Beyond Instrumentalization: Far-Right Women’s Appropriation of Feminism in France

Abstract

Femonationalism, or the selective use of feminist discourses to advance far right causes, has often been analyzed through the lens of party politics. Shifting the focus to grassroot activists, this article studies a group of far-right female activists in France organized as a women-only collective of “identitarian feminists” to explore how these grassroot activists articulate anti-feminist frames while also appropriating selective aspects of feminism. The study relies on three types of empirical data: a long-term digital observation of the collective, a critical analysis of documents, and ten semi-structured interviews. These data reveal that these activists diverge from traditional antifeminism and instead reflect a femonationalist appropriation of feminism. This appropriation can be seen in three interconnected frames used by the collective in the fight against street harassment: an opposition to intersectional feminism, the use of postfeminist frames, and the racialization of sexism