Narrow focus made the F-Word documentary inaccurate, unhelpful and defeatist
One of the framing questions asked by the film is "where did feminism go wrong?" In getting to the answer the film outlined some of the goals and objectives of "second wave" feminism. But if this means the status quo is represented as the answer to the question of where feminism went wrong, the answer will focus only on the shortcomings of the second wave.There would be something to be grateful for here, too, if the documentary makers had focussed on those "failures" in their socio-economic and political context. The pressures of neoliberalism over the last two decades have led to the marginalization of many liberation movements, feminism is just one of them. The critical issue for contemporary movements is to understand how that happened and, of course, that means critical analysis of the goals and strategies of the movements themselves.
But the exclusion of this type of context in the documentary rendered it inaccurate, unhelpful and defeatist.
Did the doc at least get its history of the Canadian second wave right? Absolutely not.