Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity - Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place - Vaia Touna
9. Reply to Russell T. McCutcheon: Navigating the Politics of Comparison
Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity - Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place - Vaia Touna
Leslie Dorrough Smith [+]
Avila University
Description
In the main chapter of this section, I argued that many Western feminist scholars are often quite willing to overlook the conservative political interests of many international women’s groups by calling such groups “feminist” so as to create the sense of a diverse and multicultural feminist movement. Mine is not a popular conclusion to reach, I note, since making such a statement reveals a clear double standard that is still present in some feminist activism. In response, Russell McCutcheon pondered whether my unpopular argument was like another controversial piece of scholarship from scholar Rebecca Tuvel, who infamously claimed that if a transgender identity is possible, then we must logically acknowledge the possibility of a transracial identity as well. In the present chapter, I consider the nature of McCutcheon’s comparison between my conclusion and Tuvel’s, and maintain that their similarities reveal the enduring life of certain unspoken biases in scholarship today