"I don't even know what feminism means anymore."

Ballerina Farm's Hannah Neeleman makes a great point

In the days since the now infamous Times profile of Ballerina Farm has gone viral, we’ve seen backlash to the backlash to the backlash. Many (including me) have noted the thread of patriarchal control that seems to undergird the Neeleman lifestyle. But after the first round of “free Hannah” pieces were published, there’s been an onslaught of pieces decrying “bitter feminists” for unfairly judging Hannah Neeleman’s choices, particularly since she posted this response to the profile, and this updated “About Us” page on the Ballerina Farm website.

Photo by Cory Arnold for the Times

The rose tinted conservative online magazine Evie has published defenses of Ballerina Farm, but so have plenty of mainstream journalists and influencers, implying that the Times profile was a hit piece written by a feminist with an agenda, that Megan Agnew deliberately “attacked” the Neeleman family. I don’t agree with this assessment (read Agnew’s reflection on the profile here). But I do think Hannah Neeleman’s response to Agnew’s question about feminism in the profile itself AND her defenders’ invocation of feminism, is worth taking a closer look at.

When Megan Agnew asked Hannah Neeleman if she identified as a feminist, she responded as follows:

“I feel like I’m a femin-,” she stops herself. “There’s so many different ways you could take that word. I don’t even know what feminism means any more.” She “absolutely” feels as though she has become politicised by other people. “We try so hard to be neutral and be ourselves and people will put a label on everything. This is just our normal life.”

I understand Neeleman’s confusion about feminism and I think this confusion is at the heart of the furor over both the profile and the Ballerina Farm account (and all that it represents).

Note how often feminism is mentioned in the many passionate defenses of Neeleman in this post. The general consensus is summed up neatly by these two comments:

“Seems like a lot of people claim they’re feminists until a woman chooses a life that doesn’t fit their narrative.”

“I think the point of feminism is the choice. If this is your dream, no one should be shaming you for it just like no one should shame the woman who chooses career over family. The ability to make the choice is the beauty 🩷”

The first comment was liked 5,732 times and the second 6,528 times.

So what is feminism exactly? And is it defined by a woman’s choices? Or at least, her right to choose the life she wants?

Our generation is not the first to debate the definition of feminism. In the 19th century, first wave white suffragettes argued that feminism was all about getting the white woman’s vote, but failed to see how not simultaneously fighting for Black men’s right to vote made their version of feminism limited and reliant on access to white supremacist power. Black feminists were systematically excluded from these efforts. In addition to fighting for the Black vote, Black feminists advocated against lynchings, fought for increased education access for Black people, and a definition of feminism which acknowledged the inseparability of race, class, and gender.

During the second wave of feminism, which coincided with the American Civil Rights movement, Black feminists continued to work on coalition building while many white feminists focused mainly on a woman’s right to work outside of the home. Again, white feminists didn’t extend this fight to the many domestic workers and childcare workers of color. These women, because of systemic racism and structural poverty, were often unable to make the choice between staying home or working outside the home.

During the third wave, Black scholar and theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality to address how various layers of marginalization interact to impact people’s lives and their ability to access equity, support, and access. Most recently, critiques of girlboss feminism and lean-in feminism, which celebrate a single woman’s ability to succeed in a patriarchal system that actively oppresses marginalized groups, have reckoned with the futility of trying to win at a game rigged against so many.

This brings us to today, where we’re torn between defending Hannah Neeleman’s right to live out her bucolic dream and critiquing how the glorification of that dream impacts cultural demands and expectations of mothers and women.

In her indispensable book White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and who they Leave Behind, Koa Beck writes about the limitations of self-optimization in the white feminist movement, which salutes a woman’s individual ability to access her goals while ignoring how that access is not available or accessible for all people. Women or not.

For Beck, feminism is not about a single issue (such as choice), it’s about all people having access to joyful, safe, and productive lives.

We need to build a more holistic, ambitious approach to inequality that doesn’t just isolate a single issue as definitive Feminism or ask that we aspire to that single issue. Nationally, we need a tiered movement toward gender equality that addresses the reality of people’s lives and that involves not only marginalized genders being seen, but securing food and basic resources like clean water and housing. Then workplace protections, decent wages, and a reformed justice system. Finally, once basic needs, workplace protections, and our legal system are secured, they need the opportunities to grow through education and small business opportunities. White feminism has never been this movement.

In other words, feminism necessitates active resistance against oppression. It is not politically neutral, nor does it equate interrogation of women’s choices (and the landscape in which those choses are made) as being synonymous with misogyny or anti-feminism. As Beck writes, white feminism “aligns being ‘pro-woman’ with being entirely self-seeking. The self becomes the dominant lens by which you metabolize oppression, reframed narrowly as a lack of business opportunity, a lack of seed money, a lack of confidence, a lack of stamina, a lack of an ability to simply believe in yourself.”

In the Ballerina Farm discourse, we see this “pro-woman” white feminism time and time again as BF defenders praise Hannah Neeleman’s work ethic, her entrepreneurship, her energy and her drive, without stopping to consider how her various layers of privilege enable her to employ these strengths in the first place. Does the undocumented single mother of three lack work ethic, entrepreneurship, energy, or drive? Or does she lack access?

Kate Manne

writes the newsletter

More to Hate

, which is about misogyny, fatphobia, and more, and is the author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, and Unshrinking: How to face Fatphobia. She teaches philosophy and gender studies at Cornell University. I asked her how the idea of “choice” factors into our understanding of feminism.

Feminism becomes meaningless when it's reduced to empty rhetoric about supporting women's choices. Unfortunately, women often choose to be subservient and kowtow to men's desires because that's what's rewarded under patriarchy. That's simply not feminism. Feminism, to me, is defined by a belief that white supremacist patriarchy is real and a commitment to ending it. That means supporting abortion rights, being an advocate for more vulnerable women and girls, and, most controversially, standing up for trans folks and other people marginalized in virtue of their gender expression or identity

Millions of women defend Hannah Neeleman’s right to choose her own life, but are they also defending other women’s right to choose? What about a trans woman’s right to choose gender affirming healthcare? What about a queer woman’s right to choose to raise children? What about a disabled woman’s right to live freely without being hindered by ableist physical landscapes and power structures? What about a migrant woman’s right to choose to live free the threat of from political violence? What about an Indigenous woman’s right to choose to live unburdened by the generational trauma of colonialism?

Kate clarifies that “of course feminist don’t, and shouldn’t, agree about everything. But we can have productive arguments over, say, how best to relate to beauty standards and make society more equitable without women’s basic freedoms and equality with men up for grabs.”

Serene Khader is a feminist theorist and the author of the forthcoming Faux Feminism: Why We Fall For White Feminism and How We can Stop. In response to the women flocking to the Ballerina Farm account to praise Hannah Neeleman’s freedom to choose her own destiny, Serene argues that all choices are “socially shaped,” and that it’s worth having conversations about whose choices deserve to be celebrated.

No one would support a woman of color launching a Ballerina Farm-esque account. Welfare rights activists such as Johnnie Tillmon used to argue that white women like Hannah Neeleman are celebrated for being “perfect” housewives, while Black women with many children are vilified as “welfare queens” and drains on the system.

Many outspoken BF defenders claim that people raising questions about whiteness, patriarchy, and feminism as it pertains to the massive cultural power of the Ballerina Farm account “hate” women simply because we’re not going out of our way to celebrate one particular woman’s very particular choices. But I think this misunderstands what leads so many thinkers to write about the impact of Ballerina Farm. I think it also ignores the urgency of many questions raised by the account.

Is it feminist to celebrate Hannah Neeleman for living her dream? How does such a feminism actively support other women’s ability to live their dreams? Or is it feminist to examine how Daniel Neeleman can openly disavow reproductive justice and divorce but the Ballerina Farm account is still called “politically neutral?” Is it feminist to expect the Neelemans to talk about generational wealth and the inability for people who don’t look like them to “build businesses from scratch?”

Every generation fucks up feminism, and I’m sure folks reading this twenty years from now will point out the many ways that I have fucked up feminism. And that’s a good thing! Resting on an easy, inflexible definition of feminism will only prevent progress and a radical reconsideration of how to create a more just world. We should be thinking and asking and wondering and discussing.

But in response to the recent push to “stop talking about Ballerina Farm,” I guess I just have to ask, why? Posting hateful comments on a stranger’s Instagram account sucks and isn’t productive. Of course. But I don’t think the people writing about Ballerina Farm critics being anti-feminist, or the influencers and random BF followers splashing the Ballerina Farm account with comments of support, are talking about internet trolls. I think they’re talking about their discomfort with a version of feminism that requires active political participation, that requires active engagement with privilege, that requires active work to destroy white supremacy.

A couple years ago, I interviewed Kyla Wazana Topkins about trad wives. Kyla an author, the chair of gender studies at the University of Buffalo, and the executive producer of the Feminist Keywords podcast. When I asked her what she made of the ways in which “choice feminism” has been recently weaponized, she said this:

It’s interesting to see many Ballerina Farm comments align feminism (which many of them call “true” feminism as though it is a religion) with “choice.” “True feminism,” they say, “means respecting every women’s choice.”

And yet: it is fundamentalist Christianity that is trying to deny women choice over their own bodies and therefore their own futures when they seek to limit reproductive healthcare; and it is fundamentalist Christianity like Mormonism that advocates for fewer life choices for women AND men, when it comes to sexual and gender freedom, and freedom to make alternative romantic choices. 

Actually feminism fundamentally complicates the idea of choice by asking: how does the world form the paths in front of us before we even get to imagine that we have choices. Feminism doesn’t care if Hannah Neeleman chooses to have eight children. Feminism cares to ask complicated questions about what choice is, and to clarify how what seems like a choice may not be one at all. Only Hannah can decide that for herself: if only everyone could say the same.

There’s little to be gained by parsing one person’s individual choices, particularly since none of us will ever know how these choices were made and in what type of cultural, religious landscape they were fostered. Choices, after all, are never made in a vacuum. And some choices are freer than others. For many, sometimes the best “choice” is just the least shitty option. So I’ll keep talking about Ballerina Farm as long as I continue to be curious about choices. Who gets to make them, whose choices are celebrated, and whose are suppressed.

When we talk about Ballerina Farm, we’re talking about ourselves and how we’re engaging with feminism. We’re asking ourselves what our feminism is worth. What it means, who it protects, and who it ignores.