Antagonizing White Feminism : Intersectionality’s Critique of Women’s Studies and the Academy

Much of the work coming out of Women’s Studies spaces narrowly defines what it means to be a woman. Antagonizing White Feminism pushes back against this exclusive discourse by invoking intersectionality and centering the experiences of Trans Women, Femmes, Women of Color, Queer Women, and Gender Variant and Gender Non- Conforming people.

Antagonizing White Feminism: Intersectionality’s Critique of Women’s Studies and the Academy pushes back against the exclusive scholarship and discourse coming out of women-centered spaces and projects, which throw up barriers by narrowly defining who can participate. Vehement resistance to using inclusive language and renaming scholarly spaces like Women’s Studies and Critical Feminism expresses itself in concerns that women are still oppressed and thus women-only spaces must be maintained. But who is a woman? What are the characteristics of a woman’s lived experience? Do affinity and a history of oppression justify exclusion?



This book shows how intersectional feminism is often underperformed and appropriated as a “woke” vocabulary by elite women who are unwilling to do the necessary emotional work around their privilege. As Trans Women, Femmes, Women of Color, Queer Women, Gender Variant, and Gender Non-Conforming scholars emerge, the heteronormative, cisgender, colonial idea of women and the feminine is rapidly under attack. The contributors believe that to engage in the necessary conversations about the oppressed performing oppression is to disrupt the exclusionary basis of monolithic understandings of the feminine. Only then can we advance the coalition needed to forge a multiracial, multicultural, queer-led, anti-imperialist feminism.