Article Colonialism: The Elephant in the Room in Western Feminism
Article Colonialism: The Elephant in the Room in Western Feminism
Dec 13 2025, 8:55 PM
https://radleftunity.substack.com/p/colonial-feminism-and-zionism
Quote:We have all often witnessed the discussion of oppression of women within the global south in radical feminist communities. It was brave; a contrast from many progressives who were reluctant to discuss these topics due to worries of coming off as Islamophobic or racist. It is a nuanced discussion because there are legitimate fears about playing into the hands of entities that seek to weaponize feminism to advance colonial interests. But these things should be discussed; what is the right way?
This article was also shared on Vexxed, and it was pleasantly well-received and with some civil discussions and didn't end up getting locked, I guess since it didn't get "heated". Amazing.
When this article was originally shared, I had written my thoughts in a Discord server while reading through the article in "real time."
This section is my (cleaned-up and slightly expanded) commentary from the time it was shared.
Quote:Using women from the global south as tokens and only in the context of propaganda to get women to support brutal and traumatizing wars in their countries (that unsurprisingly, fail to liberate them.)
Pro-colonialist feminists also use women in the Global South as tokens in terms of justifying Western politics or their Western religions as "better." One prominent example of this is they frequently bring up the burqa/hijab, because it's a very easy way to visually identify/symbolize the oppressive misogynistic nature of Islam while being able to ignore any focus towards the female oppression of Christianity. Additionally, this "others" women who wear such garments, therefore reducing the diversity of voices in female-/feminist-centered discussions that want to promote female solidarity/female class consciousness.
This is brought up later/intersects with the "Selective critique of religion" point later on:
Quote:Selective critique of religion (IE: Islam) is weaponized while others are not in a very sinister way so that it is only used to justify racism without actually challenging religious fundamentalism or promoting secularism and human rights in any consistent way. Many still support far-right Christian fascist organizations. This makes genuine critique of Islam more difficult.
This is a specific example to a general trend: antisocial movements (eg. racist/nationalist movements) taking advantage of the criticisms of specific types of cultural oppression identified by prosocial movements (eg. women's liberation movements).
On an anti-religion tangential rant:
Quote:Pro-colonialist feminists may discuss Islam but turn a blind eye on how western wars, regime changes, and capitalist interests play a part in facilitating the rise of these extremes and offer little to no help to the feminist plight of these women.
I am just so annoyed at how much Christians forced their religion into secular governments, even ones which tried to have separation of religion from the country's government (ahem, United States...), and then after they've finally eroded the separation of church and state so far, that they're starting to freak out about how "omg Islam omg Muslims how dare they impose their religion" Like... Y'ALL FUCKIN BROUGHT THIS UPON YOURSELVES! They didn't respect the boundaries of where their personal religious beliefs ended upon where another person's rights begin, and therefore allowed religious fanatics to impose their beliefs in government on others, increasingly and persistently, and now they are shocked whenâguess whatâthere are OTHER religious fanatics out there of OTHER regressive religions! Woah!! /rant
Tbh I think Christian Brits freaking out about Muslim immigrants kinda makes "more sense" than the Christians in the US freaking out about Muslim immigrants, because at least in the UK, that whole place was built upon enforcing Christianity and huge ties between the governing systems and "the Church." Why y'all surprised when another Abrahamic religion now wants to use that shit to enforce their fucking version of Abrahamism?? So uh, enjoy your Holy Wars, I guess... (/meanjoke, I don't actually want any wars or suffering...)
Quote:In the 1980s, Israel, aiming to weaken the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), provided indirect support to Islamist groups in the occupied Palestinian territories. One significant beneficiary was the Islamic Center Association, led by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, which later evolved into Hamas. Israeli officials, including Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, admitted to facilitating funds to Yassinâs network to counterbalance the PLOâs influence.
However, this policy backfired. Hamas, initially a tool to undermine secular Palestinian factions, grew in strength and popularity, eventually becoming a formidable adversary to Israel.
Uhhhhhhhh ohhhhhhhhh... look at that... more examples of religiously-controlled governments fucking with secular liberation movements causing massive problems!
Quote:It is an interesting coincidence that right-aligned zionist gender critical feminists who seek âalliesâ with the right wing of their countries to deal with the one issue they care about (to push out gender ideology), cannot fathom why Palestinian women may ally with Hamas. Iâd even argue that itâs laughable to compare; because gender critical feminists have more varied and better options than that, while Palestinian women have none and their lives are on the line.
I thought this was a fascinating point. It reminded me of Dworkin's Right-Wing Women; this quoted part very much could be used to explain the justification of women in Palestine who "support" Hamas. And I feel like the irony is that I think many Zionist/conservative women happily wax poetics about how right-wing women in the United States feel like they don't have a choice in the politics they support, going so far as to even refer to Dworkin's Right-Wing Women; they love to use that book as a way to basically go "oh poor right wing women đ„ș so few choices, you can't really blame them, you see", but what's interesting is that one can apply the same logic to the Palestinian women in this case. And I feel like they would not like that... But why is it okay to justify the antisocial political choices of right-wing women in the Global North as "they feel they have no other options", but not the antisocial political choices of women in war-torn countries in the Global South?
So that was basically my commentary from a few months ago when the article was new. I also gained a recent re-interest in this topic, especially regarding happenings in Iran/Afghanistan being shared on this forum. Several comments have been brought up about concerns about how a focus on the human rights (and especially women's human rights) abuses going on in Iran/Afghanistan could be used to amplify "pro-war" rhetoric from Western countries to justify waging war in the Middle East region in the name of "liberating people" there (not really).
I'm of the opinion that it is still important to highlight misogyny everywhere, including in the Middle Eastern region, and I kinda don't understand why it is Western feminists that need to feel guilt for wanting to call out blatant misogyny (the way I view it, Western feminists are not the war-hungry men in power, chomping at the bit to destroy Middle Eastern countries). I do think Western feminists need to be wary when criticisms of misogyny in the Global South are used to promote pro-war/anti-immigration policies. In a sense, when the topic starts to shift from identifying misogyny to promoting antisocial and/or violent practices in the name of "female liberation", that's where things need to be paused and reflected on. That's when I think feminist discourse begins to lose its way, and starts slowly veering towards unintentionally promoting regressive/authoritarian/right-wing systems.
Kozlik's regular member account. đđ
RadLeft Unity, October 15 2025.
https://radleftunity.substack.com/p/colonial-feminism-and-zionism
Quote:We have all often witnessed the discussion of oppression of women within the global south in radical feminist communities. It was brave; a contrast from many progressives who were reluctant to discuss these topics due to worries of coming off as Islamophobic or racist. It is a nuanced discussion because there are legitimate fears about playing into the hands of entities that seek to weaponize feminism to advance colonial interests. But these things should be discussed; what is the right way?
This article was also shared on Vexxed, and it was pleasantly well-received and with some civil discussions and didn't end up getting locked, I guess since it didn't get "heated". Amazing.
When this article was originally shared, I had written my thoughts in a Discord server while reading through the article in "real time."
This section is my (cleaned-up and slightly expanded) commentary from the time it was shared.
Quote:Using women from the global south as tokens and only in the context of propaganda to get women to support brutal and traumatizing wars in their countries (that unsurprisingly, fail to liberate them.)
Pro-colonialist feminists also use women in the Global South as tokens in terms of justifying Western politics or their Western religions as "better." One prominent example of this is they frequently bring up the burqa/hijab, because it's a very easy way to visually identify/symbolize the oppressive misogynistic nature of Islam while being able to ignore any focus towards the female oppression of Christianity. Additionally, this "others" women who wear such garments, therefore reducing the diversity of voices in female-/feminist-centered discussions that want to promote female solidarity/female class consciousness.
This is brought up later/intersects with the "Selective critique of religion" point later on:
Quote:Selective critique of religion (IE: Islam) is weaponized while others are not in a very sinister way so that it is only used to justify racism without actually challenging religious fundamentalism or promoting secularism and human rights in any consistent way. Many still support far-right Christian fascist organizations. This makes genuine critique of Islam more difficult.
This is a specific example to a general trend: antisocial movements (eg. racist/nationalist movements) taking advantage of the criticisms of specific types of cultural oppression identified by prosocial movements (eg. women's liberation movements).
On an anti-religion tangential rant:
Quote:Pro-colonialist feminists may discuss Islam but turn a blind eye on how western wars, regime changes, and capitalist interests play a part in facilitating the rise of these extremes and offer little to no help to the feminist plight of these women.
I am just so annoyed at how much Christians forced their religion into secular governments, even ones which tried to have separation of religion from the country's government (ahem, United States...), and then after they've finally eroded the separation of church and state so far, that they're starting to freak out about how "omg Islam omg Muslims how dare they impose their religion" Like... Y'ALL FUCKIN BROUGHT THIS UPON YOURSELVES! They didn't respect the boundaries of where their personal religious beliefs ended upon where another person's rights begin, and therefore allowed religious fanatics to impose their beliefs in government on others, increasingly and persistently, and now they are shocked whenâguess whatâthere are OTHER religious fanatics out there of OTHER regressive religions! Woah!! /rant
Tbh I think Christian Brits freaking out about Muslim immigrants kinda makes "more sense" than the Christians in the US freaking out about Muslim immigrants, because at least in the UK, that whole place was built upon enforcing Christianity and huge ties between the governing systems and "the Church." Why y'all surprised when another Abrahamic religion now wants to use that shit to enforce their fucking version of Abrahamism?? So uh, enjoy your Holy Wars, I guess... (/meanjoke, I don't actually want any wars or suffering...)
Quote:In the 1980s, Israel, aiming to weaken the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), provided indirect support to Islamist groups in the occupied Palestinian territories. One significant beneficiary was the Islamic Center Association, led by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, which later evolved into Hamas. Israeli officials, including Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, admitted to facilitating funds to Yassinâs network to counterbalance the PLOâs influence.
However, this policy backfired. Hamas, initially a tool to undermine secular Palestinian factions, grew in strength and popularity, eventually becoming a formidable adversary to Israel.
Uhhhhhhhh ohhhhhhhhh... look at that... more examples of religiously-controlled governments fucking with secular liberation movements causing massive problems!
Quote:It is an interesting coincidence that right-aligned zionist gender critical feminists who seek âalliesâ with the right wing of their countries to deal with the one issue they care about (to push out gender ideology), cannot fathom why Palestinian women may ally with Hamas. Iâd even argue that itâs laughable to compare; because gender critical feminists have more varied and better options than that, while Palestinian women have none and their lives are on the line.
I thought this was a fascinating point. It reminded me of Dworkin's Right-Wing Women; this quoted part very much could be used to explain the justification of women in Palestine who "support" Hamas. And I feel like the irony is that I think many Zionist/conservative women happily wax poetics about how right-wing women in the United States feel like they don't have a choice in the politics they support, going so far as to even refer to Dworkin's Right-Wing Women; they love to use that book as a way to basically go "oh poor right wing women đ„ș so few choices, you can't really blame them, you see", but what's interesting is that one can apply the same logic to the Palestinian women in this case. And I feel like they would not like that... But why is it okay to justify the antisocial political choices of right-wing women in the Global North as "they feel they have no other options", but not the antisocial political choices of women in war-torn countries in the Global South?
So that was basically my commentary from a few months ago when the article was new. I also gained a recent re-interest in this topic, especially regarding happenings in Iran/Afghanistan being shared on this forum. Several comments have been brought up about concerns about how a focus on the human rights (and especially women's human rights) abuses going on in Iran/Afghanistan could be used to amplify "pro-war" rhetoric from Western countries to justify waging war in the Middle East region in the name of "liberating people" there (not really).
I'm of the opinion that it is still important to highlight misogyny everywhere, including in the Middle Eastern region, and I kinda don't understand why it is Western feminists that need to feel guilt for wanting to call out blatant misogyny (the way I view it, Western feminists are not the war-hungry men in power, chomping at the bit to destroy Middle Eastern countries). I do think Western feminists need to be wary when criticisms of misogyny in the Global South are used to promote pro-war/anti-immigration policies. In a sense, when the topic starts to shift from identifying misogyny to promoting antisocial and/or violent practices in the name of "female liberation", that's where things need to be paused and reflected on. That's when I think feminist discourse begins to lose its way, and starts slowly veering towards unintentionally promoting regressive/authoritarian/right-wing systems.
Kozlik's regular member account. đđ