I’ve always understood that certain sets of morals work in societies that are in different modes of production. That is why certain societies are more individualistic than others.
I certainly think that pluralizing ‘feminism’ would lead to the legitimizing and virtue-making of a “diversity” that supports being uncritical of whatever is claimed to be progressive or supports the scapegoating of all feminist politics to be as problematic as the bad logic that is swept underneath the feminist umbrella.
Here’s what others have written about the problems of ‘feminisms’ as a term.
In my opinion, I feel that ethically, there’s only one feminism. That is to be against the institutionalized practices that shape people’s psyches into being dominant or subservient to a person or another group of people. I understand that there can be conditions in which the gendered work division in an environment that does not provide wage labour or employment can be not problematic: for example, the installation of a philosophy or religion and an understanding of ethnicity or community that institutionalize an equitable economic system that buffers the gendered work division, which in the case of pre-industrial societies, may be more efficient. I see the logical argument of cultural relativism.
At the same time, feminism can be one as it can account for this relativism. There needs not to be feminisms, but just one feminism that overcomes the troubles of ethnocentrism found in second-wave feminism. We call it third-wave feminism.
The reason to favour this term over the other is when one proclaims to be a “supporter of feminisms,” it is not expressed that those who are oppressed are all deprived and it creates an undesirable distance of “I wouldn’t know what you’re going through but I will likely be respectful and stand behind what you claim to be your rights,” when people ought to be coming together and talking about what we need. The truth is, we live in a globalized world in which economic systems are fluctuating within societies that are interactive; one must discuss the possibility of the abandonment of ties to social roles and the adoption of citizenship in a society that is institutionally different, one that is more focused on individual wage and transferable job skills. All who is oppressed ought to further the discourse of feminism globally by outlining the backbone of human rights and the potential of identity.
