Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 8: white feminism Ft. Rafia Zakaria

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8: white feminism Ft. Rafia Zakaria · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

• 0:00
  What this book demands is this radical self questioning by white women of how their race has and racial privilege has helped them be who they are.
• 0:14
  The sun shines out of you and into me. Hello sun shines and welcome to reimagining with I understood a podcast where we reframe rethink and re-imagine everything standing in the way of love and liberation.
• 0:32
  I'm your host I under and I am delighted enchanted ecstatic overjoyed to have a slice of your precious time today.
• 0:44
  Welcome Rafia. It's so nice to meet you finally. I'm so excited to have you here. I am such a huge fan of your work and when I read your book against white feminism, it was one of those books that I could not put down.
• 1:00
  I remember I was in an airplane and I have a system where I highlight things in red that I think are critical that I want to share with everyone my audience and my platform and often I only end up sharing actually like 2% of what I highlight in red.
• 1:12
  And then our images like this could work but like is also very important and then yellow is for me and I swear your whole book is just highlighted in red because I just think it's such an urgent brave and transformative book and I'm so so grateful for your work because I can only imagine the journey of bringing this to life and I would love to hear more about it.
• 1:33
  But thank you so much for being with us today. I'm so excited to hear more of your thoughts and your experiences and welcome.
• 1:39
  Thank you so much. Like I said, I absolutely love what you're doing with these ideas with feminism with bringing these critiques to a larger and a younger audience.
• 1:53
  I think I felt the same frustration that you did in that I felt that these ideas needed to be made amenable to a wider public who was very interested in what is happening within feminism and new ways of understanding the feminist movement but they weren't essentially coming down.
• 2:16
  So so many of the books arguments when I do these interviews, I would say, wow, I didn't know that and the thing is is that some of it isn't really very new, for instance, a critique of some wonderful bar in the book that was done years ago by black philosophers, black women philosophers, but of course it hasn't been available in mass market format.
• 2:42
  So just delighted to be here. Just absolutely delighted. Yes.
• 2:47
  Oh my gosh, I love that. And I'm so excited to learn more about what you've just shared around people's surprise with the book and how you're giving an amazing piece of work that people can read and reference and also understand the histories. I think there are so many histories that your book brings to life that I wasn't aware of.
• 3:04
  As we have this conversation everyone, I so encourage you to read this book. This conversation will just hopefully be a launching pad, but it's a book that you might even end up reading twice or three times because it's just critical. So I'm so grateful.
• 3:16
  Before we launch into work and your perspective, I would love to get an introduction to you. So who are you in your own words?
• 3:23
  Well, I am a writer, first and foremost, I'm also a lawyer, you know, I'm a mom and I'm an immigrant. So I carry that sense of perpetual homelessness in a way with me because that's the immigrants burden.
• 3:44
  But yeah, I am someone who has worked as a lawyer has worked in a shelter actually was a resident of a shelter with my then like baby daughter.
• 3:58
  And I went through law school and came full circle when I actually went back and was able to start a legal aid program at the shelter.
• 4:11
  So I worked with all women from there into amnesty, which is just very large human rights organization, the biggest in the world, and then served on that board for six years.
• 4:25
  And then finally, I was just like, I have got to write a book and I had been writing all along as a columnist and essayist, but I think as you said in your intro, this book was brewing for a long time.
• 4:39
  It was the compendium of my experiences in all of these different realms, but I also knew that it's a difficult book in the sense that can when things I want to publish it was not going to be to be easy.
• 4:56
  So yeah, so that's my journey it's been I would say that my own experiences of powerlessness in different situations are what drives the emotional content of the book in understanding what it feels like to be denied power and agency or be condescended to is what drove like the emotional.
• 5:26
  Push off the book, because I felt that I had to develop a vocabulary to describe a very particular powerlessness.
• 5:35
  That was so powerful. Thank you so much for all of everything that you said and your journey, everything that you carry that you mentioned from being a writer, mom, and immigrant.
• 5:45
  And also your experience being in the shelter with your daughter and I think the sense of urgency you write with and what you say about this epistemic imbalance as to who gets to write feminist work and who gets to say the genders and then who lives feminist lives.
• 5:59
  I thought that really was so powerful and stuck with me throughout the book. I want to ask you about against white feminism notes on disruption.
• 6:07
  I think so often as women of color were labeled brave, were you scared to write this book and to share it with people.
• 6:14
  I wasn't scared to write the book. I was scared that through the process of selling the proposal and then working with various editors that it would be diluted to the extent that the punch that I wanted it to be wouldn't be left in there anymore.
• 6:34
  I mean, I think that was central. I mean, I did feel before like we just talked about I had a long journey myself and a lot of the experiences that galvanized the book intellectually were ones that I did want to write about and couldn't always write about.
• 6:55
  There are parts of the book such as the one on FGC female general cutting that I took that essay four years.
• 7:07
  So publications, including one which I knew very well. I knew the editor. No one was willing to touch it. No one was willing to touch that topic.
• 7:18
  In that sense, I would say that until I actually saw against white feminism in my hand published like the first copies, I didn't think it was yet published.
• 7:31
  Like something would happen or because of its content and also yeah, because that's what happens to a lot of books that are insistent in this way on combining personal experience.
• 7:47
  And there was a lot of shame that I felt in a lot of the experiences that I've described where, for instance, yeah, like I talk about being on the board of fantasy international and being, of course, the only woman of color on the board of 16 and bringing these exact topics up such as that why do we never prisoners of conscience giving us like testimonies and we write them letters and we do all of this stuff.
• 8:16
  To try to get them out, but we never include people who have gone through that in the policy making parts of our discussions.
• 8:26
  Why is this? Well, I mean, it is for the same reasons that within feminism, it's these professionalized feminists that we rely on or that we imagine as leaders.
• 8:40
  Of course, it's still happening. I mean, after the DOBS decision, after Rovers' date was overturned, since this, the opinion was leave, for instance, the New York Times has been doing like this series on feminism and what feminism is going to be post row and stuff.
• 8:58
  It's all white upper middle class women who don't really have any personal experience of really having to fight only because they're female who are selected to sort of provide this representative argument about where women think feminism is going.
• 9:17
  Wow. Yes. Oh, my word. I love how you write about how you mentioned you have a daughter and how disappointing it is that so much has not changed. And so this book is an urgent awakening, I think, to that fact that this has a history. This is present today.
• 9:32
  And what I also think is so interesting about what you said about fighting to get this book published and for it to not lose its punch, as you say, I love that word.
• 9:41
  Is this notion that even as you contextualize something, you still exist in that context. And so you're still in a publishing industry that has this exact same dynamic that you critiquing of who gets to have power, who gets to have a say, who decides.
• 9:54
  Yes, what is a fair title for a book, what will people read, what won't they read, who is people and what is worth fighting for one. So I think that it's so important and I'm so grateful and proud that you were able to get it over the edge in this way in its unabashed truth because we have to tell the truth.
• 10:11
  That part of such a long history of truth telling that I think is a radical truth telling that I think is so central and really comes through.
• 10:18
  And then to your point of this professionalized feminism, I would love to, in your own words, get your definition of white feminism.
• 10:25
  So white feminism, as I said in the book, it's not a white woman who's a feminist. That's not that could be, but it's not the white feminism that is the subject of the both.
• 10:37
  What I mean by white feminism is a feminism that centers white women prioritize their goals, perspectives, ideals as the ideals for all of feminism.
• 10:52
  So I'm interested in whiteness as a power structure where there are women who refuse to question what whiteness has gained them.
• 11:04
  So essentially what I'm asking what this book demands is this radical self questioning by white women of how their race has and racial privilege has helped them be who they are.
• 11:19
  So in this sense, of course, it's an abrasive thesis because white women, particularly those that were part of the sexual revolution and are older now their entire thesis is that they have achieved so much of their feminism.
• 11:37
  They don't want to be told that maybe a part of where they are today, getting up in the sea suites, running for president, all of these horn quote glass ceiling shattering things have been a product of entirely their hard work.
• 11:58
  To tell them that your racial privilege has played a part in your achievements and in a way that is not available to black and brown women it's difficult because they have been making that argument about men.
• 12:13
  And so to make that argument to them about their white racial privilege is something that a lot of that bulk, but that's what the white feminism i'm talking about.
• 12:25
  I do say in the book that it's not necessary to be white to be a white feminist unfortunately I know a lot of feminists of color as well brown feminist particular.
• 12:38
  Who have felt that the only way to coexist with a feminist universe that's dominated by white women is to behave like white women and they've lived their whole life on that belief that everything they have is because they've made nice.
• 12:54
  With white women so it becomes almost impossible to get them out of that frame of mind and it's interesting for me to see the critics of the book often particularly in the UK.
• 13:08
  There were a few white women that criticized the book but then it's almost like they got all the browns white I would call them brown white feminists in a line to criticize the book because it's this very old idea right is that oh well you can't make this critique because look here's another brown person.
• 13:28
  The complete opposite of what you do and yeah I mean I think that's very infantilizing and but at the same time the battle has to be one in terms of our ideas and what we're saying and that's why I spent the time I did in constructing an alternative intellectual history for feminism.
• 13:51
  So that it can be something that has a genealogy and I can show that it doesn't have to be a genealogy that's centered on white because the belief is is that oh well feminism began when white women decided to fight for the wall essentially.
• 14:10
  So we start in the late 1800s and the early 1900s and it's just this idea that this is when women got it together and began to fight for themselves.
• 14:21
  The truth is is that at least within the post colonial context in the British Empire which my South Asia was a part of that Africa I mean like huge swats of the world there were women who were fighting colonial forces all along and they were asking for their rights.
• 14:40
  They were against the occupation of their lands and this is all before this whole suffrage movement that's idealized in movie after movie but of course there's no room for talking about that because like I said it doesn't center white women and it's all sort of imagined in these waves for a second third which are all then defined by what white women were doing.
• 15:06
  So yeah in that sense I think that all of us feminists of color have a pass before them to unearthed you know these stories that have been lost in the rubble of colonialism.
• 15:19
  Wow that is so beautiful oh my word stories lost in the rubble of colonialism and that is really resonates with me personally as well because I think when I think about white feminism I only think of what has happened since this like post colonial era but the idea that there have always been feminists they've always been black feminists they've always been brown feminists they've always been Asian feminists they've always been indigenous their feminists is just who gets to.
• 15:45
  Be labeled as such and how you write about the difference between rebellion and resilience in the book is so powerful about which types of qualities that have sustained generations without which we would not be here get to be then marginalized as not feminist enough versus branded as feminism so I think your work here is just so critical and I think for every single person here listening to it like no matter your.
• 16:09
  Identity and the way that you complicate this notion of they can be white feminists of color, especially it sounds like in the alignment with capitalist ideals and with the ideals of this goal classification of feminism I think it's just so powerful and we'll speak to everyone and I think that's really such a huge accomplishment because it sounds like this book is in honor of and for in the deeper sense it's for the woman of color who feel excluded from or left out of feminism.
• 16:36
  It is also for in the sense that it will speak to everyone involved and give us a vocabulary to really have powerful conversation so I think that's so amazing and I think also what you mentioned about self questioning that's such a beautiful invitation I think we are often focused on what's out there and a lot of conversations now around systemic violence systemic institutions and so on but without that self questioning as well and it's a dual effort because we have to be able to recognize how these systems live and breathe inside of us and inside of how we reconcile.
• 17:06
  And justify and legitimize and run away from the choices we make all the choices we don't even have access to making at all so I think that's all and just the way that we live our lives so I think that's just really really so powerful I really love that work.
• 17:19
  I think also what you said about critics of the book and being a lot of brown women and what do you make of the state the fractured state of solidarity in general within the feminist movement like what is maybe surprised you and also as you think of your daughter and like
• 17:35
  maybe some differences or similarities what stands out to you in terms of the moment that we're in we're in so many moments but just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
• 17:43
  Yeah I think that the primary feminist quote unquote ethics that has been sold and of course it's been sold in this way because it aligns with capitalism is this idea of individualist success
• 17:58
  where as a woman you're supposed to elbow all other women out of the way men out of the way and get great glass ceilings and it's essentially a very corporatized notion of success and it exists today.
• 18:14
  It exists today I mean the whole girl boss paradigm it is undying it seems because it is pursue because one of the losses I would say that the existence of white feminism has has caused in the white and western world in particular is this belief that solidarity and collective action is not really
• 18:40
  here towards achieving any kind of real success so when someone is pursuing for instance this very girl boss model they're also unable to imagine how success can exist in a collective format work together or how solidarity can transform your life.
• 19:04
  I've tried to get to the bottom of why that is but I think perhaps it is because look I mean if you are a brown or black or Asian woman you know that to survive you're going to have to be a friend and you're used to sort of creating a network or sisterhood in any way that you can because you are constantly precarious and worried about if oh well if this doesn't work then what do I do.
• 19:33
  Or that doesn't work what do I do I think that creates a sort of innate trust in other women that white women have just not been able to experience I think that there is a lot of truth to this idea of white women at this moment in time feeling extremely alienated and kind of hollow because this was the model that was sold to them but it's a very alienating model.
• 20:03
  If you're constantly just imagining everyone else as competitors and enemies that's a very sad world to live in.
• 20:14
  So obviously I come from a culture where women were used to working together it's true that often those sisterhoods were created out of suffering common forms of suffering and they still exist on that basis.
• 20:30
  But at the same time I will say that the call female environments that I grew up in also experience a lot of joy and fun and laughter and true sharing and working to help each other out of various situations that life inevitably brings.
• 20:49
  So in that sense you know I think black ground Asian women have something to teach white women about collective notions of success and of solidarity of working together and that you can still be successful if you aren't pursuing this girl boss model I mean it's not a relinquishment of all ambition that is not what I'm talking about.
• 21:15
  But I am talking about tempering your ambition with feminist ethics which I think are absolutely crucial at this moment if we are going to come out of what is a transformational moment in many, many ways.
• 21:33
  I think it's beautiful I so agree and I think this notion of collective success I love that language because it's also something that it's not in the culture again there's the media industry there's celebrity culture there's all this messaging that people are.
• 21:48
  Embibing and I think it's so important for us to be elevating communities mutual aid projects all these different ways that people are collaborating movement building and I think these are often unsung heroes we have such a focus today it's so interesting in this conversation around feminism on individuals who have a mass fame and wealth and success.
• 22:08
  So of course that's left a movement that's fraught with those same values when who gets to have a podcast on feminism who is the voice of feminism in the way that empowerment as you critique and I would love to have you provide us the history of empowerment and people should definitely read about this in the book it's just so interesting I had no idea where the term actually came from.
• 22:27
  But the way that's been co-opted by the beauty industry and by the diet culture industry and all these very absolutely the opposite of empowering institutions I can critique it now but I mean there was a point where I fully believed that's how you're a feminist is.
• 22:42
  This corporate notion of success is something that I had to do my own learning and reading and understanding of to really understand success at whose expense and who is enabling you even when you think about women are doing less domestic labor at home like no that's not true it's just being burden sorry offloaded it often onto black brown and Asian and poor women in general so it's all these things are happening.
• 23:04
  But who gets to have the air time to really be the public face of the feminist movement and what it means and looks like and then who is literally doing the behind the scenes work to make that all possible I think is deeply concerning and this book really shines a light on those dichotomies so with that I would love to hear your perspective on empowerment and the history and then also how you see it being used and co-opted today.
• 23:27
  Well the story of how that word came about and what it originally meant is definitely one of the stories that as the beginning we were talking about people being like oh my god I didn't know that and I had written about a little bit about this before the book but the disbelief that people had made me go back and like really really look through in and out of how that happened.
• 23:55
  And it was collective the dawn collective which was a group of primarily South Asian women who were interested in radical political and social transformation.
• 24:10
  Gita Sen was one of the activists who led the dawn collective which was out of India and they are the ones who came up with the term empowerment and this was like I believe in the 80s they envisioned it like I said it was it was kind of at its core a radical pursuit of social transformation transforming particularly institutions in a way that's model gender equality.
• 24:40
  Now what happened to empowerment is the story of how some radical concept that is disruptive and wants to interrupt sort of psychology and trajectories of power was made first into a buzzword.
• 24:58
  So when I was made into a buzzword it became language that the UN was using it became language that was heard everywhere in Beijing in 1994 it became the language of conferences definitely feminist conferences which at that time felt like this is a good thing because maybe the adoption the wide adoption of this word as defining the feminist quest is going to be a good thing.
• 25:25
  And you know women will win these battles but then it became from unfortunately and this is what I meant even when I was talking about this book and my fear that it would be diluted.
• 25:38
  It is that it became from a buzzword a buzzword and a buzzword is a word that means essentially whatever you wanted to mean in this plugged in sense.
• 25:50
  So when you want to like sell to women when you want to want them to attend something when you want to sort of brand yourself for something you're selling you go to empowerment and the edge of it the fact that it represented a call to a radical reappraisal of institutional and social and political very crucially political transformation.
• 26:17
  It was lost and it became a technocratic term right so that working towards a gender mainstreaming was empowerment was almost always attached to that.
• 26:29
  But it meant things like oh well if we give these women this stove then all their problems will be solved and actually became the opposite of what it meant in the sense that it's wide adoption by the development and aid industrial complex converted it to a completely a political thing.
• 26:53
  You don't have to agree politically with this or that country or with the movement you just get them all the women clean stoves or you give all the women chickens or a half or or whatever and that was empowerment they're going to be empowered.
• 27:09
  They'll have this chicken and the chicken will lay eggs and then there'll be more chickens and this chicken thing is a literal example from the Gates Foundation.
• 27:20
  The fact is is that if you want women to flourish and if you want want this to be a long standing way to lift them out of poverty they have to have the political rights to protect them whatever they've gained from having the chickens.
• 27:37
  And that's what they found right later on they studied this and they said well the problem is is that it increases their standard of living for a short time but then some other government comes in there's some law that's passed town wants taxes out of this chicken business.
• 27:56
  These are all things that happen to women and they happen because we've under in the hijacking of the concept of empowerment we have forgotten that yes economic uplift is very important for women but political rights are just as important because otherwise they cannot protect any of the games that they make and that is really a story that is contained in that concept of empowerment.
• 28:25
  And what was done to it because it began very precisely and intentionally as something that recognize this fact recognize look at where we are in the US in terms of reproductive rights.
• 28:42
  What happened what happened was is that we did not have a viable feminist movement that would get women out in the streets protecting roe wave was a political endeavor when you have a deep politicized feminism.
• 28:59
  That's all about girl boss and breaking glass ceilings then you start to lose substantive rights which is what has happened now and so now there is some talk of re invigorating the political discourse of empowerment in the way it was originally conceived but of course it's going to be a much more difficult and up until battle because those rights have been lost.
• 29:24
  I mean talk about collectivism solidarity that is what I mean I mean solidarity that gives our movement political tea so that these ideas and these rights that we have counted on we recognize that they can be lost if we are not politically mobilized.
• 29:45
  We don't have we see feminism as a set of political transformation and not just as oh well i'm going to write this t-shirt and by these sneakers i'll be such a girl boss and he'll be selling content on the internet or whatever it's something very different from that.
• 30:04
  Now I think we're all going to suffer the consequences of allowing empowerment to be reconstructed in this feeble way.
• 30:15
  Yes, oh my word that's so powerful the feebleness of that and the deep politicization and then also this extremely narrow and elitist view on what economic empowerment would even mean it's not no one like the mainstream conversation it's not about housing rights or food security or any requirement that all women that all people in fact have.
• 30:36
  Not only their base needs met but can live a life where they have the resources to thrive but because the people setting this agenda don't have those concerns and also aligned with I think it's in general like not a very pro movement it's this idea of as you've said before like matching the power structure and matching the power that white men have economically and then politically not having that teeth really to have a powerful movement so I think that is really resonates with me.
• 31:02
  And the sad thing about it all is that after all this was said and done and was overturned you have women like the New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg they're writing articles that say things like well where's the feminist movement where do I go to find the feminist movement and.
• 31:25
  And it was shocking to me to read or maybe it was interview because at that same time we're watching Iranian women out in the streets off their heads cars and literally putting themselves in direct harms way I work with professor Kimberly Krenshaw and her movement say her name is there to talk about what police violence does to black women.
• 31:52
  So the thing is is that if you are a black or brown Asian woman you have to fight these battles anyway like you're not going to really be able to get through without having some feminist consciousness simply because those groups are discriminated against so you will encounter some form of rebellion like Iranian women like black women.
• 32:18
  But white women live in this Lala land particularly upper middle class white women where they can go get all the way into middle age without ever having to realize that you might be treated poorly just because of what you look like what your gender is there's not a black brown Asian woman alive who has not faced that moment where you really try to.
• 32:47
  Making a point within a professional environment and you've told yourself you're not going to budge on this and people look at you like you're crazy I mean the gaslighting that you face it's so pervasive so that it becomes part of your consciousness without perhaps even being intentional.
• 33:05
  The consciousness of inhabiting a body that's different and a body that's going to be judged based on that difference we never get the clean slate when we walk into a room we encounter that somebody has had with some Pakistani Indian whatever woman walks in before me when I walk into a room.
• 33:29
  And then I have to work to clear all that out and get people to see me as an individual and not the member of a racial and gender class and I think that that gives you a different assessment of yourself then if you're right upper middle class white women you walk into a room and you feel quite entitled to telling everybody exactly who you are and other people believing you.
• 33:58
  And yeah so it's an uphill battle but it's one that we have to fight and racism doesn't exist anymore in these formats of like oh well I hate you because you're black it's not simple like that and it's much much more insidious and I was the task I set myself in the bulk is that I would try and create a vocabulary so that women like me who have both life experience and then.
• 34:27
  Other sorts of training that we would be able to talk about all of those instances in which we are put down but where we don't have the vocabulary to describe exactly what happened to try to bring those instances into the conversation about race.
• 34:49
  Yeah and it's so true I think unfortunately there's just all forms seem to be happening of both explicit and implicit insidious forms of racism it seems like it's also so dependent on where you live and and it's so true it's really important that work like this exists and it's interesting what you spoke about with the critique on the lack of feminist movements and it reminded me so much of what you said that if white woman especially a specific.
• 35:14
  If white up with class women on doing something then it's just not being done like where is the movement there are many movements and I absolutely love say her name as a movement and what you shared with the Iranian woman movement and protests fighting against the state I mean that's the most powerful form of feminism that I think the global.
• 35:32
  Seen has witnessed in a long time so I really like love everything that you are sharing with us and so I'm curious on this point I love how in that piece you write about that anyone who wants to read more about rough years views on this topic there's an amazing article that you wrote called unfocused feminism the battle lines go beyond the boardroom and the bedroom and I think it's really amazing and you should read and if you can subscribe to the baffle as well as by the book that would be amazing.
• 35:57
  So one metaphor that I wanted to ask you about before moving to the final segment of our conversation is I love metaphors and you speak about the technology of white supremacy I'm really fascinated by how these systems and ideas like stay so powerful and in place.
• 36:14
  And I love the use of metaphors and so I'm curious what is it about technology that really helps us understand how white supremacy operates in the world and then what does that imply for how we should be thinking about an approaching trying to oppose white supremacy wherever we are.
• 36:30
  I mean, I think the central idea around that is that the white upper middle class western person is considered every man or every in this case so that anytime you're encountering mean and this goes obviously for technology as well.
• 36:49
  I mean now there's so many data scientists that have already pointed that out is that algorithms and other forms of identification they use that model still it's not developed to represent like a black person so the template is what we are fighting against and the template is always white and upper middle class western woman.
• 37:15
  So that to me is frightening in a sense because as we move further and further into these realms that are virtual but are created by artificial intelligence even our artificial intelligence can be as racist as just normal intelligence right human intelligence.
• 37:37
  And that is something that is the next frontier for the fight against racism because there hasn't been much questioning of it in that I mean you know like I said there are data scientists who are doing this thing.
• 37:53
  But what the beliefs are are what is going to sink in into these other systems and ideologies that we are creating very.
• 38:03
  Visually at this moment and I don't want to be all doom and groom so I think that there are positive possibilities there as well and for instance I remember when this whole pandemic happened and everyone was relegated to their homes and couldn't be offices were closed and everyone was remote.
• 38:28
  I was on a message board of my friends from graduate school and these are definitely people who like work very hard to like not be racist and be good allies.
• 38:40
  And on the board they're all talking about oh but I really do miss the camaraderie I miss like getting ready and going somewhere and then being able to have conversations with people and it was all about the camaraderie right that they were missing because now office life was in hiatus.
• 39:00
  And then I said look and then there's another black person said the same thing was that I love it because those sorts of interactions those are all very fraught interactions.
• 39:13
  If you're an immigrant, if you're a black from Asian because it is a white dominated space and you have to mold yourself to be in that I'm a safe brown person.
• 39:26
  Right. Yes.
• 39:27
  And for me it was a real realization of the weight of that when I didn't have to do that. Yes, me too.
• 39:36
  But like the crazy thing was how oblivious the white people were of this fact that other people were experiencing what they love as something that was burdensome to them and was something where they felt almost kind of tested in that how to interact with these people.
• 39:56
  That you're not now working with or spend all day around so technology is the same way right like when the people who are creating these systems are oblivious.
• 40:08
  Then of course they created in ways that serves them and I do think that there is a need for a more focused movement within the tech realm that makes engineers in particular.
• 40:23
  Activists who make engineers into activists so that the design solutions that they are has with coming up with are ones that are actually receptive to people who are not white.
• 40:39
  And that can happen. I just finished writing an essay about in my book, for instance, I talk about this huge development debacle of these stoves, these clean stoves that were supposed to transform the lives of South Asian women because they were using wood stoves in their little houses and the wood smoke was very bad for them for the environment and left them point to accident.
• 41:07
  Well, at the time that I wrote about it, I didn't know about the work that this woman was doing, but she is an architect from Pakistan and what she did is work with these women who didn't adopt the clean stoves that the UN provided right it was like this huge program that provided literally hundreds of thousands of stoves to women in South Asia because they were going to deliver them from the smokey stove situation.
• 41:37
  And now I saw this woman who is an architect who calls her thinking as architectural activism and barefoot architecture.
• 41:49
  And she worked with these women to come up with this design that uses lime and plaster and mud essentially all things that are available to them to make this clean stole which from a design standpoint addresses all the problems, but is familiar enough for the women to actually use it.
• 42:11
  I love that example because again activism has to exist within all of these realms that are creating our future right so engineering in particular software engineering other sorts of designs and logistical systems require feminist activism and it's only if that is present as a sort of intelligible ideological thread.
• 42:36
  You can hold when okay i'm an engineer but i'm going to do it i'm my politics is informed by feminists and so i'm going to design in this way and not let this dimension of human existence be ignored the idea of gender parity the idea of transforming institutions such that they provide equal justice all of that has to be in what we do and what we build.
• 43:05
  Wow yes that's so so compelling I love that and this idea of engineering our future that actually is exactly where I was hoping to go with you as well because the podcast is called reimagining i'm really interested in this idea of imagination and the idea that to some extent we're all engineering our future we're all subscribing to collective norms and deciding how do we want to relate to each other how do we want to relate to.
• 43:31
  Our communities do we want faceless nameless neighbors or do we want to take a vested interest in.
• 43:36
  Who is around us and how can we help them or how can we be helped by them and so I love what you said about these engineering activists and i'm wondering what is your dream for feminism I think we've spoken about.
• 43:48
  Some of the key critiques of what we need to deconstruct if you imagine the utopic state of how we could be of course within as many confines as you do or don't want to take on but.
• 43:59
  What is your dream for the feminist movement my dream for feminist movement is that we can revive ourselves transnational I think that a lot of the problems that women are facing are.
• 44:14
  Have threads that unite us in very very crucial ways well bodily autonomy is one of them undoubtedly it is an attack in different forms all around the world and it singles out women as targets for that.
• 44:30
  For curbing autonomy and so my hope is that white western feminists can give up their condescension that's their challenge and that black brown and Asian women in the rest of the world.
• 44:46
  Can learn to work with right women despite the fact that a lot of what they suffer has been the result of white colonial domination so it's forgiveness on one side and respect that's required on the other side.
• 45:03
  And I think if those are taken seriously enough we can have a vital and essential feminist movement and God knows we're going to need it.
• 45:14
  Our planet is transforming at pace that is unprecedented right I mean whether it's in a negative sense from climate change migration economic deprivation.
• 45:29
  We're just in terms of our ideas and the way we are looking at the world I mean I really and believe that my book would not have been published even four years ago.
• 45:43
  It would not have been published there was no room to say this I remember being at a panel at Columbia abilities and I knew everyone else on and there are other professors and they're balls at me using the word white women like saying white white like that.
• 46:05
  And they were like I don't think it's necessary I think it's okay to say this last round is that and I wanted to I was doing it very intensely and particularly I was going to say it but I remember that moment because in that moment if you had asked me that I would be able to publish a book that has what feminists in the title there was absolutely no way then something changed after I would say the summer of 2020.
• 46:34
  Or just before that where suddenly there was a small opening to start having these conversations about what is happening within movements rather than simply just describing these movements.
• 46:47
  And that's what I credit for and of course like once this book is out it's out and then the next person isn't going to have to climb that tree over again in saying okay well I want to use white and the title and I want to describe these women as white.
• 47:02
  But I tell that story to describe how palpable that resistance was like it wasn't an incoherent abstract thing it was very much don't do this and don't do this from and this is from our side I would say and that has all changed now.
• 47:21
  This is being discussed the issue of how white racial privilege operates within feminist movements what it does among women that is now becoming a part of the conversation in a way that I didn't think it was possible I just pushed like myself physically and emotionally it was a real journey to write this book.
• 47:46
  I kept telling myself is just keep on until it's published and once it's out there it's out there and that was true but it's one thing as a writer like you say I mean what I went in I told myself writing this book is that you know what I'm writing this I don't mind taking the kicks and the push back.
• 48:06
  Because I cannot bear the idea that women 10 15 younger than me are going to have to face that that I've been facing for 15 years so I very much very very much thought that but of course when you are actually writing it and you're getting that push back.
• 48:25
  Very very fine intelligent people and you have to fight back to know i'm not picking this out of the book it requires a lot of much more I would say I was prepared for the intellectual for the two but it requires also emotional for the two.
• 48:41
  Because these are issues that are very very personal to women so even with being in a professional environment you encounter aspects of other women that are emotional rather than professional and you're not always prepared for that you're prepared for these professional relationships editing copy editing this and then you're not.
• 49:05
  Expecting people in those roles to have an emotional response to what you've written but they did because that is what this as you said at the outset this book is as much about that emotional transformation as it is.
• 49:19
  And so many of the letters that I have received particularly from black and brown women just all around the world some like the Dominican Republic Sudan and they say that this has transformed the way I think and the way I look at this struggle and of course like as a as a writer but when you're writing if you don't have those letters.
• 49:42
  Yes, all yourself that people will get this so yes that's what gave me and literally I mean I think when you started said at the outset the frustration with another generation coming up with the same issues I had just had it is the last thing I ever write it's okay i'll even take that hit but I want this to be out there because this is the sort of book that I would have given a white woman that I worked with.
• 50:12
  I came out of that moment of undergoing that moment again and again where you want to explain all this to a person who does want to understand but I didn't have something I could point to or say like okay if you read this you'll get where i'm coming from and why I think this way.
• 50:32
  So I wrote the book that I wish I could have given my co-workers or even my professors in graduate school and law school so that they understood why certain things were a problem.
• 50:47
  I calling certain things in a certain way why describing feminist history from the suffrage movement like drove me nuts so yeah that was what gave me the energy but I was beat after.
• 51:01
  Well thank you so much as you say emotional fortitude and physical fortitude i mean i'm sad that it had to be that way it shouldn't be so draining on the labor the emotional and physical resources of black brown Asian woman to tell these stories and to do this work but i'm so grateful because it just makes the next.
• 51:22
  generation in the general sense it makes it easier for the next book and the next book to be pushed through and for these conversations to really be injected into the public consciousness as I hear you speak and as I hear you saying that you.
• 51:35
  I really wanted to make sure that this doesn't get repeated i'm feeling like this should actually like one of the places where I feel like this book should exist is in the form of a Netflix documentary where you can have that transnational storytelling of what is the foundation of being against white feminism and then.
• 51:51
  And how as you said this link between Dominican Republic and everywhere Sri Lanka South Africa like this is just such a relatable and deeply important work and so it excites me to think that it starts with the book and over time if it gets into the right hands.
• 52:05
  I feel like ideas can really permeate culture and i'm so grateful to social media for this I mean it's got a lot of negativity but I think to your point of how.
• 52:14
  You've been surprised by where the conversation is now versus where it was four years ago, I think there are these ways that the technologies that we have are advancing certain conversations at an acceleration that I don't think would have been possible without these platforms I wish we had more ownership over how these algorithms and.
• 52:33
  Exactly what you were saying about how racist and all the things homophobic transphobic sexist these platforms are but at least gives me hope I think that we can change ideas you already have.
• 52:44
  Thank you do I mean quite honestly when I saw that little tech talk of you reading that passage from the book it's not something I could have done I couldn't have done it in that way and I just.
• 52:57
  Rolled around in that awesome feeling a couple of days because it was like yes I mean people she's making this her own in this amazing way that is so accessible and so magnetic and you honestly as a writer it's the ultimate it's the ultimate thing for destination for you I honestly believe that books belong to the author until they're published and once they're published they belong.
• 53:26
  They belong to the people who read them bring their experiences and their skills and talents to them and in a very visible way that's what we're doing and I was just like oh my god.
• 53:40
  What I mean and what I hoped for but there were lots of moments and when I'm writing this book where I saw like okay maybe nobody's going to get it maybe I'm completely crazy this is like all in my head.
• 53:57
  So I watch that and for my next book I'm going to be watching your tech talk because it's this sort of thing is possible you keep the faith like don't let yourself be ghastly in addition the other issues like you said you exist in the publishing world there's so much business aspect to publishing a book for writers it's always hard to go through because we're creators but not sellers you know.
• 54:26
  So this will carry me.
• 54:29
  Oh that's amazing thank you.
• 54:31
  I love that and I mean now that you say that i'm imagining i'm imagining basically like a coalition of like creators and writers who we can be the people who say we will get this to a million views or we believe in this book I just picked up a book called viral justice in the bookstore the other day and I was like my phone was like need this book and I think if we could actually organize I think there's an MLK quote that it's like those who want peace need to be just.
• 54:56
  As organizers those who want war and there's so many different ways that that's already happening as you've mentioned there's so many movements across the world but I wonder if that could help make the writing process less lonely and less like you having to believe in it because I feel I already have one of my best friends he's also creator.
• 55:11
  And he would love to also be part of he always shares books and movies and stuff so I wonder if there's a collaborative opportunity there of people who are chronically posting online and sharing books and stories and ideas and who can also be involved maybe earlier to say yes we believe in this keep going we will be the first.
• 55:29
  Incubating ground for this book to be shared with the world we have so much alignment in the book viral justice you speak about how we each need attend to our plots and like do the things that were good at but we can support each other because there's like this perfect alignment between as you say the creatives and then the people who are like there's a different creative.
• 55:47
  So I'm going to be a New York from may I would love to collaborate and support in any way that I can and also bring other people together around this mission of how can we.
• 55:55
  Inject really important work and ideas in a really accessible way into the hands of everyone to the hands of all types of people across the world and so that really energizes me and is something that I want to reimagine is what could the relationship between scholars academics writers authors philosophers be.
• 56:13
  With content creators people are spending hours and hours on their phones so could be a very subversive tool already is so it that just made me very excited I hadn't considered that.
• 56:23
  I am totally there 100% amazing and particular you see you said you're coming to New York after me yes that in itself so that I'm not just with me but also introducing you this other people in the city who are leading projects like this one of my best friends leads up.
• 56:42
  It leads a project like this at City College in Harlem amazing and I ended up teaching in that particular program I mean point being that there are lots of we can do this.
• 56:55
  Yes it would be fun and I think you would enjoy it and you would meet some interesting cool people in New York along the way so amazing amazing I love that idea wonderful world.
• 57:08
  Thank you so much for your time your energy your perspective I'm so so grateful everyone please read this book it's so critical and I promise you will come out the other side transform just as I did.
• 57:19
  I think especially if you feel inundated by celebrity culture especially and this narrow vision of who gets to be noteworthy and known in our culture today in pop culture.
• 57:30
  I think it really speaks to some of the feelings that I've had about it relates to beauty as well and all these different ways that we are interrogating ourselves but through whose lens and so I think this question of I always ask and take talk whose imagination are we living in.
• 57:43
  I think this book really unpacks whose imagination of feminism we are living in and we could be from this transnational vision that you've laid out in such a different definition and understanding of and commitment to feminism so I hope everyone will read the book and let us know if you do.
• 57:59
  And you can get it anywhere wherever you shop for books it's there in audio and ebook form every single form so please do read the book the paper back has just launched everywhere as well so if you don't like hardcover books then we got you any final words and rough here thank you so much for being on.
• 58:15
  Don't give up on feminism just don't like if I could just grab everybody by the collar and say that it is what we make of it and it can be a very vital and transformative force and we are so much more connected.
• 58:30
  Now the costs of connection have been reduced drastically so it's a tremendous opportunity for all of us and I think we will find not only ideological and political longing in it but also a sort of spiritual and emotional fortitude at the all craving at this moment where everything's changing.
• 58:56
  That's it Sunshine's thank you so much for listening to reimagining with I understood a podcast where we reframe rethink and reimagine all things standing in the way of love and liberation.
• 59:09
  Please follow my work on substack at I understood that substack.com and subscribe if you have the means as well as on TikTok and Instagram at I understood I would absolutely love to hear from you if you have good things to say I am a cancer please be nice to me I am sensitive.
• 59:24
  Follow our podcast community the IG handle is reimagining with I understood please leave a rating on the podcast if it is five stars again I'm a cancer okay I love you have a wonderful day nourish yourself and nourish each other.