u/prettyfisher1

As a political science student in Berlin, I am basically breathing post-structuralist theory every day, but the deeper I get into it, the more I feel like we are stuck in a very exclusive, Eurocentric view. This hits home for me specifically because I have a Turkish migration background myself, and growing up between these different worlds makes the gap between academic theory and lived reality very obvious. We learn from Judith Butler that gender is a pure performance, a constant repetition of acts, and that biology itself is really just a cultural interpretation. That sounds incredibly liberating in a seminar room, but when I look at the reality of my own community and others with a migration history here in Germany, this whole approach often feels like a Western luxury problem.

I am seriously wondering if we have a massive blind spot when we declare modern lifestyles like open relationships or the total deconstruction of gender roles as the universal standard for empowerment. In the Berlin/academic bubble, it is seen as progressive to break down traditional structures, while those exact structures often serve a vital purpose for people in the diaspora. For many families like mine, the family unit is often the only place of unconditional solidarity in a society that otherwise tends to marginalize you. If we dismiss these traditional roles, like the man as the provider and the woman as the center of the family, as simply being backward, we are actually practicing what Chandra Mohanty calls a kind of discursive colonialism. We are viewing everything through Western eyes and assuming that every woman is just waiting to be saved by our liberal ideals.

This becomes especially clear when we talk about the headscarf. In many feminist debates, it is almost automatically framed as a symbol of oppression because it does not fit the image of fluid, Western liberation. But thinkers like Saba Mahmood have shown that agency can exist within religious traditions too. Wearing a headscarf or consciously choosing to live in a traditional role can be an active, ethical decision that provides stability and identity. It becomes particularly problematic when our feminism is turned into a tool for what Sara Farris calls femonationalism, which happens when we use our modern values like sexual freedom or a lack of social commitment as a border to decide who is integrated and who is not.

Maybe what we often perceive as conservative in migrant circles is actually a form of strategic essentialism according to Gayatri Spivak, meaning a way to hold onto clear identities as a protective space against an individualized, cold, and performance-driven society. When we demand in our studies that everything must be deconstructed, we ignore that for people in precarious or marginalized positions, dissolving structures is not an act of liberation but a security risk. I think we need to ask ourselves honestly if our academic feminism is really for everyone, or if it is ultimately just a self-portrayal of the Western secular elite who think their own life reality is the end of history.

Is the focus on total fluidity and deconstruction in today's theory ultimately just arrogant toward everyone who finds more freedom in tradition and community than in total individualization?