The problem with white feminism

Isn't it horribly racist to criticise people for being "white feminists" when talking about issues other than race (specifically trans issues)?

As pp have said there are some serious problems that black women face both in the UK and elsewhere (eg the increased mortality figures when giving birth are horrifying). But Alison Phipps isn't focussing on those problems. I know that she would say that she's using "white feminism" as a shorthand for non-intersectional feminism, but the whole thing seems to be dishonestly appropriating black women's struggles. Why is she taking the spotlight away from black women and why do you support her in doing this @FrackOff?

I'm now wondering what North Americans call plasters.Band aids?

That's what most people say, though if they want to avoid propriety names they might say adhesive bandages. I've really only heard that from medical types though.

Good to hear she disapproves of calling women t**fs then and thinks fighting not to be discriminated about because of your sex is a good thing

Is it colonialist to object to rape and prostitution FrackOff? Is it colonialist to develop a politics based on women's experience of men's violence which works to liberate us all?

Wouldn't you agree that it is colonialist for white men to use poor women from developing countries in prostitution. What about the cover ups of British army rapes in Kenya. Are they colonialist?

Oh great, you're back @FrackOff

so this podcast says

Rad feminists define women by their capacity to reproduce which apparently excludes black women

can you explain how that works?

do all white feminists practise 'white feminism'? or do some like the redoubtable Ms Phipps practise some other form of feminism?

Sorry, confused. How does the average modern day feminist divide people into acceptable and not acceptable people?

Speaking as a feminsit who dreams about the day t the need for feminism goes away , but recognises that today we need feminism because many people can not see past someone's sex and hurt people accordingly.

Isn't using baby formula white colonial feminism?

Hey @FrackOff, come and tell us what you think of Alison's podcast. Do you agree with it? Why?

It’s been said over and over that there is the lack of a class analysis
The interesting thing 2Rebecca as I discovered via the knitting argument is that a Japanese person would be considered a “BIPOC” by the US-centric wokesters and therefore massively oppressed. As you say, dodgy imperialist history completely gone over the heads of the woke.
They have divided everyone into white and non-white. Non-white people are one big mass to the woke. I can’t see people going for that.

"I am not saying that white women do not suffer sexual violence....We are entitled to be angry; we are entitled to cry. But we are not entitled to politicise our pain"

Bang goes radical feminism then. Does that mean white men can't politicise rape either? Alison will have to tell all those Russian soldiers in Germany after WWII who are estimated to have raped two million German women and girls. Or there were the white Bosnian Serbs who used rape when they were "ethnically cleansing" Bosnian Muslims. Or there's just your average white rapist who can keep women in a state of low level terror simply because we know he exists and he's going to attack at least one of us. We're supposed go ignore that men have used rape as a fundamental tool of male supremacy ever since they invented the patriarchy.

Alison makes me think of that white female academic Robin DiAngelo who has made a huge name for herself with the term "white fragility" (a term which Alison uses). Her book was at the top of the New York Times bestseller lists. Are there black women who get the same profile for the same kind of analysis, or are these "white women" taking jobs and space from women who have actually experienced white racism directly?

History is being edited and rewritten in my opinion.

It's really not, it's out there, it's just the mainstream has latched onto American history and applied it to the UK.

"White feminism" as a masochistic term of abuse by white people is a weirdly white thing.
I can't imagine Japanese feminists disparaging the feminism of their country in the same way. (Not that I know anything about Japanese feminism but the Japanese tend to be proud of being Japanese despite them having a dodgy imperialist past too)
I'm neither ashamed or proud of being white it's just what I am. My feminism is rooted in the issues I experience. All women's feminism should be like that.
Me disparaging white feminism and trying to promote the feminism of other women is like middle class lefties saying they are fighting for the "working class" who they see as an exotic species and don't really understand.

I actually went as far as looking at photos of 1970s feminist conferences to see the demographics, they were certainly not 100% white, there were WOC in the audience and on the panels, although numbers varied by location and it would be difficult to argue completely proportionate, there were also conferences organised by and for African American women. Also present were, shock horror, old women, often wearing hats! History is being edited and rewritten in my opinion. Young women need to be more curious and do their own research.

The problem is the elision of class. Even in the US, what interests/commonalities does a middle class second gen immigrant with professional parents have in common with a black American descendant of slavery? Everywhere you look, modern "progressivism" elides actual structural inequality with superficiality.

So pardon me, Frack, but I'll leave Alison with her politically illiterate, ahistorical, class-ignorant, bourgeois word salad in the full knowledge that she wouldn't recognise inequality if it got up and slapped her in the face with a wet fish.

I'll stick with heroic women like Pragna Patel, who have a genuine understanding of structural inequality, a sense of liberationary internationalism, and what intersectionality actually is, rather than what superficial bourgeois people like Alison would like it to be.

Want to know what middle class white feminism really looks like? Find a picture of Alison and her Wokeist chums.

That's adorable :)

I would also like to point out that the overlap between the problems of women and transwomen is extremely small in comparison.

I'm now wondering what North Americans call plasters.

Band aids?

White women and "WOC" may have some different experiences but there's a hell of a big overlap, enough of an overlap that it's perfectly reasonable for both groups to talk about issues that effect all women as well as their own more particular ones.

Them being Americans, and Canadians who use similar language. It's surprisingly catching, American English.

It works the other way too. My toddler, who is a Peppa Pig fan, came to me the other day asking for a plaster for her toe. It took me a few minutes to figure out what she wanted.

There should be an acknowledgement that WOC have different struggles as women in the patriarchy

Who are "WOC" in a UK context?

Are women in countries such as Saudi or Brunei, who may be far, far wealthier than an American "women of colour" also "WOC"?

Are the Filipino house servants of the Saudi WOC also WOC?

As someone else said out of a US context WOC makes my teeth itch. It's so patronising- there are white and everyone else is WOC.

Generally as a white, middle class woman I'm pretty fed up of being told I'm to blame for everything ; whether that is Dr. Olivette Otele, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Munro Bergdorf or any one on MN castigating me for employing nannies or cleaners.

I believe the mock-guillotine photo comes from the protest outside Meghan Murphy's talk in Vancouver on Saturday:

www.feministcurrent.com/2019/11/06/vancouver-panel-on-gender-identity-and-media-bias-encapsulates-conflict-between-women-and-trans-activists/

Them being Americans, and Canadians who use similar language. It's surprisingly catching, American English.

I've lived abroad teaching American English and surrounded by them. I'm currently training myself out of saying thingd like garbage, trash, and sidewalk.

I have zero interest in the views of anyone who treats 'white women' as a homogenous mass. Such people tend to have extremely ill informed and superficial world views.