Neoliberal postfeminism—or some other sexier thing: gender and populism in the Spanish context

The ambivalent and complex status of contemporary feminism has been widely discussed in relation to neoliberalism, especially within the North American context (see for example Banet-Weiser, 2018; Gill, 2017; Rottenberg, 2018; Fraser, 2013). However, the Spanish case may be of particular significance, given the current moment of booming neoliberalism and political instability, but also, simultaneously, of intense and resurgent feminism. In the (post)crisis setting, thanks to feminist activism against precariousness, institutional patriarchy and everyday sexism, gender justice has penetrated Spanish common sense in a way the broad formal/legal development of equality during the last fifteen years was unable to achieve - as the multiple demonstrations against the infamous rape case of ‘La Manada’ ¹ and the thrilling feminist strikes on 8 March in 2018 and 2019 have shown.

Thus, in Spain, feminism is not only a popular matter informing and changing the ongoing conversation in the domains of journalism or entertainment—it is already integrated in the electoral strategies of all political parties (from the left-wing Podemos to the right-wing populist Vox), in the editorial values of new media (e.g. El Salto, eldiario.es, Público o Ctxt), and even in TV gossip shows, including the leading Sálvame. Feminism is becoming an ordinary matter of/for the people, affecting their needs, identities and relationships. Therefore, it is now more difficult to find women who openly define themselves as non-feminists; even those who mistrust or disown feminism take a stand for gender parity and have actually normalised equality, freedom and empowerment in their own lives (Martínez-Jiménez, 2019).

Nevertheless, this does not mean that the (re)humanising project of critical and progressive feminism has succeeded in Spain as the only and hegemonic alternative to the legitimation crisis of neoliberalism after the Great Recession. As Nancy Fraser has stated, we are living a ‘moment of risk and opportunity’ in which the hopeful transformations of feminism co-exist with an extreme-right backlash and the neoliberal torsion and exploitation of gender (Andrade and De Sus, 2019). In this sense, Sarah Banet-Weiser (2018) and Rosalind Gill (2016), we are confronted with an ambivalent three-dimensional political and cultural phenomenon that comprises the popularisation of feminism and pro-women discourses, the coexistence of different feminisms in Western common sense, and the resulting counter-reaction of ‘popular misogyny’.

Furthermore, in Spain, this ambivalent moment has fostered the expansion of various over-sentimental, post-truth and identity populisms, which are openly manifested in political and cultural discourses dazzling enough to attract part of (post)recessionary social disaffection. There is ‘punitive populism’, where being ‘tough on crime’ is presented as a solution to violence against women and children, but also the hyper-identitarian and patriotic populisms that hide precariousness and inequality behind their essentialist defence of ‘the good Spaniard’ or ‘the good Catalan’; and of course the rise of a proud, emboldened and freshly-fragmented Right in which the parties Partido Popular, Ciudadanos and Vox all claim to be advocates for women. Meanwhile, the Left is trying to redesign a progressive project and reinforce its commitment to equality and diversity, but it seems unable to stop its balkanisation that is occurring through infighting and disagreements about political purity and transversality; verticality and horizontality; and class/identity dichotomies — as the escalating fratricidal confrontation between Podemos’ founders and (ex)friends Pablo Iglesias (leader of Unidas Podemos) and Iñigo Errejón (leader of the new left-wing party Más País) has demonstrated since 2016.

In this political and cultural environment, characterised by fragmentation, the marketing of the politically sexy, as well as the precariousness intensified by the Great Recession, We should expect reactionary narratives to circulate not only in obviously aggressive and regressive ways, but also more insidiously through appealing and suggestive discourses. Under the guise of what Fraser called ‘progressive neoliberalism’ (2017) – that is, ‘an expropriative, plutocratic economic program [combined] with a liberal-meritocratic politics of recognition’ and, using softer strategies, socioeconomic models are promoted through these exciting, seductive and ‘progressive’ postures that are increasingly adopted by reactionary organisations and narratives that are as flashy as they are unfair and where the dispositif of what I will call ‘neoliberal postfeminism’ is apparent. (Martínez-Jiménez, 2019) truly makes sense, and where we can see an embrace of an uncritical cultural populism.

Neoliberal postfeminism may thus be understood as a new (populist) narrative in the Spanish context. Resulting from the struggle for hegemony between popularised feminism and the neoliberal project, which acts within this conjuncture as an ideological project that summons women to new mystified identity positions. These new subject positions are sexier, easier, and ‘harmless’, and become profitable tropes within the cultural industries —such as the new post-recessionary mystique of the ‘angry/fierce pretty girls’ (Martínez-Jiménez, 2019: 524–526); in this way they are aligned against the counterhegemonic feminist alternative that has been internationally popularised neoliberal postfeminism not only assuage the feminist threat during the last few years, but also integrates it and regurgitates it as ‘some other thing’ which is less dangerous, more palatable and, above all, more functional in political, commercial and cultural terms for the maintenance and (re)legitimation of neoliberal capitalism (Martínez-Jiménez, 2019: 526, 532).

In other words, neoliberal postfeminism emerges as popular misogyny (also discussed by Banet-Weiser, 2018) part of a populist counter-reaction or backlash to the growing normalisation of feminism exploits a volatile cocktail of glamourized neo-traditionalism, meritocratic individualism, and feminist-inspired claims for freedom, empowerment and sexuality through showy images and catchy slogans. The purpose is to make women – even those who are truly dissatisfied and upset with the state of things – freely choose it every time they consume or vote or plan their life projects, without this substantially challenging the fundaments of the system. In this way, neoliberal postfeminism tries to simultaneously constrain, displace and replace feminism.

Therefore, we can consider neoliberal postfeminism to be a populist narrative in the most conventional political, cultural and commercial sense; that is to say, it is demagogical, emotional, with pop(ular) aspirations and, in McGuigan’s words, it provides ‘solutions that are unrealistic’ (1992: 2) – just as postfeminist micropolitics does when it identifies consumption and beauty as paths to happiness and social mobility – we can interpret neoliberal postfeminism as being in line with the uncritical cultural populism denounced by McGuigan (1992, 1997) – that which feeds on the hypertrophy of the cultural/discursive/poststructuralist turn and its quasi-omnipotent consumer-subject – because the feminine subjectivities summoned by it are imagined as willpower free, self-empowered, sovereign of themselves and their choices, and capable of resignifying or overcoming structural inequalities.

From within the framework of feminist cultural and media studies, it is imperative to understand that it is precisely the postfeminist appropriation and perversion of the much battled-for feminist depiction of women as diverse and individual beings with full agency which not only echoes the principles of an uncritical cultural populism but also reflects the tension between the modern and postmodern feminist positions (see Gill, 2007); furthermore, it is this which buttresses the very neoliberalisation of feminism that is denounced by authors such as Catherine Rottenberg (2018). In this sense, Rosalind Gill and Angela McRobbie agree in warning us against the alarming tendency of certain contemporary analyses to suspend their critical feminist commitment attention to political economy in favour of women’s personal sovereignty, facilitating a complicity postfeminist neoliberalism. While McRobbie (2008) blames the celebration of a commodified ‘popular feminism’, just as long as Gill (2007) criticises the growing obsession with respecting the capacities, agency and free choice of (young) women at all costs, which renders their cultural and economic vulnerability invisible. Thus, the populist narrative of neoliberal postfeminism is a strategy aiming not only at transmuting the political into the personal, but, in addition and above all, at depoliticising the personal – or, rather, at re-politicising it in terms that are irresponsibly complicit with patriarchal neoliberal capitalism. In other words, it de-problematises our choices and lifestyles, even those that reproduce social inequalities, if they make us feel happy, empowered or free.

Neoliberal postfeminism is particularly interesting symbolic key for analysing contemporary populisms because it allows us to critically explore the relationship between economy and culture, and between structures and subjectivities through the very association between neoliberalism and postfeminism. Postfeminism is an imperative critical concept that allows us to track or wholly rejects feminism – in McRobbie’s terms it is both taken into account and repudiated – but instead, as I argue, it uses it as some other thing. The complex connections between feminism, patriarchy, capitalism, sex, media, work and consumption since the late 20th century.

Indeed, postfeminist claims for diversity, sorority and self-empowerment are the most viral and pervasive narratives in Spanish media, especially in connection with topics like sex, money and the female body via trendy singers such as La Zowi, Ms. Nina and Bad Gyal—even the internationally idolized Rosalía—or TV celebrities like Ylenia are constantly discussed as new popular icons of postfeminist empowerment who upgrade ‘choni’ (chav) or ‘ratchet’ culture, enjoy their explicit sexuality, brag about their money and access to luxury, and also distance themselves from counterhegemonic feminisms.

However, neoliberal postfeminism is not the only popular pro-women populist force in Spain these days, although they all share characteristics. There is a sober, tempered and politically correct feminist discourse focused on demanding equality in the labour market and within the family, mostly expressed by actresses and other public figures – the outing of Banco Santander’s CEO Ana Patricia Botín as a self-declared ‘feminist’ in 2018 was particularly representative, ² and can be understood in a broader transnational context where Sheryl Sandberg has championed a form of neoliberal feminism that encourages high-flying women to ‘lean in’ (see Rottenberg 2018). Alongside this, the most reactionary right-wing parties PP and Vox are basing their own pro-woman a conservative defence discourse on motherhood, the heteronormative family model and the concept of ‘exceptional femininity’; meanwhile, the new centre-right party Ciudadanos explicitly supports a pro-capitalist ‘liberal feminism’. All these parties – including the new extreme-right organisation Vox, which stands for popular anti-feminism – have recently accused progressive feminist activists and left-wing parties of ‘appropriating’ feminism.

Within this context, as Gill (2016) has indicated, it is necessary to critically differentiate the various versions (and intentions) of feminism(s) that are currently circulating, feeding on each other and colliding with one another: for we must keep in mind that while feminism assuredly includes everyone, not everything should be welcome in feminism or even be able to – populist use of feminism and appeals to ‘diversity’ be called ‘feminist’. (Neo)liberal (post)feminism and the various acritical popular pseudo-feminisms support a rationality that essentially contradicts the feminist fundaments of social justice. Likewise, if we keep in mind the possibility of a ‘critical populism’ (McGuigan, 1992: 5) or a ‘progressive populism’ (Fraser, 2017), pseudo-feminist distortions cannot and should not be considered feminist populism or popular feminism – although they can certainly be confused with it or overlap with it, given that the latter implies certain necessary concessions to trivialisation and simplification.

The above does not mean that those various allegedly feminist versions are not sexy, suggestive or trendy – with the upsurge of celebrity/influencer feminism as a perfect example here – or that they wholly ignore gender inequalities or do not make certain women feel empowered. Nor does it imply that feminism is a singular orthodoxy, that it is immune to the constant tensions and discussions around it, or that it has incorruptibly resisted the neoliberal-corporativist hegemony, or that it has always successfully avoided a complicity with other dominant projects like capitalism.

The point here is rather that feminism is a (popular/populist) thing now! And this popularisation of feminism may represent a precious opportunity – a starting point, a means and not an end – to identify and dismiss acritical populisms and make the critical feminist project accessible, intersectional and attractive, to the extent that its values (justice, equality, wellbeing, diversity and freedom) become normal enough – without being taken for granted – to resist any antidemocratic attempt to destroy or corrupt them, as well as to continue the feminist conversation and nurture radically progressive social transformations.

If we want to keep alive our hope for a critical and progressive populism, we should be careful not to automatically think of popular feminism as necessarily or inevitably complicit with neoliberal capitalism. But we need to be even more careful not to forget: first, the extraordinary complexity of creating intersectional popular projects that take our differences into consideration; second, the impact of our own socioeconomic conditions and constraints; and third, the power of attraction, absorption and discipline of the hegemonic forces.

For the time being, the feminism that has flooded the streets of Spain and forced a vast change in mentalitées is the one which, in Fraser’s words, avoids ‘half-measures’ and works for the sake of the 99% (Andrade and De Sus, 2019). However, it seems there are real difficulties for a budding popular feminism, with such a high profile in the media – especially media as politically hackneyed as in Spain - to articulate a relatable, solid and, above all, explicitly anti-capitalist alternative. As Fraser has stated, ‘we are in the middle of a class struggle within feminism’ (cited in Andrade and De Sus, 2019).

To meet each other and to resist together by designing and implementing a transversal, creative and progressive set of political initiatives for the sake of that 99 percent – with feminism leading the defence of equality, justice, diversity, freedom and wellbeing – should be our greatest responsibility in the coming difficult years. As bell hooks passionately stated, ‘feminism is for everybody’ (hooks, 2000)—so be it, (re)sisters!