France, Alternative Libertaire AL #227 - Read Felix Boggio Ewanj?-Sword and Stella Magliani-Belkacem "White feminists and empire" (fr)

The issue of consideration, or rather the non-inclusion of racist oppression in wrestling 
moves (feminism, unionism ...) is not a false question. But the synthesis made by this 
book is both grotesque and wrong: white feminists use empire and racism to get their own 
demands while non-white feminist struggle against the empire and racism. ---- The thesis 
of the author are simple: the vast majority of Western feminists (the hegemonic feminism) 
have joined the racist system of opportunism to advance their claims. This rally was made 
??on the occasion of the law on the veil, or only the current minority called " a school 
for all-are "denounced the hijacking of feminism for racist purposes. But it was not the 
first time. In addition, this feminism has always been blind to the oppression of 
non-white women and the specific forms of local struggles.

As blind racism within it. Their argument also seeks to show that the Western LGBT and 
feminist struggles are not applicable to ex-colonized or dominated countries. They rely on 
a feminist history rewritten to support this thesis. For authors, activists of the right 
of women to vote colonialism used to have a right to speak and to assert their claims. 
They have positioned themselves as the only capable of providing a civilizing mission in 
the indigenous private sphere.

For them, since the 70s, feminism uses the analogy between the sexes and races to assert 
the absence of biological bases of these categories and show that it is as social 
constructions. This analogy has been used for the patriarchal oppression is taken into 
account as well as the racist oppression. But this argument has left no room for the 
specific oppression of non-white women. The main focus of struggle was then the family is 
inapplicable to non-whites whose families were destroyed by colonialism and anti-colonial 
struggles.

The struggles of non-white feminists, in particular the coordination of black women were 
not supported and were even hidden. White feminists were focused on polygamy and genital 
mutilation. A vision mixing exoticism and colonialism that is not interested in political 
struggles anti-colonialists. While black feminists fought against the evil fate of the 
women DOM: anti-natalist policy, encouraged migration and training to domestic trades.

In a word, the book's authors, Western feminism does not take account of local conditions, 
the diversity of forms of women's struggles.

Josette Trat, feminist activist and coordinator of Cahiers du feminism , made ??a detailed 
response to the inaccuracies of this historical argument, showing that the suffragettes 
were not predominantly colonial, quite the opposite and that Western feminists have been 
in solidarity with struggles racialized women. You can read the answer on the website of 
the online journal Contretemps . One can only agree with the authors to find that the 
defense of gender equality is used for racist purposes. We can also see that the 
institutionalization of feminism majority that lobbying for laws and policies blunted the 
radical and limited struggles.

But there is no collusion between feminist and racist power. Feminists do not use racism 
to get their own claims.

At the end of the book, he quickly mentioned the abolitionist struggle for prostitution, 
described putophobie and close racism. A kind of convergence of struggles unfounded but 
very much in tune with the times?

There is also a chapter on homophobia. Where it is rightly pointed out that homophobia is 
today as racialized sexism, which hardly exist in the suburbs if we believe the dominant 
discourse.

A strange little reasoned theory is repeated: the homo erotic practices of Arab countries 
are not homosexuality (which is an identity) and the repression of these practices is not 
homophobia. Again, the only argument is elsewhere, sexuality is not the same and that the 
forms of eroticism have complex trajectories.

Christine (AL Orne)

Felix Boggio Ewanj?-Sword and Stella Magliani-Belkacem, the white feminists and the empire 
, Editions La Fabrique, 2012, 110 p., 12 euros.