Do you think it is necessary to have good analytical and critical thinking skills be a feminist?

I'm not at all sure that this topic is a hotbed of rad fem. I wouldn't describe myself as a radfem because my understanding of it is that it requires a complete overhaul of the capitalist system in order to dismantle the patriarchy at the same time. I'm not at all sure I'm on board with that, being the wishy-washy, centrist hand-wringer that I am...

As for white middle class feminism, unfortunately as a white middle class feminist, it's the only kind I can do. I've got a lot out of some of the threads on here highlighting BAME feminist issues, but it's been mostly about me reading and reflecting, because I feel if I try to speak out too much on these issues I'm speaking over people, and I'm always very aware of that. I agree that we all bring our biases to our politics, and should always be aware of that, but I'm not sure what silencing myself on my own feminism does to allow others to speak up? And if I ask "what should my participation look like?" I worry that I'm asking BAME feminists to educate me and that's never a good look either.

I think all that someone can do is remind themselves what intersectionality is really about, and keep that in mind. And try not to be an arse (more of a rule for life, that one).

It's not paying someone to do housework that's the problem in itself. It's the fact that the person paid to do it will, in all likelihood, be a poorer woman. Low paid domestic jobs are still viewed as women's jobs.

The work isn't valued in any sense other than a basic wage and promotes the stereotype of women doing drudge work.

I thought it was a feminist issue that women had to do all the unpaid wife work? So why is it an issue to pay someone else to do it?

I don't understand why it is assumed that a woman at home looking after a couple's children and doing housework whilst the other partner is in paid employment outwith the home is doing "unpaid wife- work". Has she no investment in, and gets nothing from, their joint endeavour of a family and a home?

I have no idea why paying some one else to do housework is a bad thing- or if it is only a bad thing if it is a woman who is paying.

I thought it was a feminist issue that women had to do all the unpaid wife work? So why is it an issue to pay someone else to do it?

I'm all for white women speaking in support of and not instead of BAME women but is it really virtue signalling for white women to acknowledge the privileges that come with being white and to accept that this influences their outlook and aims ?

And where BAME women can't or won't speak out because they don't feel that they have a voice or any power, don't we owe it to them to be proactive in encouraging their input into feminist theory and activism ? How do we do that without talking about it ? Rather than STFU, isn't it widening the discussion whilst remaining focussed on women ?

Something either is feminism, or it isn't

Or it could just be completely irrelevant. I really could not care less whether my and my husband's decision to employ nannies and to do housework for us is a feminist act or not. And even if it is declared unfeminist, I still could not care less.

A woman getting out of having to do all the cleaning, cooking and childcare by using her own money to pay a poorer woman to do it is not "white feminism", it is just not feminism at all, as it does precisely nothing to shift the burden of childcare away from women as a class

I see. And is it only women who employ nannies, cleaners , gardeners or whatever who are judged in this way?.

I fully appreciate this must be an example of "white feminisim" but (a) perhaps women could actually try sorting out their own individual relationships with the fathers of their children and (b) stop making ridiculous assumptions that paying another person to do a job must be exploitation.

Something either is feminism, or it isn't.

A woman getting out of having to do all the cleaning, cooking and childcare by using her own money to pay a poorer woman to do it is not "white feminism", it is just not feminism at all, as it does precisely nothing to shift the burden of childcare away from women as a class.

And if black women don't feel that the endeavour to change the "women are delicate little porcelain dolls" stereotype is relevant to them, then that is because the problem is not that men don't think women capable of hard physical work, but the problem is that men oppress and exploit us because of our ability to get pregnant and give birth, and everything else is just window dressing.

Not all women are white. But all women are women. And if we tackle the core of patriarchal opppression, then how can this not help all women?

'White feminism' is a means to tell people to shut up. Its also a way if saying scatter your energies far and wide so nothing gets done.
Any victory for white feminists is a victory fir women as a whole, even if individuals or groups never see the rewards. Like if a factory somewhere is forced into better pay and conditions. A benefit for all workers even if their own factory is still shit. It raises the bar a little bit. Its incremental, wave upon wave til all boats rise.

I've said before on different threads that I think modern variants of 'liberal' and 'radical' feminism are quite different from those of the 70s and 80s. There were also different variants in the past such as cultural, psychoanalytic, socialist, marxist, materialist and existentialist feminism. Modern versions are more polarised than what I grew up with.

I blame the pomos. :)

*if

This article picks apart the supposed impact of postmodernist thought on the rest of the west:

areomagazine.com/2017/03/27/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-postmodernism-and-its-impact-explained/

It's a long read, but it introduces some of the "main players" and offers, I think, a pretty good counter-argument that we might be able to relate across certain issues currently up for debate on the mn fem boards.

Rightly or wrongly, it's a fine example of critical thought of ever I saw one!

I think the whole Donald Trump thing has brought the notion of privileged white men, particularly rich Republican ones very much to the fore. But I wasn't talking about men.

It's not a controversial point of view that feminism, particularly liberal feminism, had been focused largely on the writings and theories of white, able bodied, middle class , western women and for a long time remained the preserve of those educated or in academia. Their experiences shaped feminism in a way that didn't reflect the issues or demands of life on other women of different cultures .

There are some strange alignments at the moment but that is the case outside feminism too. It's part of a wider breakdown of left/right politics and a result of concepts being appropriated by different groups to mean different things. Such as sex and gender and freedom and liberty. I think what we have to remember when organizing for political ideals is that if we use a tactic, the other group who are against us can use that tactic too.

I sometimes despair but the critical thinking I have found on mumsnet is keeping me going.

Bertrand no of course it doesn't, extreme or very means extreme or very. Radical does mean something that is going to overturn or destroy something though, and that's what genderism is currently doing.

Am sure I saw threads on Mn aligning with Christian fundamentalist because it one think people have agreed on. But at the same time forgetting it will be the same group who will deny women the rights to abortion or contraceptives.

I don't think anyone forgets that for a minute! Women on both sides of that alliance are very consciously setting aside their other fundamental differences in order to stand together against gender ideology as a single issue. I do not for one minute believe those women think they're all friends now.

It's an uncomfortable alliance but I understand why it's happening and I think it's useful in the current climate.

Well said IamAmy

"Radical" does not mean "extreme"or "very"

I'm not sure about the term radical for what I see as fairly moderate 'normal' feminism. Most of my beliefs would be categorized as radical and yet I'm about as middle of the road, moderate as they come. To me, the idea we should primarily understand gender as identity and that it has nothing to do with sex is the radical thing.

privileged white women

Privileged for being white, not for being women. Why do I always see this term used and rarely if ever "privileged white men"?

issues that largely trouble white, middle class women

Plenty of these are issues which trouble all women. Being middle class and white doesn't shield me from misogyny, doesn't reassure me much when being harassed on the street etc. Of course it's vital feminism benefits all women and all women are heard within feminism (I can think of so many WOC who are magnificent feminists doing vital campaigning) but something being an issue faced by "white middle class women" doesn't render it irrelevant or a minor concern.

I may be white, but I'm also disabled and a weird cross of middle, working and underclass (!! ) yet I've never felt excluded from "online" feminism? Where does this happen?

Is it purely a race thing rather than a "privilege" thing, and that's why I'm missing it?