Feminism and the Alienation of Women

[Sausageeggbacon]

Reading the postings on here and discussing feminism elsewhere I am seeing large sections of women standing away from feminism. Or more particularly the vocal white middle class driven feminism.

There is a long article here that looks at the issues of why women of colour are moving away from feminism this is mainly though in the US/Canada. However some of the points remain relevant and show why inclusion needs to be worked at.

Also something that gets my goat in particular is this constant whinge about the glass ceiling. I hate this because in real terms how many women benefit? 200, 500, 1000? There are a limited number of top positions. I see so little in the fight for better conditions for women at the bottom end of the working spectrum. And those women look at feminism and see how little it seems to be for them and don't join in the battle.

3 million women supposedly read the Sun against the 300k or so who petitioned for no more page 3. Why are those 3 million not engaging with feminism? In my humble opinion feminism does not feel inclusive and the biggest chunk of people that could be engaged in the need for change are not being addressed.

I hear lots of stuff about why we don't have enough women MP's that usually revolves around the long hours and workaholicism necessary. After seeing firsthand the differences in how female and male councillors are treated, I think it has absolutely nothing to do with that. Intelligent capable woman councillors are judged way more harshly than men, and mocked by those who disagree with them, in a way that does not happen to male councillors.

"whether they would settle for lower profits in order to promote less able staff, purely on the basis of gender" A couple of points on this:

Most of the time they are choosing sub-consciously and even if they aren't they justify it to themselves.

They wouldn't view it as a loss of profit, because they don't consider the woman could make more profit (even if she could). Plus they can rid of a man if they aren't getting enough profit from them and replace with another man. Whereas a woman's failure would be an indictment on the performance of all women.

And its not all to do with profit. "Best-fit" plays a large part. And who is going to better fit with a bunch of sexist blokes than another sexist bloke.

The article is spot on - though I would call it mainstream western feminism and the alienation of women, there are many other branches that do recognise how the historical and continual stepping on women of colour, disabled women, and many other groups - regardless of how vocal we are - and the generally the top down universalist approach favoured by them damages the cause of women's rights as well as the larger appeal for social justice. Many more are engaged, and fighting, we just follow a different branch, a different name, different priorities.

This last year, American Indigenous women have been fighting for the land that the US and Canadian governments and corporations feel they can push upon for their projects without the nations' permissions (including cases of the UN telling them to hand over land and the government said pay extortiante amounts of money, millions+, or we'll it paved over), fought for soverignty, fought for their children who are being taken at rates higher than in boarding school days (this is true in Australia as well as in the US and Canada), fought for their image and cultures while White people continue to create the image across media that homogenizes over 500 nations into a savage, sexualized, silent image that is "just for fun", "honouring", or "child's play" - ignoring how that continual image has been used for centuries to destroy people (a favourite in boarding days was to dress American Indigenous children in dirty mock stick and cloth regalia clothes to show how disgusting it is to be Indigenous - the image of children crying in those outfits next to their smiling White women captors is heartbreaking) and that while the children's play version or the overt sexualization of the popular Pocahottie or Sexy S-word costumes that contribute to our is our sexual assault and rape rates ae so much higher than White women's, we're often foridden, fined, or have our regalia taken off of us if we wear in public space for something other than entertainment of others (and previously had them stolen from us by force even in our homes). Our pain is being contributed by White women and we're told to get over it, be quiet, and we'll get our rights once they get theirs - ignoring that that has never happened, that White women are right now fighting to take away our rights and our culture, and no one has ever gotten their rights by being silent and playing nice for those stepping upon them.

With all this and far more going on, we're more likely to join up together with those who also face this treatment under different leadership and discussions than follow and get into something just because mainstream western feminism tells us that that should be our priority while ignoring our missing and dead. I have far more in common with men alongside us than the current White-as-universal standard in mainstream Western feminism. I don't buy the Sun, but as a Metis woman, I don't get why that is being used to define who is and isn't a feminist while women globally are being jailed for trying to defend their lives and families against the neocolonizing agenda that's going on. Surely there is a better measurement of who is in this, and possibly better branches to push as the guide towards justice and equality.

And the White middle class may get more media time, but that doesn't make them the most vocal. There are large protests and campaigns going on over the world, being as vocal as possible, that will never get mainstream media attention. See the American Indigenous people who have been standing to block machinery to their lands, literally lying in the road and chaining themselves together. See the ones in Brazil who have been protesting and fighting for their lives from having their lands and homes confiscated and the slums torn down with nowhere to go. How about Tunisia's recent victory giving a constitutional guarantee for equality for women in all fields and equal social rights and those women's discussions of their fight for this victory. They haven't gotten anywhere near the amount of media time for how vocal they are being.

I've always thought there were lots of glass ceilings at different levels (so to speak) as you can be held back in a poorly paid job as much, or more I think, as a well paid one. If women as not getting promoted and men are then there's a glass ceiling even if only just above minimum wage.

The glass ceiling exists. It most obviously exists at top echelons therefore it's very symbolic that when this one is smashed then likely so is lower.

It is also exists at much lower levels in diff ways. I hit three. One because I reached 27 plus and was deemed 'likely to have a family'. Second firm/industry. They internally had decided what roles and levels women could reach. It was soul destroying. I then hit another on trying to return after I had kids! Gave up. Wasn't worth the mental anguish.

I got militant too lol ;)

Dusk - hear hear

dusk I really like your post about everybody having an ok life. This really shouldn't be about a race to the top and damn everybody else. It's about everybody taking responsibility for making society broadly ok for all of us - but the people at the top will have more say over making sure that happens than the people at the bottom.

I thought Art was saying that why would the banks employ less able staff at the moment i.e. men (as we are saying) rather than women when profit is their bottom line.

I just don't think that they view it that women wold bring them extra profit. Because men have always done that job.

That was to Buffy.

TheSporkForEatingKyriarchy - thank you for that really interesting long post.
This really resonated with me:

"we're told to get over it, be quiet, and we'll get our rights once they get theirs - ignoring that that has never happened, that White women are right now fighting to take away our rights and our culture, and no one has ever gotten their rights by being silent and playing nice for those stepping upon them. "

so so right - never believe those who say you have a better chance by "working with" "negotiating" etc. When has that ever happened?

there is so much you talk of I shamefully know so little about.

Buffy, it is as scallops said - promoting less able men over more able women. That is what I meant.

Women divide - there are socialist and capitalist feminists. Both are feminists.

I like the cling film analogy, Wilson. I agree that not having women in senior positions affects the way all women are regarded in an organisation. It affects women as a class, not just the individual woman who gets the job.

I see feminism as having many goals. There is much to be achieved. I don't like an attitude that says "you shouldn't fight for X unless you also fight for Y". I don't believe there will ever be a feminist revolution so we need to fight each battle as best we can. If someone chooses to fight non-feminist causes, I don't have a problem with that. If someone doesn't care that women are being discriminated against in the workplace, I don't see that as compatible with feminism but no-one is forcing you to fight against it. There's no need to tear down others who do care.

Sorry for the delay DD has come back from Uni to spend the weekend at home and see her BF. The household has gone nuts.

The problem I have if mainstream feminism is not inclusive (and I don't see it as so at the moment) then when people ask who does feminism represent we get the fact that 80% of women don't feel included. I wish there was an easy answer but we struggle between the sex positive pro porn/striptease and those who see objectification as the issue. I don't think there is an immediate answer but I was reading the york uni paper online which has an article by a female student arguing for striptease.

Add the working class feeling not include, WoC feeling marginalised and those getting to the top not filtering down their success. Quotas being questioned, parachuted MPs being challenged. Those who are leading feminism need to assess what is going to bring most women to the movement otherwise I can see MRAs using the situation to their advantage.

"but we struggle between the sex positive pro porn/striptease and those who see objectification as the issue."

Male violence is the issue sausageeggbacon. That manifests itself in a number of ways but male domination and oppression through violence is the issue.

And nobody leads feminism. That is one of the points of feminism, getting rid of existing hierarchies.

I can entirely understand the perspective in the article linked to, but this is ultimately not an issue of white women and WOC, but one of indigenous North Americans and white North American. The idea that somebody living in Britain has any power to stop white North American women setting up feminism in a way that is damaging to indigenous women is dubious.

I don't think that the situation for indigenous women and 3 million women reading the Sun are remotely, vaguely comparable. I am sure that there is a massive focus British women do need to pay to serious global issues for women, seen from a local context, so that we work better together and don't harm women in other countries, but we need to understand that from a British perspective, not a North American one.

Eradication of a Women's Voices

OK I really should have read the article before joining in this thread as my responses would have been very different. What Lauren Chief Elk says in the article is that WoC voices are being eradicated using the frame of reference of how white feminists want to tackle the issue of male violence.

Yet Sausageeggbacon you cite the article purely in order to talk about the issues you want to talk about. How is that not doing exactly what you are accusing middle class white feminists of doing (I'm not denying we do this btw)? You've just totally eradicated what she had to say, which were really important points about tackling male violence, to talk about other white-centric topics such as the glass ceiling. Not that the glass ceiling doesn't affect WoC, it does. They get the double whammy of sexism and racism. As does page 3 (especially as only 4 black women have been on page 3 since its existence). But you don't reference that.

Is there some reason you don't want to talk about the article? Or if you wanted to talk about class privilege, which is basically what you go on to talk about, why not cite an article about class privilege?

From her article Lauren says:
"The V-Day idea of gender justice has had a major impact on mainstream feminism, and has been able to cultivate a narrative of addressing sexual and domestic violence by means that are actually harmful to women of color."

"Throughout the past couple of months, we have been having Twitter chats such as #FreeMarissa which centered on Marissa Alexander’s incarceration and how many women of color are being incarcerated through anti-violence policy, and #CrimVAW which focused on the criminalization of girls and women of color and all of the ways the state creates policies to punish them. #IDidNotReport covered reasons why victims of sexual violence do not report to authorities – including knowing the shame, blame, and possibly punishment that often comes from doing so."

That is way more than just being irked because you don't feel the glass ceiling is relevant to you. That is actually where the policies put forward by some feminists could actually physically or mentally harm some of the very people they are trying to help. You are right that white feminists need to listen more to people from marginalised groups and the way to do that is to address and discuss the points that they raise rather than going off to make points more relevant to you.

And yes I cite myself in this completely as I didn't even read the article before commenting. You don't get much more eradicating than that.

I disagree to a certain extent LittleMiniPumpkin, I think that what Lauren says can be extrapolated to any white country. At the risk of citing another white feminist, Baroness Helena Kennedy writes about how the justice system in the UK disproportionally affects WoC because of stereotypes and looking at justice through the lens of white men.

In the article Lauren says that the justice system is white. It is. It is in fact white male. So white women are affected by some of the disadvantages she states but WoC are affected more and in slightly different ways.

But I agree about comparing indigenous women's issues to women reading the Sun (the vast majority of whom will be white) is tenuous to say the least.

Scallopsrgreat, it definitely cannot be translated to all white countries! There are 'white' countries where the ethnic group who perpetuates racism and the ethnic group who are the targets of most racism are both 'white' groups, just different ones. Racism isn't like sexism. A person can be part of the dominant racist group due to their ethnicity in one country, and part of a subordinate group in another. For example a Polish person in Poland compared to the same person in Britain. Or an Arabic person in Mauritania who keeps black people in chattel slavery but becomes an oppressed POC if they live in the United States. But women can't move in the gender system. There isn't a country women can move to where they become the dominant gender group, but that is possible for many ethnic groups.

In terms of Britain, it is certainly true that specific areas of the criminal justice system are essentially white supremacist, but that doesn't mean that any light is shed on that by looking at a wholly different issue in another country. We don't have a situation similar to North America where there are ethnic groups on their own areas of land operating a separate legal system, and how that can be manipulated by racists. I don't see any more in common than Britain, Canada and USA are all racist countries; the nature of the racism is different.

When I say that we should look at it from a British context, what I mean is that we should look at the context British women are in relative to the US and Canada when deciding how to approach what we can do about indigenous people in North America, of course based on what those people want people in other countries to do.

We can also look at racism within our own country, but that is based on the voices of people who experience racism here, or who experience racism in other countries due to British colonial actions in the present. Given the relative size and power of North America compared to other English speaking countries, I think our understanding of racism and sexism are both being subsumed online by ideas that actually aren't that useful in terms of British racism.

I should make clear that I am not saying that reading that article subsumes us into North American ideas. I mean that we should respond to indigenous groups from our own context, not by being subsumed into white North American feminist ideas. And that our discussion of the situation article should primarily be about those indigenous people, while the discussion of, say, Iranian British women, should primarily be based on listening to Iranian British women.

I think Scallops has said it better than me, but I think there is an issue of 'Western feminism' discussing certain issues (sex positivity, glass ceilings, media portrayals of women, career opportunities) while paying less attention to others (prisons and the justice system, absolute poverty, famine, basic sanitation, access to food, land rights) and I think the original post is a version of that. It has used a specific problem of a much more marginalised group to then raise the question of the engagement of Sun readers. And there's nothing wrong with either topic, but the former shouldn't be a vehicle for centering the discussion on the latter. Added to which, indigenous women are self organising their own feminism, while I think perhaps the point about Sun readers is perhaps they may not be involved in any form of women's rights, which is a very different issue.

Yes I think see what you mean LittleMissPumpkin. I think I misunderstood your original post. I guess I was just seeing that were shared experiences between WoC in different countries, as there are with all women. But yes there are experiences and nuances that are very different which come into effect when trying to tackle the problems. Which is one of the points that I thought the article was making even though it was referencing indigenous women specifically.

"I think our understanding of racism and sexism are both being subsumed online by ideas that actually aren't that useful in terms of British racism." Yes I agree.

Sorry I missed your post of 13:38 because I actually started the reply to you 12:47 post about an hour ago and it's taken me this long to post it!

"And that our discussion of the situation article should primarily be about those indigenous people, while the discussion of, say, Iranian British women, should primarily be based on listening to Iranian British women." Yes I agree. The women experiencing the issues should be the ones leading the solution and the ones we should be listening to.