A review by ballgownsandbooks
Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria

informative medium-paced

4.0

"The story of feminism which our daughters learn tomorrow must be different from the one we know today. It is not enough for alternative narratives of women of colours simply to exist; they must actually influence the conetent and the course of the movement for gender parity."

"It is impossible for any change to occur unless white women, particularly older white women, let go of their paranoid belief that racial equality within the movement is some sort of surreptitious strategy to displace them."

I was just nodding along throughout almost this whole book: it's such a fantastic look at the history of systemic white feminism, and the ways in which white women's struggle to be equals of white men in a structurally white supremacist society must inherently involve the oppression of women (and all people) of colour; in particular I'd had no idea just how much of British and American women's suffrage in the early 20th century was positioned explicitly in opposition to rights for people of colour, both domestic and colonial.

The interrogation of the 'white saviour' narrative was especially wonderful, as well as the connections she draws between capitalism and white feminism, and the problems inherent in philanthropy and foreign aid. The chapter on how 'feminism' was used as an excuse to justify the invasion of Afghanistan (among countless other countries) was particularly brilliant and horribly timely.

My one major complaint was the chapter on sexual liberation, where it felt a little like Zakariya (perhaps in an attempt to distance herself from her 'conservative' Pakistani Muslim upbringing), in her rush to emphasise her belief that sexual liberation should be a part of the movement (just not the be all and end all of it), missed an opportunity to underscore that the choice NOT to have sex can be as much a powerful and liberating one as the choice to do so.