What do you think is the term for the kind of feminism that strives to achieve gender equality but somehow does not include the struggles and grievances faced by women of colour, ethnic minorities, transgender women and the disabled? You are probably thinking what I just mentioned is not feminism in the first place, is it? Unfortunately, such a branch of feminism does exist and is called Imperial Feminism. As the name suggests, Imperial Feminism is a direct outcome of white colonialism and its subsequent history from across the globe. What is more unfortunate is the fact that a fraction of modern-day feminists still fail to take responsibility for the consequences and scratch out the very existence of Imperial Feminism.
Any form of equality should essentially be inclusive of minorities regardless of the background, religion, colour, caste or any other category they fall in. However, much like other movements, the Feminist movement has somehow ended up excluding certain minorities from under the umbrella of its global and historical existence as well. Imperial Feminism indicates the hijacking of the feminist narrative by the people from the so-called ‘superior’ Western culture who have managed to propagate this burdensome approach for decades whilst ignoring and adding to the struggles faced by the black, ethnic minorities, transgender and disabled women. The phenomenon allows the privileged people to suppress the underprivileged women and oppress them without facing consequence. Consequently, the same has led to the addition of another stereotype in the list of many others forced upon women from minority sections.
Historically, the existence and prevalence of a discriminatory and oppressive phenomenon such as Imperial Feminism proves to be an outcome of the global history of colonies and empires formed by the Western states. A sentence from the book Orientalism states that ‘there’s still so much oppression that these women have to endure’. The pronoun ‘these’ in place of ‘us’ is hugely problematic and is an evidence enough that as long as the Western culture stays ‘privileged’, both literally and figuratively, any conversation barring those which exclusively mention intersections and include women from minorities shall be unfairly dominated by the people from West itself. The book also propagates the idea that women of colour are unable to help themselves and poses the need for people from Western culture to intervene and help them out instead. Now the only conclusion that one can draw is that the historical privileges that lie with Western people have turned them into hypocritical misogynists.
Imperial Feminism is sometimes also labelled as Colonial Feminism which is, to put simply, ‘the appropriation of women’s rights in the service of the empire’. History provides ample evidence to the fact that Feminism has time and again been used as a weapon to expand states or to start wars. For example, the British colonial administrators in India preached gender equality in the favour of Indian women, but they often promoted and promulgated institutions of patriarchy in order to continue their colonial rule. The most recent facet of American approach towards Imperial Feminism is the military intervention and war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even though the rhetorics supporting the decision of military intervention consisted of the plight of Afghan women as one of the strongest justifications, it was later found that the attack not only worsened the situation, but also that women comprised a large fraction of the total casualties caused by the attack.
United we stand, divided we fall. We all have come across this group of words as frequently and as commonly as we have recited the Alphabet in our childhood. The meaning which comes out of the quote has direct implementation to the problem at hand. As long as feminists across the world choose to overlook or ignore the internal shortcomings such as this one, women will never be able to achieve the euphoric notion of equality. The paradigm of ‘Intersectional Feminism’ most straight-forwardly counters all the problematic aspects and outcomes of the Imperialist approach to Feminism. (To read more about Intersectional Feminism, click here)
Essentially, any form of feminism bereft of the necessary intersections to accommodate anyone and everyone from across the globe is both outdated and pseudo. In its more authentic form, Feminism should ideally be free of any narratives or schools of thoughts which internally stereotype the struggles of anyone based on their physical appearance, religious belonging or beliefs. It should, rather, strive towards uprooting any such pre-existing biases, uplift the victims of such shortcomings and fight to achieve gender-based equality with the provision of representation to anyone and everyone together. As contemporary feminists of the 21st century our motto, henceforth, should be - Intersected we stand, Imperialised we fall.
Piece By-
Khushi Agarwal
khushi31agarwal@gmail.com
Khushi is currently pursuing her majors in Mathematics from Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi. She loves to talk and is an avid day-dreamer. She wishes to create a lasting impact by not only learning new things, but also by helping anyone and everyone with her journey at the Women’s Development Cell.
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