White fantasy, white betrayals: On neoliberal ‘feminism’ in the US presidential election process

In this note for ephemera, I discuss neoliberal, white feminism – as recently embodied in declarations of Hilary Clinton’s anticipated US Presidential election as feminist glory, as triumph for women. Further, guided by the voices and analyses of people of colour (e.g., Alexander, 2012; Fernández, 2016), I call out these declarations as violently exclusive; as white feminist fantasies which sustain systems of marginalisation – including the attempted silencing of progressive women of colour on social media exchanges about US politics, women, and equality. I state at the outset my embrace of intersectional feminism, by which I refer to the understanding that women embody diverse relations to society and its structural inequalities, as experienced through their multiple identities, such as intersections of race with gender (Crenshaw, 1991; Dy et al., 2017). Intersectional feminism rejects support of political activity which works only for the privileged, (white) few, and as a supporter of this movement, I have challenged the equation of a woman in power with support for the struggles of women – women who exist outside white neoliberal enclosures.