ABSTRACT
In the tradition of feminist, anti-racist dialogue, Houda Ali and Britt Munro reflect on the ways in which whiteness has shaped their different experiences with feminism while considering how they have navigated the entanglement of liberalism, feminism, and whiteness throughout their lives. As an Arab Muslim woman living in the Australian settler colony and a white woman living on Turtle Island (US), the authors draw on their different locations and experiences in order to question the universality of liberal norms that locate freedom in individual choice. Weaving in the scholarship that has helped them to make sense of their own experiences, the authors map out some of the ways in which gender has been used historically as a tool of racialization while considering the difficulties this can present for racialized women relating to feminism in the contemporary West. Through this dialogue, they hope to help students think critically about the historical relationship between liberal feminism and whiteness, while understanding some of the ways in which liberal-feminist discourse has been harnessed to Islamophobic ends. Ultimately, they raise these questions in the hopes that students may come to think more expansively and generously about whose lifeworlds and aspirations may be captured in the language of liberal-feminist “freedom,” and whose may not.
