Gender, Blackness, and the Oppression Olympics (original) (raw)

As Oyèwùmí states, the “difficulty of applying feminist concepts to express and analyze African realities is the central challenge of African gender studies.” Similarly, the “fact that western gender categories are presented as inherent in nature” and “operate on a dichotomous, binarily opposed male/female, man/woman duality in which the male is assumed to be superior and therefore the defining category, is particularly alien to many African cultures.” I learned I need to move beyond solely US-based feminist concepts in order to teach my students of color the complexities of gender, that feminist theorists who expand the geographical boundaries of our inquiries could help challenge narrow notion of gender hierarchies that lead to unfruitful debates and Oppression Olympics.