📚 Finished reading Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall.

This is a searing critique of modern day mainstream feminism, at least as practiced in the US, as frequently excluding the very women who are usually the most oppressed by the system.

It takes aim particularly at “White middle-class feminism” characterising it as getting fixated on battles such as increasing the number of female middle managers who become CEOs. But this fight comes at the expense of tackling issues of true survival such as inadequate food, housing, gun violence and healthcare that are regularly experienced in silence by women in marginalised communities.

The author sees the truth as being that some women have the power to oppress other women. And too often the feminist fight has effectively been in the service of giving some women an “equal right to oppress” as the more privileged men have in a society that remains infused with ideas of white supremacy, rather than to enable the most marginalised women to live a decent life.

I’m sure its arguments and style are controversial in some quarters. But it’s certainly one of those fascinating and unsettling books that may cause some of us who identify as progressive some inner turmoil, rightfully so.

More extensive notes here.