2025.05.4 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Serene J. Khader, Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop, Penguin Random House, 2025, 248pp., $18.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780807021385.
Reviewed by Ege Yumusak, University of Pennsylvania
Serene Khader’s first book for a public audience packs philosophical rigor into a compulsive read. The book is primarily a call to action. In Khader’s view, the Dobbs decision’s final blow to abortion rights was unsurprising—not only because she was watching closely political developments but also because she was paying attention to how mainstream feminism had failed to evolve into an emancipatory movement. If mainstream feminists had seen their flaws, she tells her readers, they too would have seen that, in a sense, the Dobbs decision was inevitable.
What has made contemporary feminism’s claim to emancipation false? In the book’s introduction, Khader presents the premise that motivates her inquiry—that feminism has made a false promise—and proposes a solution. Mainstream feminism, she argues, has promised women freedom…
Read the full article which is published on Notre Dame's Philosophical Reviews (external link)
