Woman Compares Feminists to Schrödinger’s Cat, Says They Claim Victimhood and Power at Once

A TikToker known as (@misskofficial) explains her perspective in a direct-to-camera video, comparing feminists to Schrödinger’s cat. In her opinion, in modern feminist discourse, a woman is portrayed both as a victim and an active participant depending on which outcome will be more beneficial for them at a particular point.

She begins by naming the pattern she discovered.

“There’s a reasoning trick that explains a surprising amount of modern feminism. It’s called Schrödinger’s feminism. It works like Schrödinger’s cat,” she says.

It refers to a thought experiment in which the cat exists in two different states before the observation happens. Her explanation lies in the way female agency is discussed.

“Women are simultaneously powerfully autonomous adults and helpless products of society. Which one she becomes depends on whether she likes the outcome. Let me show you how it works,” she says.

The first case she brings up is work, as text overlays include statistics on career paths.

“A woman becomes a CEO. Female ambition, but women disproportionately choose lower-paying careers. Then choice becomes suspicious. Suddenly women were socialized into caring professions, pushed away from STEM and conditioned by gender roles,” she notes.

Then she discusses marriage, including statistics about who terminates relationships in the first place.

“A woman initiates a divorce and builds a new life. Empowerment. She knew what she wanted and was brave. But women initiate most divorces. And if you ask whether female behavior may contribute to the marital breakdown, now we need to talk about what men did to make them leave. And reactive abuse,” she says.

As her third example, she talks about the language of describing sexual behavior of women.

“Women embrace casual sex, sexual liberation, her body, her choice. But if women become unhappy with hookup culture, now it’s a sexual culture built by men that women were pressured into,” she adds.

A graphic accompanying her statement summarizes all three examples.

“And that’s what makes shrugging this feminism so useful. Female agency expands when the outcome is flattering and contracts when the outcome needs explaining,” she notes.

In her view, this makes the framework flexible and, therefore, durable.

“That’s incredibly convenient ideologically because it makes the theory almost impossible to falsify. You can celebrate women’s choices when they produce the statistics you want, but blame society for women’s choices when they produce the statistics you don’t want,” she says.

She concludes with the alternative to this approach.

“Women are adults with agency, and adulthood means something considerably less glamorous than empowerment. Sometimes the consequences really are of your own making,” she concludes.

@misskmusic

Feminists are like Schrödinger’s cat: strong and equal when there are benefits to claim, but suddenly vulnerable when there are costs to bear. Two incompatible standards, switched depending on which one produces the desired conclusion. . . . #schrodingerscat #feminism #femaleempowerment

♬ original sound – misskofficial