The Issue with Neoliberal Feminism
The problem with Neoliberal Feminism is that it tends to align itself with a neoliberal ideology that only supports people who profit from or are indifferent to the struggles of those impacted by Western neoliberal and imperialist policies and attitudes. Neoliberal feminism goes hand in hand with white feminism, except neoliberalism is a system that defends imperialism, exceptionalism (think American exceptionalism), and classism. It is often associated with figures such as Michelle Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, and Nancy Pelosi; women who have positions of power that are granted by a neoliberal system that, in turn, is built to exploit the non-privileged classes. Neoliberal and white feminism are the platforms in which Western imperialism and colonialism stand on. This is exemplified by the complete betrayal of the MeToo movement by those who claimed to carry it. Tara Reade, the woman bravely accusing Joe Biden of raping her in 1993 when she was employed in his office, is showing the world the hypocrisy and indifference of neoliberal feminists; they claim to believe women, but then only do so if it serves them politically, and as long as it doesn’t expose the gruesome reality of American neoliberalism.
During the Democratic presidential primary in the US, Joe Biden, who was accused last year of inappropriate behaviour towards female colleagues, announced he was running for president. When last year’s allegations were made public (7 in total), many liberal women who needed political credibility, such as then-candidate Kamala Harris, used the MeToo mantra, saying she “believed the women.” It had become the standard response, which is what the movement had been hoping for. However, as soon as it became clear that Biden would be the nominee to take on Trump in the general election, the same women, including Harris, endorsed him. Alyssa Milano, who was a prominent MeToo activist, ruined her credibility as such when she went on a Twitter campaign to defend Biden and to encourage other women to vote for him in November. Any criticism she received she would proclaim to be from toxic ‘Bernie Bros,’ a propagandistic name given to those who supported Senator Bernie Sanders for president and who advocated for policies such as Medicare for All. Even leading progressive politician Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez stumbled when asked her opinion on Tara Reade’s allegation, finally saying the whole situation was “not clear-cut,” and that “while a lot of folks, again, are trying to jump to the political implications, [Reade] has never explicitly said, ‘don’t vote for Biden,’...if anything, it sounds like she simply wants to be heard.” To many, this was a disappointing answer. When a survivor comes forward, listening and believing them goes hand in hand with not voting for the abuser. Especially when survivors come forward to warn about the character of someone who is running for such a powerful position.
Why Due Process Fails? Neoliberal Feminism is There to Make it Worse
The greatest MeToo criticism is that if we believe all women, then due process becomes obsolete. Due process is the undertaking of a fair judicial process when charging someone with a crime. But what the MeToo movement points out is that due process oftentimes fails survivors. The US is a country where only 5 out of every 1,000 rapists end up in prison. Because the law fails survivors, collective solidarity becomes the first line of protection and prevention. With this comes the question of who to believe and who not to believe. By MeToo logic every story is looked into with an open and empathetic mind. This is where this logic and due process conflict: in the face of such statistics as those reported by RAIN, believing women sounds like the right thing to do. However, it’s important to remember that due process is still a crucial part in reviewing each case. Many would submit the ongoing case of Hollywood actors Amber Heard and Johnny Depp as an example: Heard accused Depp of domestic violence in 2016 and fashioned herself a MeToo hero, however, Depp is now suing Heard for defamation with newly revealed evidence that includes audio clips in which she confesses to participating in violence during their fights. Whatever happened, there is clear mutual toxicity and victimization on both sides, but what is interesting is that Heard is an icon of neoliberal feminism: the type of feminism that resides among the elite in Hollywood who, for example, celebrate Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman as a milestone for women everywhere while ignoring the people suffering under the apartheid regime Gadot has continuously praised. Similarly, Heard is one of many celebrity activists paraded by the US empire in order to draw sympathy for its war efforts: two years ago she took a trip to Jordan to visit Syrian refugees displaced by the Syrian Civil War to support the work of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS).
Of course, these kinds of trips are ultimately unhelpful coming from an American whose government is directly responsible for the conflict. They only serve to try to instil in non-Americans that the US is their saviour while refuelling American’s already inflated sense of righteous white saviourism. Not only does Heard’s charity speak to the massive propaganda scheme of the US empire today, but it speaks to the elitist celebrity culture that neoliberal feminism relies on in order to exist. Neoliberal feminism will always act in solidarity with elites first, be it those in Hollywood or those in DC. There is no Marxist or decolonial nuance in neoliberal feminism’s blind worship of the bourgeoisie class. Conclusively, the MeToo failure in the Heard/Depp case was not so much that Depp was misrepresented, but that Heard could never have been a true MeToo hero due to her status as a neoliberal feminist, and neoliberal feminists tend to only rally in support of each other and not other, perhaps even more vulnerable, survivors. This is why due process is flawed: because it is carried out through a neoliberal system that is already biased.
MeToo as a Political Weapon Wielded by Neoliberal Feminists
Personally, it feels like this whole election cycle has done nothing but radicalize me more while opening my eyes. Sparing you the political manifesto, I would like to focus on the complete abandonment of the MeToo spirit by neoliberal feminists in favour of Biden. Biden was Vice President to Barack Obama, a neoliberal president whose administration is accused of implementing the NSA mass surveillance programme revealed by Edward Snowden, deporting more people than Trump, and failing to close the notorious CIA concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, among many other things. But before Biden became Vice President to the drone-loving Obama, he was a senator who in the 1960s worked with segregationists and praised their ‘civility.’ In 1994 he advocated for and co-authored a federal crime bill that espoused the racist attitude known as ‘tough on crime,’ which helped the US become the world's leading carceral state and targeted mostly black and brown communities. In 2003, he stood next to President George W. Bush and campaigned and voted for the imperialist invasion of Iraq, continuing Amerikkka’s bloody tradition of imperialist foreign policy. All in all, he is a neoliberal ‘hero,’ and as expected, neoliberal feminists flocked to his defence once he was accused of rape.
There have been two such instances in recent American political history that sum up this article. Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, and Tara Reade’s allegations against Biden. Brett Kavanaugh was an appointee for Trump’s (white) Supreme(sist) Court. There are some women who work for Biden’s campaign or are associated with it who have tweeted about the bravery of Dr Ford and condemned the Republican Party and the FBI’s treatment of her in their investigation. But this overwhelming support did not transfer over to Tara Reade in 2020. Not only is Twitter flooded with #TaraReadeisALiar, but those same women who tweeted in support of Dr Ford have now deleted those tweets and are standing firmly behind Biden. Elizabeth Warren, another neoliberal feminist politician, called Biden’s denial of the allegations “credible and convincing” as she endorsed him. Warren and her ilk have shown their true colours when it all comes down to it. Neoliberalism does not allow for an inclusive, intersectional, and nuanced feminism. It simply uses feminism as a political tool to further the interests of a select class of people. But the feminist movement has progressed beyond the confines of Western neoliberalism. After all, liberalism is a system that demands that some die in order for others (the privileged) to survive, which makes it antagonistic to feminism rather than complementary.