Is Solidarity among Cross-Cultural Feminists Possible? bell hook, a feminist theorist, a Black Feminist activist and thinker, once published a book she named “Feminism is for Everybody,” a title that reflects her ambition that feminist thinking will live in everybody’s minds. She wants and believes, feminism as a social-political and intellectual idea of anti-oppression and injustice will be a fundamental way of emancipation and liberation if it turns to be a mainstream way of thinking. As an “ambition”, bell hook offers a very important point. However, such an ambition of bringing feminist way of thinking into everybody’s mind finds a very difficult and mountainous path. Underlying bell hook’s idea is sisterhood, an articulation of solidarity derived from women’s experiences both as victims of oppression or as actors with their agentive capacity to challenge and transform the system and structure of oppression. Are women’s experiences singular and identical? Is there only one single “form” of feminism? How do different geographical backgrounds display different geographies of gender and sexuality and how should feminists deal with these varieties? How are these different geographies of gender and sexuality a resource to build feminist solidarity? Another Black Feminist scholar and writer, Audre Lorde, indeed warns us that rather than being an ideology of liberation and emancipation, feminism was a “master’s tool,” a tool used by the colonials to legitimize their oppression against the colonized in the name of liberation and civilization. Feminism was a tool to maintain hierarchical power relations between the colonial and the colonized. Feminism was the “master’s tool” to bring the Western ideal of gender norms and gender relations into a hegemonic and universal concept. This also legitimizes the claim that only the encounter of Western colonialism inspired the rise of feminism in non-Western societies. Gender is brought as the standard of civilization and progressive evolution in which the subjugation, subordination and domestication of women were viewed as “Oriental backwardness,” reflecting the low status of women in non-Western societies, as Jayawardena elaborates. There was colonial feminism that was not always a “good and right tool” to liberate women in the colonized countries. In fact, as Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyèwùmí examines, even gender as an analytical framework of inequality and oppression cannot be universally applied, in cross-cultural and historical contexts. Therefore, we need to consider the very specific contexts that play a role in diversifying women’s experiences. Remember, Lila Abu Lughod addresses, feminism was presented as a legitimacy of war against terrorism for the sake of saving Muslim women from Muslim men, liberating Muslim women from the Islamic patriarchal tradition. Postcolonial feminist Gayatri Spivak poetically articulates this situation as, “White men saving brown women from brown men.” Working on bringing “feminism into everybody’s mind” requires critical thinking related to certain questions such as: Is feminism still for everybody? In what way feminism is possible for everybody? Is global sisterhood that crosses cultural, class, historical, geographical boundaries possible? In what way is it possible? Feminist solidarity is a necessity to consolidate our movements against the oppression; yet, it displays complexities within feminist movements. Sometimes, it even turns to be a new source of “conflict” among feminists from different cultural and geographical contexts. While it gives us some difficulties, it is always important to bring it into dialogs. The main goal is to build an understanding that while we have differences, we always think about our biggest enemy: patriarchy and other systems of oppression and injustice. We can begin by understanding the differences. But, how? Can there be a local feminism more contextual with local gender politics? In conjunction with the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, LETSS Talk held a talkshow series #8 “Understanding Differences, Building Solidarity: Gender-Based Violence Movements in Different Contexts" Wednesday, December 2, 2020. A number of gender equality activists and feminist scholars from different countries were present as speakers: 1. Undariya Tumursukh (MONFEMNET National Network, Mongolia) 2. Yuniyanti Chuzaifah (Women Human Rights Activist, Indonesia) 3. Daniela Valle (Anti Domestic Violence Activist, USA) 4. Maria Rashid (Feminist Practitioner and Researcher, Pakistan) 5. Sharon Advincula Carangal (Professor of History and Gender Studies, the University of the Philippines Manila, the Philippines) 6. Shamila Daluwatte (Lawyer; Women’s Rights Activist, Sri Lanka) 7. Diah Irawaty (Moderator; Founder of LETSS Talk) LETSS Talk provided Indonesian Sign Language Interpreters/Juru Bahasa Isyarat Indonesia (Mada and Yulina).
