The new Alt-Feminism, when white supremacy met women’s empowerment
by Flavia Dzodan
Jan 6, 2017

Much has been written about what is popularly known as “white feminism”. Catherine Young wrote the most comprehensive breakdown of its definition and what white feminism entails politically. This form of feminism is also sometimes called “liberal/neoliberal feminism” or “Lean In feminism” because of its persistent focus on corporate careers at the expense of other sociopolitical issues that affect women.

In the past four years, since I wrote the above, many political changes have taken place. Mostly, we have witnessed a relentless growth of extreme right ideologies vying for positions of power in North America and Europe. Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, the list of people advocating white supremacist ideologies to position themselves within their respective electorates goes on. It then stands to reason that, vis a vis this mainstreaming of white supremacy, women’s issues would follow suit (after all, they are half of their respective voter bases). Enter what I call “the alt-fem” or “alt-feminism”, a repurposing and expansion of white feminism to explicitly serve white supremacy. As part of this expansion, women like Megyn Kelly or Ivanka Trump are lauded as feminists advancing the cause of women’s equality, even though they both support extreme right and racist ideologies.

In turn, other feminists (mostly those writing from and about the margins of gender, race, sexuality, disability, working class, etc) resisted this inclusion of obviously non feminist women into the mainstream. However, whatever resistance was vociferously laid down, it didn’t help to prevent us from getting to the point where some of the most read media such as Vanity Fair or The Daily Beast celebrate Megyn Kelly’s “feminism”. Perhaps one of the reasons why this co-optation might be easily available is that mainstream white feminism failed to articulate how to move beyond individual white women and their issues, encapsulated in the 70s slogan of “the personal is political” and into a system wide definition of women’s empowerment that included issues beyond gender. By embracing the personal in the form of the individual and never setting any ideological goals beyond “career for mostly white women”, this feminism could be easily co-opted by any woman who just attaches the label to herself or by any media outlet that pins it on a woman (whether she claims it for herself or not). As long as the woman in question could claim that her politics were rooted in her personal, individual experience, she could call herself (or be called) a feminist.

With the mainstreaming of eugenics as part of right wing ideologies seizing power, it will be vital to keep track of these further co-optation, especially considering how the white supremacists that call themselves “the alt-right” are focused on reproduction, maternity and the rights of women in so far as these rights enable births of white babies in greater numbers. I foresee that if these ideas continue moving forward, the “alt-fem” embodied by the likes of Megyn Kelly and Ivanka Trump will be instrumental in advancing a specific ideal of white femininity at the service of totalitarianism.

A bit more here --> https://medium.com/this-political-woman/the-new-alt-feminism-when-white-supremacy-met-womens-empowerment-b978b088db33