quote is made clear by the Combahee River Collective, organized on the basis of their scorned
differences as Black women who wrote:
“If
Black women were free, it would mean that
everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all
the systems of
oppression”
(276). Likewise, Chandra Mohanty asks:
“How
would academic
feminist projects be changed if we were accountable to activist/academic
communities…?”
Her
intervention is to
“
recommit to insurgent knowledges...antiracist, [and] anti-imperialist
feminisms”
(987).
As shown by those women who decided to stay home January 21st, there are many
woman-positive, anti-patriarchal women who do not identify with the feminist movement for a
variety of reasons, not to mention the specifically anti-feminist and post-feminist men and
women who seem to see nothing wrong with current dynamics of gender-based violence and
disparity. This is not a matter of personal preference or identification, but can be understood as
the result of mainstream
feminism’s
exclusionary practices and failure to influence a wider
understanding of the ways in which the multiplicity of various oppressions impact women
differently. In order to shed its exclusivist image as an elitist, white and academic movement,
the cooptation and commodification of radical feminism needs to be acknowledged and reversed.
Mainstream single-issue feminism must expand itself to acknowledge that heteropatriarchal
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43
oppression works in conjunction with white supremacy and neo-imperialist capitalism. If
feminism’s
liberatory aim of creating equity for all women is to be achieved or even taken
seriously, feminists must enact a praxis of deep inclusivity that counters the power dynamics of
positionality between different women. This means conscientiously and intentionally centering
and amplifying the voices of the most marginalized: women of Color, including Black and
Indigenous women, transwomen, poor women, and disabled women.
