Amid the utterly ridiculous calls for Oprah Winfrey to run for president since her inspiring anti-rape speech at the Golden Globes this past weekend, much criticism has been levelled against her and imperial feminism at large.

Winfrey was among the (overwhelming majority of) women who wore all black to Sunday's event, eliciting the red carpet question "Why are you wearing this?" as opposed to the usual "Who are you wearing?" The silent protest was in support of the Time's Up campaign, a movement against sexual harassment. It was moving to see all of these celebrities, to whom many women (and men) look up to as demi-gods, show their support for a cause that affects more women than we can fathom all over the world.

And then Winfrey took to the stage

In itself, the moment was a sight to behold - the first Black Woman to win the Cecil B. DeMille Award - telling the rapt audience about herself as a young girl watching the first black man to win an Oscar and how it must feel for little black girls watching her now to see a black woman winning this award for the first time.

"Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have," she said of the women clad in black before her. And she spoke of Recy Taylor, a black woman who was gang-raped by six white men who never faced justice.

She touched on racism, highlighting that in 2018 she is the first black woman to receive this award - 36 years after Sidney Poitier became the first black man to be presented with it.

She spoke to the girls who need to see a woman who looks like them speaking their truth on an international stage.

Now, before all the lefties start caps-locking me to death on Twitter, we know Winfrey's neoliberalism. We know her support of the invasion of Iraq. We know that Winfrey's feminism is based firmly in US cultural hegemony and imperialism to the point that women outside this reality don't exist to her.

It's feminism like hers that is problematic to the point that it ignores colonised peoples' history and current reality as a result. Those women in Iraq were once women too - until they were killed. We don't hear about the trailblazers from the East or Africa because their histories have been decimated and usurped by the West.

And what do the women in the proverbial global South do now that we don't have our own role models?

We listen to people like Oprah and get all choked up when she says something nice.

This billionaire who received an award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for "outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment" was a token when you think about the fact that not a single black woman was given an actual Golden Globe. Who better to deliver the erasure of black women's' pain but the most powerful black woman in the world, right?

And the story of Recy Taylor was glib, omitting the vast differences in the rapes and pain that black women endure due to racism. Equating their pain to that of rich white women on Twitter was laughable.

The #TimesUp parade of elite Hollywood women had no problem with lauding an award named after a white man - a white man who I’m pretty sure if someone looked into his past would find the same disturbing practices of casting couch auditions and more.

Yes, let's never forget how Winfrey is a symbol of imperial feminism that disregards - nay, erases - the reality of women outside her own circle of reference, as well as her support of dubious individuals like Dr Phil McGraw who singlehandedly turned psychology into a spectator sport.

It's a global truth that needs to be told

But let's not forget the words she spoke on Sunday. Forget for a minute that those words came from Oprah Winfrey and imagine anyone saying them.

It's a global truth that needs to be told and heard again and again because once is not enough. Let those words be shouted from the rooftops by any woman in the world and those words will still be true.

Yes. We know Winfrey colludes with neoliberalism and capitalism. But her speech was about rape. It was aimed at men who rape. It was about the worldwide epidemic of gender-based violence. She spoke about the toxicity of masculinity and the powerful men who also sat before her in their suits squirming as she spoke.

What I have been seeing all over the internet is - largely - men criticising Winfrey and her politics, while ignoring the words she spoke. It's easy to target people who leave much to be desired in terms of their own examples in public.

And let's not let Winfrey get away with her double-standard ways of being.

But also let's not let her message slip through the cracks in her shortcomings. Because it's a reality that needs to be addressed desperately.
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