The Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid

Abstract

This essay offers a critical analysis of the Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan in terms of its synchronicity with US imperialism and militarism. While the FMF's Campaign draws public attention to the discrimination and violence facing Afghan women under the Taliban, its discourse is embedded in an ahistorical and Orientalist framework that assumes the benevolence and superiority of the US in establishing gender equality. Thus, the FMF reproduces an imperial feminism tied to US state interests in empire building – a feminism that evades accountability for the consequences of US militarism while it establishes its own power and authority in determining the future of Afghanistan. The imperial feminism of the FMF is an example of how actions taken to challenge hegemony can in fact support and reify the hegemonic projects of the state. In effect, the FMF draws upon the same imperialist and problematic ideas about women as those expressed by the Bush administration to protect Afghan women in the name of empire.

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