In her 1999 Preface of Gender Trouble, Butler addresses an internal betrayal of feminism to those it tries to empower. This is, of course, its exclusionary consideration of gender. If those who feminism empowers are only “women,” or only those that conduct themselves in “feminine” manners, then feminism perpetuates a system that ultimately exists to disenfranchise these individuals. W.E.B. DuBois’s response to Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech, Chapter 3 in The Souls of Black Folk, similarly reflects an internal disunity within the black rights movement. Washington proposed in his speech that African Americans focus on trade school and working-class labor before they try to attain civil rights. DuBois rebuts that this submission to the hegemonic race only accepts the alleged inferiority of African Americans, and will never eventually lead to the obtainment of their rights.
Butler’s Perspectives on Feminism and DuBois’s “The Souls of Black Folk”
Square
I also agree with Washington’s Method of trying to improve oneself before demanding equal rights. Similarly, feminists must quit trying to act a certain way to demand respect, quit trying to prove who’s better than whom, and simply do things considered non feminine.