Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Outspoken by Pluto)

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a violation of ‘harmony – wholeness, being.’ Though disguised, the credence given to biology in these arguments affirmed the Of course, the book is by no means comprehensive and I would have loved to include a chapter on the work of disabled feminists and how work, exploitation, ‘productivity’ and austerity has had a specific effect on the lives of disabled women in the UK. Crip theory offers us a lot in terms of rethinking a phenomenon that has always been contentious in feminist thinking: the body. It might help us loosen an attachment to biology as a determiner of fate, helping us reassess the cost-analyses and value calculation embedded in the way we think about life. This is particularly important in this crisis, where disability and the language of “underlying conditions” is being utilised to subtly reaffirm whose lives can and should be saved and who is simply collateral, a problem that is always and inevitably racialised. Feminist and queer disability theory challenges predetermination and inateness, retraining the eye on the way the organisation of the world and social structures put us in danger, create a host of obstacles and barriers, making it harder to live survive let alone live full and dignified lives. Often, it is hard to credit these movements because they are leaderless and made up of working class women who strategically work through a collective voice rather than as individuals. I’m interested in what gets considered “feminist work” and how the liberal engulfing of feminism as a discourse has led to the idea that movements against ecological crisis, state power, facism and neo-colonialism are somehow unconnected from feminism and feminist thinking.

Lola Olufemi was due to appear at Housmans in conversation with Jay Bernard in May 2020 to talk about her recently released book Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power There are a number of scientific studies that point to the fact that human beings’ sexual biology is far more varied than we Olufemi is perhaps at her strongest when she discusses the struggles facing marginalised groups in “Transmisogyny: Who wins?”, “The saviour complex: Muslim women and gendered Islamophobia” and “Complicating consent: How to support sex workers”. The last of these distills most of its arguments for decriminalising sex work from Molly Smith & Juno Mac’s excellent Revolting Prostitutes (2018), but builds a more specific critique of the individualistic takes on sexual consent promoted in mainstream feminism alongside. As Olufemi aruges, focusing solely on teaching men to interpret consent as enthusiastic, verbal, and sober ignores the “grey” areas of power dynamics and material conditions that can impact on a person’s ability to say no in sexual interactions. a sex according to their genitals. Everything from science, to culture, to common wisdom affirms to us that there are only two In a much-needed intervention against transmisogyny, Olufemi challenges hegemonic discourses that continue to repress and exclude. She shows alliances between far-right organizations, especially in the United States, and trans-exclusionary radical feminists, as well as pointing out crucial links between the exclusion of trans women from feminism and other forces of oppression such as racism. As she puts it, “There are ideological links between biological essentialism and scientific racism; both see the body in absolute terms.”Lending itself to societies organized around racist, patriarchal, and capitalist states, this kind of feminism can create great harm to the most vulnerable. Olufemi’s book thus forcefully seeks to interrupt exactly those tendencies in feminism which aim merely to tweak the present. She covers an impressive array of topics, from food politics (showing the connections interlinking racism, class politics, food poverty, and body shaming) to an inspiring discussion of the politically radical potential of art. With her concise and sensitive approach, Olufemi artfully pinpoints the blind spots of white feminism. But more than that, she points to the vast potential of a broader and more radical conception of feminism, which could provide it with a vision for a genuinely inclusive future. Olufemi starts from looking at “the sexist state” and its use of austerity and state violence. Here, she maintains a decisive focus on British cases — avoiding the all-too-common tendency for discussions of racist police violence to end up deflecting attention to the United States alone. The incarceration of asylum seekers in institutions such as Yarl’s Wood detention center is a crucial focus, here: feminist struggles which focus on citizenship-based rights neglect the fact that some of the most vulnerable women, most in need of solidarity, are denied access to those very rights. This demands an overhaul of a state system whose own structures perpetuate patriarchal violence. As I’ve gotten older, I believe more in the possibility of transformative gender relations and crafting political ideas/demands that account for everyone. At a certain point I changed my mind about ‘work/careers’ being the most defining aspect of a person’s life, the necessity to ‘love’ your job and instead chose to think about work in terms of what capitalism does to our bodies and minds, what we are missing out on, what we don’t get to do.

Lola offers a crucial vision that imagines beyond racist, capitalist solutions to oppression... the necessity of this book cannot be overstated for those who call themselves feminists and those who eschew feminism as it presents itself'LO: I think the idea of frames of thought as disparate and incoherent really scares people because the inability to make a universal claim or universal demands means the journey to freedom is longer and more complicated but I think, just as consequence of how I learnt about the different schools of feminist thought in school, I’ve always been at peace with that. I don’t believe in universals but I do believe in an idea that I take from Audre Lorde, that sitting with tension, with distortion, is productive. That the tension caused when we place different kinds of feminism in conversation with one another create new routes, modes of thinking and practices that get us closer to what our perceived goals are. I loved the tweet that you did where you stated that you’d learnt things from different, overlapping and sometimes conflicting theorists. I think it perfectly sums up something that I’m always striving towards, to understand and incorporate different ideas from different strands of feminism that are all making a claim about the way the world should be. Liberation means chaos, it might mean a million different ideas at once and that potential excites me. To recognise that this frame of thought advocates many things, some conflicting is not to give in to the idea that no short-term political demands can be made – the urgency of the conditions of our lives make those demands clear to us. Embracing chaos doesn’t mean embracing abstraction. In the introduction to Feminism, Interrupted, you write “Everybody has a story about how they arrived and keep arriving at radical politics.” What were the particular circumstances of your discovery of the word ‘feminism’, its histories, resonances, and implications? The relationship between feminism and political radicalism is both necessary and complex. Feminism, Olufemi persuasively shows, does not have necessarily radical tendencies — rather, there is a long history of women giving their support to oppressive systems under the guise of “feminism.” Take the white suffragettes who did not see colonial subjects as part of their struggle for a vote (and even cheered on British imperialist forces). Or take the British home secretary Theresa May, who was the architect of policies especially harmful for women, even as she sported a “this is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt made by underpaid laborers. White feminist neo-liberal politics focuses on the self as vehicle for self-improvement and personal gain at the expense of others. We are instructed by corporate talking heads to "lean in" into a capitalist society where power equals financial gain."