearts, or even just a history of hearts. To be recognized as having a heart is to be recognized as having the potential to be broken. With such recognition comes care, comfort, support. Without recognition, even one’s grief cannot be supported or held by the kindness of another.”

In this section, Ahmed talks about a film in which a woman’s partner dies and she must hide their relationship from the deceased woman’s family at the expense of not being able to express her own grief. She is unable to access communal support for her grief because lesbian relationships are not granted the level of intimacy and value that heterosexual relationships are.

“Lesbian feminism gives us the tools to build a world in which we become each other’s building blocks. We love our cobuilders; they are our lovers […] We have to find spaces that are for women: and for women means, for those who are assigned or assign themselves as women, for those who willingly accept being women as their assignment.”

As Ahmed does in other spaces, she is careful to include trans women in her definitions of women. If lesbian feminism means turning one’s focus to other women, Ahmed absolutely means for trans women to be included in that focus and community.

“Audre Lorde, as one might expect, helps us differentiate survival from other styles of self-orientated politics. Lorde writes, ‘caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.’”

Ahmed wishes to separate the self-care advocated in her Killjoy Survival Kit from other kinds of self-centered attitudes that allow women to turn away from their collective causes. Ahmed is not advocating for this self-centeredness, but rather for strategies of survival so that one may continue the fight. This ties neatly with her theme of Living as Feminist Resistance.