The multiple futures of feminism

Abstract

Feminism as a concept and as a movement tends to provoke ambivalent responses. Although gender equality is a commonly shared value, feminism remains hotly debated in Finland, and explicit anti-feminism often intertwines with homophobic, xenophobic, and racist currents. To resist reactionary mobilization, new generations of feminists are defining their feminism as intersectional. For them, analysing gender and gender-based subordination is not enough, but racism, homophobia and transphobia need to be tackled just as urgently. The possible futures of feminism, its utopias and dystopias, were the topic of a panel discussion at the annual Finnish gender studies conference organized by the University of Jyväskylä in collaboration with the Association for Gender Studies in Finland (SUNS) in Jyväskylä in November 2017. The invited participants were akshay khanna, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and Katariina Kyrölä. The discussion was chaired by Tuija Saresma.