Issues

 It can hardly come as a surprise to anyone that governments – like corporations – employ spin to portray their actions in the best possible light (and to cast their opponents in the worst possible light). Nor is it news that many corporations – and the PR companies they employ – operate a revolving door for helpful politicians.

Like most parents in Canada, I have grieved for Rehtaeh Parsons, the 17-year-old teenager that committed suicide April 7 after being sexually assaulted two years ago. After the assault, she was cyberbullied until her breaking point.

As a parent, this terrifies me. I know I am in way over my head. Every parent feels that “kids didn’t act like that when I was young.” But for parents today, it’s a little more accurate.

The occasion of International Women’s Day is an apt time to discuss how abstract ideas of global sisterhood and women’s universal human rights hide the actual differences of class and social location which divide women in the real world, and how certain varieties of feminism not only cannot address the real foundations of women’s subjugation, but may in fact contribute to them.

In the 19th and early 20th century, the civilising mission through which colonialism was justified was supported by western feminists who spoke in the name of a ‘global sisterhood of women’ and aimed to ‘save’ their brown sisters from the shackles of tradition and barbarity. Today, this imperialist feminism has re-emerged in a new form, but its function remains much the same – to justify war and occupation in the name of ‘women’s rights’ . Unlike before, this imperialist feminist project includes feminists from the ‘Global South’.