White feminism ignores the importance of intersectionality
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Award season is, unfortunately, proof that our cultural conversations and the priorities we have as a nation haven’t progressed all that much. Last month, Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig weren’t nominated for Oscars in their respective categories of acting and directing, prompting thousands of fans everywhere to grab their pitchforks and call out the Academy for their blatant sexism.
Their co-stars America Ferrera — notably one of the few actresses of color besides Lily Gladstone to be nominated — and Ryan Gosling, were forced to perform a careful balancing act of celebrating their wins while lamenting the erasure of both women’s contributions. Even Hillary Clinton got in on the action, sending reassurances that they were both “Kenough” in their own way. Someone went as far as starting a change.org petition demanding justice in the face of “gender” and “genre bias.”
It seemed, at first, like the whole world was coming together in a rare moment of unity to advocate for two talented women who got overlooked and let down by a patriarchal system. To some, that was an undeniable fact.
To me, it felt like a poorly thought-out take at best. At worst, it was a tone-deaf debate to be having in the middle of a genocide where women in Palestine are being forced to use tent scraps for menstrual pads, where miscarriages have increased by 300% since Oct. 7.
The way the whole situation was handled is evidence that society will do just about anything to protect white women and make them feel comfortable, even if it means neglecting others’ accomplishments or overlooking the political and cultural violence, trauma and discomfort that women of color are facing around the world every day.
Yet that, in a nutshell, is what white feminism is all about.
It’s the same concept that gave white women the right to vote in 1920, while Black women had to wait 15 more years to be given the same privilege. It’s what fueled the girl-boss movement, what empowers “Karens” to make scenes in public, what permits white women to lament about their oppression in the workplace while engaging in microaggressions with their female co-workers of color.
At its foundation, white feminism seeks to perpetuate patriarchy and white supremacy without naming it and hides under the guise of empowerment — that is, empowerment of other white women.
As a result, not only does white feminism lack awareness, but it also lacks intersectionality, ignoring, as writer Shahed Ezaydi noted in 2023, “how misogyny intertwines with racism, Islamophobia and ableism, for example. It assumes that white women experience misogyny in the same way all women experience misogyny. And that is simply not the case.”
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Under white feminism, otherwise important conversations about women’s rights, gender-based violence and oppression feel like a waste of time when one group always ends up hogging the mic. It silences women of color whose lives are not just complicated by the fact that they’re women but also that they’re from a marginalized ethnic or racial group. It makes it easy to ignore that women of color are more likely to be low-income, be the victims of domestic violence, receive inadequate medical care and face harassment in the workplace, among other urgent and ongoing issues.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen white feminism in action during work meetings and classroom discussions, how often I’ve witnessed a white co-worker name herself a social justice activist, only to then turn around and touch a Black woman’s hair or ask me for the thousandth time if I speak Spanish. (I don’t.)
Of course, white women aren’t the only perpetrators of this kind of thinking. In fact, women of color often do it to each other too – asking harmful questions, disrespecting others’ cultures and failing to educate themselves on the oppression other communities of color face. Intersectional feminism isn’t asking us to engage in an oppression Olympics, but there are no excuses for us being ignorant or not supporting and advocating for one another.
There are a lot of things white feminism gets wrong aside from the fact that misogyny affects all of us. But when we don’t talk about feminism in the context of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender identity and ability — when we don’t acknowledge our differences in how we face systematic oppression — anyone who doesn’t fit into the white, Western concept of womanhood will get left behind. And when that happens, we don’t get the support, advocacy and visibility we need, much less sweeping changes on the political stage and the cultural landscape.
If feminism is going to amount to anything meaningful, it must be intersectional. It must be open and inclusive of other perspectives and experiences. At the very least, it should consider frameworks outside the “Barbie” movie and not speak over the suffering that marginalized communities face. I, for one, will make it a point to speak louder and take the mic back for ourselves.
Sofia Aguilar is a first-year grad student in the Library and Information Science program. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at saguilar07@syr.edu.
