Laura Morlock

Feminism in a Diverse World

When I was an undergrad, I had the privilege of taking one of the most life-shaping courses of my long student experience from an Innu elder. I learned (and continue to learn) many things from her, but I often reflect on the first story I heard from her.

As a young woman studying at a university in Southern Ontario, she was a long way from her Labrador home. Everything was completely different. Interested in women’s experiences and history, early in her undergraduate career she took an introductory Women’s Studies course.

The first half of the semester, however, she was completely confused. The professor, the TA, and her classmates kept speaking about “women’s experiences,” but she didn’t know what they were talking about. She had grown up on reserve, and this wasn’t how things worked in the world she came from. Then, one day, the light went on. “Ooooooh. I see what’s going on. They’re talking about Western women’s experiences.” Then she told my class, “You see, not once did anyone bother to say that they were only talking about Western women. They just assumed. But this was not the story of the women I came from.”

That story has stayed with me over the decade since, and I have often revisited it. In what ways do we speak of experiences as though they are universal? Assumed? A given? Even (especially?) when we’re trying to challenge oppressive systems, or make space for new voices?

In my work, I have dug deep into the arguments against women wearing niqabs in North American society. There are many and varied reasons some oppose the niqab, but I’ll reserve that discussion for another post. And yes, some of the fiercest voices of opposition come from within Muslim communities. Again, a conversation for another time. But that aside, in addition to the oppositional voices you expect to hear (*cough* “go back to where you came from,” “you’re in Canada now,” etc.), a significant percentage of the publicly articulated opposition comes from feminists. When doing my doctoral research, I was disappointed to see how many brilliant and well-spoken (non-Muslim) feminist scholars and leaders turned these skills against women making choices for themselves and their bodies, negating these women’s own confirmation and demonstration of their experiences.

There is certainly some irony in this. Back in 1988, Karen Offen (a preeminent feminist scholar) wrote Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach that laid some ground rules for what feminism “is” — ground rules that are now well-established and still in play. Amongst Offen’s core tenets is this golden nugget: feminism recognizes the validity of women’s experiences and self-assessment of their status in society. In other words, believe women when they talk about what life is like for them. How then can some feel it’s not only appropriate but imperative to dismiss North American niqabi women’s self-assessment in favour of a blanket you-are-oppressed narrative?

(By the way, “niqabi” is short-hand for a niqab-wearing woman)

As an ideology and as a movement, feminism seeks to rebalance society for everybody’s benefit (spoiler alert: patriarchy is bad for everyone, even the ones who benefit from it). This can’t happen if we don’t “recognize the validity” of what women tell us about their choices and experiences, even if it is completely different from truths we assume to be universally acknowledged.