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Unless feminism acquires a politics of justice that reaches beyond victim-status and misandry, it cannot move us towards a gender-balanced society. Feminists fret over Janet Halley's apostasy in Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism, but the more probative assertions sit outside this debate. Irrespective of Halley's relationship to feminism, she pierces the feminist armour by critiquing what she calls 'Governance Feminism' and the 'Injury Triad'. These critiques motivate a serious reconsideration of gender inequality remedies, as they reframe but do not entirely undermine the feminist enterprises that seek to dismantle the male/female ('m/f') divide. Even those committed to feminist norms can embrace Halley's definition of feminism as m ≠ f, m > f, and carrying a brief for f, advocating on behalf of women. Halley's assertions require an answer and a shift in feminist politics, even in those that seek to reduce the m/f divide. What consequences do these critiques hold for continued engagement in feminist enterprises?
Governance Feminism and the Injury Triad highlight the real consequences of Halley's post-identitarian theory. Governance Feminism involves the installation of feminists and feminist ideas in actual legal and institutional sites of power, including a multiplicity of non-state and para-state institutional forms. Governance Feminism's havoc falls on men, Halley asserts. Governance Feminist efforts to eliminate consent as a defence to rape in the context of war crime tribunals rely on an excessive criminalisation of sexuality in which some contact may be consensual. Here, Halley asserts that Governance Feminists presume their own disarray when in fact their agendas 'walk the halls of power' in a variety of contexts. The consequence, as others have argued, is institutionalised misandry. 1
Governance Feminism's mistake draws on the Injury Triad. The Injury Triad, Halley tells us, is 'female injury + female innocence + male immunity' (p. 324). The Injury Triad has a dangerous potential to elevate women above their own subjectivity. This self-perception of constitutional innocence can carry its believers to extremes. The Injury Triad explains how feminists, despite their inclusive methodology, moved from a consciousness-raising ethos to disregard some of the consequences of their actions. To connect the dots more closely, the Injury Triad is at the heart of that...