I’ve been reading Tamora Pierce’s classic Song of the Lioness series, about a girl named Alanna who dresses up like a boy and becomes a knight in defiance of her culture’s sexist gender expectations.

While flawed and outdated (the series was originally written in the 1980s), these books deeply resonate with me. However, I have a major criticism of the third book in this series, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, in terms of the faulty feminism it represents.

It may seem unproductive to criticize the feminism from a book that was written 30 years ago. However, this particular problem unfortunately still exists in Western thought, and I’ve been considering writing about it for a while. This book finally gave me the excuse.

What happens in the book

In The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, Alanna has finished her training as a knight and sets off in search of adventure. Unfortunately, she ends up captured by a tribe of desert dwellers called the Bazhir.

Forced to prove herself in a fight to the death, Alanna survives and is inducted into the tribe. She soon encounters a problem: This tribe has deeply sexist attitudes and strict gender expectations, much like her own culture back home.

Disturbed, Alanna begins challenging the ancient customs of the tribe, and starts to see changes with surprising rapidity. She becomes the Bazhir’s first female shaman, and starts training up two young girls with magical powers to replace her.

There’s a lot I could criticize about the way this is handled, not to mention the role her friend Jonathan plays in this story, which had the uncomfortable echoes of pro-colonialism (something I’m sure the author did not intend).

But I want to focus on one thing: The underlying philosophy around changing someone else’s culture, and how that actually works in the real world.

Mindy Bugdor: A case study

Let’s step away from fantasy for a minute. I’ll tell you a story — a true story.

In 2013, an American named Mindy Bugdor volunteered in Kenya. While there, she had firsthand experience among a semi-nomadic tribe known as the Maasai.

Mindy asked a chief of the tribe, “How many women are warriors?”

“None,” he replied. “Women aren’t strong or brave enough to do it.”

According to Mindy, “His response ignited a fire within me that made me want prove him wrong.” She knew that warriors had special privileges in Maasai society. The fact that men barred women from this role seemed like an obvious factor in the tribe’s gender inequality.

Mindy asked about the requirements to become a warrior. She then went through the Maasai’s rigorous tests and training, proving to them that a woman could become a warrior.

Proud that she had made significant strides for Maasai gender equality, Mindy wrote a book about her experiences.

But what did real Maasai women think about her story?

A condescending insult

While I’m sure Maasai women had mixed opinions of Mindy, given that no group is a monolith, many were not a fan. And they had a lot to say about her.

As it turned out, very few (if any) Maasai women cared about becoming warriors. But this wasn’t because they didn’t want gender equality. They did!

Maasai women were already working on positive changes in their culture, which they felt Mindy had ignored. There were other roles in society that were much more empowering for them to pursue, such as entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, professors, and politicians. This was what Maasai women actually cared about. Why didn’t Mindy?

Some accused her of being a white savior by trying to “rescue” the Maasai women in ways they never asked for.

“Who told her we want to be ‘warriors’?” asked one woman, Rarin Ole Sein. “Who told her we need to be ‘warriors’ to make a ‘difference’?… We can fight our own battles ourselves thank you!”

There were so many other things Mindy could have done to actually support Maasai women. For example, she could have supported Maasai women entrepreneurs. Or she could have just asked Maasai women what they wanted, and how she could help.

Instead she spoke over Maasai women, and profited from it.

White feminism

The title of this article addresses white women, because unfortunately this problem exists among our demographic more than anywhere else. Some people have taken to calling this phenomenon “white feminism.”

What is white feminism? It’s when a well-meaning feminist falls into the trap of thinking that her way of liberating women is the best way, or even the only way.

However, the truth is that not all women want, or need, the same things. And not all cultures will follow the same paths towards gender equality. If we truly want women to thrive throughout the world, this is an important thing to understand.

If you’re insulted that this terminology targets white women, please don’t be. The fact of the matter is that white women are frequently guilty of this, even when we have the best intentions.

But there are more effective, and more respectful, ways of doing this.

A better way

I’m a firm believer that cultural changes need to come organically from within a culture. Changes should not be imposed upon a culture by condescending outsiders who think they know what’s best.

An example of this happening in our real world would be the resistance that women are putting up in extreme Islamic countries. They are pushing back against the oppressive patriarchy in their own way, and on their own terms.

In my opinion, effective and respectful feminism should take the form of coming alongside women in other cultures and supporting their own movements, which will inevitably look different from culture to culture.

An alternative for Alanna

In The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, I would have loved to see Alanna working to change sexist attitudes in a different way.

Imagine if, instead of immediately pushing for changes when she arrived in the tribe, she had spent more time listening to the Bazhir women first. Imagine if she had found the women who were already resisting patriarchy in some way, and then came alongside them, supporting their own movement. This would have made her a powerful ally.

Instead, Alanna marches in and imposes her own idea of what male-female relations should look like in the tribe. This may make for satisfying fiction. But in the real world, this strategy doesn’t work, and it only alienates the people you’re trying to help.

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Cover photo by Acclaim Games.