Against White Feminism

March 1, 2021

Writing from an American Muslim woman's perspective, Zakaria (The Wife Upstairs) argues that white feminists have relied too heavily on cultural assumptions serving their own interests and individual empowerment. She proposes a more inclusive and transnational approach to the feminist mission.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 19, 2021
Attorney and journalist Zakaria (Veil) makes a lucid and persuasive argument that feminism must address its “problematic genealogies” of whiteness. She notes that British suffragists refused to support Indian self rule, while those in the U.S. demanded that white women get the vote before Black men, and critiques early feminist theorists including Simone de Beauvoir for centering white womanhood as universal. Zakaria, a Pakistani Muslim woman, describes her own dismissive treatment at the hands of white feminists, but the book’s strongest sections detail how Western aid organizations and feminist groups including the National Organization for Women alienate and devalue women of color worldwide. Among other topics, she dissects the culturally myopic attitudes embedded in sex-positive “empowerment” messaging and the “ruthless individualism” of white women journalists who seek to “gain access to the intimate spaces of Black and Brown women.” Zakaria also links “moral outrage” in the West over Muslim “honor killings” to the “agenda of colonialism,” which “involved manufacturing definitions of new crimes and new classes of criminality to make a point about the moral degeneracy of the people whose freedom, goods, and land were being looted.” Tackling complex philosophical ideas with clarity and insight, Zakaria builds an impeccable case for the need to rebuild feminism from the ground up. Readers will want to heed this clarion call for change.

July 1, 2021
An exploration of the divisive effects of Whiteness on feminism and a strong argument for transforming long-standing power structures. In her latest book, Zakaria examines "dimensions of the feminist movement as it exists today, how it has arrived at this point, and where it could go from here, such that every woman who calls herself a feminist, of any race, class, nationality, or religion, can see a path forward and a reason to stay." Underscoring her case against hegemonic trickle-down feminism are the author's personal experiences. At age 17, while she was still living in her native Pakistan, she agreed to an arranged marriage in order to move to the U.S., where her future husband, 13 years her senior, promised to "allow" her to go to college. "I had never experienced freedom, so I gladly signed it away," she writes. Their relationship became abusive, and, years later, Zakaria fled to a women's shelter with their young daughter. The author describes in studied detail the dissonance between "the women who write and speak feminism and the women who live it," pointing out that the former are almost exclusively White and middle- or upper-middle-class, while the latter are typically Black and brown working-class women. Zakaria asserts that White feminists "are constructing a feminism that uses the lives of Black and Brown people as arenas in which they can prove their credentials to white men....Freedom is a zero-sum game, more for one group (white women) only possible as the reinforcement of less for another (non-white people)." Demanding anti-capitalist empowerment, political solidarity, and intersectional redistributive change, the author eviscerates White-centered feminism, the tokenization of women of color, the aid industrial complex, and more. The final chapter, "From Deconstruction to Reconstruction," is a welcome transition from visceral attack to plea for unification. In her conclusion, Zakaria acknowledges that "critique is the first step in a long process of opening debate." A worthy contribution to feminist and activist studies.

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July 1, 2021
Although feminism promises liberation for all women, its most prominent and powerful voices are white, upper-class, Western women, often speaking on behalf of Black and brown women in this country and in the global South. Journalist Zakaria (The Upstairs Wife, 2015) lays out the myriad ways white women use feminism to gain greater freedom for themselves at the expense of less-privileged populations. With their outsize command of resources, from book deals to NGO funding to positions at universities and newspapers, white women set the terms on which global feminist conversations are conducted. As such, they emphasize white Western priorities (rebellion, sexual liberation, dutiful participation in capitalism) at the expense of the stated needs of women in other countries or economic positions. White women's beliefs are treated as requirements for participation in feminism, and those same beliefs are used to criminalize and control people in developing countries. For instance, though intimate-partner violence remains chillingly common in America and Europe, the term "honor killings" is used to suggest a uniquely Muslim problem that requires Western intervention. Zakaria lays out the damage white feminism has wrought in clear, unflinching terms and urges readers to commit to a feminism that is truly collective and global.

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July 1, 2021

Zakaria's (The Upstairs Wife) new book is based on a simple premise: that Western (white) feminism does not serve the needs of all women and is not the ideal to which other feminisms should aspire. She makes the case that white feminism is based on guarding power and speaking on behalf of "powerless" women instead of valuing non-white voices. Zakaria effectively shows that white feminists often focus on bringing feminism and enlightenment to marginalized people instead of examining the ways in which these marginalized people already practice feminism within their own lives and experiences. In examining the pitfalls of white feminism, Zakaria also explores related issues, such as the cult of relatability, the dichotomy between expertise and experience, virtue signaling, and sexual liberation as a core pillar of white feminism. She provides perspective on U.S. events such as the Women's March in 2017 and the failure to acknowledge the role of white supremacy in the 2016 presidential election. VERDICT While Zakaria's argument is not the only one of its kind, her examination of current examples from politics and pop culture furnishes crucial evidence of the continued colonization of feminism by white women. She brings this conversation into mainstream view.--Siobhan Egan, Barrington P.L., RI

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.