Professor provides theoretical framework in new look of feminism

Author Serene Khader argues for a more inclusive and expansive view of the women’s movement.

A new book provides a framework of feminist theories that aim to make the philosophy more inclusive and welcoming to women from all backgrounds. 

Serene Khader, a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center, recently published Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop. At the book's core is her criticism of freedom feminism, a belief system that posits individual liberation should come at the expense of collective women’s rights. Khader spoke with me about her work. 

“The success of an individual woman doesn't necessarily mean action that ends up lifting up all women and gender-expansive people,” Khader said. “Patriarchy and other oppressive systems are set up so that individual people can get ahead by throwing other people under the bus.” 

Balancing collective organization against individualism has always been a tough thing to do in any movement. Within the movement for racial equality, many authors like W.E.B. Du Bois focused on amassing political influence together. Others like Booker T. Washington pushed for a more individual approach. Modern writers like Henry Louis Gates Jr. call for a balanced approach. He famously said that if there were 40 million black people in America, then there were 40 million ways of being black. That’s also true for women and men of any other race. 

Khader expounded on that when I mentioned it in our conversation. 

“It's absolutely important to remember that everybody is different, and people have different individual pursuits,” she said. “It's just that the actual world that we're living in doesn't make it very easy for women to pursue individual pursuits anyway, kind of regardless of what those pursuits are.” 

Khader calls for a less hierarchical approach to feminism or focusing exclusively on shattering the glass ceiling. That’s important, but it’s also essential to improve the lives of women who aren’t anywhere near the top. 

We disagreed on how we should approach call-out culture, which is when someone publicly explains to a person before everyone else on social media what is wrong with their views and the proper ways of thinking about it. I feel that it always makes people defensive. 

I think it should be more of a “praise publicly, criticize privately” approach that allows the person to think about their viewpoints and possibly change them while saving them the embarrassment of doing so in front of others. 

Khader, who takes a nuanced view, thinks that we don’t always have that ability, and it’s vital to use the tools that we have at our disposal to resist intolerance and discrimination. 

“It's important to realize that callouts are sometimes the only tool available to people without much power,” Khader said. “ You can't always pull aside someone that needs to be corrected if you don't have access to them.” 

One of the things I agreed with her that was related to that point is that people often put the wrong inflection on what they read other people writing on social media. So, while it may be written from a calm and reasoned mindset, people who engage in the post or tweet will think that the person is unhinged or emotional. Many things can be lost in translation, especially if the person’s reading comprehension isn’t to the point where they could pick up on things like humorous sarcasm or other literary devices. 

The book covers other topics like ethnocentrism. The one that stuck out with me the most, though, was how beauty standards carry with them a preference for white women. There is power in being considered sexually attractive. When society shows white women that way and then doesn’t provide black women with the same treatment, then it places white women higher up in that hierarchy. 

The book and its author are intriguing and thoughtful. Even if you disagree with some of the points, it’s a work worth reading and using to inform conversations about where feminism should go. 

It’s available on Amazon and in bookstores.