When the French government passed a ban on the veil in 2011, surprisingly few Fr
ench feminists spoke out against the racist measure. Christine Delphy - the soci
ologist whom Simone de Beauvoir once described as "France's most exciting femini
st writer" - was one of the notable few. Castigating humanitarian liberals for d
emanding cultural assimilation of the women they were purporting to save, Delphy
showed how criminalizing Islam in the name of feminism was fundamentally parado
xical.
Dominating Others is Delphy's manifesto against this tendency, and for
a fluid understanding of political identity that does not place different polit
ical struggles in a false opposition. Dismantling the absurd claim that Afghanis
tan was invaded to save women, alongside the notion that homosexuals and immigra
nts alike should reserve their self-expression for private settings, Dominating
Others is a call for a true universalism that sacrifices no one at the expense o
f others.
