Settler colonialism in black and white: Roberta Sykes, Germaine Greer, and the different embodied experiences of womanhood, rape, and sovereignty

This article explores the short-lived friendship between white Australian feminist Germaine Greer and Black Australian activist Roberta Sykes. From 1971–73, when both were engaged in transnational public work in Australia, Britain, and the United States, they bonded over their experiences of rape and sexism, their will to change their worlds, and the highs and lows of being activist women. The friendship fractured when Greer published an article about rape that disclosed Sykes’s story without her permission. Sykes articulated her feelings of betrayal in a germinal 1975 article about the violent colonization of Black women in Australia—including by white feminists. For Sykes, the women’s liberation movement’s concern with patriarchy and sexual liberation neglected the experiences of Indigenous women and women of color, ignored colonialism and racism, and bolstered white women’s power. Drawing influences from Indigenous, anticolonial, and Black Power visions of self-determination, Sykes repeatedly testified against the objectification and exploitation of Black women. Fifty years later, however, despite her intervention, and the subsequent contributions of postcolonial and intersectional theories, patriarchy is the hegemonic feminist theory for analyzing rape. By centering Sykes’s context of settler colonialism, this article argues that sovereignty is a more capacious concept than patriarchy for understanding different women’s experiences of rape and conceptualizations of freedom. Applicable for feminist praxis beyond the Australian context, the concept of sovereignty honors First Nations peoples and enables analysis that incorporates diverse perspectives. In doing so it recognizes and promotes rather than undermines women’s self-determination.