California's Women's March cancelled for fear of being "too white"

Doh, forgot to add the bit I was quoting.

White women attending the women's march in the US are routinely berated over the number of white women who voted for Trump. This is just a guess here but the white women who voted for trump and the white women in pussy hats are not likely to have much overlap as groups.

NAWWALT?

Jokes aside, this perfectly illustrates my gripe with class analysis.

White women attending the women's march in the US are routinely berated over the number of white women who voted for Trump. This is just a guess here but the white women who voted for trump and the white women in pussy hats are not likely to have much overlap as groups.

I think it is difficult for people in other countries to understand, and even difficult for many Americans to understand, the extremely high correlation between evangelical Christianity and Trump support among women. Much has been written on the college/non-college educational divide, but a much higher correlation exists between evangelical beliefs and Trump support.

Look at this:

www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/getting-know-white-voters

White evangelical women without a college degree give Trump a 68 percent job approval rating, while those with a degree give him a much lower, though still positive 51 percent approval rating. Meanwhile, Trump’s approval among white, non-evangelical women without a college degree is 35 percent, just five points higher than the 30 percent approval rating he gets from white, non-evangelical college-educated women.

The white women who do support Trump are ultimately responsible for their actions. At the same time, I find it disingenuous to discuss this support outside of the context of the overarching intensely patriarchal religious fundamentalist communities in which they are raised from infancy quite explicitly to submit to men.

And yes, white feminism is weaponised by these bullshit third wavers.

White women attending the women's march in the US are routinely berated over the number of white women who voted for Trump. This is just a guess here but the white women who voted for trump and the white women in pussy hats are not likely to have much overlap as groups. What are white feminist women supposed to do with that?

Beyond sit down, shut up and feel bad - what exactly is expected of them? Who does this benefit?

Directly because of Theresa May's 'hostile environment' (this is what she did as Home Secretary before becoming Our Dear Leader):

A fuckton of BAME people, female and male, who are legally British are caught up in the Kafkaesque nightmare that is the Windrush scandal

Landlords are refusing to rent to non-white British tenants

BAME women and children are sleeping on the streets, on night buses, in A&E waiting rooms

Destitute BAME women with children are too afraid to seek help

Immigration checks have spread across public services, with the NHS demanding identification before treatment or charging patients, while sharing their information with the Home Office, and banks carrying out status checks on current accounts.

Police have reported victims of crime, including a woman who was raped, to immigration enforcement and teachers say migrant families are too “terrified” to attend meetings or sign up for free school meals.

Monitors cite the decision to drive Home Office vans telling illegal immigrants to “go home or face arrest” around Britain in 2013 as a turning point for the “hostile environment” policy, which the government recently rebranded as the “compliant environment”.

“Right to rent” checks requiring landlords in England to check prospective tenants’ immigration status, or face fines and criminal prosecution, have sparked particular concern and are the subject of a legal challenge.

How the fuck anyone has the nerve to come here and lecture us on 'white feminism' while extolling the virtues of Theresa fucking May I have no clue. It exhibits a level of woke cluelessness only matched by the women's march itself.

I'm with you there EJennings
I just don't have any time for divide and conquer crap. In REAL LIFE women are underpaid, undervalued and have worse outcomes regarding financial security and sexual safety.
That's what I care about. All this theoretical poetry is just meaningless.

1. Challenge the practice of certain men to use women's bodies for their sexual gratification against women's wishes. Promote laws and public norms which strongly punish such actions. Advocate for education of women and girls to have strong boundaries and strong voices to protect themselves from such men.

1. Challenge the right of the state to control women's bodies via laws and medical practice which prevent women from receiving appropriate care. Promote proper research into womens' medical conditions. Promote retraining of doctors to better treat women.

1. Challenge gender stereotyping which indoctrinates children and reinforces a male dominated society. Promote labor laws which outlaw the use of stereotyping in hiring and firing.

1. Challenge any and all cultural practice that contributes to women's oppression, regardless of its religious, political, or societal origin. Promote laws which outlaw such practices.

"I'm curious...what are "white women's issues?""

Some liberal feminists believe that #4 cannot be a feminist goal any longer because it might alienate certain religious or ethnic groups to say too loudly that e.g. FGM, or forms of toxic masculinity practiced by men from certain minority groups should be challenged. The argument is that if a woman who was white were advocating against practices that are practiced by another ethic group this would be "white feminist colonization" (again in US centric speak).

I feel this is a problem because women with power on some axis of oppression should stand up for women who don't have that privilege most of all. This is supposed to be what intersectionality is about - using the voice we do have to help those who don't have it.

Yup. Does this kind of thing ever happen in other movements? After 20+ years in the LGBT community, I can tell you that I've never heard of anything being cancelled because it was too male, despite women being massively under-represented (and actively marginalised).

Well it wouldn't be would it! Because penis.

Theresa May?

This is what Theresa May did.

Fucking hell.

I'm curious...what are "white women's issues?"
That phrase keeps being repeated.
The women's issues that mainly concern me are as follows:
The low pay trap of part time work and the way women's jobs are paid less.
The warped perception of female sexuality by porn and liberalised prostitution.
Helping women escape abuse, fighting for crisis services.
General encouragement for girls and women to rise economically on their own terms.
? I don't think any of these issues primarily affect any one racial background!

I feel like the message should have been simple.

If you are a woman, or support women's bodily autonomy, come to the march to protest patriarchy / male domination.

Instead we get gobblydegook like I got in my inbox last week:

"Women’s March is a women-led movement providing intersectional education on a diverse range of issues and creating entry points for new grassroots activists & organizers to engage in their local communities through trainings, outreach programs and events. Women’s March is committed to dismantling systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance and building inclusive structures guided by self-determination, dignity and respect."
and

"The Women's March on Washington is a women-led movement bringing together people of all genders, ages, races, cultures, political affiliations, disabilities and backgrounds in our nation’s capital on January 19, 2019, to affirm our shared humanity and pronounce our bold message of resistance and self-determination."

So yeah. There's nothing in there about this organization being about women's rights or specifically against women's oppression. I'd say it's basically about everything else except the sex based oppression of women (please note that the word sex has been omitted, as usual!). And it's impenetrable gobbldeegook written by "queer and gender studies" academics. No wonder that regular every day women of all stripes are turned off.

sigh

I feel pretty alienated from much of American feminism. It just seems like a ton of buzzwords and worrying about what is the right word to say etc.

You can’t do right for doing wrong with liberal feminists.

This is the Guardian article. Why, if you are a woman with breasts , would you assume breast cancer does not affect you because of your skin colour?

All women in the UK are invited for a mammogram after a certain age.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/21/breast-cancer-awareness-black-women

53rdWay, that's not altogether true. Very little progress was made even after the MacPherson's report.

The MacPherson report wasn’t about child poverty.

I don’t disagree that mainstream political parties could do a lot more to tackle how racism impacts on public life and public institutions. I don’t think anyone here is disagreeing with you on that. It is staggeringly obvious to anyone looking that there are massive, structural, continuing problems with racism in the UK, and a lot of ground to go until we have reached a better future.

However, I’m really not satisfied with politicians saying “oh yes we take this very seriously” on the one hand, while promoting policies (like austerity) that disproportionately impact on BAME people on the other. Theresa May talked a good talk about her new vision for the Conservatives, but I have yet to see how that translates to real and lasting change. So no, she’s not someone I’d hold up as an exemplar, and I’m confused as to what she’s got to do with “white feminism” in any sense.

Oh yes, we are the victims being shamed. Always the victims. Always turning it around and making it about poor us. We are being shamed. We'll maybe we should be shamed.

The evidence and the voices of minority women speaks to whatever shame you might be feeling. It's not about you and your feelings of shame. It's about those who are constantly disadvantaged whilst you constantly bring attention to your hurt feelings, deflecting attention from the issues they face.

No one is shaming or silencing you. Stop making things up to turn yourself into the "victim", poor you.

You can 'raise awareness' without trying to shame women into being silent about the problems they themselves face.
You havent actually raised awareness of any issues, you've just tried to shame others into silence about their own problems.

The way the media behaves, you'd think that only white girls or women ever go missing.
Stop blaming women for the way the patriarchal media act.

I may be wrong but I'm fairly sure white feminism isn't a creation of white men
It is used as an insult by MRA's to dismiss womens voices. As you yourself have done to working class women.

Women are allowed to speak for ourselves. Shaming and silencing achieve nothing of any value. We don't all have to be silent because someone else has it worse.

53rdWay, that's not altogether true. Very little progress was made even after the MacPherson's report. New Labour achieved no real discernible profess on race disparity and the stark differences in outcomes and experiences of BAME people living in the UK.

Personally, I'm not sure any of the political parties have done much. I am certainly not an authority on any of this. For various reasons I've come to understand a lot more about these issues) racial inequality and racism in Britain) than I ever did before.

I agree that Theresa May is raising a long neglected issue. It is a step in the right direction and I hope real progress can be made. It is no longer tenable and it is a disgrace that such differences in experiences exist because of the colour of people's skin. Evidence is very clear that BAME people across the different categories have high educational achievements and yet occupy the lower rungs of organisations. We know it's not not about ability but unconscious and conscious bias.

I was shocked to also learn from the Guardian series that black women are far more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. Not because cancer affects them differently but because of how this issue is advertised, and the relative differences in the time taken to refer and treat them.

There are also other elements that we avoid tackling because of race. Like women in some cultures feeling pressured to marry first or second cousins resulting in children with severe disabilities.

I guess we have to do whatever we can in our own way. The little I've set myself to do is raise awareness.

This is the race disparity audit: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/686071/Revised_RDA_report_March_2018.pdf

It is a good first step. You need to know what the problem is before you can target policy to address it. But you do actually need to target policy to address it, rather than handwave it off into the future with "we'll get to that after Brexit".

Example: child poverty. We know that poverty affects BAME groups more, and that this is the same for child poverty, so BAME children are more likely to be living in poverty both than white children and than BAME adults. And what's Theresa May's (and Cameron's, and the coalition's) government done to address this? Well, er, not much, in fact it's on the rise again after falling dramatically under New Labour who did actually see it as a policy priority.

A link to the report is included in this article
amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/11/lack-of-data-hampers-theresa-mays-efforts-on-racial-inequality?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQECAFYAQ%3D%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2018%2Fjun%2F11%2Flack-of-data-hampers-theresa-mays-efforts-on-racial-inequality

the fact that she has made addressing "the burning injustices" in society her number one priority after Brexit.

Oh, well if she said she will in a speech then that's totally the same as actually doing anything constructive...

Muttley, clearly you are not aware of the wide ranging review commissioned by Theresa May and the fact that she has made addressing "the burning injustices" in society her number one priority after Brexit.

She is doing a massive amount. Unfortunately this is not picked up by the media. If you listen carefully to her speeches, she almost always mentions that she wants to focus on ensuring that everyone in society is able to achieve to their full potential. It is that agenda on addressing racial inequality that she is referring to.