“Over the past few years, populist politics have been on the rise across the western world.”
“Few, however, have noticed the rise of populist feminism, a mainstream feminism that espouses to speak for and on behalf of all women, but essentially speaks for and on behalf of white, middle-class, cis-gendered and able-bodied women.”
“As a feminist, critical race media scholar, populist feminism is, in my opinion, more detrimental to women than patriarchy.”
“Where patriarchy, in a structural sense, is often defined in terms of (white) male domination, feminism is supposed to be geared toward the political, economic, cultural advancement of, and personal and social rights for, women.”
“Populist feminism, however, tries to achieve this by either neutralizing any and all differences among and between women, or tries to speak for all women on matters related to their bodies, especially motherhood.”
“Iqra Khalid, a Liberal MP”
“Instead of acknowledging her positionality as a racialized and visibly marked woman in a majority white federal government, her body, literally and figuratively, was whitewashed – as though the threats she faces are of no greater or lesser significance than her white woman counterparts. This is disingenuous at best, insulting at worst.”
“The recent uproar over Beyoncé’s pregnancy photographs and Grammy performance is also an example of how populist feminists believe that they are the arbiters and gatekeepers of “proper” public displays of “true” womanhood.”
“Linda Alcoff’s 1991-1992 article, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” in which she wrote, “not only is location epistemically salient, but certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous.””
“In other words, when privileged women speak for or on behalf of the less privileged, it has the result of increasing or reinforcing the oppression of the group spoken for.”
“In 1995, Kimberlé Crenshaw argued that an intersectional approach to feminism is necessary if we are to account for the multiple identities that shape how the world is constructed.”
“Similarly, in her book Body as Evidence, Janelle Hobson notes that if we are to dismantle the hegemonic discourses of race, class, gender and nation that frame our perceptions of feminism and seek to define what might constitute a feminist agenda, we will then be one step closer to building a global feminism.”
“If feminists continue to speak for all without recognizing the varying structures of oppression and cultural nuances that are interrelated, overlapping and inseparable, feminism as we know it will continue to silence the increasing numbers of women worldwide who are not white, middle class, cis-gendered and able bodied.”
“Cheryl Thompson has a PhD from McGill University. She is the 2015-2016 Recipient of the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship which she holds at the University of Toronto. She also teaches courses in Black Canadian Studies, Visual Culture, Media and Identity, and Transnational Feminism. She can be found on Twitter @DrCherylT.”