Review of Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power by L. Olufemi, Pluto Press, 2020
“feminism means freedom, it means the right to be […] incoherent “, p. 71
Let me state outright, that I won’t be able to provide a critique of the cogent rational argument that forms the core of Ms. Olufemi's book, for the simple fact that even the most diligent search will not find an argument of that sort there.
I am going to prove with ample internal and external evidence, that the book does not present an articulated argument for anything. That it is little more than a haphazard collection of claims, that are not only not supported by evidence, but do not even form a consistent sequence.
All references are to the paperback 2020 edition.
Preamble
The most striking feature of the book before us is that it is difficult to find a way to approach it. A sociological study and a political pamphlet still have something in common: they have a goal. The goal is to convince the reader. The methods of convincing can be quite different, involve data and logic and authority. But in any case, something is needed. As you start reading Feminism Interrupted you are bound to find that this something is hidden very well. Indeed, as I just counted, one of the first sections Who’s the boss has as many claims as it has sentences (some claims are in the form of rhetorical questions). There, as you see, was no space left for any form of supporting argumentation. Because it is not immediately obvious how to analyse a text with such a (non-)structure, let me start the same way as Ms. Olufemi starts in Introduction and just read along, jotting down notes and impressions, gradually finding our way through the book, forming a conception of the whole.
The following is a numbered list of places in the book that made me sigh or laugh. They are classified as: E (not supported by Evidence), C (Contradiction with itself or an earlier claim) and I (Incoherence). These classes are necessarily arbitrary and overlapping. I will also provide a commentary about some common themes and undercurrents running through the book.
One may object that this is too pedantic a way to review a book. Well, maybe it is, but this is the only way I know to lay ground for justifiable conclusions, with which my review will be concluded.
Notes on the text
1.E, p. 4: “neo-liberalism refers to the imposition of cultural and economic policies and practices by NGOs and governments in the last three to four decades that have resulted in the extraction and redistribution of public resources from the working class upwards “ — this of course has very little to do with the definition of Neo-liberalism. Trivial as it is, this sentence introduces one of the most interesting and unexpected themes that will resurface again and again: Ms. Olufemi, a self-anointed radical feminist from the extreme left of the political spectrum, in many respects is virtually indistinguishable from her brethren on the opposite side. Insidious “NGOs” machinating together with governments against common people are the staple imagery of the far-right.
2.C, p. 5: “… that feminism has a purpose beyond just highlighting the ways women are ‘discriminated’ against… It taught me that feminism’s task is to remedy the consequences of gendered oppression through organising… For me, ‘justice work’ involves reimagining the world we live in and working towards a liberated future for all… We refuse to remain silent about how our lives are limited by heterosexist, racist, capitalist patriarchy. We invest in a political education that seeks above all, to make injustice impossible to ignore. “ — With a characteristic ease, that we will appreciate to enjoy, Ms. Olufemi tells us that feminism is not words, and in the very next sentence, supports this by her refusal to remain silent.
3.C, p. 7: “Pop culture and mainstream narratives can democratise feminist theory, remove it from the realm of the academic and shine a light on important grassroots struggle, reminding us that feminism belongs to no one. “ —- Right after being schooled on how the iron fist of capitalist patriarchy controls every aspect of society, we suddenly learn that the capitalist society media welcomes the revolution.
4.C, p. 8: This is the first time that Ms. Olufemi has decided to cite a source (an article from Sp!ked, 2018). The reference is in the form of a footnote, and the footnote is a 70-character URL. That is what almost all her references and footnotes look like. A particularly gorgeous URL is in footnote 3 on p. 53: it’s 173 characters, of which the last 70 are unreadable gibberish. Am I supposed to retype this character-by-character on my phone? Or the references are for ornamentation only? In any case, it seems Ms. Olufemi either cannot hide her extreme contempt for the readers, or spent her life among people with an unusual amount of leisure.
5.E, p. 15: “When black feminists […] organised in the UK […] [t]hey were working towards collective improvement in material conditions… For example…” — The examples provided are: Grunwick strike by South Asian women and an Indian lady, Jayaben Desai. Right in the next sentence after that, Ms. Olufemi concludes: “There is a long history of black women […] mounting organised and strategic campaigning and lobbying efforts“. Again as in 2.C, she is completely unabated by the fact that the best examples of black feminist activities that she is able to furnish, have nothing to do with black feminists.
6.E. p. 23: “Critical feminism argues that state sexism has not lessened [for the last 50 years]“. Evidence: “MPs in parliament hide the very insidious ways that the state continues to enable male dominance … “ —- tension rises! — “the Conservative government introduced their plans to pass a Domestic Violence Bill with the intention of increasing the number of convictions for perpetrators of abuse…. “ — which looks good on the surface, but of course — “it is simply another example of the way the state plays on our anxieties about women’s oppression to disguise the enactment of policies that trap women in subordinate positions.” — Finally, we are about to learn how exactly the governments (and NGOs, remember!) keep women subjugated for the last 50 years, we are agog with curiosity! — “Research from the Prison Reform Trust has found an increase in the number of survivors being arrested” (p. 24) — And then… And then there is nothing. How does this prove that things are not better than 50 years ago? Just follow Mr. Olufemi example, and completely expunge from your mind everything that you claimed more than five sentences and seconds ago.
7.C, p. 26. “But this figure does not tell the whole story. The impact of these cuts is felt particularly by low-income black women and women of colour. “ — Another constant motif of the book is that Ms. Olufemi alternately blames the state for violence and overreach, only to immediately request expansion of paternalistic services and welfare.
8.C, p. 27: “If a woman must disclose […] that she has been raped […] her dignity, agency and power over personal information is compromised. “ — In a sudden turn of events our feminist seems to argue that it would be preferable for rape survivors to stay silent.
9.E, p. 28: When she does provide any sort of supporting evidence, it feels better that she wouldn’t: “We know that thousands of disabled people have died as a direct result of government negligence surrounding Personal Independence Payments […]9“ — The footnote is nothing but a 100 character URL, that I patiently typed in, only to be greeted with 404. According to webarchive.org, the referred-to page never existed. Ultimately, after many false starts (whose details I shall spare you), I found the document at a completely different web-site: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2018-12-19/203817 . Imagine my (lack of) surprise, when it turned out that government “negligence” is neither mentioned nor in any way implied or imputed—Ms. Olufemi simply fabricated the whole story.
10.I, p.29: “[In Yarl’s Wood IRC] they are locked in, unable to leave and subjected to surveillance by outsourced security guards. Tucked away in Bedford outside of the public consciousness, it’s hard to think of a more potent example of state violence.” — Judgment of anybody who, in the world of wars, continuous genocides and slaughter of human beings, maintains that the worst example of state violence is the sufferings of the women, who fled their ruined countries to the relative safety of the UK, must be thoroughly questioned. The second quoted sentence is also indefensible grammatically.
11.E, p. 30: In support of her claim that the state violently oppresses black women, Ms. Olufemi provides stories of 3 black women, that died in police custody over the course of… 50 years. “they reveal a pattern“ — she confidently concludes. No, they don’t. Statistical data would, but they do not support Ms. Olufemi’s thesis. She then proceeds to lament “a dystopian nightmare for the undocumented migrants“ — conveniently forgetting that these people tried as hard as they could to move to the dystopian UK and none of them hurried back. The section the quote is from is called State Killings — the 3 examples provided are somehow put in the same rubric as the doings of Pol-Pot and Mao.
12.E, p. 31: “If black women die disproportionately at the hands of the police, historically and in the present moment” — and then she proceeds on the assumption that they do, without providing any evidence. Immediately available public data (from INQUEST and IOPC reports), clearly refute the premise.
13.C, p. 32: “This refusal to participate [in capitalism] takes many forms: feminist activists are finding new and creative ways to oppose austerity.“ — Ms. Olufemi’s personal creative way to refuse to participate in the capitalist economy is to copyright a book, publish it with a publishing corporation (a capitalist enterprise, mind you) and then collect the royalties.
14.E., p. 33: “Sisters Uncut has put domestic and sexual violence on the national agenda” — Ms. Olufemi’s desire to prop her friends is laudable, but it does not eliminate the need to provide evidence.
15.I., p.33: “When I ask Sandy where the idea to create Sisters came from, she tells me” — Who’s Sandy? No Sandy was mentioned before. A certain Sandy Stone, the author of A Posttranssexual Manifesto appears 30 pages later, but it is unlikely she is meant here. The simple present tense of the sentence uncannily reminds of the way children talk about their imaginary friends.
16.C., p. 36: “So that just […] – Shulamith Firestone” — Oops, Ms. Olufemi approvingly quotes S. Firestone — a central figure in the so much derided second-wave liberal feminism.
17.C, p. 38: Trying to tie ‘social reproduction’ to race, Ms. Olufemi notices: “Wealthy white women have always been able to exercise greater agency over their reproductive capacity because they can afford private healthcare and specialist medical advice “, omitting to mention that so have wealthy black women too. The difference, as she herself emphasised with the “because” part, is in wealth not race. Mr. Olufemi then proceeds to build far-reaching conclusions from this rather trivial error.
18.E, p. 39: Being a radical revolutionary, Ms. Olufemi is not afraid to cast aspersions on defenceless dead women: “Margaret Sanger, reproductive rights advocate responsible for the first birth control-clinic in the United States was a vocal eugenicist“ — the consensus in the literature is that M. Sanger was not a eugenist or racist in any shape of form. See
- Roberts, Dorothy (1998). Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 9780679758693. LCCN 97002383, p.77--78
- Gordon, Linda (2002). The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252027642.
- Valenza, Charles (1985). "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?". Family Planning Perspectives. 17 (1). Guttmacher Institute: 44–46. doi:10.2307/2135230. JSTOR 2135230. PMID 3884362
Ms. Olufemi’s source? Angela Davis. At this point, let me make an aside. Ms Olufemi treats Angela Davis as a kind of mother figure and a hero: she quotes her left and right, and puts her on the blurb of the back cover. Angela Davis, in the meantime, is a KGB stooge, a “useful idiot” in an apt expression of Lenin. That beacon of freedom-fighting unashamedly praised and was on the pay of the Soviet communist regime that, as was very well-known at the time, organised the extermination of tens of millions of people.
19.C, p. 41: Suddenly Ms. Olufemi lashes out against contraceptives, linking them to… eugenic: “eugenics has shaped our notion of family […] the racist logic of ‘population control’ that birthed the desire for contraceptives” — in this place again, it’s difficult to tell her from far-right and religious fundamentalists.
20.C, p. 44: “nobody understands the stakes around the right to access abortion and reproductive justice more than working class women“ — That looks like a good point to discuss Ms. Olufemi’s background. Far from being qualified to understand the “stakes”, she comes from what definitely does not look like a working class: after graduating from a privileged grammar school, she was immediately forced by the oppressive patriarchal society to study at Cambridge. Her PhD. research was sponsored (via TECHNE AHRC) by the very same government that she so mercilessly scrutinises in the present opus.
21.E, p. 44: “Ireland is coded ‘white’, and ‘Irish woman’ means only those who fall under that coding“ — neither of these claims is supported. Fortunately they are, as usual, in no way used in the following, because Ms Olufemi quickly switches to other, equally unsupported, claims.
22.E, p. 47: “English MPs voted […] to change Northern Ireland’s abortion law […]. This means that Abortion in Northern Ireland has only recently been decriminalised, the possibility of persecution has been lifted from those administering and undergoing abortions. “ — (Capitalisation as in the original.) There were no “underground” abortions in N. Ireland, because free abortions were available in England, a few hours away on a ferry.
23.E, p. 47: “The tendency to consider the UK a progressive environment for reproductive justice sorely underestimates the number of people, who despite the change in law may still have no recourse to abortion services“ — Well, then tell us.
24.E, p. 48: “Winning radically would mean […] a world without work” — That’s refreshingly honest, even though Marx won’t approve of such blatant revisionism.
25.E, p. 50: “throughout history, to be ‘female’ has often meant death, mutilation and oppression” — this unsupported claim is clearly wrong. Throughout history, most victims of violence by a large margin were and are men. Most people killed in the wars are men. Most people dying a violent death are men. Most people in prisons and mental institutions are men. More than 90% of work-related deaths happen to men.
26.I, p. 50: “If there are only two categories, it is easier for us to organise the world and attach feelings, emotions and ways of being to each one.“ — If it were so, then all categories would have been binary: there would have been 2 nations, 2 fashion styles, etc.
27.C, p. 50 Ms. Olufemi continues to argue that gender is fluid and a person can change it at will. Her arguments: “there is no way to adequately describe what gender is. Every definition does a disservice to the shifting, multiple and complex set of power relations that come to shape a person’s gender.“ — It would be interesting to trace her train of thought if “gender” were replaced with “race” in this sentence. As race is much more of a social construct and less rooted in biology, surely Ms. Olufemi would agree that we should welcome when a “racially dysphoric” white person claims to be black. Unfortunately that would uproot her basic tenet about the exclusivity of black women’s experience and its central role in the formation of radical feminism.
28.C, p. 52: “If one group of people consistently behave, speak, move, present themselves in one way and another in the ‘opposite’ way, we reaffirm the idea that there is actually an inherent difference between those two groups when no such difference exists.“ — I guess the groups Ms. Olufemi has in mind are males and females. Or maybe whites and blacks?
29.C, p. 52: “Many intersex infants […] have surgery to ‘correct’ their genitalia without their consent.“ — That’s an interesting notion. Should we abstain from, for example, fixing broken bones of small children, until such time as they would be mature enough to consent?
30.E, p. 53: “Many women are physically stronger than men; many men are physically weaker than women. These are not exceptions that defy a rule; there simply is no rule.” — This betrays an utter ignorance of statistics and data. Normal distribution of strength (as measured, for example, by grip tests) in a population with different means for males and females is among the most reliably established anthropometrical facts.
31.E, p. 54: “To argue that there is a clear difference between sex and gender serves to solidify the idea that biological sex, prior to human beings inventing it and naming its tenants, exists.“ — here again Ms. Olufemi joins far-right and religious fundamentalists in her anti-science stance and denial of the evolutionary origin of mechanisms of sexual reproduction. The objective existence of biological sex, manifested in morphological, physiological and behavioural differences (sexual dimorphism) is attested beyond the slightest doubt across the entire animal kingdom.
32.E, p.68: “It is the public rejoicing at 19-year-old Shamima Begum being stripped of her citizenship “ — Ms. Olufemi chose as her example of Islamophobia a girl who joined ISIS, and became there an enforcer that threatened other women with death lest they comply with ISIS rules, stripped suicide vests into their clothes and ended up burying all her 3 children in this non-secular utopia.
33.E, p. 71: “Muslim women are the most economically disenfranchised group in the country.” — this simple claim is simply wrong. According to the UK Office for National Statistics, the most economically disenfranchised group in the UK are (as expected) refugees and asylum seekers, followed (unfortunately for Ms. Olufemi) by white workers in “post-industrial” (read: de-industrialised) communities.
34.C, p. 74: “A staunchly secular way of thinking about our lives and bodies limits Muslim women’s ability to understand themselves “ — Ms. Olufemi sympathy for organised monotheistic religions and her distrust in the secular society is rather unexpected. It is not clear how to reconcile her idea that to better understand themselves women should abandon secularism and return to the church or mosque with the feminist dogma.
35.I, p. 76: “creation of a public outcry about ‘Asian Grooming Gangs.’” — It’s sad that a feminist can scary-quote and dismiss one of the most horrible cases of mass abuse of women. A sacrifice of the suffering of more than a thousand girls to make a vindictive political point does not paint Ms. Olufemi as a good human being.
36.I, p. 86: “Art is a tool for feminist propaganda “ — Unfortunately Ms. Olufemi forgot that this chapter is called Art for Art’s Sake and its main thesis is that art of not a tool of anything. Notice also how she repeats Stalin and Goebbels almost verbatim.
37.C, p. 88: “Poor women do not get to make art: the fact that Saye’s work could be displayed in one of the most prestigious arenas in the world … calls us to wake up to the cruelty of inequity. ” — This is probably one of the most impressive examples of Ms. Olufemi’s ability to forget the beginning of a sentence (that she wrote!) by the time she gets to its middle — she demonstrates that poor women cannot make art by an example of a poor woman whose art became fashionable and famous. But then she easily outdoes herself! By the time we get to the end of the sentence, she forgets what was in the middle (or otherwise she thinks that being displayed at a Venice Biennale is unusually cruel).
38.C, p. 89: “Momtaza Mehri, essayist, researcher and former Poet Laureate for young people, tells me. ” — Ms. Olufemi continues to give proof of art being unavailable to poor women by providing another example: of a poor woman who was a Poet Laureate.
39.I, p. 110: “The idea that justice is served when criminals go to prison is relatively new. […] Ironically, prisons were introduced in order to make punishment more ‘humane’.” — Unironically, this is one of the most blatantly ignorant statements to grace printing press lately. Prisons, as known to anybody with even superficial knowledge of history, existed as long as states did. There are some echoes of Foucault in that sentence, but poorly read or remembered, because his conclusion was the opposite.
40.E, p. 123: “In July 2019, Cancer Research UK, fundraising partners with dieting organisation Slimming World, launched a multi-million pound campaign using defunct scientific indicators to claim that obesity was the second leading cause of cancer. “ — This is outright dangerous. Spreading falsehoods to the vulnerable people in the risk groups is extremely irresponsible. Large‑scale cohort studies show that higher body mass index (BMI) and excess adiposity correlate with increased incidence and worse outcomes for multiple cancer types. These data form the backbone of public‑health recommendations promoting weight management:
- Renehan AG, Tyson M, Egger M, Heller RF, Zwahlen M. “Body-mass index and incidence of cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective observational studies.” The Lancet, 371(9612), 569-578 (2008).
- Bhaskaran K, Douglas I, Forbes H, dos-Santos-Silva I, Leon DA, Smeeth L. “Body-mass index and risk of 22 specific cancers: a population-based cohort study of 5·24 million UK adults.” The Lancet, 384(9945), 755-765 (2014).
41.I, p. 124: “There is no clearer manifestation of neo-liberalism than in our attitudes towards bodies. “ — this, in the words of Pauli “is not even wrong”, whatever “attitudes toward bodies” means, they are not the clearest manifestation of neo-liberalism.
42.C, p. 125: “the myth that fatness means ill health” — Again, Ms Olufemi would be home with far-right conspiracy theorists. Excess adipose tissue (body fat) is strongly linked to a variety of health problems, including hypertension, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, and certain cancers. Medical researchers generally treat obesity as a risk factor that actively contributes to many of these conditions.
43.I, p. 126: “Nearly half of single parents in the UK – working or unemployed – live in relative poverty. “ — That’s because relative poverty is defined by the UK statistical agencies as “being poorer than half of the population”.
At this point your humble Scheherazade broke off in exhaustion.
Conclusions
“we need to remove the shame in the way we talk about acceptable forms of killing” — p. 48
I hope my notes demonstrated that even the most lenient and indulgent reader would quickly conclude that Feminism Interrupted is balderdash. That would be, however, too trivial a conclusion. Everything has a purpose and Ms. Olufemi book can find one with our help. As far as I can see, the purpose is to realise that even though incoherent and rambling, the text has a texture, some recurrent images appear again and again:
1. Ms Olufemi continuously laments the exploitation, poverty and oppression of women in the UK. Well, as everything in human condition, exploitation is relative. Ms. Olufemi enjoys the life of comfort, privilege and ease unimaginable to anyone outside of the scopes of the "developed" (i.e., capitalist) world or the last hundred years. She imagines a utopia of a stateless society free of "exploitation", but there is no indication that this eschaton is possible. It is not even a practical possibility that is questionable, but logical: is her image free of internal contradictions? All attempts to realise this millenialist dream, from Bogomils to Soviet and Chinese communists, are remembered for little besides industrial scale murder they invariably resulted in.
2. Ms. Olufemi’s feelings toward organised religion are clearly ambiguous. On one hand, she presumably understands that organised religion is the core institution of patriarchy that maintains and perpetuates values and structures that she finds so odious. On the other hand, she obviously cannot stop expressing her admiration of the austere faith of Mohammed, comparing it favourably with the decadent secular societies of the West.
3. Ms. Olufemi cannot decide whether she wants to abolish the state or expand it tremendously. Often in the course of the same period she registers her conviction that the state is evil and should be abolished, only to proceed to point out how unjust it is that the state does not sufficiently help the dispossessed and to request enlargement of welfare.
4. As was noted on many occasions, many of Ms. Olufemi’s positions echo ones of far-right conspirologists. Her distrust of science and NGOs makes one reconsider the “horseshoe theory” favourably.
