Feminist Imperialism Liberates No One

 "The entanglement of the 'liberating women' agenda with America's endless and ever-expanding War on Terror gave birth to 'securo-feminism,' a term described by the scholar Lila Abu-Lughod to indicate the collusion between international women's rights advocates and the global security enterprise referred to as CVE (countering violent extremism). Securo-feminism holds that fighting against terrorism is in itself a kind of feminism. The national shock and grief around the 911 attack located this foreign war in a very different category from any that America had fought before. The threat was not abstract or hypothetical, and it was not happening somewhere far away. It felt tangible, immediate, personal. . . . . 

"Americans promoted a 'liberation lie' that positioned them as the saviors of downtrodden Afghan women. From this superior perch, white liberal feminists imagined gender-based violence as something found only in faraway lands. 

"In 2002, a coalition of women's organizations sent an open letter to President George W. Bush, asking him to 'take emergency action to save the lives and secure the future of Afghan women.' Its signatories included Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation in Virginia, together with other notable feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon. U.S. women overwhelmingly support the war, they noted, because 'it will liberate Afghan women from abuse and oppression.' The National Organization of Women (NOW) put out statements in support of the war and its allegedly 'feminist' objectives. Everyone in the mainstream American and British establishment including white feminist heroines like eventual Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, signed on wholeheartedly to the cause of fighting the War on Terror via any means that the military, the CIA, or the president thought necessary. The disconnect between the practice of American brutality and preaching of American saviordom managed to escape notice. 

"Securo-feminists were not simply invested in fighting the War on Terror, they were also committed to using American military power to promote American values all over the world. Just as imperial feminism during the British colonial era had convinced themselves of their own benevolence in improving the lives of native women, so too did securo-feminists believe that they were 'saving' Afghanis and Iraqis from themselves.

"Securo-feminism . . .  bound white American feminists  to the neoimperial and neoliberal project of nation-building around the world  . . . .Caught in its fevers, American feminists did not question loudly enough the wisdom of exporting feminism through bombs and drones. Trickle-down feminism, everyone assumed, would miraculously fast-forward the realization of a gender-equal, free market world created in the self-image of America." 

" . . . Notably, there was no mention of investing in Afghan women's political participation, perhaps because if Afghan women had political freedom they would prioritize ending the American occupation over anything else." 

-------- Rafia Zakaria, Against White Feminism - Notes on Disruption, pps. 84-7