Feminism as Racist Backlash

Indeed it did!

The first US convention for women’s rights in the US, Seneca Falls in 1848, came about because at a conference on abolishing slavery, the men voted that the women delegates should not be permitted to speak.

The main speaker at Seneca Falls who advocated fighting for the vote for women was Frederick Douglass - who was black & a former slave.

And 9 times out of 10 the foot inside the boot on those women’s neck is the same colour as them.

Indeed. Even if we accept his assumption that the US is the world, how does he explain the women's rights activism of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth?

Well, this chap is a rather curious character isn’t he?

Has anyone got a spare share token for this?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/will-we-have-the-courage-to-topple-suffragette-statues-m7xx676lv

Somewhat curious as to why someone with a special interest in black male studies would land the at uni of Edinburgh (a city where 1% or less of the population are black men) and I found this article, about how Curry got himself into a bit of a pickle at a previous university in Texas:

amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/03/what-is-a-black-professor-in-america-allowed-to-say-tommy-j-curry

THANK YOU, Maduixa, for taking the time to write that all out. A much better effort than my "it's complicated!" 😂

I'm personally wary of a male academic focusing even in a purely and clearly US context on the unique badness of the women involved, as a decisive historical driver, if he's ignoring the actions of contemporary men and the context of the patriarchal power structure.

This is such an important point.

So did I. Louisa May Alcott for example, who was active in abolitionism and supported the underground railroad, and went on to become a Suffragette.

It does seem a never ending tide of male centred people thrashing around trying to find a justifiable reason why women having equality is a bad thing and no nice woman would want it. And when you look at why they are keen to find reasons, the linking factor is usually women having boundaries that inconvenience males who would like to use those women and a) not face consequences for it and b) not feel shame or experience censure for doing so.

This isn't directed at you specifically, namitynamechange, just wanted to take your observation as a jumping-off point as there were a few questions on the US background (re women's suffrage and racism) on the thread -

In the mid-1800s, various campaigns to extend suffrage in the USA (at the time confined to white male property owners) coalesced. The largest, most organised groups advocated for (1) women, (2) blacks, and (3) working class and lower middle class urban people excluded by the property restriction. Because a change to the franchise USA-wide required a change to the US constitution (which is a huge deal, requiring either a 2/3 majority in both Houses of Congress OR a simple majority in 2/3 of the state legislatures), campaigners thought it made sense to plead the various cases together so a single amendment could be agreed and implemented to make the franchise “fair”.

When the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution took effect in 1870, it said: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Women were still 100% excluded in spite of the organising and work they had done. It took another 50 years, until 1920, for women to be guaranteed the vote via the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which said: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

During the intervening fifty years, campaigns also continued for universal suffrage, for removal of the requirement to own property, and to combat laws that various states were introducing to inhibit black men from voting, such as literacy tests. Because the women’s suffrage groups were well-organised and often had the ear of influential men through personal connections, the other groups wanted their help in campaigning. Many women/groups did want to do this, but there was also strong feeling that sharing resources with other groups might have contributed to being excluded from the 1870 Constitutional changes. They decided to sharply target a Constitutional amendment specifically disallowing discrimination based on sex, no distractions. Once this was done, women campaigners could use their new powers to help other groups with their aims.

It’s also complicated by differences by individual state. The earliest woman in Congress were elected before the Constitution was amended in 1920, running in states where the law had already changed and they could count on women's votes. Campaigns took on different tones and focuses to placate and convince the local men, who in spite of a few elected woman still had most of the power to say yes or no. There were arguments that would be recognised as blatantly racist today used on occasion in the southern states, and classist and anti-immigrant examples used in the urban areas of the Northeast (for example)

Individual women may have personally been racist and classist and anti-immigrant. "Society" certainly was. But objectionable tactics and arguments were used, when they were used, mostly because they were effective. Not enough of the men who needed to be won over (remember, 2/3 majority) had been persuaded that arguments about equality, dignity, human rights, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", etc. (which HAD been decisive in the decision to remove the race restriction) applied to women. But many were persuaded by the idea that women from their own families, social groups, etc. would vote similarly to "their" men in the most important ways, diluting the impact of the expected influx of voters from other demographics (freed slaves and non-Anglo/W Euro/Christian immigrants included). The main arguments along those lines were not so much "give us the vote, not them", but more "giving the vote to everyone BUT women is a missed opportunity". Or something.

It's wrong that these things happened. They do have downstream impact. It certainly should be talked about and analysed, in a feminist context and in a US national context - both the race issues AND the class and nationality/immigration ones (the last sometimes also antisemitic). Individual state voting laws that were clearly discriminatory against black Americans weren't fully prohibited until 1965 - and even now, discrimination still occurs despite the law. But I'm personally wary of a male academic focusing even in a purely and clearly US context on the unique badness of the women involved, as a decisive historical driver, if he's ignoring the actions of contemporary men and the context of the patriarchal power structure. (I'm not sure if Curry does this; I've never heard of him before - but there's plenty of it all over social media and in my experience disproportionately from men.)

He's a racist as well as a misogynist. And takes US history to be the history of the world. And decolonisation is a system for suggesting that magical theories and methods are the equivalent of the scientific method, suggesting that the scientific method is eurocentric, when it is not. Lot of bollocks, and Tommy Curry appears to be a main proponent of it.

I see what you did there, with 'right side of history'.

These days the UK suffragists are frequently accused of not campaigning against racism and for the working class. Firstly, this isn't true. Secondly, why would anyone in power care what women think about race and class unless women have the vote? Women are always expected to put everyone else first.

I think the explanation is right there in what you said.

Women are the enemy (to other women) because of the man’s boot on the neck. Don’t look at us, look at other women kind of thing.

He is also arguing that it is misandrist

Bloody hell, the full set. I wonder at which point identity politics will eat its own body.

I don't understand why white women are the enemy. When I look out across the world at the brutal subjugation of my black & brown sisters in the global majority, I feel nothing but fury & solidarity. And if they look up, it's not a woman's boot on their neck, it's a man's. United we stand, but divided we fall.

GrinitchSpinach

"It is accurate to say that ... the relationships between white US suffragist women and black US abolitionist men was complicated and fraught."

You can imagine the grief they would have got to be seen fraternising with black men (probably quite dangerous for the men too).

the primary racial target of feminist thought and activism over the centuries, the Black male

Way to centre feminism around men.

A reminder: it's not just white women who want equal rights.

Faculty of Arts and Humanities Decolonisation Series, I wonder if they'll be considering the numerous men now colonising women's spaces.

Okay, the piece is about American Feminism, they should have left that in the title.

"By looking at the primary racial target of feminist thought and activism over the centuries, the Black male" - I'm very interested to know how feminist thought had/has a racial target. As nepeta says, the primary target would have been white men, not because of their race but because they wielded all the power.

It is accurate to say that many US suffragists were involved in the movement to abolish slavery, and that the relationships between white US suffragist women and black US abolitionist men was complicated and fraught. I'm not an expert in the area so won't weigh in at length on that aspect.

In today's context, I think the speech on misogynoir by Lorraine Nowlin of WDI USA at the national convention in September 2022 is relevant:

lorrainenowlin.substack.com/p/wdi-usa-convention-speech

The whole thing is really, really worthwhile. Here is the conclusion:

Lynching was used to shape my perception of White women as liars not to be trusted. I am stretching my thinking about White women; will you stretch your thinking about me and other Black women? Consider that Black women were victims of sexual terrorism by White men while working as maids in White homes during Jim Crow. It makes me wonder if White women were taught not to see Black women as victims of White male sexual aggression but as loose women. It is likely that we were both given carefully crafted exaggerations about each other by our “grandparents” which in turn influences how we perceive each other. Again, we must stretch our thinking beyond what we were taught in order to Reignite the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Yes. Some early feminists got their feminist awakening in the Abolitionist movement, and both black and white women were active in the Abolitionism, especially Quaker women.
www.abolitionseminar.org/women-and-abolitionism/

This. And this was openly acknowledged very early on in America - Henry James wrote a novel about this in the 1880s. The talk described above is a load of provocative bollocks and fucking insulting to the many women of the abolitionist movement, who fought to end slavery and then also became women’s rights activists. Just fucking offensive anti feminist bollocks really.

I’ve always preferred Sylvia.

It’s interesting to see white women being blamed because white men have historically considered black men a threat/competition for white women.

An unusual take. But then he is professor of Black Male Studies, not professor of Black Female Studies, so that will affect his approach.

Does anyone know if his uni (edinburgh I think) has a professor of ' Black Female Studies'?

I must admit that I wasn't aware of Marie Stopes background in eugenics, when I quite easily could have been if I'd done any research. Her interest in birth control was not to benefit all women, at all.

But this lecture is not about Stopes and UK eugenicist feminists, it seems to be totally focussed on US history and US race relations.