What a bookstore can tell us about feminism
A couple of weeks ago, when I got near Piccadilly Circus, I felt the urge to get lost in Europe’s biggest bookshop. I hadn’t visited Waterstones’ flagship store in a while, and its proximity felt like a free therapy I couldn’t refuse. After spending so much time in front of screens, the bookstore was exactly the analogue break I needed.
I wandered around the ground floor and looked at the recommended bestsellers. Few women writers were highlighted, albeit one conspicuously promoted - The Story of Art without Men by Katy Hessel - which was a pleasant surprise. But I already bought it and knew the other two from the nonfiction table, so I headed for the feminist section to find inspiration for my next read. I started climbing the stairs and didn’t stop until the last floor with books, where I took a moment to catch my breath and appreciate the management’s decision to keep us feminists fit and ready to fight for women’s rights.
I finally got to the Gender Studies section and paused for a moment. Was it always this small? It seemed tucked away, facing a corner. And was it always gender studies? Didn’t it use to be Women’s Studies? And if women’s studies are under the gender umbrella, shouldn’t books about transgender, genderqueer, gender fluid, non-binary and men occupy an equal place there? After all, women stand for gender equality. Admitting this, can women’s vast history and experiences fit in a small top-floor section which, in theory, should be equally shared with others?
Next to the shelves, there was a table, which seemed smaller than the ones downstairs, with the highlights of feminist literature. At the bottom of the table were two piles of books - one with Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez from 2019 and one with The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir from 1949 - symbolic pillars for the table of feminism. I looked at the books displayed above. There was an intense competition between book covers; all meant to draw your attention with their designs like birds showing off their plumage. I was first stricken by White Feminism, which repeated the title for as long as the book cover allowed it to make sure it made a point. It did. There was another one, It’s not about the burqa, with a clever cover idea letting the images of women be seen only through the title letters. I kept looking and saw Taking Up Space: The Black Girl's Manifesto for Change, Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible, Sista Sister, Don’t touch my hair, Feminism, Interrupted, The Sex lives of African Women, Girl Gurl Grrrl: On Womanhood and Belonging in the Age of Black Girl Magic, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals, and Angela Davis’s Women, Race & Class and Abolition. Feminism. Now.
It was breathtaking to see all these titles dominating the table. It looked like the manifesto for change was happening right under my eyes. It took a long time for this to happen, too long, but it was still a joy to see. And then my eyes stopped on another book, Against White Feminism. It looked at me, and I looked at it as a feminist and a white woman. A white woman whose surname qualifies her in London for house cleaning and waitering rather than for writing articles and even less for publishing books. My heart went towards it because, as a first-generation immigrant from a poorer country, I understand discrimination in a visceral and bruising way whenever I utter a sound or I send out a resume. I’ve also seen the deadly consequences of racism while I lived in the US and that I cannot unsee. And still, when I saw that book, I felt that its reductive label of ‘white feminism’ was leaving no room for immigrants like me nor for the myriad of experiences that make up intersectional feminism beyond the colour of the skin. I turn the book and on the back cover I read the caveat:
Over the past 200 years, feminism has paved the way for major positive changes for women. But not for all women. If you are poor, if you are an immigrant to the West or (even worse) don't live there at all, and above all if your skin is not white, the door to mainstream feminism has been shut against you from day one.
I nodded and put the book back. Of course, the book refers to white Western upper-middle-class feminists who get to enjoy and perpetuate their racial privilege and not white immigrants or socio-economically disadvantaged people. It looks like I’m off the hook and that’s supposed to make me feel better, but it’s not. My whiteness has no name.
I left with a heavy heart, not buying anything. The table seemed too small to fit women like me. It felt too small to alleviate the many other problems going through my head, including the constant thinking about David Carrick and the Met Police ignoring his 17 years spree of rapes and abuse, which I found about a few weeks before and which probably drove me subconsciously to that bookstore.
There are many issues we need to tackle, from violence against women and girls to poverty and wealth inequality to motherhood penalty and childcare costs, the climate crisis which is not “gender neutral”, health and restricted reproductive choice, and, of course, discrimination in wealthier countries like the UK and the US and within feminism. The latter is equally important as the others, and it’s a great thing that women’s circles hold it to account. After all, feminists claim to fight for equality and a better world for everyone. It is the right thing to do, but is it right to dominate that small table, given its complexity and risk of division? Will we have room for the other issues as well? And as I was thinking this, I realised the problem was not talking about discrimination; on the contrary. The problem is the small table on the last floor, the last in a row. The problem is that we don’t have enough space and see enough books on feminism on the ground floor, the first floor, or the second or third floor. Because in the end, feminism touches on so many aspects that it deserves to be everywhere, and it deserves to be seen as more than a gender study. Yes, it can be there with studies about non-binary, transgender and gender fluid, but it goes so much beyond that.
I felt the need to go back. I looked around and wondered why these books were restricted to that corner. Shouldn’t Annabelle Williams’s Why Women Are Poorer Than Men also be in the Economics section? And why isn’t Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men among science books? Why aren’t any feminist books in the politics section? Isn’t feminism a socio-political movement? And why isn’t Simone de Beauvoir, a philosopher, in the Philosophy section?
Ironically, the Philosophy section was on the opposite side of the floor, after passing hundreds of history books dedicated to wars. It had an impressive number of books from antiquity to this day, written by and for men, with only one woman philosopher, Hannah Arendt, whose only book was squeezed on a top shelf. This sorrowful sight reminded me of a class I once took in Paris. It was my first time getting out of the country thanks to a scholarship and my first time taking a Western philosophy course. I was so happy to be there, listening to this French teacher talking about Aristotle, Plato, and all the great philosophers after them. I was hanging on his every word until one point when he stopped and told us: “By the way, all this philosophy is for men. Women, if you want to do philosophy, you need to create your own”. I immediately blushed with anger and confusion, and I could not understand. Was he saying women were not capable of understanding philosophy? Wasn’t it supposed to be universal? I felt insulted and outraged and then forgot about it. Until now.
What if he was right? What if feminism is doing exactly that?
Looking again at all the feminist books, I realised that my first instinct was to blame women for the small table we were given. A small table where we were supposed to present an entire philosophy under the umbrella of gender studies and where we were forced to pick our battles. But this only lasted until I remembered Jenny Holzer’s words: “Women are not horrible. We're largely not the problem”. And then I could see things clearly again.
If that small table was dominated by talks about racial injustices and women of colour taking up space, it was to show that feminism is, above all, about inclusiveness and putting intersectionality at its heart is the only way to move forward. While I may not agree with the reductiveness of ‘white’, I understand where it’s coming from and know that it is a necessary conversation in a Western country. It is a conversation that needs to evolve and expand along with that table and climb its way down from the last floor to the ground and then into the streets and Parliament and our everyday life.
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