ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores young women's engagements with feminism in Germany and Britain, it shows that heterosexual conventions, neoliberalism, postfeminism and difference facilitate repudiations of feminism. In the postfeminist era, feminist perspectives have become common sense and form part of young women's narratives of gender issues. The fashioning and production of neoliberal subjectivities also facilitates rejections of feminism. In a neoliberal postfeminist era, young women are positioned as beneficiaries of increased opportunities. The oppressed Muslim woman is not the only figure that emerges in the context of repudiations of feminism. Feminism is frequently associated with man-hatred, lesbianism and unfemininity. When young women negotiate feminism, they also negotiate the associations of feminism with man-hatred, lesbianism and unfeminine women. A performative approach foregrounds the various ways in which sexuality, race and class matter, and come to matter, in engagements with feminism.
