Intersectionality

Gosh Anne, I am not actually arguing that there are no problems with the content if Girls whatsoever. I have never argued that there are other shows that are worse.

What I have argued is that there are huge numbers of other tv shows that exactly the same criticisms could be made about, but they are instead being made about a show where most of the main characters are Jewish and the writer is a Jewish woman.

Yes, I would use exactly the same argument in an argument about misogyny if the example a large number of feminists had chosen to talk about misogynistic behaviour were all about Jewish men, black men, gay men etc. I would think they were a bigot.

I have also not denied that there are POC criticising the show. There are. That doesn't make it untrue that the majority of intersectional feminists/ social justice activists are white women who are attacking Lena Dunham.

Even in the context of the four articles you have linked to, there is no mention of Lena Dunham being Jewish or the show having Jewish characters. Do you not think it is bizarre that in a discussion about minority groups who have experienced oppression all four writers are choosing to not mention that it is a show about Jewish women? Like even in passing?

Kritiq, I'm loving your posts on this thread!

It's not such a compliment, perhaps, as I'm uninformed and uninterested in the kind of sociological/theoretical approach to feminism, with all of its needs for classification, that is in action here.

I decided to reply, dashoflime, because I was already thinking what your critics told you, before reading that they had, indeed, said your opinion on intersectionality could only come from a white feminist.

In her very fabulous TED talk, , Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells about a male black activist, who gets terribly frustrated by the way she always speaks of her experiences as a black woman. "Why do you not speak purely as a black person," he asks, "why must you always dilute the point by mentioning your gender?" Because I'm black and I'm a woman, she answers. "But I'm a black man," he protests, "and I don't feel the need to keep highlighting my gender!"

If you can see why that male activist was wrong, you can also see why the white feminist is wrong to deny intersectionality :) Don't even get me started on class differences and feminism's middle-class accent.

This is all about another of Chimamanda's very good points - The danger of a single story.

Freya - I find your tools used to dismiss any criticism of Girls to be rather worrying. To summarise your arguments would appear to be:
1)Why are you criticising this programme, there are worse shows out there?
2)I think you are bigoted for criticising this programme
3)You are not qualified to criticise this programme - this would be your very untrue claim that the majority of those criticising Girls were white.

These sort of arguments are exactly the same as those used by anti-feminist men to deflect accusations of misogyny, yet you've happily employed them to counteract accusations of racism.

Also the idea that it is somehow fighting the system to defend Girls from accusations of racism, when the powers that be depend on racism being downplayed and ignored, just like they do with misogyny.

Anyway here are four different articles, all by women of colour discussing Girls. I would highly recommend you read them:

www.racialicious.com/2012/04/19/dear-lena-dunham-i-exist/

www.boston.com/community/blogs/hyphenated_life/2012/04/girls_in_white.html

www.womanist-musings.com/2012/04/hbos-girls-is-all-about-spoiled-white.html#idc-cover

jezebel.com/5903382/why-we-need-to-keep-talking-about-the-white-girls-on-girls

Mini, I don't disagree with your points about the underlying system of exploitation. I do think that such systems generally operate not just by threats of violence and/or starvation but by a process of cultural mystification around the worth of resources, what is and is not work and how much somebody's work is worth.

This process of mystification ends up taking on a life of its own. So while many of the things done to various Native American groups started out and was perpetuated in order to extract valuable resources from them and force many of them into an economic system, the concepts of racism and sexism applied to them to justify those actions and make people feel less empathy towards them when they see those actions carried out now extend far beyond their original purpose. The very high number of Native American women raped may well have its origins in that system of exploitation for economic purpose, but the people doing it are presumably doing it for racist and sexist reasons that are decoupled from those origins in resource exploitation. Dealing with the underlying capitalist issues may not make those things disappear.

KRITIQ thank you for the links. I am just reading Chitra Nagarajan and several things struck me.

My pleas for us to focus on poverty, race, immigration status, exclusion and marginality are taken very seriously........people think ?that?s interesting? for a few minutes, to offer the illusion of diversity and to lend legitimacy with the melanin in my body to whatever is taking place

Feminism that fails to tackle the very worst most pressing and dire forms of oppression that effect the most disadvantaged women fails in its own mission.

I wanted though to concentrate on what Nagarajan lists as areas of disadvantage, poverty, immigration (status) exclusion and marginality. Poverty and immigration share in common the fact that they are not culturally defined but socially defined. Exclusion and marginality, I am assuming that Nagarajan would define these culturally.

I don't accept that racism stems from cultural differences and therefore I would argue that exclusion and marginality are the cultural manifestations of class exploitation under a capialist system that seeks to hove off groups, creating some that are super exploited. Slavery or more recently the maquiladora factories along the U.S boarder, many argue that the exploitation stems from racism but the exploitation of workers is colour blind in so far as we are all exploited but some groups are further disadvantaged. Not by skin colour or culture but because they lack social power, social power being the accumulated wealth of previous exploitation.

As a feminist, even I conclude that feminism is like many other "isms" post 70s, essentially single issue activism centred around women's liberation. A movement that fails to alleviate the subjugation of ALL women would seem to be failing. A movement that fails to listen to the different experiences of all women, failing to create equality amongst women stands little chance of achieving its mission because it lacks the methodology and tools to tackle inequality. But its mission is to tackle gender/sex inequality, no one ever claimed that feminism would tackle global warming, stagnating wages, rising poverty, racism and bring down the state!

But we have many single issue groups all proclaiming that their very own, very specific and very individual battles should take special precedence. This draws us to conceptualise oppression as being a result of cultural, racial, sexual and theocratic differences. We have new political groupings reactionary to established movements, a recent invention "the MRA groups" which is reactionary to the feminisation of labour, falling wages and rising male unemployment. In what way male unemployment and impoverishment is meant to benefit working class women is a mystery to me but the MRA think we women are celebrating a great victory.

I believe that people are encouraged through the study of history, modern media, education and mainstream politics to accept a cultural explanation, which is why feminism has to some extent made the great gains that it has for white middle class women. Liberal feminism in particular is very much in keeping with the aims of neo-liberal economic policy and political ideology. Liberal feminism is very much extended into the mainstream and not just because we women are shouting and getting our message over. If anything it is more to do with changes to the mode of production under capitalism and an acknowledgement that in the short term women could be further exploited both as cheaper labour and uber-consumer.

This cultural hegemony which goes unchallenged disallows us from starting to concentrate on what we have in common. To do so would require a different methodological approach, a theory that would explain the origins of all oppression.

The fascinating thing to me is the question of whether there is a progressive purpose to this period of liberal single issue politics where not only has feminism disowned its left wing roots but where women themselves are divided along class, race and theoretical lines. Maybe it is evolutionary in some way or maybe it is simply a product of neo-liberalism and beneficial to capitalist class exploitation.

KRITIQ wrote - "People of Colour dislike or are bigoted towards people of other ethnic backgrounds, they do not hold the privilege that white people do in our white supremacist society."

I understand the idea that only men can be sexist: men as a class oppress women as a class. Men are at the top of the sex hierarchy everywhere. Oppression is in one direction everywhere.

I understand the idea that white people can be racist to people of other ethnic groups where white people are at the top of the racial hierarchy in a particular society.

What I don't yet understand is: can other ethnic groups be racist in societies where there are no white people? Or is your comment only applicable to the subset of societies that are white-dominated?

How would you describe the actions of e.g. a Chinese mining or construction company that maltreated its African workers in Africa? Dislike, bigotry or racism?

Kritiq, I entirely agree with your post as an explanation of what the position of people in social justice movements in the US is. I think there are issues with that position that some POC are finding damaging in the US, but other parts of it make sense in a US context.

The issue I have with it being used as the explanation of racism and oppression is that it doesn't readily transfer to other countries. It is highly problematic in countries where neither the ethnic minorities experiencing racism nor the dominant group are white. Their experience of racism is not one of white supremacy. It is also problematic in various European countries which have a dual experience of recent serious human rights abuses against minorities that are currently considered white and those who aren't.

There is a further problem that the US has a dominant global position in political, economic and cultural terms. One of the reasons we are talking about US tv shows is because they make up a very high proportion of global media sales. Large proportions of populations of various countries are opposed to US (and sometimes British) foreign policy and imperialism. To them it is a question of US values and actions. People who are concerned about drones in their countries are not generally sitting around going, oh, the issue is just with those white people killing people, only those 59% of the US who are not POC, white Middle Eastern or white Hispanic. Their issue is with the whole of the USA.

So while I think intersectionality is really useful for understanding different experiences within one country or region, the rest is better understood through ideas about contemporary colonialism, imperialism, international relations and international laws about racial discrimination which were globally constructed, not just decided by some activists and academics in the West. The danger is that with the global dominance of the US, other people's understanding of what racism is and how they experience it is silenced and development of ideas that are useful in other contexts are thwarted, which is what I see happening in internet discussions elsewhere. People from other countries (particularly those which don't have large white populations) are shouted down and told social justice ideas around intersectionality, cultural appropriation and so on that are dominant in the West are the only valid ways of dealing with racism.

Sorry - last but one paragraph above should read " . . . in deeper and deeper, I'm not sure if the "exercise of racial privilege" at least . . ."

Finally, I have no idea to what degree comixminx understands the US context, but I'm a US and UK dual national, so I have a pretty good understanding as it goes.

I've been rather busy but do hope to return to this thread. I do plan to when I get a minute, but just a couple of quick points.

People of Colour can only be racist if you agree that women can be sexist. In other words, even if People of Colour dislike or are bigoted towards people of other ethnic backgrounds, they do not hold the privilege that white people do in our white supremacist society. That means their attitudes and actions are not backed up by the dominant history, culture, institutions, laws, traditions, etc. in the way that systemic racism against People of Colour is. Same goes that women can dislike or be bigoted towards men, but they lack male privilege or the sanction of history, culture, etc., so the impact is likewise far, far less.

People of Colour is a term that originated in the US, but particularly through increased use within global social media, it's become a common term chosen by People of Colour, including in the UK. There is no point in the discussion getting derailed on this issue any more than one where someone goes on about not liking the term "feminist" and that "humanist" or some such would be better.

I've never seen the Lena Dunham programme but I did see the discussions afterwards in social media to which comixminx refers. While anti-semitism is a thing and yes Jewish women experience intersectional oppression due to anti-seminism and sexism, but if white, also experience racial privilege that Jewish Women of Colour and non-Jewish Women of Colour do not enjoy. However, the issue here wasn't about the programme in the context of oppression of white Jewish women - it was the discussion that followed, particularly in social media.

This involved "popular" feminists like Dunham, Caitlin Moran and later on Helen Lewis (who maybe calls herself a socialist feminist? *) and other white feminists dismissing concerns raised by Women of Colour and their allies about their erasure and racist stereotyping in popular culture, the media, etc.

• I say Lewis "may" be a socialist feminist from her comments during the discussion on the marginalisation of Women of Colour within feminism (following the #solidarityisforwhitewomen Twitter discussions,) Channel 4 News where she and Bonnie Greer were guests last week. Lewis tried to derail the discussion by saying it was an issue of class, not race (to which Greer tactfully argued that it was both.)

Lewis became embroiled in yet another argument on Twitter yesterday by posting a spiteful tweet criticising this blog on Sexual Normativity in Food Writing (of all things) by Flavia Dzodan, (a Woman of Colour and proponent of Intersectional Feminism), then whining that she was being "attacked" by those who didn't like the tweet, compiled all the tweets into a blogpost (which didn't paint her in a good light at all), then flounced off Twitter. I see just now she's issued a feeble "apology" for the "hurt caused."

Just a wee final point, comixminx, you said, "It's seeing that sometimes in battling sexism we can be being massively racist at the same time without even noticing it." That is definitely true. But, in some of these discussions, where a person just gets more and more defensive, digs themselves in deeper and deeper, if the "exercise of racial privilege" at least isn't actually an accident.

Will pop back when I can. Ta!

A large number of the people complaining that Girls is racist are white, so the idea that it is the concerns of POC are the ones being dismissed is speculative. The fact that you personally are claiming not to hold anti-semitic views is simply how racism and other forms of institutionalised oppression works. Most people claim they are not racist, sexist etc etc and they just randomly happen to be talking about rapes carried out by black men rather than white men, or just randomly happen to be talking about the sexism in the clothing of South Asian women rather than white British women, or just randomly happen to be talking about a gay child sex offender rather than a straight one. And you and a whole load of other feminists just randomly happen to be talking about Jewish women rather than the dominant white group.

As for you not believing that social justice people believe POC can't be racist in the USA, have you tried googling 'can people of color be racist?' There are many, many links explaining that they can't be, including university anti-racist training material.

The definition in the US census isn't jargon. It reflects the beliefs and attitudes of people in the US as to what the major ethnic groups are and which groups are and are not white, although it remains very contentious which is why I prefer the European system based on an international understanding.

I think that the issue here is that you don't have much knowledge of the US context you are discussing and that you are expanding intersectionality to lay claim to all theories around racial discrimination, xenophobia and cultural imperialism. There is nothing wrong with intersectionality as a concept; there is a problem if people are going to have a really poor understanding of all other theories and replace it with just jumping in and going, 'everybody should just be more intersectional.'

The whole idea that international human rights around race which the whole international community came together to decide is now some trivial thing that allows you to keep claiming we're all talking about intersectionality really is staggeringly... Actually, I have no words. It's just staggering.

Or to put it more succinctly before I properly go AFK: I am prepared to believe that feminism has issues of anti-semitism. I am prepared to believe I am not immune to it either, and to try to learn from what people tell me. But surely these discussions we're having now are precisely intersectional ones.

My original point wasn't about the show itself (which as I say, I haven't seen) but about the discussion around it, where as far as I could see there was a lot of dismissiveness by white feminists of the points made by women of colour. If as you think the issue is rather that the show has been attacked preferentially because it is representative of a different minority ethnic group then that's a construction I haven't heard before; I'm not trying to dismiss it because I haven't heard it before, but that's not what I was taking from it.

You were talking about POC as if it was a jargon term, by saying it was to do with the census. I don't think the view that only white people can be racist is in any way a majority view in social justice circles, or even a substantial minority view.

I can't add more to this discussion right now because I'll be away from keyboard but I will be interested to see any further input from anyone this evening.

Sorry, that should have been many believe members of one POC groups can't be racist to members of another POC group because they claim only white people can be racist.

I don't know if we agree or not. I believe that out of all the vast numbers of tv shows that you could have mentioned which do not have main cast members who POC, you and many other feminists have chosen to single out a show about Jewish women. That is evidence of a problem of anti-semitism in feminism generally and in your posts on this thread.

POC is not a jargon term in the US. It is the case that people in social justice circles in the US do consider POC to not include various ethnic groups who they deem not POC to be the oppressors and not capable of experiencing racism. Many also believe that one POC group can perpetuate racism against another POC group as only white people to be racist.

When I say international understanding I mean the international laws set up after much discussion between all the countries of the world on the elimination of racial discrimination. They are what our laws are based on, EU laws are based on and the racial discrimination laws of most countries. Why that should be replaced with a US understanding of race as somehow being about whether you are or are not white according to the USA's racist legacy of segregation seems to be an example of xenophobia (a kind of racism) and US cultural and political imperialism. I'm not sure how intersectionality provides a better explanation.

Sorry, I'm finding this confusing now. People do use the term 'people of colour' in the UK - here's Doreen Lawrence, here's Anna Chen. It may be a jargon/technical term in the US but I don't believe that is how it is generally thought of (in terms of the census, that is). What international human rights understanding of ethnicity are you referring to?

In any case we agree not only about the point that people can be from a minority and still be oppressive to other groups, but also that racism can (usually does?) mean that some groups are criticised more than others. Surely this is part and parcel of intersectional thinking too and in saying this you are speaking intersectionally.

The Iranian people in the UK who I know wouldn't consider themselves to be white. In the US however, 'people of colour' are those who are in a category that is not white on the US census. The term was coined to stop people saying non-white as it has racist connotations given the US history of one drop rules etc.

It is the case that in the US census Iranian people, like people of other West Asian and North African descent are white categories. That is their legal definition in the US census. They are therefore white in the US.

It makes no sense to use the term people of colour and say Girls is a white show but then use the term to refer to the British population and start saying Iranians are not white because they say they are not.

If you are now inventing your own definition of who is and is not white, rather than using the US definition of POC or the British definition which is about minority ethnic groups rather than some notion of a white race, then on what grounds are you defining Girls as white? We know that in the US, they are either of European, North African or West Asian/Arabic descent, so are white. Under your personal racial categories, how are they white? Shoshanna, for example, has never said she is white and she has never said what Jewish ethnic groups she is descended from. She could be of Iranian descent; many Iranian American are Jewish.

It would seem to me that rather than try and use an imported American system of race, it would actually be more useful to use the international human rights understanding of ethnicity.

To return to the other point, while it is true that people can be from a minority and themselves be oppressive to other groups, there is a huge issue that racism and other forms of prejudice are carried out by criticising some groups more than others. Classic examples would be subjecting the wearing of the hijab to more discussion and law around sexist clothing standards than we do to Western clothing standards, paying far more attention to sexual assaults carried out by black men more than white men, and complaining more about gay men abusing teenagers than straight men.

Part of the solidarityisforwhitewomen discussion is about the demonisation of black men. It is about this very issue of criticising a minority to a far greater degree when members of that group do something which we feel we can criticise. It just isn't good enough to say being part of a minority doesn't exempt you from criticism when that criticism can lead to murder, persecution and war.

Actually the term people of colour is one I've heard in the UK and used by British people.

The Iranian people I know wouldn't call themselves white, I'm pretty sure. But I agree that there will be white minority groups who are discriminated against; historically, Irish people, for instance. I am not saying that white minority groups will experience less racism; they will experience different racism, and it is perfectly possible that they could be racist with regard to other minority groups. I am not in any way saying that if people make a tv show about a particular minority and don't include another minority that means viewers and creators are massively racist! I'm saying that we are not magically exempt from ourselves being oppressive in some ways just because we are also oppressed in other ways. We can be racist without noticing it while being totally on the lookout for sexisim in all its forms.

We don't use the term people of colour in the UK; this is not the USA. We refer to minority ethnic groups. I think it would be ridiculous to claim that in the UK an Iranian person has privilege over say, a Chinese person because Iranian people are white and Chinese people are people of colour it would be ridiculous. A distinction that a white group like Iranians experiences less racism in the UK than a group of people of colour is simply not true. That is why we don't use the term. It has no meaning here. We refer to minority ethnic groups, not racial groups.

On a separate note, you seem to be saying that if people make a tv show about a particular minority and don't include another minority, the people who view that show and the people who watch it are 'massively racist.'

On the other hand, if I select a particular minority and hound individuals from it into the ground for writing or watching that minority rather than about an another group, I'm supporting intersectionality and a good feminist?

Does that count for all groups? Can I constantly complain there are no Asian people in a show with black characters? is it okay for me to target that show rather than say a white show like Gossip Girl or Two Broke Girls? How about if I target shows with a gay character for not having a bisexual character rather than target a show with all straight characters? Can I set up a blog devoted to complaining about a show with Hispanic characters because there should be more Asian people in it, but not do the same for a show about white people of Dutch descent?

Why do we use intersectionality in the way we criticise media, but are content to be racist, sexist and homophobic in the way we select the people we choose to criticise?

Sorry, I mean "white minority ethnic groups can experience racism, I agree".

Fair point about that being for Jewish women to decide! And you may well be right in saying that Girls is more criticised for being racist than any shows about non-Jewish white women (which shows are you thinking of?). I don't see that this means that the show is let off the charges levelled, though. It could be being unfairly singled out while the people singling it out still have a point.

'White people' or 'white women' are not monolithic groups, and minority ethnic groups can experience racism, I agree. I don't see that that means we can't use the terms white women and people of colour in this discussion, though. Multiple strands of oppression and of status is part of the whole issue.

I also don't know why we are discussing 'white women' and 'people of colour' to discuss the comments of a woman of Irish Catholic descent about a largely Jewish TV show on a British website.

We don't make a distinction between white people as the privileged minority and people of colour as the ones who experience racism. There is no 'we' as white women in that sense. There are the privileged majority - white British people and the people who experience racism - minority ethnic groups, some of whom are white.

I do think it is an issue of what is on the tv right now. I don't know if Jewish women are under-represented or for that matter mis-represented on the tv right now. That is rather for Jewish women to decide, isn't it?

I do think that Girls, a show where three of the four main characters is Jewish, is being criticised to a far greater degree for being racist than any of the shows about non-Jewish white women.

I didn't know that much about the different ethnic groups of Jews or how that had an impact on Jewish women's lives. I'd never even heard of Camp Ramah.

I think anti-semitism is still a pretty major issue, and one Lena Dunham has to deal with.

I haven't watched Girls so can't comment, and in any case it's not really about what's actually on the telly right now, I don't think. Rather, I think it's about what are we aiming to have on the telly, or what might we be happy to see on the telly. (I can't comment about current tv generally as I barely watch it.)

I don't know what tv shows are a better representation of Jewish women, but as far as I know that's not a demographic that is specifically under-represented, is it? In any case I'm not saying we shouldn't have a show like Girls on the tv, but rather that when women of colour point out rather a big gap in the progressiveness of it, it behooves white feminists not to be dismissive about it.

ComixMinx, which US and UK TV shows do you think are preferable to Girls in terms of intersectionality? It would be nice to have some recommendations. Also, which TV shows do you think are a better representation of Jewish women than girls?

(Obviously as well as my example of racism I could/should include ablism, transphobia, and so on.)