Review by Ella Cigognini
The ‘sisterhood’ that scaffolds contemporary feminism is fraught or—according to Dr Ruby Hamad—has never existed. The subject of her 2019 text, as elicited in the title White Tears Brown Scars, is not just a study, but a scrutiny of ‘strategic white womanhood’— the deliberate portrayal of victimhood that white women have toted around within their metaphorical and literal tears.
Hamad’s 2018 article, How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour, set off a media explosion across the globe, exposing what white feminists fail to acknowledge about themselves: their biological victimhood. The article, in which Hamad explores how black and brown women are consistently shelved as the external agitators to the internal, privileged white woman, criticised feminism in practice as being completely inconsistent with its historical theory. While feminist writings have traditionally followed a ‘feminism is for all’ principle, this is rarely the case in practice. And when it has seemed like strides in female liberation have progressed, it’s been distinctly reserved for white women who then ‘slam [the door] shut in brown and black women’s faces’.
Deciding to republish a six-year-old book that unapologetically contests the feminism we continue to accept speaks volumes about our current social and political landscape. It isn’t a money-grab or a way to get her name back into public conversations, but a collection of candour that applies to our world now as much as it did in 2019. In her introductory line, Hamad acknowledges that we are ‘living in a world that has since both changed dramatically and stayed mired in its old, destructive ways.’ It’s clear here that her displeasure is palpable, reminding us that amid our conversations on race and gender in 2026, women of colour are undoubtedly proclaimed as villains.
Hamad’s detailed account of slavery, genocide and abuse in the chapter ‘Only white damsels can be in distress’, is a reckoning on how we have learnt about whiteness in the past. Perceptions of white victimhood are ruptured through her analysis, exposing white, female slave-owners as complicit in the control, abuse and exploitation of black people during the 19th and 20th centuries. Hamad’s robust research fills in the cracks of a historically white recount of slavery in America. And her thesis is clear: white women are, and have always been, complicit in the consistent oppression of women of colour.
Perhaps the most damning of Hamad’s commentary is her evaluation of the white damsel as we know it today—flexing a mirror to the face of the white feminist herself. She reassigns the term ‘damsel’ to not only represent the innocent, submissive woman, but someone who now weaponises their whiteness to beat down women of colour in a mission to reaffirm their privilege. Her 2020 New York Times article, A White Damsel Leveraged Racial Power and Failed, is a shocking demonstration of how easy it is for white women to wield privilege through the fall of their tears. The video she references shows the castigation of a black man by a white woman in the middle of a park. The woman holds her phone up her ear, telling the police of the ‘African American man threatening [her] life’, simply because the man had asked her to leash her dog, as ruled by the park. The video undisputedly illustrates Hamad’s concept: how white women can oscillate between being the victim and the perpetrator by slipping between their ‘one up’ and ‘one down’ identities. This switching of identities supports 21st-century choice feminism, a theory that regards every choice a woman makes as a feminist decision, irrespective of the ethics or individuals involved. White feminists who remain in pursuit of maintaining white power, likely regard the white perpetrator in the video as a woman who is finally taking down the patriarchy in real time, a strong woman who—regardless of privilege—has the courage and wherewithal to ‘keep herself safe’ from the ‘scary African American man’ in her presence. It’s an example of choice feminism as well as institutional racial abuse, speaking directly to Hamad’s testimony: gender and race are inextricably tangled, with the very concept of feminism being at its centre.
White Tears Brown Scars presents a fascinating exploration into the pitfalls of what we know to be ‘intersectional feminism’. Hamad challenges even the most modern, progressive era of the movement by acknowledging its position among a western backdrop. What is labelled as ‘intersectionality’ is often a faux representation of feminism, as we see women, many of whom are exploited in the Global South, clearly left out of the conversation. To Hamad, feminism still creates a standard of whiteness, even within its own aspirations to become a space for all. She leaves us pondering whether feminism can ever deconstruct its own biases, suggesting, ‘feminism [is] not solely equipped to grapple with the enormity of our challenges – that is perhaps a necessary but not sufficient lens for deciphering our world’.
White Tears Brown Scars is a collection of powerful assertions, supported by years of personal experience and rigorous research. Hamad infallibly deconstructs historical writings of—and experiences with—strategic white womanhood, refusing to hand grace to women who hide behind the mishandled power of white men and who have traded the rights of other women in exchange for the preservation of their own privilege.
Ella Cigognini is a freelance writer living on unceded Wurundjeri land in Narrm/Melbourne. She holds a Bachelor’s of Communication (Journalism) and a Masters in Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing—currently spending her time working at an educational publishing house. She is a big fan of British crime thrillers and analysing the pitfalls of legacy media. You can follow her on Instagram, @ellacigognini and read her Substack, https://substack.com/@ellacigognini.
White Tears Brown Scars was first published in 2019 by Melbourne University Publishing, then republished & updated in 2026
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