ABSTRACT
In early 2018, Donald Trump told British journalist Piers Morgan: “No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.” Such a statement seems contrary to a current global conversation about women’s rights. But to understand Trump’s comments as merely counter to dialogues about women’s rights is to oversimplify the statements. When we say “women’s rights,” we gloss over differences that impact the rights and visibility of many specific groups of women, like those of colour. Where whiteness intersects the issue of women’s rights, a narrative of progress co-opts the lived experiences of women of colour. This problematic narrative has given rise to recent invocations of post-feminism – the notion that feminism is no longer needed. This chapter traces a genealogy of significant images and slogans from the 2016 presidential election that reveals a systematic dismissal of intersectionality from American cultural discourses. Through rhetorical analysis, the chapter argues that intersectionality is effectively colonized by hegemonic narrative production on both sides of the political aisle through two primary techniques borrowed from Kimberlé Crenshaw, namely that of bait and switch, and the universalizing tendency.
