The -ism Series (35): Femonationalism

The term "femonationalism" was coined by Sara Farris and refers to the phenomenon of European nationalist, right-wing parties advancing "their anti-Islam agendas in the name of women's rights" despite their traditionally antifeminist politics and "their lack of concern with elaborating concrete policies of gender equality (and occasionally LGBT rights) within an otherwise xenophobic rhetoric". The message is that Muslim males are a danger for Europe because of their oppressive treatment of women and that Muslim women are victims of non-western patriarchy. In fact, Muslim men are instrumentalised "in order to advance their own political objectives" (Farris, 2017).

(...) by encouraging a rhetoric of division, or a Manichean splitting of the political and ideological debate into one counterposing "US" (white, European, western, Christian, civilized, "women-friendly") to "Them" (nonwhite, non-European, non-western, Muslim, uncivilized, misogynist Others), right-wing nationalist parties have everything to gain.
Farris (2017)

This is a classical dilemma, when anti-sexism is played out against anti-racism. It’s something Black feminists in the US wrote a lot about in the 1960s and 1970s and continue to debate: how can we denounce sexism in our communities, when we know that could then be used to attack Black men? There is no easy answer. We need to support in every way the possibility for women of any community to denounce sexism wherever it presents itself. The question we should ask is: are we really enabling this? How can we support the struggle of these women, in this context of incredibly harsh and rising Islamophobia? The struggle against racism and sexism must go hand in hand.
Sara Farris

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- Farris, S. R. (2017). In the Name of Women's Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
- photograph (Afghan women walking along a street in Kabul, 1962) via