White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
Koa Beck
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
Koa Beck
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
A former editor at Jezebel, Vogue, and Marie-claire.com, Beck illuminates how prejudice and elitism suffuse mainstream feminist thinking.
Beck names and identifies white feminism in the hope of replacing it with a 'more holistic, ambitious approach to inequality.' Beck’s book teems with examples of how white feminism has always been an exclusive club.
Just in time for the hundredth anniversary of white women’s suffrage comes this masterful outlining of the progress and flaws of the feminist movement. Journalist, critic, and fiction writer Beck skillfully challenges the centralizing of white feminism.
The real key to the shape and tone of the book may lie in Beck’s exposure to the 'ideology' of white feminism in the offices of Marie Claire and Glamour. She has many interesting observations of the essence of this particular feminism as being not only white and elite, but also thin, capitalistic, individualistic, and exclusive. But this obliges her to find other labels for non-white, working class, collective movements of women (and non-women) activists; or to appear to contradict her own very limited characterization of feminism.
A clear analysis of the commodification of feminism from protest to brand.
Nowadays, Beck writes, profit-oriented corporate culture has merged with white feminism, resulting in a transactional #feminism brand that merely reinforces the status quo rather than challenging power structures. She argues for a more collective approach, urging readers to use their privilege to ensure that marginalized people are considered.