“Multiculturalism is a politically normative version of the
anthropological notion of cultural relativism premised on the view
“that all cultures are equally valid.” The postmodern version of the
multiculturalist critique assumes that the speaker takes their own
culture and its values to be valid, and criticizes other cultures from
the standpoint of their own. Feminism, however, questions the
cultural validity of subordinating women to men anywhere.
Feminism does not assume that “other” cultures are to be measured
against the validity of their own, because feminism does not assume
that anyone’s culture, including their own, is valid. How could we?
Defenses of local differences, as they are called, are often simply a
defense of male power in its local guise. Male power virtually always
appears in local guises; one might hazard that there are nothing but
local guises for male power. The fact that they are local does not
improve them.”