Sisters in Hate: American Women and White Extremism

by Seyward Darby

It is easier to be the kind of feminist you want to be than it is to question how that identity might be harmful to other women. Choice feminism claims to value civility and crams a big tent with clashing opinions. You can be a choice feminist if you buy into systems of oppression or oppose them—if you want to expand social benefits or slash them, if you’re a protester outside an abortion clinic or a volunteer ushering patients in the door, if you’re building a corporate empire on the backs of underpaid employees or an advocate for a fifteen-dollar-an-hour minimum wage. Disagreement inevitably happens, and too many people in the teeming tent “focus their ire…on the tsk-tsking of other feminists,” according to political scientist Jennet Kirkpatrick.37 This dynamic limits collective, meaningful progress. It can stoke conflict that pushes some women toward the tent’s exit and prompts others to waffle about entering in the first place.