Transnational feminism

Transnational feminism refers to both a contemporary feminist paradigm and the corresponding activist movement. Both the theories and activist practices are concerned with how globalization and capitalism affect people across nations, races, genders, classes, and sexualities. This movement asks to critique the ideologies of traditional white, classist, western models of feminist practices from an intersectional approach and how these connect with labor, theoretical applications, and analytical practice on a geopolitical scale.Transnational as a term is useful only when it signals attention to uneven and dissimilar circuits of culture and capital. Through such critical recognition, the links among patriarchies, colonialisms, racisms, and feminisms become more apparent and available for critique or appropriation. The history of the term 'international', by contrast, is quite different.In working to construct such a terrain for coalition and cooperation, however, we have to rearticulate the histories of how people in different locations and circumstances are linked by the spread of and resistance to modern capitalist social formations even as their experiences of these phenomena are not at all the same or equal. Transnational feminism refers to both a contemporary feminist paradigm and the corresponding activist movement. Both the theories and activist practices are concerned with how globalization and capitalism affect people across nations, races, genders, classes, and sexualities. This movement asks to critique the ideologies of traditional white, classist, western models of feminist practices from an intersectional approach and how these connect with labor, theoretical applications, and analytical practice on a geopolitical scale. The term 'transnational' is reaction and the rejection of terms like 'international' and 'global' feminism. Transnational feminists believe that the term 'international' puts more emphasis on nation-states as distinct entities, and that 'global' speaks to liberal feminist theories on 'global sisterhood' that ignore Third World women and women of color's perspectives on gender inequality and other problems globalization inherently brings. The transnational feminist academic paradigm draws from postcolonial feminist theories, which emphasize how colonialist legacies have shaped and continue to shape the social, economic, and political oppression of people across the globe. It rejects the idea that people from different regions have the same subjectivities and experiences with gender inequality, it further recognizes that global capitalism has created similar relations of exploitation and inequality, this core concept creates dialogue which feminists around the world can find solidarity and seek collaboration. Transnational feminism further complicates global capitalism and neoliberalism. Transnational feminist practice is involved in activist movements across the globe that work together to understand the role of gender, the state, race, class, and sexuality in critiquing and resisting structures of patriarchal, capitalist power. It is attentive to feminism as both a liberatory formation and a practice that has been oppressed by and sometimes been complicit with colonialism, racism, and imperialism. As such, it resists utopian ideas about 'global sisterhood' while simultaneously working to lay the groundwork for more productive and equitable social relations among women across borders and cultural contexts. Transnational feminist theorists and practitioners vary in how they phrase 'transnational feminism'. Variations include 'transnational feminisms', or 'transnational feminist praxis' and 'transnational practices' Amanda Swarr and Richa Nagar, in their book Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis, give a list of the now outdated terms that describe transnational feminist practices. They emphasize that, like these 'rejects', the term 'transnational' feminisms is merely a product of its time in the U.S. and Canadian academic institutions. Before, the terms were ' 'women of color' feminisms (Combahee River Collective 1982), 'third world' feminisms (Mohanty et al. 1991), 'Multicultural feminisms (e.g. Shohat 1998)', 'international (Enloe 1990)' and 'global' feminisms (e.g., Morgan 1984).' Currently, 'transnational feminism' is the term that feminists like Chandra Mohanty and Jacqui Alexander, Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan claim has political power and can discard essentialist binaries like First World/Third World, or heteronormative gender constructs. These feminist theorists believed that 'international' put more emphasis on nation-states as distinct entities, and that 'global' speaks to liberal feminist theories, like Robin Morgan's concept of 'global sisterhood', without taking into consideration race, class, culture, or colonialist and imperialist histories. In Women's studies on its own: a next wave reader in institutional change, Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan claim they do not think the term 'transnational' is better than other 'international' or 'global', but that it is useful inasmuch as it is free from the implications that other terms may have: Criticisms against the term 'transnational' claim that because it de-emphasizes the borders between nations and emphasizes the similar concept of global capital flows, it deceptively smooths over large inequalities between nations. Transnational Feminism in practice can be noted as a means of studying the 'other', a western concept of people not strictly related to the global north. This is the attempt to understand what factors make up their identities and struggles and a way of acknowledging  these experiences have their own complex natures, unique geographically and how this is interpolated by those examining and theorizing.