Oparah, Julia. 1998. ‘Other Kinds of Dreams’: Women’s Organisations and the Politics of Transformation. London: Routledge. Olufemi’s book is a brave manifesto. There is a lot at stake in asking us to dismantle our current systems and overhaul them completely. And women who have benefited from these oppressive systems by being allowed an inch of hegemony will not give up without a fight. The commonplace idea of “waves” of feminism may give a misleading picture of incremental achievements, inch by inch, stride by stride — allowing us to tell ourselves comfortable stories about progress. However, these histories are built on colonial, racist, capitalist narratives that leave patriarchy intact while excluding many women. Perhaps the most ironic aspect of white feminism is that, by subscribing to a limited struggle, women lose out on a prospect of overarching liberation which would benefit us all. Raymond’s argument relied, at least in part, on the importance of biology in forming women’s bodily integrity. ‘Transsexualism’

Olufemi starts from looking at “the sexist state” and its use of austerity and state violence. Here, she maintains a decisive focus on British cases — avoiding the all-too-common tendency for discussions of racist police violence to end up deflecting attention to the United States alone. The incarceration of asylum seekers in institutions such as Yarl’s Wood detention center is a crucial focus, here: feminist struggles which focus on citizenship-based rights neglect the fact that some of the most vulnerable women, most in need of solidarity, are denied access to those very rights. This demands an overhaul of a state system whose own structures perpetuate patriarchal violence. I’ve stopped viewing certain thinkers as infallible or their theories as impervious to critique. I really want to stress how crucial it is that people who are trying to craft a radical understanding of the world remain unashamed of the places that they began. I try to have empathy for those other versions of myself. I think remaining flexible in that way also helps us trace what it was that caused those shifts – affective experiences, reading, material conditions etc, which will matter a lot in a ‘post-COVID’ political moment when more people will begin to question state power.Popular TERF arguments in the public eye centre on the safety of children. Perhaps one of the most insidious is the idea that young children, who are grappling with gender, are being pushed into early transition. The logic holds that young women (especially butch lesbians and those who are gender non-conforming) are being given an easy way to ‘opt out’ of womanhood or lesbianism because of societal pressure to become trans men. Straight women attached to TERF Ideology have attempted to disguise themselves as ‘allies’ to the queer community, arguing that lesbians are disappearing. Their logic holds that any young woman who feels trapped by gender expectations or thinks critically about gender would opt to transition. But this argument assumes that to be trans means to move from one binary gender to another. This is not only incorrect; it simplifies the complex and deeply personal relationship to gender and presentation that many trans people have. Some opt for medical transition, some don’t, some grapple with their bodies as they appear, and others do not. It becomes easier to argue against transness when a simple narrative about what it means to be trans is presented and dissected. In the UK, children do not have access to medical transition, yet the scaremongering tactics that TERFS employ rely heavily on ideas of young children’s proximity to underground sex confirmation surgery. Lola Olufemi explores state violence against women, the fight for reproductive justice, transmisogyny, gendered Islamophobia and solidarity with global struggles, showing that the fight for gendered liberation can change the world for everybody when we refuse to think of it solely as women's work. Including testimonials from Sisters Uncut, migrant groups working for reproductive justice, prison abolitionists and activists involved in the international fight for Kurdish and Palestinian rights, Olufemi emphasises the link between feminism and grassroots organising. MM: In the introduction, you write ‘Everybody has a story about how they arrived and keep arriving at radical politics. Some of us are politicised by the trauma of our own experiences, by wars waged in our names, by our parents and lovers, by the internet. It’s useful to share the ways we become politicised if only because it helps politicise others.’ But beyond the uses of lived experience, you also touch on how it can be weaponized at the expense of structural analysis.

In a much-needed intervention against transmisogyny, Olufemi challenges hegemonic discourses that continue to repress and exclude. She shows alliances between far-right organizations, especially in the United States, and trans-exclusionary radical feminists, as well as pointing out crucial links between the exclusion of trans women from feminism and other forces of oppression such as racism. As she puts it, “There are ideological links between biological essentialism and scientific racism; both see the body in absolute terms.” Kutipan yang ada di atas merupakan sebuah kritik terhadap Sheryl Sandberg dan bukunya yang berjudul "Lean In." Ini karena adanya bias pendapat yang mana Sandberg merupakan wanita kulit putih dengan jabatan tinggi sehingga bukan sebuah kesulitan bagianya untuk "Lean In." In a particularly thought-provoking and vital intervention, Olufemi shifts the discussion from reproductive rights (which are based, she shows persuasively, in a history of repression of women of color and use of eugenicist discourse to oppress them) to thinking about reproductive justice as an overarching system, in which women’s sexuality is seen as part of transformed liberation politics. This is a crucial intervention; when marches from Poland to Argentina and Ireland demand reconsideration of women’s ability to control their reproduction, it is vital that we think carefully about our demands and their relationship to the law. Feminism, Interrupted is the second book from Lola Olufemi, co-author of A FLY Girls Guide to University. A cross-between an introductory text and manifesto, the book is a collection of ten essays covering topics from trans rights and islamophobic misogyny to food and art. hate campaigns targeting trans people. Hannah Woodhead argues that ‘Mumsnet has become a breeding ground for transphobic voices; a space where they can laugh about sabotaging an NHS survey aimed at LGBTQ+ users and scorn trans participation in sport, or ponder that trans rights are a millennial issue.’ Claims that young children are being pushed into transition without a choice are reminiscent of homophobic campaigners and legislators who mobilised the idea of protecting innocent children from ‘homosexuals’, leading to legislation like Section 28 in the UK, enacted in 1988. The aim is to legislate queerness, transness, anything that upsets the binary out of existence. Race and class play a key part in the authority of the anti-trans lobby. It is no coincidence that the most vocal and prominent TERFs in the UK tend to be middle class white women. Their reliance on biological essentialism reveals much about their conceptualisations of race. They rely on the power of essentialism because they see how successfully it functions as an organising principle for society.

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Those who rely on this kind of thinking are also the least likely to adopt an intersectional approach to feminist practice. These ‘feminists’ are not concerned with changing the material conditions of women’s lives so that subjugation and exploitation are no longer necessary parts of it. Instead, they direct their anxieties about the kinds of violence that all women experience in a patriarchal society towards trans women so that cis women become ‘oppressed’ by the existence of trans women or by expansive ideas of gender. Essentialist understandings offer a simple truth about ourselves that is easy to swallow. Pathologising trans people makes it easier to blame them for societal ills and to pit cis and trans women’s issues against one another. This merely distracts us from the most pressing issues at hand. The relationship between feminism and political radicalism is both necessary and complex. Feminism, Olufemi persuasively shows, does not have necessarily radical tendencies — rather, there is a long history of women giving their support to oppressive systems under the guise of “feminism.” Take the white suffragettes who did not see colonial subjects as part of their struggle for a vote (and even cheered on British imperialist forces). Or take the British home secretary Theresa May, who was the architect of policies especially harmful for women, even as she sported a “this is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt made by underpaid laborers.