“Ah I would now, yes, … with a certain … two-faced ah shuffling of feet, … I think most socialists of my generation, male socialists of my generation, would … somewhat embarrassedly say the same thing … you know? I think along the way, we've learnt a lot I think.”
—Interview with male socialist activist when asked whether he self-described as a feminist, April 14, 2014“A crucial vote is taken on a resolution that seeks to ensure a 50% quota of women on all representative bodies of the new party Left Unity. It passes with a large majority. When the result is announced, a man sitting in the audience laments rather loudly: ‘whatever happened to class politics?’ Upon hearing him, a furious young woman stands up and reprimands him in front of everyone, yelling: ‘I'm a woman, and I'm working class, how about that?!’ Enthusiastic applause erupts.”
—Excerpt from field notes taken at the founding conference of Left Unity, December 2013“The first speaker at a panel entitled ‘We should all be feminists’ is an activist from Feminist Fightback. She nervously addresses her audience. She describes her collective's feminism as ‘anti-capitalist,’ ‘intersectional’ and ‘socialist.’ Gaining in confidence, she criticises that ‘kind of feminism’ that simply pushes for more women CEOs and female politicians. We know that the presence of female politicians does not guarantee a feminist politics, she reminds us. After all, look at how Harriet Hartman, the Deputy Leader of Labour, waved through the welfare cuts! Look at our PM Theresa May! Applause ensues.”
—Excerpt from field notes from the World Transformed festival, Liverpool, September 24, 2016These three vignettes are drawn from research we recently undertook examining the status and character of feminism within different strands of left politics in Britain.Footnote 1 During the course of our research, we frequently encountered claims that left politics in Britain was becoming more hospitable to, and supportive of, feminist practices and ideas. This intuition was expressed quite confidently by one prominent left-wing commentator who boldly remarked that “the culture of the Left is changing and feminism is winning the argument” (Seymour Reference Seymour2013).
If Richard Seymour is correct to claim that feminism does seem to be finding some breathing space within left politics, the question of how to identify, describe, and evaluate these cultural and political changes remains. After all, it is not entirely clear what the left will look like once feminism has “won” the argument. In order to track this putative transformation of the left as a fluid, contested, and complex process, we need a multidimensional conceptual framework that allows us to capture and assess the ways in which feminism can be simultaneously affirmed and marginalized within left spaces and organizations (or, indeed, any political space).
The primary aim of this article, therefore, is to develop a distinctive set of criteria that can help us trace the extent to which particular instances of left-wing politics can be described as “feminist.” To carry out this task, we draw on the work and ideas of several feminist thinkers, relying particularly on the concepts of “embodied performance” and “affect.” A secondary aim of the article is empirical and involves exploring the utility of this framework in the context of several recent renditions of British left politics, including, but not limited to, the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Although we can provide neither a systematic nor a comprehensive overview, we hope to offer a glimpse of the ways in which left politics is transforming its practices and modes of representation in light of feminist pressure and inspiration. Finally, given that we share a normative commitment to a “feminist” vision and enactment of left politics, we seek to contribute to ongoing discussions about the possibilities for, and obstacles to, the cultivation of more “profeminist” forms of left politics.
We pursue these aims across four parts of the article. In the first section, we provide some necessary political context for our discussion of feminism and the British left and justify our case selection. In the second, we review the current state of play with respect to the putative conceptual relationship between feminism and the left. More concretely, here we take stock of the claims being made about these two movements in the academic literature and political commentary, highlight the central assumptions on which they rest, and suggest a reframing of the central categories under discussion, including “feminism,” “feminization,” and “the left.” Having done this conceptual ground clearing, in the third section, we outline five conceptual categories—analysis and self-understanding, policy and campaigning, organization, embodied performance, and affect—that, we argue, are essential to mapping the extent and degree to which a politics may be characterized as “more or less feminist.” In an effort to illustrate these dimensions of what we call “feministization,” we turn to empirical examples of contemporary left political practices. In the concluding section, we review the conceptual, empirical, and normative/political insights of the article as a whole.
Our overall argument has both conceptual and empirical dimensions. Conceptually, we argue that both the socialist feminist literature and the gender and politics literature on “feminization,” although instructive starting points, do not provide sufficient resources to trace or evaluate the infusion (or not) of feminism into left politics. This is because while the former has preoccupied itself with explaining the left's epistemological resistance to feminism, the latter has focused its energies on defending the role that women's presence (in terms of numbers and ideas) can have on feminizing politics. But, as we shall suggest, to fully capture the complex, contradictory gender dynamics of left-wing spaces, we must reach beyond the “politics of presence” and explore features of social life that are better elaborated in sociology and cultural studies, that is, embodied performances and affective relations.
At the empirical level, we tentatively propose that there may be less “dissonance” between feminism and British left politics than the extant literature suggests. More concretely, we claim that there is evidence of feministization across all our five categories, especially in relation to “organization” and “policy.” That said, this is not a one-way process: the ubiquity of masculinized modes of embodied performance, problematic affective relations, and a notable (and surprising) lack of clarity with respect to feminist conceptual insights all constitute countervailing forces that remind us that there are no guarantees and that this process is as fragile as it is interesting and innovative.
FEMINISM AND THE BRITISH LEFT: A WORD ON CONTEXT AND CASE SELECTION
Before launching into the main body of our analysis, we need to say a few words about the wider context of the British left, the empirical cases that we draw on, and our methodology. We begin by clarifying the contours of what we mean by “the British left.” Simplifying somewhat, there are three key constituent elements of the British left. The first of these is the Labour Party, by some distance the dominant player in the history of the British left. Labour's hegemonic position within the British left is partly attributable to the United Kingdom's two-party system (and associated single-member plurality voting system), but it is also a reflection of Labour's self-perception as a “broad church” containing several different political tendencies. These range from something akin to Marxist-inflected socialism (the so-called hard left), to a more “soft left” vision of parliamentary social democracy, to a more humane and redistributive rendering of neoliberal capitalism, which became especially dominant during the New Labour government of 1997–2010 (Gilbert Reference Gilbert and Perryman2017). Organizationally, the Labour Party has tended to derive much of its strength from its close association with the trade union movement: although the link between Labour and the trade unions has weakened over recent decades, the connection is showing some signs of strengthening and, both within and beyond the Labour Party, trade unions remain a significant organizational force within British left politics.
The second key strand of the British left concerns those small political parties explicitly situated to the left of the Labour Party (often aligned with various strands of Trotskyism, Marxism, and revolutionary socialism). Most of these have been fairly small and have struggled to wield a great deal of political visibility and influence. However, some (e.g., the old Communist Party of Great Britain and the ill-fated George Galloway–led Respect) have succeeded in returning members to Parliament, while others—such as the International Marxist Group in the 1960s, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for much of the late twentieth century, or Left Unity in 2013–15—have played significant roles in mobilizing grassroots opposition to capitalism, racism, imperialism, etc. (Callaghan Reference Callaghan1987).
The third and final key force constituting “the British left” is grassroots social movements, which, as elsewhere, have been central to reshaping cultural and political life in the United Kingdom since the 1960s. Prominent in this context have been the efforts of feminist, antiracist, and queer/LGBT activists to forge some space within the wider British left. Indeed, despite a high preponderance of socialist feminists within the Women's Liberation Movement in the United Kingdom (Rowbotham Reference Rowbotham1989), there has always been an uneasy relationship between (predominantly white) feminist movements and other strands of the left, including the Labour Party. While this can be partly explained by the patriarchal attitudes and practices of the left at the time, it was also reinforced by feminist commitments to decentralization and inclusion, an ethos that was in stark contrast to the hierarchical, elite-oriented party machines of the left, with New Labour under Tony Blair offering no exception to this trend (Bashevkin Reference Bashevkin2000, 409). A similar state of tension shaped relations between black women's organizing and other left groupings, including white feminism. In this case, ignorance and racism on the part of white feminists as well as sexism on the part of male activists pushed black women into autonomous organizing from the late 1970s onward (Patel Reference Patel, Rowbotham and Linkogle2001). Again, both the Old and New Labour Party were seen as tolerating rather than embracing the needs and aspirations of the black community, despite a well-established tradition of black and antiracist activism within the Labour Party, especially in London (Shukra Reference Shukra1998). More recently, grassroots black and antiracist activism has once again achieved a renewed prominence, partly, though by no means exclusively, as a result of the racialized character of Brexit (Bhambra Reference Bhambra2017), but also thanks to grassroots movements such as Grime4Corbyn, Justice for Grenfell, and Black Lives Matter UK (though the last-named movement has been less prominent than its U.S. counterpart).Footnote 2 Furthermore, the simultaneous resurgence of antiracist and feminist activism has reignited long-standing debates about racial hierarchies and inclusivity within feminist and wider left movements (Bassel and Emejulu Reference Bassel and Emejulu2017). In sum, the British left has developed on fractious terrain in which a diverse mix of institutional and social movement forces have struggled together and apart to challenge as well as negotiate the fraught relations between gender, race, and class.
Against this historical backdrop, a number of significant recent developments prompted us to ask questions about the precise character of feminism's contested status in U.K. left politics today. These include a resurgence of grassroots feminist activism that has extended its political and cultural reach in recent years (Evans Reference Evans2015) as well as the rise of student, antiracist, and Occupy/anti-austerity movements in response to the financial crisis of 2008 (Bailey Reference Bailey2014; Maiguashca, Dean, and Keith Reference Maiguashca, Dean and Keith2016). Moreover, the fallout from a serious mishandling of an allegation of rape against a senior member of the SWP in 2013 forced many on the left to admit that there was a need to “get their house in order” on the issues of male violence against women and gender parity (interview with Left Unity activist, May 4, 2014; see also Downes Reference Downes2017). Last but not least, Corbyn's victory as leader of the Labour Party—now consolidated following Labour's improved performance in the 2017 U.K. general election—has seen a revitalization of left politics in a country highly divided over Brexit. More specifically, under Corbyn's leadership, Labour has adopted a more explicitly “left” policy program and has seen a vast expansion of its membership base, partly reconstituting Labour as a grassroots movement rather than a parliamentary-oriented party (Seymour Reference Seymour2016). This, in turn, has reignited long-standing debates about the contested place of feminism within the ranks of the Labour Party, for although it historically has been seen as the natural “home” for feminism in British party politics, its record on gender has always been patchy (Childs Reference Childs2004; Krook and Nugent Reference Krook and Nugent2016), and views as to the “feminist friendliness” of Corbyn's Labour have proved highly polarized.
In light of these developments within British left politics, we have, over the past five years, carried out a study of four different left sites, seeking to ascertain the precise contours of feminism's presence (or lack thereof) within British left politics. The four sites vary in terms of their historical origins, their status as party or movement, and their precise ideological flavor (although all four profess to being opposed to neoliberalism and austerity). However, our case selection was motivated by the fact that all four cases met two key criteria. First, they are all sufficiently large in size and scope, and visible in their activity, to count as key players on the U.K. left scene in recent years (and thus we focused on these rather than the myriad micro-sects and proto-parties that one finds on the British left). Second, they have all expressed, albeit to varying degrees and in different ways, a desire to cultivate a more feminist-friendly and intersectionally oriented rendering of left politics, underpinned by a commitment to participatory, horizontal forms of organizing. Three of our cases were studied intensively from 2013 to 2015. These were Left Unity, a newly established political party espousing mainly socialist/Marxist views but seeking to build a broader, nonsectarian left politics; the People's Assembly Against Austerity, a left alliance of trade unionists, Labour members of Parliament, political commentators, and local community campaign groups; and, finally, a broad assortment of nonaligned left activists associated with Occupy London and the student movement. In the last two years, we shifted our focus to Momentum, a grassroots campaign/activist group that was founded to support and popularize the policies of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. In all cases, we conducted semistructured interviews with activists (135 in total) and participant observation in a range of field sites (street demonstrations, local and national gatherings, Left Unity and Labour Party conferences, including the Momentum-organized World Transformed festival in Liverpool in 2016), and we undertook document analysis (e.g., party manifestos, political pamphlets, etc.).
LEFT POLITICS AND “FEMINISTIZATION”: MAPPING THE CONCEPTUAL TERRAIN
Having set out the historical and empirical context, this section clarifies our conceptual lines of inquiry. Primarily, we aim to rethink the fraught and much-discussed “marriage” between feminism and the left. Most scholarship on this subject emphasizes the left's resistance to feminist insights and practices. Socialist feminist theorists have, for example, produced a significant quantity of invaluable work documenting and seeking to rectify what Abigail Bakan (Reference Bakan2012) names the epistemological dissonance between Marxism and feminism (Eisenstein Reference Eisenstein1979; Hartmann Reference Hartmann and Sargent1981; Vogel Reference Vogel1983). This “dissonance” inheres in a number of often-competing features of Marxist and feminist thought, including their understandings of time and temporality; the agents of political transformation; the relative status and importance of race, class, and gender; and the relationship between activism and scholarship (Bakan Reference Bakan2012). In addition, Janet Conway has described how feminist knowledges are potentially at odds with the universalism of Marxist thought by virtue of being practice based and situated (i.e., grounded in the experience of practical politics), nonhegemonic (i.e., sensitive to context and locatedness), alert to difference (i.e., entailing dialogue and coalition building), and pluralistic (i.e., acknowledging and affirming epistemic and political pluralism) (Conway Reference Conway2013, 137–40). To this extent, feminism's established ways of “knowing” are often framed as in tension with Marxist and socialist insights.
In addition to these conceptual tensions, feminist scholars have also argued that this pervasive “intransigence within the left … to feminist critique” (Bakan Reference Bakan2012, 62) plays out not just epistemically but also at the level of political practices. In fact, much of the feminist literature on the British left—both historically and in the present—draws attention to the ubiquity of traditional forms of left masculinity and traditional gendered divisions of political labor (Arruzza Reference Arruzza2013; Bakan Reference Bakan2012; Coleman and Bassi Reference Coleman and Bassi2011; Hartmann Reference Hartmann and Sargent1981; Rowbotham Reference Rowbotham, Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwrigh2013). For instance, Lara Coleman and Serena Bassi, in their study of anti-imperialist and anarchist activism, identify two widespread modes of idealized left masculinity. First, they point to the “Man with Analysis,” characterized by a form of “black-and-white” reasoning that allows little room for self-doubt or emotion (Coleman and Bassi Reference Coleman and Bassi2011, 211). Second, the “Anarchist Action Man,” by contrast, accrues status in left-wing spaces through a commitment to action, especially through violent confrontation with police (Coleman and Bassi Reference Coleman and Bassi2011, 215). Bakan introduces a third modality of idealized left masculinity, “Communist Urgent Man,” whose radicalism inheres in his insistence on the importance of quickly understanding and seizing the moment: more slow-burning, probing questions (such as those to do with gender and race) are framed as mere distractions (Bakan Reference Bakan2012, 70).
Interestingly, in addition to claims that the left is recalcitrant to feminism, a second argument has emerged of late that suggests that the splitting off of feminism from the left has occurred as a result of the current trajectory of feminist movements and ideas. Nancy Fraser and Hester Eisenstein, for example, chastise feminism for letting the state “off the hook” through their complicity with NGOization and for becoming distracted by so-called identity politics, not to mention allowing the “dream of women's emancipation” to be harnessed “to the engine of capitalist accumulation” (Fraser Reference Fraser2009, 110–11; see also Eisenstein Reference Eisenstein2009). Similarly, Angela McRobbie (Reference McRobbie2009) bemoans the fact that, in Britain, feminism has become instrumentalized and individualized by neoliberal cultural logics. This generalized anxiety or “co-optation blues” (Smith Reference Smith2006) with the contemporary direction of feminism has yielded a rich body of feminist self-examination in which the institutionalization of feminist movements (Lang Reference Lang, Kaplan, Scott and Keates1997; Prügl Reference Prügl2015), the “mainstreaming” of gender issues in state and market governance structures (Kantola and Squires Reference Kantola and Squires2012), and the discursive appropriation of feminist concepts (Stratigaki Reference Stratigaki2004) have been subjected to critical scrutiny. In these accounts, feminism has lost its way, unwittingly colluding in a neoliberal politics that seeks its domestication and deradicalization.
Although this is an impressive and laudable manifestation of self-reflexivity, which arguably strengthens feminism as a movement, one ironic consequence of this candid analysis is the view that feminism can no longer be seen as a reliable ally of the left. Indeed, Fraser calls for “the reposition[ing] of feminism squarely on the Left” (2009, 116), and Eisenstein pleads with feminists to get on with “mending the break with the left” (2009, 202). This, in turn, feeds into the much longer-established view among a number on the left that feminism—understood as a form of “identity politics” that has increasingly gained insider status within capitalist forums—does not and cannot, in its current articulation, form part of a left politics (Dean Reference Dean2015).
Notwithstanding this commonly held view that feminism and the left have gone their separate ways, the recent transformations of the left in Britain, noted in the previous section, give us reason to heed Lynne Segal's call to pay closer attention to the ways in which the gendered cultures of left politics can and do change in response to feminist critique and, in so doing, produce “a more nuanced account of left culture, and of the impact of feminism within it” (Segal Reference Segal1989, 14). In order to capture this fraught process of transformation in which feminism is simultaneously endorsed and contained across a range of social, political, and cultural sites, we shall invoke the term “feministization,” a notion deployed in passing by Rosie Campbell and Sarah Childs (2015, 155) but left undeveloped. Although the term is a little jarring phonetically, we chose this concept precisely because it speaks to, but is distinct from, the more familiar notion of “feminization.” The latter has become something of a mainstay in recent literature on gender and mainstream politics, particularly since the publication of Joni Lovenduski's now-classic Feminizing Politics in 2005. Lovenduski's work has given rise to a rich and extensive array of analyses of opportunities for, and obstacles to, the representation of women in decision-making institutions in a wide variety of arenas. Conceptually, this body of literature, which typically defines feminization as “the insertion and integration of women both in terms of numbers and ideas” (Lovenduski Reference Lovenduski2005, 12), has tended to focus on the often uneven connections between descriptive and substantive representation of women, that is, the conditions under which women's numerical presence translates into the substantive promotion of “women's interests” (Celis et al. Reference Celis, Childs, Kantola and Krook2014; Phillips Reference Phillips1995).
In a context in which our interest is in mapping the presence, or lack thereof, of feminist politics, the term “feminization,” as it is currently used, is potentially problematic. As Campbell and Childs as well as the activist from Feminist Fightback in the opening quotes all pertinently remind us, the fact that women politicians can and often do defend a distinctly antifeminist politics should lead us to be skeptical of “any claim that the integration of women's issues and perspectives in politics can only ever mean the inclusion and integration of feminist issues, perspectives and interests” (Campbell and Childs Reference Campbell and Childs2015, 155). In light of this, they argue that feminization cannot to be automatically equated with feministization (Campbell and Childs Reference Campbell and Childs2015, 150; see also Celis and Childs Reference Celis and Childs2012).
A further limitation of the notion of feminization is that it renders intersectional analysis—for us, a sine qua non when defining what constitutes a feminist politics—impracticable. In other words, it is not entirely clear how the theory and practice of intersectionality, understood both as an identity and as a configuration of power, can be reconciled with the Lovenduski- and Pitkin-inspired language of feminization. For us, the latter runs the risk of downplaying difference and contestation among women and feminist actors, a move that has long been questioned by black and postcolonial feminists (Ang Reference Ang, Caine and Pringle1995; Lorde Reference Lorde1984). Indeed, it is precisely for this reason that gender and politics scholarship has started to move away from the language of feminization and descriptive/substantive representation toward a more constructivist account of “representative claim-making” (Celis et al. Reference Celis, Childs, Kantola and Krook2014).
Our final concern with feminization is its rather narrow scope, to the extent that it foregrounds visible or tangible outcomes with respect to the demographic composition of the constituency under study or their policy decisions. To be fair, this limitation has been tempered somewhat by the recent emergence of feminist institutionalism (Kenny Reference Kenny2014; Krook and Mackay Reference Krook and Mackay2011), an approach that foregrounds the ways in which both formal and informal rules and norms shape the gendered power dynamics of various kinds of political institutions. Despite this effort, we feel that the challenge of capturing elusive but equally palpable features of a political space—such as mood, aesthetics, and styles of dress, speech, and comportment—remains and requires us to expand our analytical toolkit beyond the purview of political science to encompass methods from cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology. Moreover, in addition to expanding the range of relevant features, our research highlights the importance of paying attention to the relations between them, for they are not always aligned. In other words, a party may pursue policies that can be framed as profeminist but still play host to deeply gendered and/or explicitly sexist cultures that serve to marginalize individual feminists and feminism as a political ethos.
Having defended the need to move beyond the popular notion of “feminization” to “feministization,” we must now define our other two key units of analysis. Turning to feminism first, we are referring to a politics that embodies a “shared principled commitment to challenging gender hierarchies” (Sperling, Ferree, and Risman Reference Sperling, Ferree and Risman2001, 1158). In our view, this exercise requires an acknowledgment and analysis of injustice, a vision of an alternative, even if inchoate, and a range of collective and individual actions to resist and overturn this injustice that includes, but cannot be reduced to, public expressions of protest. In addition to these three components, feminism today has increasingly become associated with intersectional analyses and practices. Intersectionality emerged in the late 1980s as a means of foregrounding the erasure of black women from feminist theory and practice (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991), and it has now become commonly accepted, at least in principle, in contemporary feminist theory and politics (Davis Reference Davis2008; Hancock Reference Hancock2016). Intersectionality directs our attention toward a range of inequalities and stereotypes—around race, class, sexuality, and disability—that cut across gender and serve to impoverish not only women in different ways, but also men (Collins and Bilge Reference Collins and Bilge2016; Nash Reference Nash2008). In this sense, then, feminism can be framed, as bell hooks suggests, as an emancipatory project that seeks social justice “for everyone” (Eschle and Maiguashca Reference Eschle and Maiguashca2010, 122; hooks Reference hooks2000). Given that this definition conceptualizes feminism primarily as a movement, rather than as a form of self-identity, it should be clear that it can be enacted and expressed by people of all genders. Of course, self-identified women are still more likely to advance feminism than self-identified men, but this is not an absolute. In fact, during our interviews with left-wing activists, levels of enthusiasm for feminism did not always map cleanly onto interviewees’ gender identities.
This conception of feminism speaks to and from a distinctive understanding of “the left.” Drawing on the work of Norberto Bobbio (Reference Bobbio1996) and Steven Lukes (Reference Lukes, Ball and Bellamy2003), we define the left as a political project animated by the “emotive value of equality” (Bobbio Reference Bobbio1996, 65). While taking historically grounded and context specific forms, this project is based on a shared moral objection to “unjustifiable but remedial inequalities of status, rights, powers and condition” and a commitment to “rectify” them through political action (Lukes Reference Lukes, Ball and Bellamy2003, 612). For those on the left, therefore, inequality is a socially created problem, one that is sustained through “customs, laws and coercion” (Bobbio Reference Bobbio1996, 67) and that can and should be overturned with political will and collective political action. Given this conception of the left, it should be evident, as Bobbio reminds us, that all variants of the feminist movement, whether liberal egalitarian, social democrat, socialist/Marxist, or anarchist, are on the left to the extent that they share a commitment to overturning socially created gender inequalities, however and wherever they manifest themselves (1996, 67).
Now, of course, we realize that arguing that feminism is already, pace Fraser, “squarely on the left” is contentious, especially in light of the growing literature, alluded to earlier, on the myriad ways in which feminist and women's movements are being instrumentalized, appropriated, and demobilized. And we are by no means suggesting that the detailed mappings of feminism gone wrong in these cases are not important reminders of the current limits of and dangers inherent in any collective effort at transformation. What we do want to propose, however, is that the lessons taken from these narratives of feminism “lost” need to be mitigated by a number of related insights. First, that conceptualizing a political project as an ideal type and identifying its central normative features is a different exercise from forensically examining a particular instantiation of it, in a specific locale. Both activities are valuable, if for no other reason than the former move provides some normative reference points when undertaking the latter critical interrogation. In other words, without some sense of what feminism is for and against, at least in principle, it becomes impossible to empirically assess claims about either co-optation or feministization (Eschle and Maiguashca Reference Eschle and Maiguashca2013). Second, processes such as co-optation, depoliticization, or even feministization must be understood as fluid and uneven, rather than fixed, all-encompassing states that are irreversible. Indeed, for some time now, feminist scholars have pushed back against simple narratives of co-optation, arguing for more nuanced, fine-grained conceptual and empirical analyses of the good, bad, and ugly of feminist activism (Alvarez Reference Alvarez1999; Bernal and Grewal Reference Bernal and Grewal2014; Eschle and Maiguashca Reference Eschle and Maiguashca2013; Roy Reference Roy2015). In a similar vein, we propose examining contemporary left politics in Britain as a site of contradictory logics that allow for concrete expressions to be more or less feminist in terms of degree and scope, rather than fully feminist or not at all. Third, movements, including feminism as well as other strands of left politics, always yield intended and unintended consequences, and therefore they may or may not contribute to progressive ends in a particular moment in time and space. To this extent, an arguably feminist-inspired practice can result in what some will see as nonfeminist outcomes. To come to this conclusion, however, requires some explicit or implicit criteria to assess both the intent and the outcomes: recognizing feminism as belonging to a long-left tradition of thought and practice gives us at least a starting point to undertake this self-reflexive process.
In sum, in order to resist premature epitaphs about the death of feminism as well as overly optimistic proclamations about a full “feminist turn” in British left politics, we need to equip ourselves with the conceptual and analytical tools to recognize the presence of its core features (or absence therefore) in an array of empirical cases and to map and assess its changing shape and vitality in each.
FEMINISTIZATION: A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS
Having set out the aims and conceptual terrain, the following sections sketch what we consider to be the five features of “feministization”: analysis and self-understanding (which refers to self-identity as well as a theoretical worldview), policy/campaigning (which refers to the goals and implementation of policies as well as campaigns for specific policies), organization (which refers to the formal organizational structures in place to promote feminists/feminism), embodied performance (which refers to the styles of speech, dress, and comportment of activists), and, finally, affect (which refers to the moods, feelings, and emotions reflective of, and conducive to, feminist politics). Taken together, these dimensions enable the analyst to diagnose the nature and extent of the feministization of a political space while also allowing her to highlight points of tensions and contradictions across them. They also potentially facilitate normative evaluation by providing a “checklist” through which to come to a preliminary judgment as to an organization's feminist credentials.
We derived these categories from two main sources. The first was the existing scholarship on gender and (left) politics (Bakan Reference Bakan2012; Conway Reference Conway2013; Eschle and Maiguashca Reference Eschle and Maiguashca2010); the “feminization” literature in political science (Lovenduski Reference Lovenduski2005); and an array of other feminist research on gender and organizations (Kenny Reference Kenny2014; Puwar Reference Puwar2004), gender and social movements (Coleman and Bassi Reference Coleman and Bassi2011), and the politics of affect (Dean Reference Dean2014; Ahmed Reference Ahmed2004). Our second source was our primary research. While document analysis and our interviewees prompted us to pay attention to the analyses, policies, and organizational rules of different left groups/spaces, our fascination with embodied performance and affect emerged in the context of our fieldwork. Indeed, it was our personal experiences in a range of bustling, energetic, and sometimes fraught left sites that convinced us that the general “feel” of the room and the personal interactions therein were crucial factors in shaping the space available for women, as equal participants, and feminism as a set of ideas, ideals, and practices.
Analysis and Self-Understanding
By identifying analysis and self-understanding as a discrete category of examination, we want to draw attention to two interconnected phenomena. On the one hand, we want to underline the ways in which participants in left spaces self-describe and give meaning to their activism. On the other hand, we want to explore their broader understanding of what constitutes left politics and the role that feminism, as a body of thought, has in this picture. In other words, do they self-identify as feminists, and to what extent do they incorporate feminist theoretical insights into their diagnoses of the world they are trying to change?
To capture this dimension methodologically, one would need to undertake textual analysis of the particular organizations’ manifestos and/or position papers as well as semistructured interviews. To this end, one would need to be curious about how power relations are conceptualized, the place of gender in this schema, and its role with respect to other power relations such as race, class, and sexuality. In addition, one might ask what they think the most important sources of knowledge are—texts, experts, experience, or some combination thereof—and, more particularly, which feminist insights they affirm and/or reject. On this question, it would be important to note whether feminism is subject to what Pereira (Reference Pereira2013, 291) calls “epistemic splitting”— that is, the domestication of feminism by demarcating some feminist insights as valuable and others as undesirable. Finally, some inquiry into the role of the public/private divide would be instructive.
Turning first to the question of self-identity, we were favorably impressed by the willingness of many of our interviewees to either explicitly self-identify as “feminist” or to at least register the importance of aligning oneself as an ally of feminism. This was true of activists across the left spectrum from Left Unity to Momentum. As one interviewee—a prominent male left activist in Left Unity—told us,
I mean there's definitely a shift on a big part of the socialist left … towards ah acknowledging … and embracing ah feminism, fourth wave feminism, you know? It has been very important to opening a lot of people up to that. (interview with male Left Unity activist, July 27, 2014)
In a similar vein, another Left Unity activist pointed out to us that “women's liberation needs to be at the core of any new organization, and … needs to be at the forefront of any struggle” (interview with female Left Unity activist, May 4, 2014). This sentiment was echoed by nonaligned student activists, one of whom rather optimistically announced to us that “a newer kind of more vibrant liberationary left-wing politics” was now “totally ubiquitous” on the student left (interview with male student activist, October 4, 2013).
This allegiance with feminism as an identity and as a set of ideals was similarly evident among Momentum activists, although it was particularly noticeable among the younger generation. Speaking to an activist within Welsh Labour Grassroots (the sister organization of Momentum in Wales), we were told that, “Yes, I would say we were very feminist. I don't think anybody … wouldn't describe themselves as a feminist, the men included” (interview with female activist, November 3, 2016). Reinforcing this view, another pro-Corbyn activist boldly retorted “I'd find it very odd if we weren't [feminist and antiracist]” when asked about the feminist orientation of Momentum and then went on to distance his group from other strands of the left by saying they were “predominantly male, white and old” (interview with one of the founding organizers of Momentum, April 19, 2016). It is important to note that this confidence in the feminist credentials of Momentum was tempered somewhat by some of our black female interviewees, who, while conceding that Momentum was at least “woman conscious” (interview with prominent Momentum activist, September 27, 2016), if not fully feminist, insisted that it still had work to do on the race front. As one activist from BARAC (Black Activists Rising Against Cuts) UK explained, “a lot of the white left still don't get race and racism, and if I had a pound for every time somebody says what I'm about to tell you I'd be very, very rich right now, yeah? I could give up work. ‘Oh it's not about race, it's about class.’” She went on to tell us, however, that the politics of Jeremy Corbyn and (shadow chancellor) John McDonnell made a big difference to the prospects of Labour becoming more explicitly antiracist, saying that “now we've got a good chance, we're got a stronger chance, and things are changing” (interview with female black activist, September 27, 2016).
Interestingly, activists were far less forthcoming and confident in their answers when probed about their theoretical understanding of feminism and how it might contribute to an alternative analysis of power and social justice. Although all our interviewees were dedicated, in principle, to resisting the oppression of women, black and minority ethnic groups, and the working class, perhaps unsurprisingly, relatively few had a clear-cut conception of how these different axes of oppression intersected and how they should be tackled. When they did, it often involved, at least in more traditional left spaces such as Left Unity, subsuming gender as a power relation to capitalism and feminism, as a politics, to Marxism and/or socialism. So, one male interviewee told us that he did not really need to self-describe as a feminist because his primary identification as a “communist” already encompassed feminist politics (interview with male student activist, January 9, 2014). Another student and trade union activist explained that although she thought intersectionality was crucial, she still viewed capitalism as “more structural” than gender and race (interview with female student and trade union activist, October 5, 2013). This default position is captured nicely by the following declaration:
[B]y saying I'm a women's liberationist [I'm saying that] we believe that women need to be liberated from the structures that cause it in the first place. That it's … a classed society that causes women's oppression not … men and male genes. (interview with female left activist, March 27, 2014)
This disjuncture between the use of feminism as an identity, on the one hand, and as an analytical framework that requires an intersectional theorization of power, on the other, was equally evident in the far less doctrinaire left of Momentum. One key founder of the organization honestly admitted to us that
Antiracist and feminist are not going to be … terms that anyone has any problems with, but if you start to say, you know, I imagine there would be some people who would sort of curl their lip slightly at say intersectionality, but if you just say, … gender or something else then they'd be fine. (interview with male activist in Momentum, April 19, 2016)
This view chimes with the fact that, in the main, when asked about how they were tackling gender exclusions, most of our interviewees enthusiastically told us about their procedures to ensure gender or racial parity by means of quotas for committees and panels and through the establishment of women's caucuses and other liberation strands (i.e., descriptive representation). A more in-depth, comprehensive conceptualization of how gender, race, and class operate in left spaces and beyond was less evident, although some did note the need for such a perspective. In sum, at the level of “analysis,” we found support for feminism, as an identity and set of ideals, to be alive and well and, on the more pluralistic left (student activism and Momentum), flourishing. Having said this, the reach of feministization begins to ebb when we consider the limited integration of feminism, understood as a theoretical diagnosis of unjust, intersecting power relations that cuts across the private and public sphere.
Policy and Campaigning
To frame policy and campaigning as a dimension of feministization is to examine the extent to which feminism is substantively represented in the declared policies and goals of an organization, party, or movement. It invites us to ask to what extent, and in what ways, the communities and organizations under investigation seek to challenge unequal gendered power relations. More specifically, it encourages us to first explore the specific gender/feminist policies that the organizations support and then examine whether gender is further mainstreamed into all the policies and practices of the organization—that is, is gender equality/awareness factored into policies and campaigns that are not self-evidently about gender, feminism, or women?
On both counts, although the record is somewhat mixed, the breadth and depth of support for feminist-inflected policy in British left movements is reassuring. Indeed, we found a wide variety of instances of left-wing groups actively supporting feminist policy goals. For example, Left Unity expressed strong solidarity for reproductive rights struggles in Ireland and Spain (Maiguashca, Dean, and Keith Reference Maiguashca, Dean and Keith2016, 44), and its 2015 manifesto incorporated a wide-ranging program of gender equality including fully funded state provision of child care, a program of affirmative action for women in the workplace, unconditional access to abortion and contraception, inclusive sex and relationship education, and enhanced specialist services for women asylum seekers (Left Unity 2015). Similarly, the 2017 Labour Party election manifesto had a stand-alone section entitled simply “Women” (Labour Party 2017, 109–10) that promised access to abortion services across the United Kingdom, the appointment of a Violence Against Women Commissioner to ensure funding for rape crisis centers and women's refuges, and a program for the expansion of the rights of women workers.
With respect to the mainstreaming of gender across policy programs, there was a notable distance between Corbyn's Labour Party and some of the “extraparliamentary” left groups we studied. While both Left Unity and the People's Assembly stressed the gendered impacts of austerity policies, we found little to no general discussion about gender politics and feminism outside of this context either at the People's Assembly conference in London or at the Left Unity policy conference in Manchester (both in March 2014). In other words, not only were issues such as welfare, austerity, taxation, health, and the economy given priority, but when gender was added to this list, it was treated as a discrete policy area. By contrast, in the 2017 Labour manifesto, in addition to the stand-alone section on “Women,” there are references to the impact of policies on women in relation to child care and early education, apprenticeships, employment rights, pensions, disability rights, police and crime, diplomacy, and development. What is more, the manifesto promises that “a Labour government will gender audit all policy and legislation for its impact on women before implementation” (Labour Party 2017, 109). A further significant change is that, as of 2017, the annual National Women's Conference, held every year at the start of the Labour Party conference, is to be afforded a formal policy-making role, rather than being merely a “talking shop,” intended to reflect Labour's commitment to mainstreaming gender sensitivity within its broader policy-making processes.
Without wishing to sound naively sanguine, the resurgence of parliamentary left politics under Corbyn's Labour has provided some not insignificant scope for feminist policies and ideas to garner broad support not only within the activist left but also, to some extent, within the wider electorate. Within our other left sites, however, support for feminist policy tended to be more targeted and specific. As such, the recent rise of the Labour left has, broadly, been positive from a feminist policy point of view.
Organization
While policy and campaigning refer to the outward-facing activism enacted by a left-wing group or community, our third dimension of feministization, organization, refers to the internal structures and formal rules of a group. Methodologically, we garnered our evidence from textual analysis of publicly available policy documents relating to regulations, codes of practice, and procedures and from interviews with activists who were asked about the formal measures/procedures their movements/organizations had in place to combat gendered and other kinds of power inequalities. Their responses included the use of quotas guaranteeing a certain percentage of women representatives; the use of caucuses and promotion of autonomous organization for oppressed groups (sometimes called “liberation strands”); safe-space policies that guard against hierarchical or abusive behavior; child care provision at conferences and events; and ensuring that meetings take place during family-friendly times and in family-friendly places (such as community centers rather than pubs) (Segal Reference Segal1989, 13).
In addition to these formal mechanisms, we understand feministization to refer to the pursuit of participatory, egalitarian, and antihierarchical modes of organization (Eschle and Maiguashca Reference Eschle and Maiguashca2010). This commitment is underpinned by a skepticism toward strict divisions of labor that characterize male-dominated institutions (Cockburn Reference Cockburn1991). Capturing this ethos, Meyer and Whittier describe it as encompassing “egalitarian participation by all group members, consensus decision-making, rotation of key tasks and roles among members, and attention to the emotions and interactions of participants in addition to the pursuit of instrumental goals” (Reference Meyer and Whittier1994, 289). An approximation of this model of organizing—coupled with an aversion to the hierarchy that has often characterized Leninist politics in Britain (Callaghan Reference Callaghan1987; Rowbotham Reference Rowbotham, Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwrigh2013)—might therefore constitute further confirmation of feminist gains in this area.
It is at the level of organization that we found the most compelling evidence of feministization. Several interviewees described a shift on the left toward an emphasis on a more participatory, horizontalist ethos (Cooper and Hardy Reference Cooper and Hardy2013). An older male activist, for instance, talked about the recent emergence of what he called a “looser sense of movementism,” particularly among younger activists, which, in his view, reflected their burgeoning interest in feminism and anarchism (interview with male Left Unity activist, April 10, 2014).
In addition, we found widespread use of, and support for, women-only caucuses. There is a Momentum Women's Group that acts as a forum for discussion and support for women members. In addition, regional representatives on Momentum's National Coordinating Group must be at least 50% women. Defending this quota system, one founding member of Momentum told us, “if your group is unable to put a woman in a position of leadership then, … you're not adhering to, you're not like part of the political outlook of the organization” (interview with male activist, April 19, 2016). Similarly, Left Unity has a women's caucus and has also enshrined the use of gender quotas to ensure 50/50 gender representation on all of its representative bodies, a move that is, in the view of one senior female member, “historically unusual for the British left” (interview with Left Unity activist, April 15, 2014). Furthermore, antihierarchical forms of self-organizing by marginalized groups remains pervasive across the student left.
In conclusion, we found that enshrining gender equality within left organizations was primarily understood in terms of descriptive representation and pursued through structures/policies that ensured the visible presence of women. The exception to this approach could be found within the student and Occupy movements, where “safe-space” policies, intended to promote a feminist culture of empathy and understanding, suggested a different, more expansive conception of inclusion. While safe-space policies have proved controversial in some circles—particularly among the Marxist left, who have sometimes regarded them as an obstacle to working-class solidarity (McNair Reference McNair2014)—their prevalence among the student left in Britain, alongside the stress on ensuring descriptive representation within the more institutionalized left, points to important strides toward feministization, at least in terms of “organization.”
Embodied Performance
In proposing that embodied performance is a crucial element of feministization, we take inspiration from a wave of old and new literature that highlights the importance of performance for the understanding of politics (Coleman and Bassi Reference Coleman and Bassi2011; Rai Reference Rai2015; Rai and Reinelt Reference Reinelt, Rai, Rai and Reinelt2014; Velten Reference Velten, Neumann and Nunning2012) and everyday life (Young Reference Young1980). Iris Marion Young's now-classic 1980 essay “Throwing Like a Girl” aimed to “trace in a provisional way some of the basic modalities of feminine body comportment, manner of moving, and relations in space” (139) because, as she argued, they “may be particularly revelatory of the structures of feminine existence” (140). Learning from her, we want to claim that the collective embodied practices of a left space, far from being a superficial or merely aesthetic concern, can be “particularly revelatory” of how receptive it is to feminist insights and practices.
So what does the notion of embodied performance encompass, and what might it look like? Drawing from this literature, we suggest that it includes the aesthetic dimensions of politics and, in particular, the role of verbal, sartorial, and bodily norms. In this context, the role of rhetoric—that is, what Alan Finlayson refers to as “inviting audiences to accept an argument” (Reference Finlayson2012, 760)—also becomes important. More concretely, in the context of left politics, we are reminded by Coleman and Bassi as well as Bakan to be alert to the fact that left spaces provide oxygen for a range of problematic gendered presentations of self and others that reproduce “whiteness” and “hegemonic masculinity,” albeit in different forms (see also Dean Reference Dean2015; Emejulu Reference Emejulu2011). So when men talk over or interrupt women (i.e., “mansplaining”) or cultivate predominantly male social networks and friendship groups—what Elin Bjarnegård (Reference Bjarnegård2013, 24) calls “homosocial capital”—they are erecting obstacles for feministization. Equally, insisting on talking, despite limited knowledge of the topic, or engaging in aggressive or confrontational practices such as fist-shaking or table-banging “may discourage women from being more active in terms of access, presence and agency” (Verge and de la Fuente Reference Verge and de la Fuente2014, 68).
Although clearly important in shaping a political space, embodied performance presents us with a number of methodological problems. Analyzing and judging different forms of embodied performances and interactions in left spaces inevitably involves the subjective judgment of the individual researcher, a fact that pushes against the grain of so-called objective analysis. Moreover, it is hard to analytically grasp practices that are implicit and not verbalized. Having explored in some detail the methodological challenges of capturing the informal norms and practices operative in political spaces, feminist institutionalists confirm ethnography and participant observation, along with interviews, as the most reliable methods (Bjarnegård Reference Bjarnegård2013; Kenny Reference Kenny2014, 681; Krook and Mackay Reference Krook and Mackay2011).
From our experiences as left, self-identified feminist researchers, we found that embodied performances, marked by gender, were notable in two ways. First, we found evidence of different kinds of gendered performances that ranged from Bakan's “Communist Urgent Man,” a repeated sight at the Marxism Festival we attended at University College London in 2013, to Coleman and Bassi's “Man with Analysis,” glimpsed more than once at Left Unity meetings, to the more feminist performances we discovered at the Women's People's Assembly in London in February 2014 and at the Momentum-organized World Transformed festival in 2016. In terms of the first two categories, we witnessed and patiently listened to many men, speaking at length and at volume, untroubled by ambiguity and uncertainty, a theme picked up on by one student activist when she derided “the armchair theoretician [who is] just like talking about everything fucking Lenin has written … you can't participate in those conversations and neither would you want to” (interview with female student activist, December 16, 2013). Another bemoaned his encounter with the “the know it all socialist man who has an answer for everything” (interview with male student activist, February 20, 2014). Taking in their performances, we were also struck by the particular aesthetics cultivated by these self-consciously “left men.” Dressed in dowdy attire, featuring old ill-fitting jeans, a higher than average prevalence of beige and checked shirts and, on the younger generation, German military attire, these men were able to signal a nonverbal assent to the wider subcultural norms of traditional left politics.
Providing a stark contrast to this was the Women's People's Assembly in February 2014. As it was a women-only event, only one of us could attend, and she was struck by how different this space was from the numerous other People's Assembly gatherings that she and her male colleague had attended. With the SWP stall allowed only outside the confines of Conway Hall, where the event took place, the speeches, the audience reactions, the group interactions, which included a shared community prepared lunch, and even the colorful decorations and banners made the space feel distinct. Although the morning was dedicated to plenary talks—which were notably less hectoring in style, focusing more on delivering informative than rhetoric—the afternoon was organized around workshops where attendees were invited to participate and share their personal stories. Encouragement was offered to speakers in the form of cheering and loud applause. Interestingly, some present still complained that it felt too “top-down.”
But gendered embodied performances not only differed across spaces, they also played a notable role in eliciting particular responses from the audience. So, in spaces marked by more masculine performances, we found that for women/feminists to be heard, they, too, had to adopt a masculine mode of intervention. The second opening quote of this article features a young female trade union activist at a Left Unity conference shooting up from her seat in front of hundreds of surprised participants and screaming angrily at a seated member of the audience for muttering rather loudly that class was being overridden by gender. The audience responded with rapturous applause. This was a job well done, but the lesson learned is that defending women and feminism, in this kind of left space, required fearless, confrontational belligerence.
In sum, we would argue that any “feministization” of British left politics is significantly tempered by the continued prevalence of a series of gendered performances that display stubborn resistance to feminist critique.
Affect
Bakan remarks that “epistemological dissonance is not only intellectual … but also affective” (2012, 65). Unlike the other dimensions, however, which refer to (relatively) clearly defined areas of left-wing practice, affect is produced in and through the other dimensions. So although we think it is important enough to merit discussion in its own right, it is not, strictly speaking, a distinctive dimension in and of itself.
What, precisely, do we mean by affect? Affect, for us, refers to the ways in which feelings, emotions, and bodily sensations manifest themselves in and through political practices, in ways that, depending on context, serve to shore up, or disrupt, established ways of thinking about and practicing politics. As Jon Protevi argues, there is a productive ambiguity at the heart of the notion of affect. On the one hand, it refers to “being affected”—“the somatic change caused by an encounter with an object”—but it also refers to “the felt change in the power of the body, the increase or decrease in perfection, felt as sadness or joy,” that is, something akin to what we might ordinarily call “emotion” (Protevi Reference Protevi2009, 49). More concretely, an alertness to affect points to two lines of inquiry. In the first instance, as Jessica Ringrose and Emma Renold argue, “qualitative researchers [should] spend more time considering data ‘hot spots’—those affective relations … that both ‘disconcert’ and create a sense of ‘wonder’—where data ‘glows’ for the researcher in various moments of fieldwork, analysis and beyond” (2014, 773). To us, this highlights the value of honing in on particularly conspicuous or charged moments of “affective intensity”—such as a moment of particularly acute anger, disagreement, or joy—and to try to situate these within the broader affective dynamics of the research site (or “research assemblage,” to use what Ringrose and Renold's Deleuze-inflected terminology).
But affect relates not only to that which is sudden, dramatic or disruptive. As Rita Felski and Susan Fraiman argue, “mood” is one of the key modalities through which affect functions. Moods, they contend, “are usually described as ambient, vague, diffuse, hazy, and intangible, rather than intense, and they are often contrasted to emotions in having a longer duration” (Reference Felski and Fraiman2012, v). As such, the ambient mood of a political space can either disable or enable a particular way of thinking or acting (Dean Reference Dean2014). So, for example, long-standing, deep-rooted, affective investments in a particular conception of socialism can create an atmosphere that militates against feministization. Conversely, the cultivation of intellectual generosity, sensitivity to difference, empathy, and solidarity can nurture it. To this extent, the “mood of a space” can clash with and undermine incremental advancements at the level of either analysis, policy, or organization.
Given that affect is very difficult to capture methodologically, it is unsurprising that, as Ringrose and Renold (Reference Ringrose and Renold2014, 772) note, it is often overlooked during the research process. After all, highlighting affect requires the researcher to find ways of tracing, “measuring” and describing collective and individual expressions of anger, displeasure, frustration, confusion, alienation, and unease, as well as more positive feelings of empathy, belonging, love, warmth, solidarity, friendship. Moreover, this exercise, once again, cannot be done without the subjective judgment of the researcher, who is forced to examine his or her own affective response to his object of study.
These methodological challenges notwithstanding, we witnessed the bubbling up of “affective intensity” in a range of “hot spots.” One such moment included the real anger, revulsion, and disorientation that we found among many on the left in response to the allegations of rape and harassment within the SWP. One interviewee recounted his feelings of “absolute horror” when he learned the full details of what had happened (interview with male student activist, January 9, 2014), while another long-standing SWP member expressed a sense of existential crisis: “has [my] life as a revolutionary been completely in vain, you know, … have [I] been somehow duped into fronting a completely dishonourable project?” (interview with male Marxist activist, April 9, 2014). Another “hot spot,” this time conversely suggesting that class politics still elicits far more excitement than feminism in some left contexts, was made visible to us at the People's Assembly conference in March 2014. Here, a woman stood behind the podium and gave a short, matter-of-fact speech to a packed floor of about 800 people highlighting the gendered impact of austerity and the value of women's autonomous organizing. Although not overtly hostile, the audience's response was somewhat muted, even disinterested, especially when compared with the next speech, delivered by a male care worker about a long-running industrial dispute, which was greeted with rapturous applause and a spontaneous chant of “the workers united will never be defeated!” Clearly, in this case, the presence of feminist claims and ideas did not translate into a passionate, affective commitment to feminist insights.
Turning to the general “mood” of our research sites, we want to make a qualified defense of the view that at least some strands of the British left have experienced a degree of feministization on this front. This is because, for us, a number of the more traditional left spaces we visited—for example, Left Unity and the People's Assembly—often felt less feminist than their profeminist policy programs suggested, in part because of the widespread use of top-down speaker/panel formats and the reliance of continued “mansplaining.” We did note a significant difference at the World Transformed festival in Liverpool in 2016, organized by Momentum, the pro-Corbyn grassroots organization (Wainwright Reference Wainwright2016). There we were buoyed by the atmosphere and ethos of the event, at which participatory, interactive workshops (including a large number on race, feminism, and related issues) predominated, and the vibe, feel, and aesthetics all worked together to make it a generally welcoming, inclusive, and nonsectarian space. In one such workshop, entitled “Making the Left Sexy,” speakers explicitly addressed the question of the left's “image problem,” arguing for an approach that was less “doom and gloom” and more affirmative, emotional, and feminist in style. Clearly, these activists understood the importance of cultural style and mood.
Of course, this is one event among many, and we cannot be complacent about the degree of unease and awkwardness that still prevails, particularly among older men, in the face of feminism. The opening quote about “shuffling of feet” is an honest testament to this. Worse still is the tendency for some Corbyn supporters to engage in online abuse of women who are critical of Corbyn's politics. The latter has led some to argue that Corbynism is marred by “brosocialism,” a form of patriarchal masculinity manifest in, for example, online abuse of female critics (see, e.g., Cosslett Reference Cosslett2016). Pro-Corbyn feminists, in response, have contended that abuse is, sadly, prevalent across the political spectrum and that to frame Corbynism as uniquely patriarchal is to erase the work of socialist feminist women (Wilkinson Reference Wilkinson2017). More broadly—and without denying the significant obstacles to “feministizing” the British left—what we can do is take hope from the fact that there is now at least an explicit recognition among many on the left that their political spaces and practices should be—and, if not, need to be made—amenable to feminism and that this includes attention to the affective relations generated therein.
CONCLUSION
We want to end this article by revisiting our three initial aims in light of our findings. Starting with our empirical mapping, we are in no doubt that recent years have seen an upturn in the feministization of a range of left sites, including more traditional left organizations (the People's Assembly and Left Unity); spontaneous, horizontal pockets of youth activism; and more hybrid formations such as Momentum. All of these spaces have been characterized by a greater willingness to self-identify as feminist; a recognition that there are multiple axes of oppressions that must be challenged by the left, even if there is still disagreement about the order that they must be tackled; efforts to raise awareness of and combat violence and abuse in left-wing communities; and the institutionalization of equality guarantees such as quotas and widespread use of autonomous organizing by self-identified women.
Having said this, the extent of this feministization process remains constrained by two main factors. First, as we have seen, there remains a degree of epistemological dissonance with regard to how feminism, as an analytical perspective on the world, should be integrated theoretically into a socialist conception of power and politics. In other words, socialist feminism, as an intellectual/political paradigm, let alone anarchist feminism, has not taken hold in these spaces. Our intuition here, however, is that this fact cannot be explained solely or even primarily in terms of ideological resistance, although there is some. Rather, we noted a degree of impatience, especially in the more recent renditions of the left, with what is interpreted as intellectualism/scholasticism and a preference for a more “pragmatic” approach to achieving equality, one that eschews the task of theorizing and emphasizes instead the promulgation and implementation of concrete policies and structures. The second factor, as we have seen, is that the embodied performances of much of the British left, along with the affective responses that they elicit, tend to reflect and reproduce traditional gendered scripts, even if more women are doing the performing. In this way, the furtherance of the feministization of the British left depends not only on a more sustained and rigorous intellectual/conceptual engagement with both feminist and left ideas, and their fundamental points of overlap, but also on the creation of more imaginative, less masculinist ways of doing politics. In sum, while the desire and will for change are there, the intellectual/cultural resources seem to be less so.
The final empirical point that we want to make concerns the context and temporal specificity of our findings. As we have said, from a diachronic perspective, we do detect a slow-burning, if uneven and halting, transformation of the left toward a more feminist-friendly way of enacting politics, a process that is, of course, reversible. When looking synchronically across the panoply of individual left sites, however, generalizations are harder to make. In the main, although it is important to acknowledge the efforts made by Left Unity and the People's Assembly, we were more impressed by the ways in which Momentum activists have self-consciously, explicitly, and passionately sought to tackle gender and race as obstacles to the pluralization and democratization of their left politics. Whether they are able to complement these efforts with a more sustained intellectual engagement with feminist, intersectional insights and find alternative ways of doing politics will remain an open question for some, as it is still early days.
Turning to our primary aim, we have sought to develop an analytical framework through which to map the feministization (or otherwise) of instances of left-wing politics. While our approach has been mainly reconstructive—that is, aiming to constructively build on, rather than debunk, existing approaches—our analysis might nonetheless yield lessons for some of the literatures we are engaging with. So while the socialist feminist theoretical literature is correct to point to the epistemological challenge that feminism poses to the left, and the “feminization” literature is certainly on the right track when it argues that the politics of presence (i.e., descriptive and substantive representation) is important, our research suggests that these benchmarks alone cannot capture the complex, polyvalent process of feministization. To ignore the visceral and aesthetic features of a collectively enacted politics and the feelings that are produced in this turbulent context is to miss a crucial part of the story.
Last but not least, as left feminist researchers, we would like to end by sounding a cautionary note with respect to the current state of the British left. The positive shifts described here are partial, fragmented, and vulnerable to being reversed. This is due, in part, to the broader post-Brexit referendum environment in which racist and misogynist tendencies in British politics and wider society seem to feel emboldened. But there is a further danger: that, in an attempt to respond to the challenges of post-Brexit Britain, the left will abandon feminism and antiracism in the name of a broader rejection of “identity politics,” hopeful that such a move will free the left to “reconnect” with white working-class voters. This tendency to bracket off feminism, antiracism, and queer/LGBT politics (Goodfellow Reference Goodfellow2016) as a form of identity politics (as opposed to class politics) and then to assume that it poses a distraction to the main task at hand is perhaps one of the biggest threats to the continued “feministization” of the left. Finding ways of challenging these internal and external countervailing tendencies is crucial if the partial moves toward a more feminist left are to become fully entrenched.
