When did 'White, Middle Class Women' become the scum of the earth

And, more to the point, when a posh white bloke in a frock is framing his relationship to womanhood as the same as a black woman's relationship to womanhood, IT IS AS RACIST AS FUCK.

Pointing this out is not white bloody feminism.

exactly, timbuktu and lunamoth-mine is a good faith position. And I will absolutely be thoughtless or flat footed at time when it some to BAME or class issues, but the answer to that is not for me to stop doing the feminism that I can do. Getting derailed by the quest for ideological purity never helped anyone.

It's being used as anti-feminist silencing technique. That's the issue here.

Exactly. The current bleating about white feminism is both sexist and racist. It's just the newest way of framing posh white blokes in dresses as the most oppressed and only people allowed to ever say anything.

I am white and middle class. I can only do white, middle class feminism.

I am wholly conscious of my privilege, and where I can, I'll use it to amplify the voices of those who don't have it. I am an ally when and where it's appropriate for me to do so, and silent when my voice isn't needed.

My voice is absolutely not needed in defence of penis rights and men's hurt feelings about the material reality of women, and I'm automatically suspicious of anyone who tells me it ought to be

Yy - exactly this

"White middle class feminist" is used an insult to try to silence the speaker, to make them doubt that what they are saying is valid. It's guilt-tripping whilst hoping that pesky female socialisation will kick in to make the speaker apologise for and retract their claim.

The issue is that those using the "middle class white feminist" line is that they aren't actually doing it to point out racism and classism in feminism in order to address it. They aren't actually doing anything to help women of color or poor & working my class women. They aren't doing any kind of analysis. They aren't amplifying the voices of those less privileged. They aren't advocating or doing any activism around issues that affect and are important to women of color or poor women.

They are using "white middle class feminist" as an insult. They are using it as a way to shut down women. They are using it as a way to shut women up. And the people who are using it the most tend to be white, middle and upper class males. People who have more privilege than those they are accusing of being blind to privilege.

It's oppression olympics. It's a silencing tactic using the less privilege as shield. It's a way for privileged white men to tell women to shut up while still maintaining their lefty "woke" status.

Those using "white middle class feminist" don't give a flying fuck about poor women or women of color. They also deny that sexism exists and affects all women regardless of income or skin color.

It's being used as anti-feminist silencing technique. That's the issue here.

There is a problem with how the discourse beteeen feminists has become so wrapped up in identify politics that nothing gets done.

I'm white and middle class, I have privilege I accept that. I have inherent biases and sometimes I can be a bit thoughtless because of this. Thing is that's true of most people and we can all unintentionally offend/exclude people. However the appropriate response to this has to be based on the assumption that women are acting in good faith towards each other. That thoughtless omissions can be drawn to attention, changes made and everything move on without witch hunts or excluding people. Otherwise it's all just divide and rule.

I don't want to take away from or exclude others. I have to accept that I am always going to be working from a white middle class perspective but I am also not going to give up doing my utmost for women and feminism because I can only ever come at the problems from that perspective.

I do sometimes wonder how much of the calling out culture actually comes from marginalised groups of women and how much is just infighting and virtue signalling amongst wmc women (and men!)

namechanger22 I think the poor in general are ignored or feared because their situation scares people. It stands to reason then that the women of the poor are most ignored/feared/hated. It is a mistrust. To be articulate and poor is almost a betrayal of what people like to believe (that life circumstance is not about luck but hard work).

We are privileged because we are white, absolutely.

Nobody is saying that white people aren't privileged in comparison to POC.

That's not the point.

"White feminism" was originally coined by black women getting pissed off that feminism always asked them to forget about race in favour of fighting for gender. While anti-racist groups always asked them to forget about gender in favour of fighting for race. But black women can't separate them. They have to fight both battles at the same time.

What white feminism was not coined for:

Posh white blokes who wish to express stereotypical femininity by colonising women's spaces.

It's really not difficult to grasp the point and you can be quite sad to read some of these comments to be honest as much as you like. It just means you haven't grasped it.

Poor women are hated too - probably more so.

I wholly agree with you post ILoveDolly

The problem is that those middle class feminists are the most vocal, articulate and in a position to be heard (usually white/mixed race/highly educated upper middle-class of any colour iyswim) They are the biggest "threat". There is privilege, and privilege: if you understand you have been raised and exist in a space which luckily allows you to fight for those who have less agency, that's using privilege for good. But there's a lot of dismissing of that because it suits the TRA agenda. I don't find a lot of sympathy for a movement which can't show any compassion or understanding for anyone else apart from a tiny minority who are not half as oppressed as they make out.

I have seen white feminists who don't even consider the issues affecting women of colour, let alone speak up for them, and I've seen white feminists do the opposite. Do we really need a #notallwhitefeminists hashtag?

Well all I said was that white women do have privilege over WOC and I was told to fuck off, so I think someone is saying exactly that.

Being white and middle class is a huge privilege is it not? Just like being male is?
I find this interesting because surely the OPs problem is the same many men have?

There are probably many of you that have had lives better than many white working class men but isn't it the whole point that if a woman had the same life as those men it would only have been worse for her?

Just goes to show no matter what sex, race, disability etc we all find it difficult to see what privileges we have in our own life.

I'm not sure anyone is disagreeing here.

Solidarity among women is the only way we will do anything substantial about women's oppression. The bulk of it falls on women disadvantaged along additional axes, so their voices must be heard if we are to genuinely stop it rather than just shift it further along those axes. White middle-class women have the most power and the most platform as well as shared experience of oppression so their voices are needed as well. We can't do this if we let them divide us.

Yes people are pissed off, particularly pissed off when they're told they have cis privilege - a fatuous concept that posits a privileged TIM such as Jennifer Pritzker as more oppressed than Malala Yousafzai...

When did 'White, Middle Class Women' become the scum of the earth?

When we started saying 'no' to TIMs.

I'm not arguing that transwomen are more oppressed than natal women, but completely disregarding white privilege because we are women is ridiculous.

Who is doing that?

I'm not arguing that transwomen are more oppressed than natal women, but completely disregarding white privilege because we are women is ridiculous.

DFO yourself. You're telling me that had your life circumstances been the same but you hadn't been white, it would have been no more difficult? I call bullshit. No wonder people get pissed off.

It means that had you experienced the same issues as a WOC you're likely to have had greater difficulties relating to those issues. I grew up in a diverse city and I absolutely have seen that to be true.

Yes, this is the whole point. This is why I recognise the incongruity in one of the most privileged people groups on the planet claiming to be more oppressed than a child bride in Afghanistan.

Middle class white men aren't oppressed even if they put on a dress and bit of lipstick and start calling themselves Tonya. They have lived their lives being treated as a white middle class male, their skin colour and social background guaranteeing an unearned level of respect automatically. All other groups have to fight for even a fraction of that.

Male privilege is a thing. White privilege is a thing. Class is a thing. Feminism is there to address the first of these problems, i.e. that women are oppressed on the basis of our sex. But our common oppressions hit women hardest who aren't privileged along other axes, in particular women of colour and women in poverty, and understanding and addressing this is part of feminism's job. Being inclusive of males isn't.

Fancy privilege does not mean that nothing bad has ever happened to you. It means that had you experienced the same issues as a WOC you're likely to have had greater difficulties relating to those issues.

Yes, exactly. It's about the difference, all other things being equal.

But the identity politics bollocks has twisted and hijacked this and don't consider the "all other things being equal" bit. And only certain privileges are recognised (some just reeled out when useful).

But not being oppressed because of my race doesn't mean I'm not oppressed because of my sex.