Why do lots of black women still feel that feminism is nit for them?

[SpringHasSprungYay]

Isn't it sad that in this day & age, so many black women still feel that feminism is a white woman's thing.
How can we make things better?

Thanks @DysonSphere you are extremely articulate & I hope you get well soon x

I’m a mixed race woman and I feel that’s even more of a reason to be a feminist. We are so low down in the pecking order that at times we can be viewed as simply a nothing.

All the black women I know (albeit not many in my area) are feminists too so I’ve never seen this attitude that you describe, displayed.

I think feminism has had negative connotations for a while and many women felt uncomfortable describing themselves as a feminist for a long time. Sarah Everard and Me Too seems to have changed that a little.

We should all stand as one.

@DysonSphere

I am not well and not going to articulate myself well. I am a black woman, but in the main I find feminism off-putting. I am religious and conservative and I find that something that is very unwelcome here. But the fact is many black African and Carribbean people come from families where religion and a certain social conservatism is the backdrop of their culture. Something that is not understood. Pussy hats, slut walks, this fascination on Handmaids Tale and dressing up in red capes at rallies seem performative and etc turn me off, I mean, what does it do to affect my reality as a woman of colour facing discrimination for basic things, like speaking too 'uppity' in front of white authority figures like GPs, teachers, police, Judges just to get basic decent help? Getting a black taxi to actually stop and give me a ride home in the dark? Nothing. It just looks vainglorious.

I think feminism in the main advantages well educated middle class white women, and some women in that demographic have intentionally been exclusionary and made my life difficult. Lower working class women of all backgrounds don't benefit from the real cream of feminism hardly at all.

I have been in positions where I have been pregnant with swelling ankles and had to beg to be moved with a doctors note to a sitting position at work, while several white female colleagues in higher positions have had a whole room put aside for them to rest in and everyone acts like their pregnancies and their comfort is somehow more important.

Have you had a consultant in the year 2016, not even ask you about symptoms, not give you a physical evaluation at all, just ask demeaning and wholly inappropriate questions about your earnings, and how many partners you've had, then act surprised when you say one, because they they think all black women are 'promiscuous' and then turn and say 'well unmarried mothers of carribbean origin are more prone to stress?' When the problem is your thyroid is failing and you now can't get a diagnosis for several more years because it's on your notes that you are suffering depression? And then had to weigh up whether you ought to complain, but if you do, you might be destroying a person's career or on a personal note, just not be believed (I mean it sounds like something made up) and do you have the strength to bother with it, so just sucking it up and crying all the way home?

The GC debate has made me more aware of the need for some sort of feminism, I personally do see myself as a woman first, before a black one. It's just not what happens in reality. And I did need some educating and have found radical feminism somewhat different than I imagined with some viewpoints that I completely agree with, but I can't get fully onboard.

But I'll also never dismiss or denigrate the role of men in my culture and the difficulties they face, so that's another obstacle. I could never understand why white feminists talk so disparagingly of white men. That seems odd to me and sort of culture hating.

I don't want to hate, I just want equal parity.

Excellent post, thank you.

The religious part is instrinsic too.

DysonSphere I'm sorry you're not well, and I'm sorry/angry for what you've experienced. The consultant's remarks, in particular, were completely unacceptable.

So I think I'm confused about what type of feminism women are talking about here. And again this post might be garbled but it's meant to be a discussion so hey ho.

I think Slutwalks are different to the women protesting at events in Handmaidens costumes for instance.

A lot of what I as a non white perceive as "white centred feminism" is based on "choice" liberal feminism - which is what I see with women saying they are intersectional but actually focused only on young white women and their choices whilst paying lip service to mentioning "I'm here for all women/witches." Slogans that appear to be inclusive but actually just center the person making them. To me choice feminism is about being free to able to make those choices which already excludes women like myself who are not free to make those choice - we are threatened by the men in my own culture with death if I were to step outside our cultural confines. My aunty was actually killed in an honour killing in the 1970's as an example of this cultural pressure.

To me, choice/liberal feminism appears to be young white women talking about their choices to wear what they want. About their sex lives. About their career choices. In my perception, the trans movement has hitched their wagon to this movement and now many of these young women are centering men to the point where they bullied a FGM speaker for being female focus.

Some people say that GC feminism - which is just one aspect of feminism is right wing and white. Not my experience at all, and Maya, Allison, Rachel are leading women in the fight as it's about women fighting for the rights of all women to have single sex spaces and for children to be not be pushed into gender extremism.

I don't see these as the same types of feminism at all.

@lameasahorse I agree it's not the first generation to call it out -

I think it's the first generation to have it aggressively "marketed" to them as a personality product via Body Shop, Lush and platforms such as TikTok.

@DysonSphere I hope you feel better soon and you are very articulate. It's difficult to convey ideas in forums like this as there's so much to say and it's not like any of us were given womens history, feminism history or anything to do with equality growing up in our schools really. It's a language and concepts we are all learning to grapple with as we go along. So much of the racism I felt growing up had no words to go along with it to help me understand my experiences. So much of it was just feeling the brick wall of no you can't do this or simply just a fist.

"I am a black woman, but in the main I find feminism off-putting. I am religious and conservative and I find that something that is very unwelcome here. But the fact is many black African and Carribbean people come from families where religion and a certain social conservatism is the backdrop of their culture. Something that is not understood. Pussy hats, slut walks, this fascination on Handmaids Tale and dressing up in red capes at rallies seem performative and etc turn me off, I mean, what does it do to affect my reality as a woman of colour facing discrimination for basic things, like speaking too 'uppity' in front of white authority figures like GPs, teachers, police, Judges just to get basic decent help? Getting a black taxi to actually stop and give me a ride home in the dark? Nothing. It just looks vainglorious.

I think feminism in the main advantages well educated middle class white women, and some women in that demographic have intentionally been exclusionary and made my life difficult. Lower working class women of all backgrounds don't benefit from the real cream of feminism hardly at all".

@DysonSphere - Thank you for your articulate post. I've been reading this thread wondering how to respond but the section above does resonate with me.

DysonSphere, Thank you for your writing, despite being unwell. I hope you get better soon. It's incredible for you to think you cannot express yourself well. Your post rang out like a bell. It will change the world for those who hear it.

Agreed LittleWhingingWoman. I'll be honest and say that when I was in my youth I was your basic choice feminist. All about my own life, doing what I wanted, wearing whatever I like. Insufferable.

In middle age I recognise that other people matter too, and that while debates around leg shaving etc can be interesting, they're fairly marginal to most people's daily lives.

I fully expect Emma W to literally grow up, as will most of the tiresome 'asexuals' etc.

I wonder OP if your premise is really that accurate.

That's not to say that you are wrong and - I think lots of black women don't see feminism as being for them.

But frankly I think that's true for pretty much all groups of women, the majority in various ways don't feel like feminism is for them. There are elements they agree with or are in sympathy with but they don't identify with it overall or call themselves feminists. In the UK it's only around 25% who do consider themselves feminists.

Are black women not entirely likely to feel the same way, without it being somehow centered on race issues? Do 25% of black women think of themselves as feminists? It's anecdotal, but kind of think that it's probably close to that number.

Thank you everyone for your kind comments! The consultant in question prefaced the appointment by telling me, he was the most senior and learned in his specialism, and even the doctors in such and such leading hospital had to consult him on difficult cases. Frankly I didn't doubt his competence and a nasty demeanour didn't mean he wasn't helping save lives. I ultimately wasn't going to be responsible for doing anything to influence that, plus the whole maybe not being believed . I was also younger. If it happened now......I still think it unlikely I'd complain, but I've finally toughened up a bit (and this section of MN has possibly been a factor in that), so I think I'd tell him what I thought of him now and leave it at that.

I do want to make it clear that I absolutely do think women of all colours and cultures need to get onboard with fighting the very real loss of our reality as women, as a separate biological class, and I have learned a lot from the reading the viewpoints of women here in FWR and I'll stand beside people I don't agree with to fight it.

I think partly my reticence is also due to not wanting to be wholly consumed by any sort of identity politics, (of course it's impossible to avoid completely, you're not human to not believe passionately in something) but that is why I also do not really hang around the threads on black rights much either. Anger isn't always a useful lens and I'm not sure how I would be affected by it as I have enough to be upset about.

I don’t post much, but I’m an avid reader of the feminist boards on MN and I also read quite a few posts on BMN, even though I’m white. (I understand it’s a space for black women and respect that, so hope it doesn’t seem weird that I ‘lurk’, but sometimes BMN is the only part of the board where certain issues are being discussed. I do sometimes feel a bit intrusive reading threads on BMN, but I guess it’s a public forum and if the women on BMN wanted a totally private black female only space, they would/do go elsewhere).

Digressing slightly, but I think of my daughter reading this thread. She is mixed race and a teenager. Her friends are all black or mixed teen girls. The biggest issue for her and her friends over the past few years has undoubtedly been Black Lives Matter and race is definitely the big issue for them and they’re very vocal about it. I learn a lot from listening to them, as does my DH perhaps in different ways.

However, I have noticed that feminist issues have started creeping in for them as they navigate their teens. My DD is horrified by a lot of the attitudes of boys at school and she has also quietly told me she doesn’t think JK Rowling said anything wrong (this seems to be an anathema opinion to tiktok teens!). I foresee a feminist awakening on the horizon .

It’s going to be a lot to deal with for these girls, though.

My takeaway from watching my DD grow up is that it’s bloody hard for black women to have to deal with all of these issues at once, both in terms of issues highlighted in the media and globally, and in their day to day lives. They’re dealing with everything I deal with as a white woman and then a whole other world of shit. That might sound like a very basic and obvious observation, but really think about it for a moment. That’s a lot of absolute fucking rage to be carrying around when the scales have fallen from your eyes on both the racism and sexism fronts (and then don’t even start me on class!). I can see why some black women just eye roll at white feminists and think ‘you have NO idea, love!’. I personally don’t want it to be like that, and I think we are stronger together as women, but it’s going to take a lot more listening and learning from white feminists before that can happen on a large scale.

I agree with posters who have mentioned feminists' willingness to align themselves with the Conservative party and with the right-wing / small-c conservatives more generally.

If I may draw a parallel, I'm a lesbian and I tend to avoid the MN feminist boards because I find it hard to see posters praising organisations like Christian Concern who want my marriage to be illegal. I get the impression that a lot of straight feminists on Mumsnet would happily throw my rights as a gay person under the bus in order to protect single-sex spaces. It wouldn't be surprising if black women feel similarly when they see white feminists here willing to ignore racism as long as the person saying it is gender critical.

@LittleRedRidingHood187

Why don't you post in the black mum's net section but then if you're white they'll kick off

It's an open forum but for some reason they think only black women are allowed to view that section

Pointing out the passive angry tone here. It doesn't feel nice to "feel" excluded, does it?

I am Asian not Black and also from a religious conservative background. I am still religious and conservative like previous black poster above. Many Asians and Black women have similar cultural upbringings.

For me the Trans issue is a huge one because of how it affects myself and my daughter. We cannot be in the same changing rooms as men, the same swimming classes, the same scouts trips with shared sleeping etc etc. My religion forbids it so now there are swathes of Muslim women and girls who will be cut off from aspects of society/communities/ sports/etc because of trans women in those spaces.
To me it is the biggest feminist issue. Yet I have never uttered a word in real life. MN has been amazing for me to truly understand the issues though they don’t often mention the cultural aspects for Muslim women for example or other women from religious cultural backgrounds.
I have found MN to be horrendously Islamaphobic too. Every Ramadan out come the racists. Every thread on Palestine. Or France. We’re always seen as submissive and abused. No ok really wants to hear the brown/black (or white) Muslim woman’s experience because it doesn’t fit with MN feminism or real world feminism I think. So that always makes me feel disconnected from all other areas of feminism in general.

@LittleWhingingWoman that is also such a good post.

I think feminism has so many subgroups and it is logical that we feel stronger about some of those than others.

To me, one of the most important aspects of feminism is everything related to pregnancy (and all discrimination and hardship coming from that). This includes the unacceptable higher risk of maternal mortality for black women.

I also feel very strongly about girls’ rights to education. Especially girls from disadvantaged backgrounds need support and where I live, they are very often from ethnic minorities.

Is it naive to think that we should be able to unite across ethnicity to work on causes like this together? To support women in pregnancy and to support girls? Or is this also “white feminism”?

My two closest female friends claim they are not feminists. They are, in my mind, because they live and breathe feminist values. But they reject the word because they think it means not being allowed to be a stay at home mum, not being allowed to make themselves look good, having to hate men and having to present themselves as angry.

I don't mind if they call themselves feminists or not, I know them well and I admire them unconditionally, regardless of how they describe themselves.

@DysonSphere

Thank you everyone for your kind comments! The consultant in question prefaced the appointment by telling me, he was the most senior and learned in his specialism, and even the doctors in such and such leading hospital had to consult him on difficult cases. Frankly I didn't doubt his competence and a nasty demeanour didn't mean he wasn't helping save lives. I ultimately wasn't going to be responsible for doing anything to influence that, plus the whole maybe not being believed . I was also younger. If it happened now......I still think it unlikely I'd complain, but I've finally toughened up a bit (and this section of MN has possibly been a factor in that), so I think I'd tell him what I thought of him now and leave it at that.

I do want to make it clear that I absolutely do think women of all colours and cultures need to get onboard with fighting the very real loss of our reality as women, as a separate biological class, and I have learned a lot from the reading the viewpoints of women here in FWR and I'll stand beside people I don't agree with to fight it.

I think partly my reticence is also due to not wanting to be wholly consumed by any sort of identity politics, (of course it's impossible to avoid completely, you're not human to not believe passionately in something) but that is why I also do not really hang around the threads on black rights much either. Anger isn't always a useful lens and I'm not sure how I would be affected by it as I have enough to be upset about.

@DysonSphere on a tangent here, but thinking about the treatment of your health issues - I worked in America for a bit and the Hispanic women I worked with told me that one particular hospital that mostly Hispanic women had their babies in had a higher mortality rate than the hospital "where the nice white ladies go."

Heartbreaking and horrifying. I worked with some of these girls from that hospital teaching them to breastfeed and the way they had been spoken to by both white doctors and bad boyfriends brought back to me the bad treatment I had when I was a young woman within care and hospital settings and in bad relationships. I remember coming out of one session and just feeling utter despair. Despair for the girls and despair for my younger self.

In the garden of the hospital was a Holy Mary statue surrounded by pink roses. Several of the young mothers would sit in this garden with their babies myself included as my daughter was a baby at the time too.
I suppose we felt safe in that garden with each other. Able to speak about the inequalities and about the way that men had treated us with only Mary listening in and her pink roses nodding in the summer breeze.

I definitely hear this. I cringe when Conservatives are held up as feminist saviours. But I also cringe when women on the Left throw women under the bus. It’s a minefield!

English feminism has been strongly rooted in the white middle class for the last 40+ years and embodies and reflects that world view. It is not open to any minorities, evidenced by the cruel transphobia found on so many of these pages.

Meant to quote @Siepie there

@EastHer

I don’t post much, but I’m an avid reader of the feminist boards on MN and I also read quite a few posts on BMN, even though I’m white. (I understand it’s a space for black women and respect that, so hope it doesn’t seem weird that I ‘lurk’, but sometimes BMN is the only part of the board where certain issues are being discussed. I do sometimes feel a bit intrusive reading threads on BMN, but I guess it’s a public forum and if the women on BMN wanted a totally private black female only space, they would/do go elsewhere).

Digressing slightly, but I think of my daughter reading this thread. She is mixed race and a teenager. Her friends are all black or mixed teen girls. The biggest issue for her and her friends over the past few years has undoubtedly been Black Lives Matter and race is definitely the big issue for them and they’re very vocal about it. I learn a lot from listening to them, as does my DH perhaps in different ways.

However, I have noticed that feminist issues have started creeping in for them as they navigate their teens. My DD is horrified by a lot of the attitudes of boys at school and she has also quietly told me she doesn’t think JK Rowling said anything wrong (this seems to be an anathema opinion to tiktok teens!). I foresee a feminist awakening on the horizon .

It’s going to be a lot to deal with for these girls, though.

My takeaway from watching my DD grow up is that it’s bloody hard for black women to have to deal with all of these issues at once, both in terms of issues highlighted in the media and globally, and in their day to day lives. They’re dealing with everything I deal with as a white woman and then a whole other world of shit. That might sound like a very basic and obvious observation, but really think about it for a moment. That’s a lot of absolute fucking rage to be carrying around when the scales have fallen from your eyes on both the racism and sexism fronts (and then don’t even start me on class!). I can see why some black women just eye roll at white feminists and think ‘you have NO idea, love!’. I personally don’t want it to be like that, and I think we are stronger together as women, but it’s going to take a lot more listening and learning from white feminists before that can happen on a large scale.

This is so true. It's overload! My mixed race daughter is hearing it the other way - being told by white girls that her white dad was a racist who used me as a sexual slave to have a baby with. These girls are so divorced from the actual experience of black and brown girls they have it all mixed up!