Mere sympathy and narrativization skill can coexist with politically devastating gender politics

Evidence

This is by no means an uncomplicated undertaking, for Rushdie is not, in the way Orwell always was, a misogynist plain and simple. Living in the contemporary milieu of the British Left, he has not remained untouched by certain kinds of feminism; and he is clearly aware, and quite capable of effective narrativization, of many kinds of women’s oppression in our societies. The complication is of a different order, and politically far more devastating than mere lack of sympathy. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 570

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes surface feminist sympathy from a structurally embedded politics — the same distinction strategic essentialism makes between surface identity performance and underlying belief.