The problem with white feminism

I don't identify as a white feminist 🙂

Pragna Patel's FiLia speech is really good. Thanks for sharing.

Does she not find it galling to sit there as a white woman, basically claiming to speak for black people. The woman interviewing her seems a bit dumb and a people-pleaser, but if I were her, I would have asked Alison whether, as a white middle-class academic, she feels that it's up to her to be writing this book and making this argument on behalf of women of colour.

I am listening to the podcast in the background at the moment. She is so so dumb and so disingenuous. I wonder if she truly believes this crap.

Here you go, Alison, you politically illiterate, ahistorical twit.

feminisminindia.com/2019/02/04/7-indian-suffragettes-british/

Aah yes, being white. The new ‘original sin’ 🙄

Alison seems to be a bit hacked off that the plan to make opposition to TRA overreach literally unspeakable isn't working out as expected.

(Honestly, "unspeakable things", it's like a Victorian potboiler.)

Wow. So she's actually telling black women that they're not doing black feminism properly?

Not explicitly. That was her argument against all older feminists who achieve great things but then 'do unspeakable things' by 'oposing trans rights'.

The way the q was framed made me immediately think of Linda Belos.

Twatticus that is just England and Wales. It is much higher in Scotland

Indeed, and being so homogenously white Scotland quite famously has no ethnic tensions whatsoever. No one has ever been discriminated against for their ethnicity. It is a perfect paradise. Just ask the Irish Catholics.

I wouldn't shame Alison Phipps for using a bottle, no harm in that if you can't get the glass to your mouth. Seems like she's had a few bottles too. 🤷‍♀️

It’s interesting because the one UK academic conference that I have heard of that was accused of being overtly racist and very hostile to POC was the 2019 Transgender Conference organised by Edinburgh University. The conference promised to be ‘intersectional’ but was apparently anything but, with some speakers blaming their overt racism on MH issues. Check out the hashtag #transcon2019 for all the dramz at the time. But I bet none of that will be in Alison’s book....

Their arguments are 'myopic and inherently white'.

Wow. So she's actually telling black women that they're not doing black feminism properly?

I would say more, but to be honest, I think we now know all we need to know about Alison Phipps.

'm not even sure it's ideology, actually, in this case, because there generally is at least some internal coherence to an ideology

Yes, my feeling was she just strings together buzzwords and repeats small pieces of more reasonable arguments without the nuance or context. There was no logical sequence of thought to explain or justify ideas. Several points seemed directly contradictory.

It's hard to summarise fairly in a clear way without veering into parody.

Twatticus that is just England and Wales. It is much higher in Scotland.

I listened until the suffragettes (inclusive of the Indian and other minority women of the time) being mixed up with suffragists (the US equivalent.).

I haven't wasted my time listening to it, but this is exactly the kind of thing I meant when I described Phipps as intellectually dishonest earlier. There is a growing number of academics who (either to attract funding or to reproduce their own world-view) argue from ideological standpoints without bothering themselves with facts, research or logic. I'm not even sure it's ideology, actually, in this case, because there generally is at least some internal coherence to an ideology, even when it is, by definition, false. It's not surprising that public trust in "experts" is being eroded, or that it then becomes possible for certain groups to deny climate change.

Yeah the mix up between suffragists and suffragettes is so annoying. At the time of the suffragettes, black people were not prevented from voting (although obviously they were subjected to structural racism). But there is no way that the suffragettes in the UK were fighting for the right of white women only to vote because that would have required there to have been laws preventing black men from voting at the time, which there weren’t. If I were a suffragette listening to this sort of shit 100 years later, I’d be turning in my grave. What an over-privileged entitled idiot.

Not to mention the number of Muslim and orthodox Jewish women who will be excluded from public spaces once men are admitted to facilities that were previously women-only?

No. Non white women were mentioned frequently, but only as an abstract concept personified by Alison. There was not one mention of specific challenges faced today.

I bottle-fed years before mumsnet existed and met lots of breast is best mothers/recruiters/shamers (I didn't really care) at mother and baby groups, in parks and in the midwife profession.

This went on pre mumsnet and they are not EVERYONE HERE ALISON. Again representation, breast feeders are expressing (!) their opinions, not everyone's. They don't claim to "own" feeding any more than white women "own" feminism and the digital platform they speak on certainly doesn't OWN anything.

I don't want to be your sister Alison. Conversations with you would be a bit weird.

It's about 80% white in the U.K., isn't it?

80% white British but another 6% "other white", so 86% white overall.

www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest

donquixotedelamancha - talk about taking one for the team! That was above and beyond.

Compare that load of privileged baloney with Pragna Patel.

Poor old Frack - no cigar and not even close.

Does Alison have anything to say about the numerous women of colour involved in gender critical feminism? Linda Bellos, Lucy Masoud, Raquel Rosario Sanchez, Allison Bailey?

Yes. She did not name them, but the only cohesive bit is in the middle (because the iterviewer actually asked a coherent question) and addresses this difficulty with Alison's 'argument':

Their arguments are 'myopic and inherently white'. Their type of Feminism was always problematic and is being exposed now as an attempt to grab power from men and to pull up a drawbridge, not liberate others. Feminism needs completely pulling down and remodeling in the image of Alison Phipps.

Can we have a podcast on the problems of white male socialists?

I listened until the suffragettes (inclusive of the Indian and other minority women of the time) being mixed up with suffragists (the US equivalent.)...

Then it's lost me as there wasn't even basic fact checking.

That tweet posted by Reality suggests she's nuts. "Trans women are more my sisters..." Are you OK, hun?

Does Alison have anything to say about the numerous women of colour involved in gender critical feminism? Linda Bellos, Lucy Masoud, Raquel Rosario Sanchez, Allison Bailey? Not to mention the number of Muslim and orthodox Jewish women who will be excluded from public spaces once men are admitted to facilities that were previously women-only?

How the fuck does that work?!

Perhaps if one day a student finds themselves with no other option but to attend one of her lectures* they can ask how she thinks babby is formed when the parents are not white.

*Snowstorm that they need to take shelter from and the lecture hall is the only place open?

It's about 80% white in the U.K., isn't it? So say there are 10 people and we get 50% female representation - that would be 4 white women and 1 BAME