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Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!
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Refuse Fascism podcast #79:
Rafia Zakaria: Against White Feminism
Rafia Zakaria, attorney, political philosopher, and author of the new book Against White Feminism talks about abortion, Afghanistan, empire, individualism, white supremacy and more with Sam Goldman. Follow Rafia on Twitter at @rafiazakaria. Mentioned in the conversation: The Other Afghan Women by Anand Gopal.
Send your comments to [email protected] or @SamBGoldman. Or leave a voicemail at 917-426-7582 or on anchor.fm.
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>> Transcript
Rafia Zakaria: ...Essentially, [the U.S. war on Afghanistan] was a strategic war that the US wanted to show that -- it couldn't attack Saudi Arabia because of the danger to the US oil supply -- so Afghanistan was it, even though none of the hijackers were Afghan. The idea was that Al Qaeda had allegedly found refuge there. When this announcement for the war in Afghanistan is made by Colin Powell, the leaders of the Feminist Majority were actually present; literally present in the room when the announcement was made. There was almost what I describe as a signing off of feminism, like "here, here it is, now you can do your dirty deed, and I'll call it feminism." That's exactly what happened. For the years that went on after that, this idea that the US was staying in Afghanistan to protect Afghan women was the sort of moral narrative of this war. That remained the moral narrative, even until now.
Absolute erasure of the fact that in rural Afghanistan, especially, women and men, there were funerals that were bombed, there were wedding celebrations that were bombed, there were men taken off for indefinite detention at Bagram. Family structure just sort of disintegrating because the men had died and the widows didn't know how to support themselves. All of this was happening, but the front for it was "Oh look, Afghanistan has a skateboarding team." "Oh look, Afghan girls are doing robotics." They're not bad in themselves. I'm glad that some Afghan women got something out of it, but it was largely artificial. It was created and held up by U.S. aid money. Obviously now, as soon as that money has been pulled out, that entire aid economy along with the alleged progress that the US government allowed -- Afghan women had made -- is gone in an instant...
Sam Goldman:
...In this country, in the US, we are on the precipice of losing the right to abortion. It's basically gone in Texas. December 1, the Supreme Court will hear it. They've already showed their hand up how they're going to play it based in the way that they sat out of Texas. We know that the access to legal abortion matters. A lot of white feminists are telling people basically that we shouldn't be talking about women dying from abortion because it's a right-wing talking point, and the abortion pill can be safe, right? Meanwhile, they're doing away with the pill and you have to have it accessible to get. We know that with the Hyde Amendment, it's very hard for Black and brown women to access abortion to begin with. I'm wondering, given the fact that the stakes are so high, what do you think resistance needs to be in this country for people who care about pregnant people having the right to abortion?
Rafia Zakaria:
...I really see Texas as a symptom. I see it as the sort of complacency that infected the movement. Its radical aspects were all filed down and it was made pretty for capitalism and then, you know, you could wear a tutu and have nice heels and you're a feminist. That's what happens. Texas is what happens when you reduce it to that, because the other side comes to play too. They're not going to let your moment of weakness or disorganization -- they're not going to just let it pass. I think that the challenge is formidable, but my hope is that the sheer aggression of the challenge that we face post-Texas will wake up future and existing generations of feminism to the necessity of having political teeth, and making choices that are cognizant of their political and material implications on others. That's my hope, and I feel that the conversation on race is integral if we're going to have that kind of feminism, because as long as we're afraid to talk about it and we impose this sort of gag rule on women of color, where they can't demand accountability from white feminists who have had more power, we're never going to get to that political movement. The time is now. Everything is changing. Every single thing about our lives is being transformed in some way or another. I take hope in the fact that I'm a brown Muslim woman, and the fact that I could even write a book like this, it's tremendous, and it does reflect an opening that hasn't existed before, but that would be utterly eliminated if we're not vigilant in the right now.
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