Why is comparing Womanface to Blackface offensive?

I figured the definition would be something like that, Goose - but then that's describing people as possessing fundamental essences. My reference points for understanding language like that are religious ones (it sounds reminiscent of souls). Examples of fundamental person essences would be useful if anyone has got any.

I think from a philosophical perspective you can think of inner essences in several ways, and some of them are quite compatible with materialism. You could think about something like, what is it that makes a woman a woman, or a human being a human being, or a dog a dog. The answer is material in one sense, but not exclusively; there is a real certain "isness" to each of those things that makes them mean something, materially, quite different from the others. A materialist would tend to say when speaking that way that what we're calling essence is completely married to the material, and also that there are no essential things that aren't married to the material.

Someone who is a platonist of some kind on the other hand would make a less definitive marriage between the essential and material, but in terms of material things would probably make a similar kind of statement about the two being essentially two sides of the same coin.

In fact I think this is the real link between gender ideology and race ideology that people sometimes find confusing - why someone would reject the idea of transracial but accept the idea of transgender. People who think this way think that race and gender are both essential internal essences. So transgender is only trans in relation to sex, you simply are the gender you are, which you know by how you feel. Race is defined a little differently, often according to the American cultural definition which tends to be the one drop perspective, but again, you are what you are and can't change.

"her race is the defining factor in how people treat her - even though she's well-educated, well-spoken, well-dressed, well-everything"

That's your colleague's opinion @breakfastpizza but perhaps lots of other women would feel that, for them sex would replace race in that sentence.

2B the Twitter response you describe is grim. Too many white women don't see drag for what it is and haven't really worked out how it fits into our own culture. They don't quite get the emotional gutpunch black women feel when someone says 'blackface' because they haven't really connected it to our own culture's version of 'sexualised stereotypes as a mechanism for ensuring the maintenance of the whore class' manifesting as drag from the inside.

@EssentialLeap I’m on my phone so can’t copy your comment but will try and answer in order

the real problem I see is not even BF / drag but the response online (FB, Twitter) to black women sharing how this affects them.

Being called by a small no. GCF - “divisive,” “over-sensitive,” and worst of all... white men (posing as black women), WTAF

These were young brilliant, black radfems who supported white GC. Who were tagged into shit shows with TRA to help fight the cause (and did so gladly). Who were fighting the same battle.

It’s really sad and shocking to me. Sorry I’m not sure I answered your q, will come back later

The problem is that if blackface is a very specific thing that relates to a particular period and place, we also need language to talk about other racist caricatures

It seems that for Americans it does have a very specific meaning, but for the rest of the English-speaking world it has a broader or different meaning. But Americans can't tell us that because that's what 'blackface' means to them, we can't use it to mean something different. It's our language too, and we shouldn't have our language policed by Americans.

Americans do have a habit of trying to force their culture on everyone else. We should be allowed to resist.

Well I was definitely hesitant to post, and I appreciate you acting as a sort of cultural ambassador slash translator, 2B.

The only thing is, the explanations leave me thinking "Yep, the parallels really are incredibly strong for me."

I use the word womanface for males wearing the stereotypical attire forced onto women like me - the pornified sexualised stereotype of the modern day whore.

My personal experiences are typical of how white English women are pushed into the unrapeable underclass of 'sex work' in all its many guises. The entire system is set up to force women with my experiences to submit to having been forcibly shoved into the prostituted class. So when I see a male being obnoxiously male about the stereotypical costume of clothes and behaviour that my subset of women are violently forced to adopt through the actions of the oppressor class in order to justify and excuse exploiting us as nothing more than subhuman performing wanksocks - I don't call that costume on males womanface in order to weaponise another culture's suffering.

I do it because black American women have given me the words my own culture hasn't, to describe what my culture does to me.

The word I need isn't womanface. The people I'd hitherto described with that word are wearing whoreface. Black American women are saying "this is how they justify and excuse forcing us into the unrapeable whore underclass."

The unrapeable whore underclass isn't determined by race here. Some of us are born to it with no realistic means of escape, some of us are shoved into it much later. And they justify and excuse shoving us into that stereotype and keeping us there with these obnoxious celebrations of the 'costume' they've attached to us as part of making and keeping us dehumanised.

I get how frustrating it is when white women don't understand black women's insider perspective on blackface. It's paralleled in how I feel when my fellow white women are defending the celebration of the current iteration of the whore-stereotype as just a bit of fun, light entertainment, a celebration of the history of a subset of my oppressors that I need to stop being so humourless about.

It's cultural variations on the same thing, whatever words we use for it.

@aliasundercover your comment was ages ago but I wanted to let you know I appreciated it (and there was nothing offensive whatsoever about it)!

I think quieter posters can be hesitant to post on these threads as they are scared of getting their head bitten off, whatever they say. Every voice has value so I’m glad you added yours.

I said earlier people could AMA if they were confused about what happened (not that I’m anyone - only that I’ve followed the discussions/ fallings out closely).

That offer is still there if anyone is lurking - AMA (=ask me anything), I won’t bite anyone’s head off!

I don't mind Americans saying that blackface is a very particular form of entertainment that is specific to the Jim Crow Era.

The problem is that if blackface is a very specific thing that relates to a particular period and place, we also need language to talk about other racist caricatures; and arguably you shouldn't use the term blackface to describe Justin Trudeau dressing up as Aladdin - it might be racist but it isn't blackface.

Plato I agree, the problem is mainly Americans imposing their world view on the rest of us. Some of them just don't seem to understand that the rest of the world doesn't share their history and culture, and things that are unacceptable in the US might be seen as perfectly OK elsewhere, and vice versa.

I am aware there are instances of FGM in women in the UK hence I said primarily outside. It isn’t anything like the scale of slavery though. In any event, it’s almost always black women it happens to so is another example of the additional issues that affects the black community.

I think playing the ‘my impression is worse than your oppression’ game isn’t very helpful, but I can understand why black women may take issue with the comparison we are talking about. I suppose it’s up to the person making the arguments whether they want to spend additional time and potentially distract from the issue at hand by getting caught up in this side debate.

I don’t really see it as so much of an issue in the UK though where blackface wasn’t used in the same way. It’s hard to limit your audience though.

Interestingly enough, in the Netherlands, blackface is still common and every Christmas Santa’s helpers (slaves) are white people in full on black face. Many people are adamant that it isn’t offensive. It just goes to show the opposite end of the spectrum. The comparison wouldn’t work there either.

I agree with @EssentialLeap that looking at similarities can be illuminating and useful. Can also understand as a human being the annoyance at people equating two separate experiences. Drag for example isn't part of a history where in modern times woman are innocently shot by police. I find drag hugely offensive and lampooning of women every time I see it.

What I can get my head around is what is the logical difference between a male claiming to be a 'medical woman' and a white person saying they are black? Rachel Dolezal seems as 'earnest' in her belief that she is trans as any trans woman/ man I've seen. I don't understand why it's ok for black people to find RD offensive but I can't be offended by a man stating he is having PMS?!

FGM happens in the UK. And some British girls are taken overseas for it.
plan-uk.org/about/our-work/fgm

It seems to me a little disingenuous to say that US doesn’t apply to the UK but to claim experiences that also happen primarily outside of the UK.
My comment on what happens to women and girls was a response to someone who said that women as a class weren't persecuted, and that female oppression wasn't comparable to lynchings and slavery. I don't see what's 'disingenuous' about that.

There’s a lot of nuanced arguments here and more than one can deconstruct in an Internet forum post.

One thing that strikes me though is on the one hand you have posters saying that bad black face and lynching is American but on the other women and girls are being killed just for being born girls and subject to FGM on account of the same. Surely the majority of baby girl killing and FGM happens outside of the UK.

It seems to me a little disingenuous to say that US doesn’t apply to the UK but to claim experiences that also happen primarily outside of the UK.

Also, some people might say "drag is a kind of womanface" and "womanface has some similarities to blackface", but that's not the same thing as saying "drag is equivalent to blackface" because that's missing out an essential step in the middle.

'Womanface' and 'blackface' have differences as well as similarities. Some people might disagree that drag is an example of womanface, while agreeing the womanface is a useful way to describe a particular kind of mocking imitation of women that does happen in some contexts.

It is interesting, whatever the history of blackface, that these days there is outcry if a white actor is chosen to play a character of a different race... but drag is becoming more mainstream and more acceptable.

Going "don't compare it to blackface, it's offensive! " is just another way of silencing or diverting the discussion.

Drag is damaging to women due to perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Surely that's enough for it be a problem.

Representation matters. Women are woefully under represented as complete, autonomous, human beings in all media... then you add in some of the representation of "women" being these awful sexualized caricatures. It's not great.

That WW equating blackface with drag is a painful and inaccurate comparison for BW

Just to clarify - is it only 'equating' that is the problem, rather than just pointing out that there are some similarities/parallels between the two?

Also, would the problem from your point of view (2b) be statements explicitly equating womanface and blackface, or do you have a problem with the use of the word 'womanface' full stop?

I found people drawing attention to the similarities really eye-opening and the idea that doing that is 'weaponising' someone else's suffering quite difficult to accept, as it seems to imply that no one, ever, can draw attention to similarities between the tactics of different oppressive groups, because somewhere, some group will always have suffered worse than all the others from one particular tactic. That would mean that naming that tactic and noticing it elsewhere even in different forms and strengths would be impossible, because it would 'belong' to the group that experienced the worst version of it.

OTOH I can see that a simplistic equating of the two as a sort of lazy 'gotcha' in an argument about 'womanface' is not appropriate. Does just using the word 'womanface' do that? Doesn't the word 'womanface' have its own independent function so it can be used and discussed in its own right without its mere presence indicating that the person using it thinks that the actions of drag, agp or whatever are completely equivalent to 'blackface' in intent and effect? I would say it should and does.

Making mental more note. Bastard autocorrect!

I figured the definition would be something like that, Goose - but then that's describing people as possessing fundamental essences. My reference points for understanding language like that are religious ones (it sounds reminiscent of souls). Examples of fundamental person essences would be useful if anyone has got any.

It's obvious that race affects how one's mind/self/identity emerges over time - but that's contingent on the state of the local culture. Black in the States - whoever you become is moulded by (amongst many other variables) lived experience as a member of a very obviously and violently oppressed class. The resulting trends of experience, worldview, life chances, etc etc - they're not intrinsic to being black, but to being systematically oppressed.

I don't mean 'African-American' when I say black though - that's not what black means to the English. That's another point of potential misunderstanding and frayed tempers on this topic, isn't it? Making mental more to be mindful.

But 'face' is also used as a general term to cover all racist caricatures in the arts and entertainment, including those that are unrelated to the US.

And in fact now it's being used when it's not a racist caricature at all, but simply a depiction where someone plays a race that is not their own, or even if it's meant to purposefully deconstruct racist stereotypes. And "brownface" is being used as if it's the equivalent as well, so playing a role that requires almost any modification of skin colour.

There is something kind of weird when that sort of growth of the concept is allowed without any real discussion of whether it's valid to compare a minstrel show to a white man playing Othello, or a guy dressed up as Black Peter, but on the other hand you can't use it specifically as a comparison when it's clear from the context there is no claim of any kind of historical connection and it's simply drawing attention to a similar kind of thing.

Indeed.

Can I put my hand up and admit to actually not having the faintest idea what "racially essentialising" means?

It's essentially saying that race is part of the fundamental essence of a person.

One of the major criticisms of identity politics is that it takes this idea as it's basis, and so is unable to challenge the idea of race, it can't deconstruct it as a valid category - even though ever and always the idea of race always exists for racism - and that is true whether we attach it to skin colour or not. On the contrary, it tend to reenforce and deepen the idea of race and its hold on people.

I suspect dehumanising stereotypes as entertainment goes a lot further back than Ancient Greece. Raping and enslaving the women of outgroups certainly does.

White women caricatured as subhuman and exploitable is so rife in western white society, that most people don't even notice it. It's that normalised

Yup.

blackface being designed to dehumanise but drag doesn't shape society's view of women - drag doesn't need to, because that view was shaped, that effort put into dehumanisation, rather a lot longer ago and to great effect

Exactly this.

"Drag" has a long history starting in the West anyway, with ancient Greek theatre, when women were not permitted to perform publicly, so men cross-dressed to perform female roles. That tradition persisted in the UK, until 1662. In other parts of Europe, women performed on the public stage earlier than in Britain.

Pantomime dames were comic cross-dressing starting in the 19th century, and i think this is where contemporary drag comes from - all based on ridicule of older, often widowed women. All the stereotypes - sex-mad but totally unattractive; fat; over the top; deluded about their attractiveness.

And Queen Victoria on the throne at the time? Coincidence? I think not ...

If I was descended from the likes of the women in Gaskill's Mary Barton I'd be pretty prickly about being told I benefited from slavery because some white women owned slaves.