Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Outspoken by Pluto)

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There is a dangerous liberal feminism that fetishises personal choice: Can you be a feminist and wear high heels? Can you be a feminist and shave your legs? But policing the way women present themselves distracts us from the more pressing issues at hand. Why are women the lowest paid workers? Why do women have the least access to the material resources necessary for survival? Are women free from violence? If not, then why not? The latter questions asks us to open our eyes and examine the way our society functions while the former are concerned with ‘choice’ as if choice exists in a vacuum. Our obsession with locating the singular universal cause of women’s oppression stops us from engaging with the mechanisms of that oppression that manifest in daily life: the economic, the political, the social. This narrow scope for thinking about our own oppression has undoubtedly led many feminists to fall prey to the myth that trans women pose a threat to feminist advancements. legality does not equal access. there are many more complicated demands to be made: mainstream movements will always defeat their own purpose as long as they consider the law as the sole indicator of progress' In three chapters in particular, Olufemi adopts an anti-state and anti-carceral perspective (“The sexist state”, “The fight for reproductive justice” and “The answer to sexual violence is not more prisons”). Liberal feminism’s reliance on state protection and the legal system to advance women’s rights is, she argues, entirely inadequate. The first of these chapters features interviews with members of the direct action group Sister’s Uncut, which uses attention-grabbing stunts to protest against police and wider state violence. Olufemi recounts their storming of the BAFTAs red carpet in 2018, to protest against Theresa May’s Domestic Violence Bill, and the time in 2015 that they turned Trafalgar Square’s fountains red to protest against the closure of women’s refuges. There is a clear message running through the chapter that feminists must look beyond the state, and that achieving real progress needs bold challenges from outside as well as within. Nonostante non mi sia trovata sempre d'accordo su tutto, mi ha aperto gli occhi su tante cose e sono felice di averlo letto, anche perché di testi del genere non ce ne saranno mai abbastanza.

The relationship between feminism and political radicalism is both necessary and complex. Feminism, Olufemi persuasively shows, does not have necessarily radical tendencies — rather, there is a long history of women giving their support to oppressive systems under the guise of “feminism.” Take the white suffragettes who did not see colonial subjects as part of their struggle for a vote (and even cheered on British imperialist forces). Or take the British home secretary Theresa May, who was the architect of policies especially harmful for women, even as she sported a “this is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt made by underpaid laborers.Dari kutipan itu saja, Lola Olufemi sebagai penulis mengingatkan bahwa masih banyak anggapan tentang feminis yang dibentuk oleh kulit putih. Membuat hal-hal tampak "mudah" padahal bagi kulit berwarna dan bukan ras kaukasian seperti Sandberg punya kesulitan dan hambatannya sendiri. Olufemi melalui buku ini ingin mengingatkan bahwa feminisme tidak hanya sekadar mendapatkan jabatan tinggi dan keamanan secar finansial saja. Feminisme juga menuntut adanya kesetaraan pada hal-hal esensial seperti akses terhadap layanan kesehatan dan pendidikan. Lola Olufemi explores state violence against women, the fight for reproductive justice, transmisogyny, gendered Islamophobia and solidarity with global struggles, showing that the fight for gendered liberation can change the world for everybody when we refuse to think of it solely as women's work. Including testimonials from Sisters Uncut, migrant groups working for reproductive justice, prison abolitionists and activists involved in the international fight for Kurdish and Palestinian rights, Olufemi emphasises the link between feminism and grassroots organising.

Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Does it matter that she doesn’t use the term socialist to describe herself? Given her insistence in the introduction that “there are no pre-given solutions” offered by feminism it’s perhaps unsurprising she rejects most standard classifications for her viewpoint. And if we recognise and agree with her arguments where they matter most: on rejecting individualistic liberal corporate feminism, centering marginalised voices, and liberating the working class from the tyranny of the wage system, then the specific terms she uses for herself are perhaps less important. White feminist neo-liberal politics focuses on the self as vehicle for self-improvement and personal gain at the expense of others. We are instructed by corporate talking heads to "lean in" into a capitalist society where power equals financial gain." Judith Butler broke new ground in 1990 with her seminal text, Gender Trouble. In it she suggested that there is nothingA much-needed layer to Olufemi’s argument comes from Muslim feminists themselves; “we can begin to formulate a strategic response to the way that the state and global powers attempt to regulate and diminish Muslim life. This starts by reconsidering everything we think we know about Muslim women.” Emancipation will only come from the oppressed themselves. If feminism wishes to overcome racist, patriarchal capitalism, it must listen to the women paying a hefty price for its enduring hegemony, rather than those who would impose predetermined solutions upon them. a violation of ‘harmony – wholeness, being.’ Though disguised, the credence given to biology in these arguments affirmed the Olufemi is perhaps at her strongest when she discusses the struggles facing marginalised groups in “Transmisogyny: Who wins?”, “The saviour complex: Muslim women and gendered Islamophobia” and “Complicating consent: How to support sex workers”. The last of these distills most of its arguments for decriminalising sex work from Molly Smith & Juno Mac’s excellent Revolting Prostitutes (2018), but builds a more specific critique of the individualistic takes on sexual consent promoted in mainstream feminism alongside. As Olufemi aruges, focusing solely on teaching men to interpret consent as enthusiastic, verbal, and sober ignores the “grey” areas of power dynamics and material conditions that can impact on a person’s ability to say no in sexual interactions. Gli argomenti vengono affrontati da diversi punti di vista e con diverse chiavi di lettura (privilegio di genere, di etnia, di classe) e l'autrice non ha paura di mettere in discussione il suo stesso movimento quando è necessario. Un esempio su tutti è la sua critica al femminismo mainstream e al fatto che le famose "ondate" hanno spesso rispecchiato le esigenze di donne bianche e borghesi, entrando nella cultura pop a discapito delle donne nere e "of colour" [intende le donne nere non afro-discendenti]. Per capirci: molte suffragette erano contrarie all'estensione del diritto di voto alle donne non bianche. Inoltre la storia mainstream ha troppo spesso ignorato associazioni, collettivi, movimenti e proteste organizzati e portati avanti da persone non bianche durante e tra le ondate. LO: I think the idea of frames of thought as disparate and incoherent really scares people because the inability to make a universal claim or universal demands means the journey to freedom is longer and more complicated but I think, just as consequence of how I learnt about the different schools of feminist thought in school, I’ve always been at peace with that. I don’t believe in universals but I do believe in an idea that I take from Audre Lorde, that sitting with tension, with distortion, is productive. That the tension caused when we place different kinds of feminism in conversation with one another create new routes, modes of thinking and practices that get us closer to what our perceived goals are. I loved the tweet that you did where you stated that you’d learnt things from different, overlapping and sometimes conflicting theorists. I think it perfectly sums up something that I’m always striving towards, to understand and incorporate different ideas from different strands of feminism that are all making a claim about the way the world should be. Liberation means chaos, it might mean a million different ideas at once and that potential excites me. To recognise that this frame of thought advocates many things, some conflicting is not to give in to the idea that no short-term political demands can be made – the urgency of the conditions of our lives make those demands clear to us. Embracing chaos doesn’t mean embracing abstraction.