Suspending (Feminist) Judgment

Irina Aristarkhova

MERVE EMRE’S PROJECT aims to center “particular peoples’ experiences of reproduction and care” in feminist advocacy, hoping in so doing that this will bring us closer to addressing the “vast structural inequalities of time, money, kinship, healthcare, legal protections, and bodily integrity.” Sign me up! However, later in her essay Emre complicates her own vision when she notes that “people’s bodies are unruly sites for politics.” And that is the trouble: the devil is always in the details.

Emre’s text makes beautifully clear that the personal will always trump the political. When facing “real” people with their “real” feelings, Emre wants us to suspend any (feminist or other) judgment. Because the private, like the body, is an unruly site for politics: as Emre’s subject B says, “for the possibility of this other kind of love, I will apparently do everything.” Indeed, when our own deep, uncontrollable, personal desires are concerned, we rarely act in line with whatever political choices we think should be made. Life is more complicated. You can call it hypocrisy, but Emre presents a more sympathetic picture that appeals to me because it opens itself to vulnerability, even as it risks complicating her project of inclusive feminism. I will extend in two directions what Emre started here.