Can all Feminists be Friends? The Limits of Loyalty in Feminist Friendship

• In Event: Gendered Public Policy and Attitudes

Abstract

While the desire for similarity and sameness in women’s friendships is widely problematized and traced back to the narcissistic masculinist ideals of friendship in the classical Western thought, the exclusionary character of loyalty in feminist friendship remains largely underexplored as a relational limitation of friendship. This paper critically examines loyalty in friendship, with a focus on feminist friendship, especially among feminists who are in radical political disagreement. It raises two inter-related questions: Can all feminists be friends? How can feminists expand their friendships without breaking their pre-existing feminist loyalties? This task is pursued in a three-tiered manner. Firstly, this article argues the exclusionary character of loyalty in feminist friendship is not limited to conceptions sisterhood based on similarity and sameness; it also applies to feminist friendships based on difference. This suggests that re-grounding feminist friendship in difference, or in allyship, does not put an end to prejudice and discrimination between feminists or “other feminists.” Secondly, this paper demonstrates that, due to exclusivity that loyalty demands, even when women are willing to self-critically reflect on “other women,” this mental shift may still not be enough to pluralize the actual patterns of feminist friendship. This challenges the current literature that delineates the importance of critical self-reflection beyond privileges, fears, and fragilities. Thirdly, the article concludes by introducing a concept of “relational re-imagination” as an in-between stage through which transformation can actually take place in women’s civil society based on secular feminists and Islamic feminist narratives of their in Turkey.

This paper argues that bringing our attention to the role loyalty plays in feminist friendship additionally brings in a more comprehensive and complicated challenge. This is because (1) the limitations of loyalty in friendship is not limited to friendships based on similarity and sameness but also applies to friendships based on difference, and (2) loyalty in friendship redirects our focus towards the relational component of friendship. As a result, while critiques of friendship based on similarity and familiarity encourage critical self-reflection as a way of moving towards pluralization of the Western liberal discourse on feminist sisterhood, loyalty in friendship reveals that the task requires more than individual willingness to get uncomfortable or openness to world-travel to other women’s lifeworlds. If the relational ties that bind women to their chosen communities of feminist friendship remains unchallenged, regardless of the value of the individual journeys through which women might be willing to listen to their other, feminist friendship continue to remain limited. This realization is important because it suggests that feminist activism based on “understanding the other” or “being an ally” does not solve the systematic problems of exclusion ingrained in the concept of feminist friendship.

Author

• Pinar Dokumaci, Queen's University