The Invisible Woman

Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women.[1][2] This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women.
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(Warning: The following article contains content/discussion of human rights violations that may be upsetting or disturbing to some readers.)

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Maybe I'm a confused feminist. (I don't think I am, but let's find out.) When did sexual exploitation start to pass as feminism? Somehow, the liberation of the female body seems to have led us into the same age-old mechanisms of sex-based degradation, but this time with willful participants.

Models, actresses, and personalities spearhead this false empowerment. The idea that if you're getting paid for it, it's not enslavement. (Indentured servitude, anyone?)

Miley Cyrus. Kim Kardashian. F---ing anyone that's ever been on The Bachelor. These are our idols. These are our symbols of Western liberation.

But perhaps I am too sensitive. Perhaps these characters are not so destructive as I sense. Is it objectification if we do it to ourselves? If we own it in all our ironic tongue-wagging, champagne-popping glory? Let's follow the spiral. What happens when we make women into something to be lusted after and used, rather than a person with voice and value.

1. Objectification: Being made into an object, a thing
2. As a thing, you have no human rights
3. No longer a person, you can be bought and sold
4. Society will subjugate you
5. Your opportunities diminish
6. You become financially limited
7. Thrown into a cycle of poverty and violence
8. At the mercy of those whose rights are still intact

This is one of many worst-case-scenarios. There are others. Absurd expectations impressed by advertising that promote an unrealistic standard of perfection. Demoralization that leads to self-hate and self-harm. Anorexia, bulimia, drug abuse, suicide.

While men must be held responsible for perpetuating a culture that demeans women, women in power must be held accountable as well.

Many of us in the Western world are women in power, whether we see it or not.

I've seen my share of women who accompany men to strip clubs because it makes them seem fun and crazy. Never mind that it puts them accomplice to the objectification of their own sex. It's just once in a while, they argue. Stop taking it so seriously.

Just as the power of one matters for a grassroots campaign for good, so too does it apply to the cancerous spread of dehumanization. While even the dancer and others may find it humorous, too, merely their presence and monetary participation is essentially condoning an industry that entraps and enslaves women. You're voting for inequality with your dollars. I'm not suggesting that women count for the market share of strip club attendees. But the flippant culture that encourages this buy-in is not helping.

You're a "cool girl" if you go to a strip club. The guys buy you drinks and everyone makes jokes about who gets more "action." But you get to go home and be an employed, empowered woman. You get to walk out of the club.

She doesn't.

This is cultural appropriation, plain and simple. You get to immerse yourself in someone else's circumstances for fun, then conveniently drop it and walk away, like a quirky costume.

Today, women are given the choice of either "victim of sexual repression" or "icon of sexualization" - neither is given the choice of empowerment of pure personhood. It's still all about our nethers. That's the part that America can buy and sell. It's not about who we are as people.

(In response to the people who argue for the right of women to use their bodies for financial stability: I am not speaking out against those women. I appreciate and want them to feel empowered. I also understand that some do want to participate in sex-focused work. Escorts that believe they've found their niche, exotic dancers who find genuine pride in what they do, brilliant women that have always wanted to be models. These women will should be allowed to work in that industry if they find it fulfilling, but - and let me be clear - the vast majority of women in this line of work are not adequately compensated emotionally, spiritually, or even financially for how much they give up.)

Even if a dancer works at a particularly classy place that pays well and treats them well, she might have done something else if given the chance - if the market placed a higher premium on her as a person than as an object.

Both women and men are to blame for current paradigms. Popular discourse knows this.

Men like Patrick Stewart act as leaders and own this truth, standing up against rape culture, domestic violence, and disempowerment. Women like Hillary Clinton advocate for paid maternity leave, equal pay, and bodily autonomy. These people are high-profile power players.

But they are not enough if we are undermining our own efforts with our everyday lives. If we do nothing to touch the heart of the issue.

The core problem is that we simply do not see her.

The dancer.
The housekeeper.
The laborer.
The orphan.
The sex slave.

She is invisible to us until convenient, then we allow her to disappear into the wings once we're done with her.

Often, the women with the most screen time, the loudest voices, do not understand their own privilege. This is as real - and no doubt as unpopular to confront - as white privilege. That of our own sexual autonomy and ownership of personhood as Western women. This is what allows us to flaunt, even to be vulgar if we wish. To be Miley Cyrus or Kim Kardashian. This gap falls like a chasm between the wealth and autonomy of the Western world and the rest. Even the Western world's poor.

I often wonder if the young women I run into or see on social media really, truly understand the severity of their sisters' situations. I pray most of them do, but fear that some of them are absent of both information and urgency.

What does repression look like in your sphere when compared with the rest of the world? The acid throwing, bride burning, breast ironing, honor killing, female infant murdering, genital mutilating, human trafficking rest-of-the-world. And I use "rest-of-the-world" loosely, as human trafficking and other horrors happen in the United States, too.

We must ask ourselves:

If my feminism makes me feel smug for sharing a snarky pro-women article on Facebook, but does not convict me to support pro-women legislation throughout the year (not just election season), my feminism needs work. If my feminism degrades a woman's body as an object for money, but ignores the realities of the woman bound by inheritance laws or widow immolation or female circumcision, my feminism is a poor kind of feminism. If my feminism makes me feel I have the right to use people, men or women, for my own gratification, it is no feminism at all.

We need a shift. A shift from a distinctly Western (read: privileged) empowerment to global empowerment. It cannot just end at being as virile as men, sterile as men, as financially independent as men. If we define ourselves as being "just as" then how are we ever to be our best selves?

We must be global feminists, not Facebook feminists.