By Serena Edwards
The Brooklyn College (BC) Wolfe Institute for the Humanities held an online celebration for BC Professor Serene Khader’s book, “Faux Feminism: Why We Fall For White Feminism and How We Can Stop.” The conversation was moderated by Cindy Lin, a senior at BC, and Zeus Eugene, a Binghamton University alumni. The talk included topics surrounding white feminism and aimed to debunk any myths perpetuated about feminism.
Khader is a philosophy professor at BC and the CUNY Graduate Center. She has released three books: “Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic”, “Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Empowerment,” and her most recent, “Faux Feminism: Why We Fall For White Feminism and How Can We Stop?” along with many other pieces for various publications.
Khader began the lecture by talking about her thought process while writing this book. It differed from her previous books, which were more focused towards an academic audience. She admitted that there was a bit of struggle transitioning to a different type of audience.
“One of the biggest struggles for me as an academic writer while writing this type of book, which was for like a non-academic audience was putting myself into the book more like because you can’t give all the advice when you’re trying to write a popular book, the people need to know who the narrator is,” said Khader.
Khader emphasized a movement of feminism that is often overshadowed when recounting the lengthy history of feminism. This history often places white women at the forefront of change, overshadowing women of color who made tremendous impacts in the movement.
“Feminism has always been partly a movement that has been led by women of color, women in the global South, as well as women in the labor movement,” stated Khader. Audre Lorde and Bell Hooks were her inspirations when writing the book.
She then delved into the issues with white feminism and how marginalized groups struggle to always want to fit into white spaces.
“Why do we assume that the path to a more inclusive feminism is to remain in white dominated spaces? […] There are also other spaces. One path to a more inclusive feminism is to focus on spaces that are dominated by non-elite women and actually elite women could support non-elite women instead of non-elite women asking to be included in these elite spaces,” Khader explained.
Khader mentioned that feminism is about including all women in the conversation, and not just white women.
“What if we told the story of the right way to do feminism, not as a story of like white women learning over time about how to not include people, but instead a story that’s partly about how non-elite women have kind of always had a lot of it right,” Khader explained.
With the current climate of the world, Khader addressed the current attack on healthcare access for women and how right-wing “feminists” fail to realize the inclusivity of what real feminism is.
“Just last week, the Trump administration asked to join the state of South Carolina in a Supreme Court case that was supporting a law that excludes planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding […] This is about excluding Planned Parenthood from receiving funding from Medicaid for anything, including things like cancer screening and prenatal care,” Khader stated.
In an interview with The Vanguard, Khader debriefed the events and dove deeper into how feminism is taught and how some harmful myths are perpetuated by society.
“Part of why I wrote the book is I feel like this narrative that says feminism was about white women and they excluded other women. The way that’s getting handed down to people as the narrative of feminism has a downside, which is that it still puts white women’s activism at the center and tells the story like there was this true origin of feminism. It was the one by white women,” Khader told The Vanguard.
She did recognize that marginalized women were excluded from it, but doesn’t want that to be the only narrative that is given.
“Part of why I wrote the book is that I wanted to say there are ways to take seriously feminist activism by women of color or and poor women and working class women that don’t involve telling a story that’s just like there was one true feminism,” said Khader.
Khader also mentioned the modernism in feminism, like social media and memes, that have helped bring more awareness to these topics.
“I also think memes are really good. I think they can be a really wonderful form of consciousness raising. Like, sometimes you see a meme and it just, you know, it says what an entire essay could say in a small glance,” stated Khader.
Regarding this sentiment, social media has played a particularly informational role, especially in these positive formats. It has also proven to be a useful platform for spreading awareness and avenues for activism. This, however, comes with a downside.
“One of the risks that I think we need to be careful to avoid is like thinking that clicking like is the same thing as showing up in the streets for a protest or calling your member of Congress,” Khader emphasized.
Khader also spoke about not always having to deconstruct and explain white feminism to others.
“It’s very difficult to not buy into some element of it and live in American society. So I think we need to encourage people in dominant positions to educate themselves more, right? It’s not fair that many of them are constantly asking people who don’t have their advantages questions that they could find out from Google or something like that,” she stated.
Khader reminded people that fighting for themselves is a fight for all.
“I think this is an important lesson of the book and of the Black feminist tradition in particular, there are times when fighting for yourself is fighting for all women.”