The problem with white feminism

What the fuck did I just read?! White women shouldn't seek justice and punishment against rapists because that would be .... politicising their pain??!! What the actual fuck??

taking other people's writing and regurgitating it out of context.

Yep, which is why she mixes up very very basic concepts.

Like, if you're at all familiar with the racial politics of America it's obvious that she's talking about the border with Mexico. But if she's a Brit that makes no sense, so it reads as her taking other people's writing and regurgitating it out of context.

Is she a Brit who identifies as an American?

She's a Brit who, like many students, hasn't been taught a thing about British history or politics so gets information from the USq based resources....

Is she British? Because that discusses what are specifically American white people experiences in "we" terms (there is no border within the UK that one might be stopped at as a result of not looking white enough, because island, but in the US there is). Is she a Brit who identifies as an American?

That’s it! I’m going home this evening to treat my sons as a homogeneous mass!

That’ll teach ‘em!

I just read that Red Pepper article and now am confused. WTF. Is she saying that jailing rapists is bad? Have I fundamentally misunderstood something here?

What a good job posters here don't treat men as a homogenous mass.

Unless you mean we've noticed they are all of the male sex class?

Yes, the white women weaponising crying thing (it was in the Guardian wasn’t it) manages to be both racist and sexist while congratulating itself on its inclusiveness

Any one taken in by it demonstrates an impressive capacity for believing complete nonsense

If that redpepper article is indicative of her communication style I'm not surprised most students skip her lectures. She leaps from one idea to another and implies that there's a connection without actually demonstrating that one exists. Her worldview is weirdly American centric. She conflates things that aren't connected and constantly attempts to shift attention from men's actions to how women are somehow responsible for them. She doesn't appear to realize that cultures where white people aren't in charge exist. It's all very undergrad comes up with Baby's First Political Theory.

I've yet to encounter anyone banging on about this stuff who doesn't want society to stop jailing rapists, which is certainly interesting. They're absolutely fixated on making sure that no man ever suffers and consequences as a result of predatory behavior towards women (and kids).

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

I wonder if....with a little editing...

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

Nice.

The Red Pepper article is the most batshit thing I've read in a long time

Listen to the podcast :-)

That's one of the weirdest things I've read all year - and I get through a load of TRA stuff! White women use public displays of distress to dominate other ethnic groups? So white women shouldn't be allowed to show distress? Batshit. For a start, the British as a culture are famously unemotional. Public crying is more acceptable in other, often non-white cultures.

I bet I know where this comes from though. 'White tears' as an insult for what was seen as white people expressing petty grievances. Once a concept exists it gets elaborated on and give new meanings. It's justified retrospectively with things the originator never thought of. MRAs did the same with 'feminazi' - what started as an insult turned into serious, detailed efforts to explain why feminists are Nazis.

I am carceral af

Join the fucking club!

Oh, the OP didn’t stick around to chat? They never do, do they?

Which is a shame as I’m dying to see someone back up that heap of BS

I can’t cry on demand, despite being white. If I cry, I can’t actually stop myself from doing it. It’s not like I love the feeling of tears on my skin or anything. Alison can fuck off.

Not only all of this but I hate crying. It just gives me a headache.

Also, attitudes to crying are cultural. Until very recently the British were considered unemotional types for example while those darker skinned white people in Mediterranian countries were considered emotional. There are simmilar cultural divisions across Asia and Africa regarding 'temperament'. Almost as if not all white people are the same, not all black people are the same, not all Asian people are the same.

I am carceral af

But we are not entitled to politicise our pain

What rubbish. No rationale for this, just a load of disjointed inane statements about "white narcissism". Weep quietly, women, where no one can hear you.

And what is this obsession these people have with not punishing rapists?

The Red Pepper article is the most batshit thing I've read in a long time.

Wanting men who rape women to go to prison is apparently something that only evil white feminists endorse. I assume that black women who have been raped are perfectly happy for their rapists to go free, right?

so the idea that women wept when awful things happenedin times when they had no power is problematic?

Yes, that is exactly her point. From the above article:

the domination of mainstream feminism by bourgeois white women shapes [it's] political grammar...For instance, that rape is perpetrated by ‘bad men’ who should be exposed...That they ought to be punished as severely as possible.

political whiteness...is produced by the combination of supremacy and victimhood.. studies of whiteness have highlighted the central role of narcissism in white identity..Whiteness is predisposed to woundedness

These tears hide the harms we perpetrate through our involvement in white supremacy...The cultural power of mainstream feminism is linked to the cultural power of white tears...

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

And telling people not to show emotion when bad things happen to them is great too.

I can’t cry on demand, despite being white. If I cry, I can’t actually stop myself from doing it. It’s not like I love the feeling of tears on my skin or anything. Alison can fuck off.

Only white women Errol.

Presumably black women shed no tears and just stoically carry on. Good old stiff upper lip for them. Because treating dark skinned women as inherently different to light skinned ones isn't racist at all.

There's Rachel weeping for her children too. (Jeremiah, quoted in Mathew as prophesying the Massacre of the Innocents)

Uh, so the idea that women wept when awful things happenedin times when they had no power is problematic?

When I was a student (many years ago) we had an American lecturer who talked a lot about the Americanisation of Europe. I think we're now seeing the Americanisation of academia. There are so many 'academics' and students who seem to have no awareness that the US experiences of feminism, racism, suffragettes/suffragists exist within an US vacuum and that other countries have different histories, political movements, etc.
'White feminism' when used by white women just seems to be another way to tell the majority that they're being the wrong type of feminists.It seems to be used by feminists who court male approval and have no campaigning or RL experience of feminism and no experience or knowledge of women's rights or lack of them in other countries and no appreciation of grassroots organising here or across the globe.

So a question for Alison and or Frackoff.
Tears epitomise white femininity. They evoke the damsel in distress and the mourning, lamenting women of myth. Niobe wept unceasingly after her children were killed by Artemis and Apollo; even after being turned to stone, tears poured from her petrified face. Penelope waited for her husband Odysseus for two decades in her ‘bed of sorrows’, which she watered with tears until she fell asleep. In an article on #MeToo, Jamilah Lemieux commented: ‘white women know how to be victims. They know just how to bleed and weep in the public square, they fundamentally understand that they are entitled to sympathy.’

www.redpepper.org.uk/the-political-whiteness-of-metoo/

This describes exactly the fetish of subordination that autogynephilia depends on. And yet when this is a man identifying as a women for this very purpose you are their "sister"?

And 90% of women in UK can shut up and let Bergdorf speak for them in the HSTS/non-AGP GAMP version of "feminism" you promote?