Megan Rapinoe and How Feminism Helped Sell Identity Politics

Article here. Excerpt:

'One of the great sleights of hand in American politics has been the replacement of economic inequality with a never-ending competition for victimhood. And feminism helped lay the groundwork for it. By framing the relationship between men and women primarily as one of oppressors and the oppressed, particularly within radical feminism, the movement helped popularize a political framework in which group identity determined who held power, who suffered under it, and who was entitled to moral authority. Women were the oppressed, men were the oppressors, and the struggle for equality was increasingly understood through this division.

The various strands of feminism may have disagreed about the causes of women’s subordination, but they largely agreed on one thing: women were an oppressed sex class, and men were their oppressors. Whether history actually supports that sweeping characterization is another matter.

But this framework contained a contradiction that would eventually transform feminism itself. White women, who had long dominated the American feminist movement, were challenged by black women who pointed out that their experiences of oppression were not the same. Race complicated the tidy division between male oppressors and female victims. A white woman could enjoy racial privileges denied to a black man, while a wealthy woman could possess far more economic power than a poor man of any race. If oppression was the measure of moral authority, where did that leave white feminists?'