Cori Schumacher

Globalization is a homogenizing mechanism of capitalism. It promises to erode borders, languages, races, ethnicities and genders and replace all identities with a single id drive: “BUY-your-SELF-expression-now!” and is undercut throughout by Greed.

Capital has no home, it has no body, it has no single origin (not anymore)… it is a spirit with a single purpose: to consume itself. The only means to combat it is with a force equally disembodied and equally voracious, a force that is bound by its very nature to creativity. This is the feminine. The feminine is not located within the woman exclusively, but lives within each human being in differing states, flowing with the masculine in a kind of struggle for balance.

It is too easy to mistake or misconstrue feminism as either anti-feminine or anti-male. We must reconceive it as a radical re-evaluation and reformulation of the dominant masculine hegemony (DMH), an oppressive conceptual framework, that has historically defined and structured imperialism, industrialism, corporatism and the majority of our social institutions. Feminism is not simply seeking to topple the simplistic, idiotic rhetoric of businesses and media that offer “sex sells” as a basis for exploitation (sells what? and to whom?!)…

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” -V. Woolf

“Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.” – Gandhi.

Women have been in a unique position to understand the commodification of everything (e.g. people, objects, ideas, experiences, families, holidays…) because of how we (our bodies, our minds, our words…) have been co-opted, marginalized and commodified by the DMH machine.

As the Occupy movement is spreading its demands that individuals be seen as unique human beings, as citizens, rather than reduced to cogs in the globalization machine-hungry consumers, faceless commodities- it is more important than ever to understand the underlying foundation of today’s feminist consciousness; to not balk at the word “feminism,” but to embrace it as a more balanced way of being in the world.

This is the feminism that the World Bank touts as a powerful solution to poverty:

“The initial motivation for microfinance roughly 30 years ago was, to a great extent, gender neutral. The pioneering MFIs sought to provide credit to poor entrepreneurs who had no assets to pledge as collateral and, consequently, were denied access to capital by the formal banking sector. It quickly emerged, however, that women entrepreneurs invested the profits from their businesses in ways that would have a longer-lasting, more profound impact on the lives of their families and communities. The woman entrepreneur as the gateway to household stability became a fundamental premise of the microfinance business model and the success of microfinance as a poverty alleviation tool.”

This is the feminism that helps survivors of war- the most horrendous production of the DMH machine -transform their world:

“When we enroll women in our one-year program, they learn job skills and receive business training so they can earn a living. They come to understand their rights and how to fight for those rights in their homes, their communities and their nations and become leaders.

Women for Women International (WfWI) believes that lasting change can only be achieved when women have access to both knowledge and resources.”

This is the feminism that can be found in the environmental movement, in the current Occupy movement, in antiglobalization movements, is concerned with equity and the value of being genuinely humane and above all, it is a consciousness that asks “what are we leaving future generations?”

This is not the feminism that seeks to find its place within the current oppressive conceptual framework, but seeks, rather, to reshape the very fabric of it: to create shared value in place of a hollow strategies of “corporate responsibility;” to de-emphasize competition in business in favor of more service oriented approaches (which is not to say it topples business… “It is ultimately a vision about a form of conscious capitalism, where innovation can still be rewarded, but without exploiting resources or people.”); it encourages a more holistic perspective and approach in everything from health to business to government.

Today’s feminism is transcendent. It is not bound by gender, sex, sexuality, borders, race, ethnicity… yet it values our cultural differences, unique identities, diverse histories and seeks to celebrate them. In a few words, it is a liberating consciousness that can oppose and balance the influence of the homeless, wandering id-drive that demands self-definition through materialism (spiritual materialism, accumulation of things…) and is a slave to an overly consumptive capital-based system.