Emma Watson, Feminism, and Third World Women
It has recently come to my attention that feminism has become the hot button topic of the media, one that everyone feels obligated to voice their opinion on. Is this increase in dialogue beneficial to the feminist movement? Is calling oneself a feminist enough to actually be a feminist, or is it just white noise that obstructs the reception of more insightful messages? The way I see it, the transformation of feminism into a commercialized trend opposes its original purpose (i.e.: to end the various forms of oppression that subjugate communities of women for different reasons). The narrow outreach of Emma Watson’s new U.N. Campaign He for She exemplifies how blind some mainstream activist efforts can be to their cause. Disregarding the movement’s evident issues regarding trans* inclusion and the need to “invite” men to the feminist movement, the impact of this campaign is enervated through its focus solely on First World issues. Despite being publicized as a campaign to promote gender equality throughout the world, He for She is oblivious to its own blunders due to its Westernized conception of female oppression as one that all women encounter identically.
I came to this realization regarding capitalist feminism this week while reading select chapters from Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s book Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Much of Mohanty’s writing focuses on establishing a global movement of anti-racist, anti-capitalist feminism that would transcend, yet still acknowledge, the borders established by colonization. In doing so, the goal is to establish a pure form of solidarity—not simply sisterhood— in which women strive for autonomy and self-determination through self-reflective collective action with other women. One issue that Mohanty points out is that by sociologically singularizing the oppression women face, feminist movements dislocate the focus from discovering what makes women powerless in a specific context to finding numerous examples in which women are powerless, without taking note as to why that is. By not analyzing the specific set of cultural, economical, and political circumstances under which oppression may occur, power relations become skewed. As Mohanty mentions, revolutions are constrained within binary structures in which the oppressor has complete power while the victim is rendered utterly powerless. This dichotomy blinds feminists, particularly white, First World feminists from recognizing the varying degrees of privilege and oppression faced by women globally. Consequently, the solution to ending the subjugation of women takes on a corporate, nation-state outlook where the advancement of American women is inadvertently prioritized over those of women in Third World nations.
Whether it’s with Emma Watson’s He for She campaign or Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In movement, Westernized feminists become caught up in the pettier battles of feminism, such as banning the word bossy or closing the gender gap in wage. Many feminists, including myself, obviously consider these specific issues to be critical – and they are… there’s no denying that. Nevertheless, the fact that these are the problems we focus on, rather than issues regarding child brides, female genital mutilation, and other monstrosities, simply prove how our First World privilege blinds us. In order to account for these real differences in privilege amongst an already oppressed group we must establish a feminist solidarity which is founded on mutuality, but which also “allows us to frame agency and resistance across the borders of nation and culture” (Mohanty 243).