Feminism, Defeated

Kate M. Phelan (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia)

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English

Polity Press
11 April 2025

Social & political philosophy

Feminism has been defeated.

Once a politics, feminism is now a philosophy, an epistemology, a method. Once for women, it is now for everyone. Once in pursuit of liberation, it now seeks only inclusion.

In Feminism, Defeated, Kate Phelan traces the depoliticization and ultimately, the defeat of feminism. She recovers the second-wave view of men and women as sex-classes, enemies, political kinds, a view more radical than the contemporary view of men and women as social constructs. She also describes how poststructuralism displaced this view and replaced it with another. In this view, the sex/gender binary constructs men and women, and excludes the gender nonconforming.

As this view replaced the second-wave one, the injustice of men’s oppression of women was replaced by that of exclusion, and the goal of women’s liberation was replaced by that of inclusion. Thus did feminism become the trans-inclusionary movement as which we now know it, and Phelan shows that this shift was not the progression of feminism; it was the betrayal of it. In this highly original and persuasive study, she argues that the recent emergence of a new gender-critical feminism presents a moment of opportunity to reclaim feminism’s political project.

By: Kate M. Phelan (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Australia)
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 135mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 431g
ISBN: 9781509566556
ISBN 10: 1509566554
Pages: 266
Publication Date: 11 April 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Kate Phelan is a lecturer in the School of Global, Urban, and Social Studies at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. A feminist philosopher, she is the author of Feminism, Defeated.

Reviews for Feminism, Defeated

""A terrific contribution, making sense of something that on the face of it makes no sense: the abandonment of women in the name of feminism."" Carol Gilligan, New York University ""A bold, accomplished defence of the claim that women and men are political kinds, challenging social constructionists and gender-critical feminists alike. The book is unusually stimulating both in terms of its radical conclusions and the ingenuity with which they are pursued."" Kathleen Stock