The alienated feminist

Artist reflection

I started with a philosophical inquiry about feminism in a safe environment: the Leiden University philosophy classroom. I embraced the complexity beyond injustices laid in the gender problems. I tried to bring the theories over academia broader into daily life situations. I faced the pinching situations as “feminism” labeled forced on me as a social conversation stopper.

“One late evening, I was catching up with a childhood friend in a Chinese restaurant. She started to complain that her mother in-laws treated her as a servant during a family gathering dinner. The mother in law demanded her to cook, to serve and to satisfy everyone else’s needs before she could sit down and eat. I offered empathy, she accepted. I also offered further discussion that her mother in-law might also be the victim of patriarchal society. She rejected with a disappointed sign, ‘oh, I forgot you are a feminist’.”

I feel shocked and pinched. I started to look inward, into myself. I let the body lead the thinking. I engaged with brushes and colors. I trusted my full body, the full consciousness to think, to feel involved in this process. I see the feminism problem complexity intertwined with political, social, culture, and general issues. I am confronted by the facts that all feminist theories, movements are not enough to untangle the problem or provide a solution. I feel the vulnerability of myself being labeled as something ambiguous and pushed away from a group of familiarity. The alienated emotion is potentially the core structural difficulties which stop feminist theory to engage with empathy. At some point whatever I embrace, I will face the difference, the disagreement within a relationship with a real human, it could be permanent, temporal or situational. Regardless it brings the uncomfortableness. At that very moment, I am not part of the others in the space. It is the pinch I got when I first touched my cactus in my garden.

The series of cactus here is a process, the nonlinear process goes beyond the pinch living as a self-defined feminist. The inward exploration without forgetting the others. I am still inside the we, the alienation might not be cracked by simply inwardness discovering, the hope is that the braveness can shine a light into the fear of alienation.

(Written by Camellia Xueyi from her human heart.)