There should be a whole conversation about what being progressive means because, at this point, it just means adhering to a status quo that makes you appear to be on the good side of History, but with no deep understanding or reflection of the ideas one allegedly adheres to.
(thank you for confirming I do not need to add this movie to my watchlist!)
I think there's a problem with people who self-identify as progressive but have no real understanding of progressive ideals. Any progressive movement at it's core must be expansive and inclusive.
Also, Barbie was fun. It's a movie for kids and should be critiqued as such. Plus, despite being the highest grossing film of the year and the highest grossing film by a female director EVER, it received few award nominations and won only one for Best Song. I don't have an opinion about that either way in so much as I rarely find any one particular film truly deserving of an Oscar. It was a fun romp and financial windfall. The dialogue was fine. It's a movie about a doll for little girls it's not the French Connection and that's okay.
This is an absolutely brilliant conversation - thank you for daring to talk about this! Me too I have a hard time to side with western feminism though I consider myself very pro-women… and I definitely understand your conflictions Nolan, have had these conversations with both my husband and brother too…
Et Macron…. Ohlala il est fou 😝 monitor women’s fertility LOL nothing surprises me anymore
Elin, I am so glad you enjoyed the conversation and that these are conversations you have with your husband and brother. This should be more common, the more we are open to dialogue about our mutual struggles as women and men, the better it will be for both.
And merci for confirming Macron is a mad man haha. I thought from someone who didn't have any children it was very rich.
And yes…. Funny story, Brigitte used to go to learn how to bake pizza with the bakers in the boulangerie just below my building when I was in a chambre de bonnes in 7 cus “petit Macron” liked pizza apparently 😆😆
Brilliant discussion and I loved reading both of your insights! I also haven’t watched Barbie and have had zero desire to, despite people I highly respect saying it was brilliant. I don’t know what to think but I guess I won’t know until I watch it…
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Doing my smart part out here in my own marriage and relationship to my sons - I’m fully open about menstruating, cups, fertility, cycles to my 7 and 9 yo.
About Barbie, I think some people didn't watch it because of the constant marketing. At some point even if we didn't want to we were bombarded with this movie. Maybe I'll watch it one day. Who knows...
Dialogue with the men in our families is so important, I hope we would be more open talking femininity and masculinity at every step of life with each other.
Thank you for sharing your chat I loved the back and forth style! Being German in the UK, I found it funny to see that British people wear swim wear in the sauna and vice versa, it took me some time to adjust to Germany's nudity culture when I returned here :D
I have a lot of conversations with my bf about male / female roles, societal expectations, "energies" and what we think makes us both feel valued, loved, seen, held, supported and thriving in a relationship. I must say that I was heavily brainwashed at uni in terms of white feminism and as I've been finding my own definition over the years, I'm finding these harder and harder to discuss with others. Anything non-typical or standard feminist is often so heavily criticised.
Working with women in mentoring and coaching, it is an ongoing journey for me to figure out what that can and must look like for me as I certainly not subscribe to general opinions
I really appreciate you sharing your experience as a German in the UK. I see your approach to nudity part of the culture of being around nature which is something we don't do in France. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have never done so much outdoor activities than when I lived in Germany.
Standard feminism has become the norm, and that's exactly why people don't like to question it. There is a lot of work to be done about what we call progressive because as far as I can see when it comes to feminism we are stuck and don't evolve.
What are you thoughts on the works of say Audre Lorde or Kimberle Crenshaw? Do they fall under the umbrella of Western feminists? I’m curious because in my opinion, someone like Angela Davis would not, but Audre and Kimberle would.
That's a great question! And I have no idea because I am not familiar enough with the work of these three women with feminism (oops, I hope I won't get the side eye by saying this) I know more about their work as activists for Black people as a whole. One thing, I'd say though is that I am Black French AND Cameroonian, and sometimes Black feminism through the Afro-American lense isn't something I necessarily feel inclined to. And it all has to do with context and the History of all the places I belong to.
But why do you say Audre Lorde or Kimberle Crenshaw fall under the umbrella of Western feminists and Angela Davis doesn't?
I don’t necessarily qualify feminist thinkers as either Western or non-Western and while Angela Davis is one of the most important American feminists of all time, I could see why some might qualify her as non-Western because her approach to emancipation is so distinctly non-American and anti-colonialist. Very different from someone like Kimberle Crenshaw who is a legal scholar famous for defining systemic racism and intersectionality. She is interested in dismantling oppressive systems from within, which I see as a classically American point of view.
It’s interesting that you say you are familiar with their writing on race and not on feminism because I think they’d both argue they talk about both at all times as that is their lived experience. For example, Kimberle first started developing the idea of intersectionality while a law student at Harvard. She was one of only three Black students in her class and the only Black woman. She was bonded to her Black peers because of their race but talks about this time when her two male counterparts were invited to join a men’s only group on campus. They all experienced exclusion because of their race but in this instance her sex added an additional barrier. So intersectional theory as defined by Crenshaw must take into account the experience of being a Black woman that include the interactions between the two identities. Being a black woman cannot be understood in terms independent of either being Black or a woman.
Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech from 1851 was very influential to Crenshaw, and I see Black feminist theory as integral to all American feminist theory because of Truth’s early contribution. So, I don’t really distinguish between Western and non-Western feminism as much as I do between second wave white feminism and third wave feminism. It sounds like the feminism you and Nolan are critical of is rooted in second wave notions of gender and race.
I probably don't feel close to feminism because in the culture I grew up in France it is very attached to a bourgeois idea. Women who 'had/have the time' to discuss it could do it because of their social class, and because bourgeoisie is white in France, it isn't something I feel close to. The feminism I am exposed to in France seems to have stopped in the late 60s. And the funniest thing is many white feminists borrow A LOT from the three Black women you cited. You will see them quote Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and Kimberle Crainshaw ad nauseam.
I remember in what Kimberle Crainshaw's intersectionality is rooted with, don't get me wrong, but I think I am less familiar with all these women feminist's work because of the way we are introduced to them in France and Europe at large. In Europe, Black feminism is still trying to find itself because we live in a space where the concept of race is denied, at worst completely buried. And rightly because it is the case, it is then difficult to tackle topics like Black feminism. To give you an example, in 2017, a French Afro-feminist group wanted to do a workshop for Black women around Black feminism in Paris. The Mayor of the city - a white woman who happens to be a Spanish immigrant (if you know French History they weren't well treated) decided to take legal action against the group with the reason that they were discriminating against white women. They were accused of anti-white racism. So with this level of hindrance to talk about our identities, you can imagine that it is difficult.
About the question of Western and non-Western feminism, I believe it is something that you become aware once you see what feminism is in other parts of the world that are not the U.S, the UK, Europe, etc. There is this very interesting Korean book called Kim Ji Young, Born in 1982 that gives an idea of what feminism is in South Korea. The story is very subtle and reflects well how the type of feminism we know in the West cannot be replicated in a context like the Korean one.
Also, all American political social theory is on some level fucked. Like, I'm not going to defend Americans because no shit we suck. But more importantly, I don't want to make the conversation a defensive one. I care little about how I am perceived and care much more that my actions are an expression of unconditional allyship. No one needs to pat me on the back or give me the benefit of the doubt. That's not the motivation and it shouldn't be the motivation for anyone else, either. Unfortunately, things don't happen that way.
My impression of gender politics in France is that they're fucked up. The spokeswomen with the spotlight come across as so incredibly tone deaf. I thought Juliette Binoche cutting her hair (into a bob) in solidarity with the women of Iran was so hollow and stupid. Whatever statement you thought you were making, you didn't. And that is one of the less insidious examples, as you know. I've always thought France to be quiet conservative. Pro-Life advocates in the United Sates since the passing of Roe vs. Wade until Dobbs cited French abortion policy as the gold standard. Some many things seem to be calibrated to appeal to men and the male gaze. Like French fashion is about self-expression but not at the expense of looking unattractive to men. It seems like French woman care A LOT if men find them attractive. I also think they have some very weird ideas about consent that continue to be reinforced in French film and fiction. But I also understand that this is not all French feminism, just the feminism most in the spotlight. Like where is the accounting for the queer experience under this bourgeoisie framework? Surely there are leaders I'm not familiar with that have been doing the hard work in France. They just don't get the attention. Like in the way your work, Emmanuelle, is to expand the idea of French fashion as one that takes into account French people of color. There are probably lots of women fighting for gender equality in the same expansive way and they should be the face of the movement. You're an example of a expansive and transformative figure who's work focuses on restructuring old notions of French identity. I would want you as the face of my movement not some It Girl or conservative Parisian Mayor.
I think another more prescient dichotomy for organizing feminist thought is to what level does the author believe true freedom can exist without dismantling the current system entirely? Is true freedom even possible under capitalism or does emancipation require tearing down the mechanics of economic oppression alongside race, gender, etc. full stop? That's not to say disenfranchisement under capitalism is the most pressing form of discrimination, just that capitalism is the means with which all other forms of oppression exist. Lol definitely doing the cliff notes version here. Hope I'm making some sense.
So Barbie, for example, is a feminist film but certainly not a radical feminist one because it is feminism under capitalism, EXPLICITLY. That's not to say there aren't good things to be uncovered from the film (I think there are), just that Barbie's idea of gender equality is a very safe and familiar one.
Jun 2·edited Jun 2Liked by Emmanuelle Maréchal, Nolan Yuma
I see the slow march toward equality as a collective endeavor and the White woman who have excluded and continue to exclude women of color must be held accountable. They are poor spokeswomen for the cause and at odds with how I understand feminism. True feminism can only exist alongside the fight for racial equality, sexual liberation, etc. One cannot exist without the other.
Hi Kate, thanks for pitching in. I’d have to do some research about these people to have a useful response. I came across an Audre Lorde poem in university, but I never went into a deep dive. All I know about Kimberle Crenshaw is that she’s a lawyer and teaches critical theory—something very WEIRD (Western, Educated, Rich, and Democratic). That’s likely because it started in Germany, influenced by Hegel’s dialectics, and then the critical theorists moved to America when the Nazis took power. I had to use critical theory in some university classes, and I knew I couldn't share thoughts like this in those classes. As Alison Acheson mentioned, this article would not be possible at UBC. She was one of the best profs I had at UBC and she left UBC—one of the reasons being that discussions like this were no longer possible there. (Luckily, she teaches creative writing on Substack). Anyway, the more I travel and meet people from different cultures, the more I see how critical theory (as well meaning as it may be) does more to divide than unify because it uses language most people don't have access to and a lot of the research (which is full of procedural flaws from a scientific standpoint) is done through a western lens. I still have a lot of respect for critical theorists and the ideas they brought into mainstream Western culture. They have definitely made people check their privilege and have had an important impact on laws.
This is a misunderstanding of what critical race theory is. It’s a form of legal scholarship that they only teach at the postgraduate level. It’s a system of thought used to ascertain areas where racist practices like redlining have been codified in the law. I don’t know what you’re talking about hear?
Right, but Crenshaw’s is a framework for analyzing US laws. I don’t know what you mean about Western lens and all that? What other type of lens would a framework for American legal analysis have?
You asked if I thought they were Western feminists. I mentioned I don't know enough about them. So, I brought up her ties to critical theory to explain how she could approach feminism through a Western lens.
Great discussion!
God, I get tired of America where every progressive seems to think EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Sooooo boring.
(I thought Barbie was mediocre to terrible, and the dialogue surrounding it made me want to claw my ears out.)
Hello Brent,
I am glad you enjoyed our conversation!
There should be a whole conversation about what being progressive means because, at this point, it just means adhering to a status quo that makes you appear to be on the good side of History, but with no deep understanding or reflection of the ideas one allegedly adheres to.
(thank you for confirming I do not need to add this movie to my watchlist!)
I think there's a problem with people who self-identify as progressive but have no real understanding of progressive ideals. Any progressive movement at it's core must be expansive and inclusive.
Also, Barbie was fun. It's a movie for kids and should be critiqued as such. Plus, despite being the highest grossing film of the year and the highest grossing film by a female director EVER, it received few award nominations and won only one for Best Song. I don't have an opinion about that either way in so much as I rarely find any one particular film truly deserving of an Oscar. It was a fun romp and financial windfall. The dialogue was fine. It's a movie about a doll for little girls it's not the French Connection and that's okay.
We’re on the same page, Brent!
This is an absolutely brilliant conversation - thank you for daring to talk about this! Me too I have a hard time to side with western feminism though I consider myself very pro-women… and I definitely understand your conflictions Nolan, have had these conversations with both my husband and brother too…
Et Macron…. Ohlala il est fou 😝 monitor women’s fertility LOL nothing surprises me anymore
Elin, I am so glad you enjoyed the conversation and that these are conversations you have with your husband and brother. This should be more common, the more we are open to dialogue about our mutual struggles as women and men, the better it will be for both.
And merci for confirming Macron is a mad man haha. I thought from someone who didn't have any children it was very rich.
I wholeheartedly agree!
And yes…. Funny story, Brigitte used to go to learn how to bake pizza with the bakers in the boulangerie just below my building when I was in a chambre de bonnes in 7 cus “petit Macron” liked pizza apparently 😆😆
Brilliant discussion and I loved reading both of your insights! I also haven’t watched Barbie and have had zero desire to, despite people I highly respect saying it was brilliant. I don’t know what to think but I guess I won’t know until I watch it…
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Doing my smart part out here in my own marriage and relationship to my sons - I’m fully open about menstruating, cups, fertility, cycles to my 7 and 9 yo.
Hello Irene,
I am so glad our piece resonated with you!
About Barbie, I think some people didn't watch it because of the constant marketing. At some point even if we didn't want to we were bombarded with this movie. Maybe I'll watch it one day. Who knows...
Dialogue with the men in our families is so important, I hope we would be more open talking femininity and masculinity at every step of life with each other.
Thank you for sharing your chat I loved the back and forth style! Being German in the UK, I found it funny to see that British people wear swim wear in the sauna and vice versa, it took me some time to adjust to Germany's nudity culture when I returned here :D
I have a lot of conversations with my bf about male / female roles, societal expectations, "energies" and what we think makes us both feel valued, loved, seen, held, supported and thriving in a relationship. I must say that I was heavily brainwashed at uni in terms of white feminism and as I've been finding my own definition over the years, I'm finding these harder and harder to discuss with others. Anything non-typical or standard feminist is often so heavily criticised.
Working with women in mentoring and coaching, it is an ongoing journey for me to figure out what that can and must look like for me as I certainly not subscribe to general opinions
Hello Carmen,
Thank you for sharing your views!
I really appreciate you sharing your experience as a German in the UK. I see your approach to nudity part of the culture of being around nature which is something we don't do in France. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have never done so much outdoor activities than when I lived in Germany.
Standard feminism has become the norm, and that's exactly why people don't like to question it. There is a lot of work to be done about what we call progressive because as far as I can see when it comes to feminism we are stuck and don't evolve.
How am I just seeing this? Can’t wait to dig in.
Me ha gustado muchoooo! Gracias por compartirla Nolan 🤗♥️
Question for Emmanuelle and Nolan:
What are you thoughts on the works of say Audre Lorde or Kimberle Crenshaw? Do they fall under the umbrella of Western feminists? I’m curious because in my opinion, someone like Angela Davis would not, but Audre and Kimberle would.
That's a great question! And I have no idea because I am not familiar enough with the work of these three women with feminism (oops, I hope I won't get the side eye by saying this) I know more about their work as activists for Black people as a whole. One thing, I'd say though is that I am Black French AND Cameroonian, and sometimes Black feminism through the Afro-American lense isn't something I necessarily feel inclined to. And it all has to do with context and the History of all the places I belong to.
But why do you say Audre Lorde or Kimberle Crenshaw fall under the umbrella of Western feminists and Angela Davis doesn't?
I don’t necessarily qualify feminist thinkers as either Western or non-Western and while Angela Davis is one of the most important American feminists of all time, I could see why some might qualify her as non-Western because her approach to emancipation is so distinctly non-American and anti-colonialist. Very different from someone like Kimberle Crenshaw who is a legal scholar famous for defining systemic racism and intersectionality. She is interested in dismantling oppressive systems from within, which I see as a classically American point of view.
It’s interesting that you say you are familiar with their writing on race and not on feminism because I think they’d both argue they talk about both at all times as that is their lived experience. For example, Kimberle first started developing the idea of intersectionality while a law student at Harvard. She was one of only three Black students in her class and the only Black woman. She was bonded to her Black peers because of their race but talks about this time when her two male counterparts were invited to join a men’s only group on campus. They all experienced exclusion because of their race but in this instance her sex added an additional barrier. So intersectional theory as defined by Crenshaw must take into account the experience of being a Black woman that include the interactions between the two identities. Being a black woman cannot be understood in terms independent of either being Black or a woman.
Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech from 1851 was very influential to Crenshaw, and I see Black feminist theory as integral to all American feminist theory because of Truth’s early contribution. So, I don’t really distinguish between Western and non-Western feminism as much as I do between second wave white feminism and third wave feminism. It sounds like the feminism you and Nolan are critical of is rooted in second wave notions of gender and race.
Thank you for explaining your point.
I probably don't feel close to feminism because in the culture I grew up in France it is very attached to a bourgeois idea. Women who 'had/have the time' to discuss it could do it because of their social class, and because bourgeoisie is white in France, it isn't something I feel close to. The feminism I am exposed to in France seems to have stopped in the late 60s. And the funniest thing is many white feminists borrow A LOT from the three Black women you cited. You will see them quote Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and Kimberle Crainshaw ad nauseam.
I remember in what Kimberle Crainshaw's intersectionality is rooted with, don't get me wrong, but I think I am less familiar with all these women feminist's work because of the way we are introduced to them in France and Europe at large. In Europe, Black feminism is still trying to find itself because we live in a space where the concept of race is denied, at worst completely buried. And rightly because it is the case, it is then difficult to tackle topics like Black feminism. To give you an example, in 2017, a French Afro-feminist group wanted to do a workshop for Black women around Black feminism in Paris. The Mayor of the city - a white woman who happens to be a Spanish immigrant (if you know French History they weren't well treated) decided to take legal action against the group with the reason that they were discriminating against white women. They were accused of anti-white racism. So with this level of hindrance to talk about our identities, you can imagine that it is difficult.
About the question of Western and non-Western feminism, I believe it is something that you become aware once you see what feminism is in other parts of the world that are not the U.S, the UK, Europe, etc. There is this very interesting Korean book called Kim Ji Young, Born in 1982 that gives an idea of what feminism is in South Korea. The story is very subtle and reflects well how the type of feminism we know in the West cannot be replicated in a context like the Korean one.
Also, all American political social theory is on some level fucked. Like, I'm not going to defend Americans because no shit we suck. But more importantly, I don't want to make the conversation a defensive one. I care little about how I am perceived and care much more that my actions are an expression of unconditional allyship. No one needs to pat me on the back or give me the benefit of the doubt. That's not the motivation and it shouldn't be the motivation for anyone else, either. Unfortunately, things don't happen that way.
My impression of gender politics in France is that they're fucked up. The spokeswomen with the spotlight come across as so incredibly tone deaf. I thought Juliette Binoche cutting her hair (into a bob) in solidarity with the women of Iran was so hollow and stupid. Whatever statement you thought you were making, you didn't. And that is one of the less insidious examples, as you know. I've always thought France to be quiet conservative. Pro-Life advocates in the United Sates since the passing of Roe vs. Wade until Dobbs cited French abortion policy as the gold standard. Some many things seem to be calibrated to appeal to men and the male gaze. Like French fashion is about self-expression but not at the expense of looking unattractive to men. It seems like French woman care A LOT if men find them attractive. I also think they have some very weird ideas about consent that continue to be reinforced in French film and fiction. But I also understand that this is not all French feminism, just the feminism most in the spotlight. Like where is the accounting for the queer experience under this bourgeoisie framework? Surely there are leaders I'm not familiar with that have been doing the hard work in France. They just don't get the attention. Like in the way your work, Emmanuelle, is to expand the idea of French fashion as one that takes into account French people of color. There are probably lots of women fighting for gender equality in the same expansive way and they should be the face of the movement. You're an example of a expansive and transformative figure who's work focuses on restructuring old notions of French identity. I would want you as the face of my movement not some It Girl or conservative Parisian Mayor.
I think another more prescient dichotomy for organizing feminist thought is to what level does the author believe true freedom can exist without dismantling the current system entirely? Is true freedom even possible under capitalism or does emancipation require tearing down the mechanics of economic oppression alongside race, gender, etc. full stop? That's not to say disenfranchisement under capitalism is the most pressing form of discrimination, just that capitalism is the means with which all other forms of oppression exist. Lol definitely doing the cliff notes version here. Hope I'm making some sense.
So Barbie, for example, is a feminist film but certainly not a radical feminist one because it is feminism under capitalism, EXPLICITLY. That's not to say there aren't good things to be uncovered from the film (I think there are), just that Barbie's idea of gender equality is a very safe and familiar one.
I see the slow march toward equality as a collective endeavor and the White woman who have excluded and continue to exclude women of color must be held accountable. They are poor spokeswomen for the cause and at odds with how I understand feminism. True feminism can only exist alongside the fight for racial equality, sexual liberation, etc. One cannot exist without the other.
Hi Kate, thanks for pitching in. I’d have to do some research about these people to have a useful response. I came across an Audre Lorde poem in university, but I never went into a deep dive. All I know about Kimberle Crenshaw is that she’s a lawyer and teaches critical theory—something very WEIRD (Western, Educated, Rich, and Democratic). That’s likely because it started in Germany, influenced by Hegel’s dialectics, and then the critical theorists moved to America when the Nazis took power. I had to use critical theory in some university classes, and I knew I couldn't share thoughts like this in those classes. As Alison Acheson mentioned, this article would not be possible at UBC. She was one of the best profs I had at UBC and she left UBC—one of the reasons being that discussions like this were no longer possible there. (Luckily, she teaches creative writing on Substack). Anyway, the more I travel and meet people from different cultures, the more I see how critical theory (as well meaning as it may be) does more to divide than unify because it uses language most people don't have access to and a lot of the research (which is full of procedural flaws from a scientific standpoint) is done through a western lens. I still have a lot of respect for critical theorists and the ideas they brought into mainstream Western culture. They have definitely made people check their privilege and have had an important impact on laws.
This is a misunderstanding of what critical race theory is. It’s a form of legal scholarship that they only teach at the postgraduate level. It’s a system of thought used to ascertain areas where racist practices like redlining have been codified in the law. I don’t know what you’re talking about hear?
A system to analyze bias in the US legal system, more specifically.
Yes, as I said, it has had an important impact on laws.
Right, but Crenshaw’s is a framework for analyzing US laws. I don’t know what you mean about Western lens and all that? What other type of lens would a framework for American legal analysis have?
You asked if I thought they were Western feminists. I mentioned I don't know enough about them. So, I brought up her ties to critical theory to explain how she could approach feminism through a Western lens.
So much truth here...