Unlearning the Good Intentions of Western Feminism- A White Feminist’s Reckoning Through Postcolonial Feminism

Summary

A white American woman’s journey from Western feminism to Postcolonial feminism.

As a white woman in America, I always thought that I was following the closest path to feminism that a person could and doing my part to “bring down the patriarchy”. I spent the first 37 years of my life believing this, right up until this Fall 2025, the beginning of my senior year at Syracuse University. That semester I emailed Dr. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, the instructor for “WGS 452 Feminism and Postcolonial Studies”, a course above my education level that I was requesting permission to take. The course description interested me, and being a “good feminist”, I assumed I would find the content exciting. My naivety was immediately clear in that first email to Dr. Mohanty, where I rambled on about how I would be “interested in a deeper understanding of the role that feminism has played in our country and society”. When I read the title of the course I thought “postcolonial” referred to the time after the American Revolution in the late 18^th century. My misunderstanding wasn’t random; it was a product of the Western narratives I had been trained to see as universal.

The primary assigned text for this course was Feminist Postcolonial Theory: The Reader, edited by Reina Lewis and Sara Mills. My first assignment was to read Part I, section 1.4, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” by Dr. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and then write a critical response paper along with a presentation. In this piece, Dr. Mohanty argues that Western feminist thought usually depends on “discursive colonization” (Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes”), the imposition of Western categories onto non-Western women. This idea, along with many others in her essay, completely shattered my assumptions that feminism was universal. 

I chose to write about this experience for my HASTAC project because it belongs in a public space committed to critical pedagogy, decolonial thinking, and feminist accountability. Experiencing Mohanty’s critique opened me to how deeply Western feminism can universalize women’s experiences, erase cultural and political differences, and reproduce colonial logic even with “good intentions”. Recognizing this forced me to confront the limits of the feminism I had practiced my entire life. This post follows how I came to understand that Western feminism, especially its white liberal forms, can reinforce the same hierarchies it claims to dismantle. Through postcolonial feminist theory and classroom conversations, I am learning that my role as a white feminist is not to lead, rescue, or define feminism to others, but to listen, unlearn, and use my positionality to interrupt harm instead of perpetuating it. 

Growing up in America the idea of feminism was never a new word; its meaning rooted in movements such as Women’s Suffrage, and equal rights, for as long as I can remember. Feminism meant that women are equal to men in all ways and should have the same exact access to things such as jobs, equal pay, and human rights as the men they lived and worked with had. The fight has always been for autonomy, a vote, a place in male-dominated spaces, and access. Solidarity in feminism meant speaking out for the “oppressed women” of the “other” cultures that didn’t know how to speak up or didn’t “know better”. White-liberal feminism was just feminism, and all other forms were male-dominated narratives that kept these “victims” down. 

This thought pattern is perfectly explained in Gloria Wekker’s “White Innocence” where Wekker argues that Dutch (and widely Western) self-concepts are built on the paradox of the belief that they are inherently tolerant while at the same time benefitting from colonial histories (Wekker, “The House That Race Built”). Media, education, and mainstream rhetoric in America uphold these ideals, portraying Western women as “more liberated” in all manner from their dress and sexual liberation, to the “right” to vote and work in male-dominated fields. The reinforcements in Western feminism implicitly cast Global South, Indigenous, Black, and migrant women as victims to be taught what freedom should look like for them, while giving emotional comfort to Western feminists through feeling righteous, progressive, and benevolent.

The earliest form of Western feminist thought that I can recall having and questioning, was around women and veiling.  Coming from New York, I vividly remember September 11, 2001, and the horrors that took place in New York City that morning. I also vividly remember the rhetoric immediately after around Muslim people, especially Muslim women. The simplified version was that Muslim men were scary and dangerous, and that Muslim women were their primary victims. The veil was a means of oppression to these women, and a part of how Muslim men kept control over them. However, this would be the first time I questioned what I would later come to know as Western feminism, and how it could claim something about an entire group of women who all differed from it so much.

One of the first disruptions to my idea of feminism came from Evelyn Peters’ piece on Indigenous women navigating urban spaces that are shaped by settler colonialism. Peters emphasizes that gender cannot be separated from histories of land theft, displacement, and racialized violence, and that Indigenous women’s experiences are formed within geographies Western feminism almost never touches (Peters, “Subversive Spaces”). Her point of view made it abundantly clear that my previous mind frame for understanding “women’s issues” left entire histories, and entire peoples, out of the picture. 

Lila Abu-Lughod’s critique of the Western impulse to “save” Muslim women was another catalyst for my deepened understanding of what feminism is and isn’t. Her argument hit right at the core of the feminism I had been performing one driven by good intentions but firmly grounded in the assumption that women elsewhere, or the “other” women, needed to be rescued. Abu-Lughod emphasizes that rescue narratives simplify the beautiful and varied lives of Muslim women, making their lives appear as evidence of cultural failure instead of political or historical complexity (Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”). What she brings to attention is that “saving” isn’t neutral, it is a way for Western feminists and Western nations to position themselves as morally superior. Reading this struck me because I recognized myself in that impulse to help, not realizing that my version of help was based in the belief that I know what liberation should look like for others based on my own feelings and knowledge (or lack there of). 

These readings really exposed how thoroughly Western feminism can destroy difference, erase context, and replicate colonialism that I didn’t even know how to recognize. In my own self-righteous quest to be a “good feminist”, I ignored the most important fact of being a white feminist; ignorance is the greatest white privilege, and it exists in every facet of life. Each reading lent a hand in revealing how easily feminism becomes dangerous when it assumes a single definition of womanhood, a single example of agency, or a single path to liberation. After decades of thinking I understood feminism, I was faced with the reality that I had only understood the most narrow, Western view of it, and that view was completely constructed on exclusions that I had the privilege of not seeing before. 

At this point, white Western feminism is starting to look grossly close to commodity or corporate feminism, completely shaped by corporate interests instead of meaningful change. It falls so perfectly in line with the ideal neoliberalist nation that the current administration seeks to impose even further upon its people. Most Western feminists, especially white Western feminists, would emphasize the need to “help” the “other women” that they see being victimized, mostly because they don’t reflect the same kinds of “freedoms” that the white Western woman has come to value. Sara Farris points out one major way that white Western feminists, politicians, and neoliberals form silent alliances is by framing migrant men as threats to women’s rights. In “In the Name of Women’s Rights” Farris’ concept of “femonationalism” highlights how Western feminism can be mobilized to support racism and nationalism (Farris, “In the Name of Women’s Rights”).

None of this is to say that I think Western feminism is the only feminism in America, but instead that it is the most prevalent, which falls in line with white women being the most prevalent group of women in the United States. The universalism maintained by Western feminism presents gender oppression as the same across cultures, erasing the lived realities of colonized, racialized, migrant, and Indigenous women, setting the starting point for all feminism at a neutral level. As Chela Sandoval explains in “U.S. Third World Feminism”, women-of-color feminists must remain flexible, using adaptive strategies to navigate intersecting systems of power that women in mainstream white feminism often have the privilege of not understanding (Sandoval, “U.S. Third World Feminism). Sandoval also highlights that where Western feminism fails is in its inability to shift perspectives in the same way that oppressed groups must.

While Western feminism’s universal woman is built on whiteness, middle-class norms, and Euro-American histories, those same building blocks also maintain the “woman who needs saving” narrative, a colonially constructed figure imagined from uninformed narratives. As Sara Farris notes, feminist language and what is packaged as “concern for women” has increasingly been used in European feminism, when in reality it is a function of cover for racist and nationalist agendas (Farris, “In the Name of Women’s Rights). These white Western feminists, right-wing politicians, and neoliberal administrations form not-so-silent alliances that weaponize “women’s rights” to police borders, ensuring our white women safety from the portrayed delinquent immigrant man. All of this is wrapped up to look like we are saving our migrant women from the men they used to be suppressed by, so that they can achieve our covetable white Western feminism goals. None of this was the feminism that I took part in… Except it was.

When we read “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle” by Angela Davis, these ideas and feelings all started coming together. Davis argues that liberation struggles around the world are interconnected, while critiquing Western feminism for failing to link gender oppression with racism, militarism, and imperialism, basically aligning instead with nationalist power structures (Davis, “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle”). This has recently been mirrored in one of the most visible ways for me since taking this knowledge in, with the current actions of the Trump administration and its drive to erase the ways that states are using race and nationalism to legitimize immigrant violence and racial gerrymandering. Seeing men being ripped out of their cars, homes, and workplaces to be sent to detention camps, and then to non-native countries, or worse disappeared, all in the name of “protecting our women”. But the only women we are protecting are the white Western woman, with no regard for the life-altering effects it has on our migrant women.

Learning how Western feminism causes harm means rethinking how I participate in feminist movements, from centering myself to taking responsibility for the structures that have shaped my perspective. Unlearning must be a core feature in this journey and acknowledging what is being let go and why will be the primary force behind this. White feminists need to loudly face how whiteness has shaped their own understanding, authority, and emotional responses, while quietly applying it in their work to dismantle Western feminism. 

Linda Martín Alcoff suggests that whiteness structures how white people interpret the world; it is neither invisible nor is it neutral (Alcoff, “An Analytic of Whiteness”). She goes on to argue that white individuals have an ethical obligation to understand how their standpoint affects their interactions and political commitments. This means facing the fact that the only point of view I have bothered to enter feminism with is my own, acting with my voice instead of my silence. My feminism cannot pretend to be universal; it has to acknowledge and understand my own limitations and distortions from my positionality.

True feminism demands that difference be centered, not erased. Solidarity can only happen by respecting unique histories and locations. My role cannot be to “relate” by assuming sameness, but instead to build relationships that honor and give space to difference. Avtar Brah argues that meaningful feminist coalitions must be built on relationships that don’t demand sameness or assimilation, and that solidarity can only come from recognizing histories that shaped each person’s experience (Brah, “Decolonial Imaginings”). Instead of basing feminism on the exclusion of certain groups, behaviors, and beliefs, it invites feminists to form connections grounded in accountability and not heroism. 

The assumption that all women have the same understanding of agency or liberation and those who didn’t just hadn’t been told, is one that I intend to purposely oppose in my future path of feminism. My responsibility now is to avoid projecting my own idea of liberation onto others. Practicing feminism now means listening to those whose voices have historically been oppressed, the voices of my neighbors that don’t look like me, and the voices of the people who aren’t from here. Feminism must confront the colonial foundations of gender and actively dismantle it. It has to be collaborative, which cannot happen if it isn’t first and foremost honest so that the material we share is rooted in justice across borders, and not just in white Western desires for feminism. My feminism must now move beyond the U.S., past my own experiences, and into global structures of power and how they manipulate and create the versions of feminism that most benefit them instead of the women it is meant to.

My commitment moving forward is to the women whom I never truly considered before. The ones I often thought of in my feminist daydreams, but only as victims and never to be learned from. I vow to take a back seat and follow the lead of feminists of color, while purposely furthering my understanding of feminism as anti-colonial and anti-racist. There will no longer be space for savior narratives in my version of feminism, instead I will intentionally practice solidarity instead of charity. My bias will now be forefront of every interaction and story I have, and I will spend my activism time listening to learn instead of learning to listen.