Intersectional Feminism

[MercyMyJewels]

My head is bursting with all the titles associated with feminism. In particular, the issue / accusation of being a white feminist.

I am a feminist. I also try hard to fight against racism, although I am not an activist. But I'm not an activist feminist either. I have been reading a lot about feminism on these boards and trying to educate myself more. But I have come across quite a few articles / podcasts recently critical of white middle class women and that they have to understand the plight of black women to really 'get' feminism.

But I AM a white woman, arguably middle class now, though not by birth. I know that black women are oppressed due to their sex and race but does that make me not entitled to discuss feminism as a white woman? And if I do, does that make me racist? Or is this a ridiculous competition to establish the most oppressed and we should fight against sexism and racism but they don't have to be one issue?

Apologies for this garbled post but hoping that some of you eloquent women can untangle my confused thoughts on intersectional feminism.

Quencher I don't understand why they needed to appoint leaders or a team anyway. When I've organised rallies (some quite large ones, tens of thousands of people), we just had a collective and we decided on speakers within the collective. People put their hands up to be media liaison and everyone who wanted to could do it. People put their hands up to be speakers and everyone who wanted to could do it. People who hadn't had a turn or experience were encouraged to take it on. We didn't focus on 'quotas' like nowadays. Perhaps some BAME women felt left out, and that's why we have this situation today, but it didn't feel like that. A lot of them were, like a lot of women are, very bolshy and assertive. (I'm generally not - I never put myself forward for public roles).

It's this obsession for leaders. I just don't get it. Barack Obama, after all, didn't materially improve the situation of African-Americans living in poverty. He was coopted into the system. Identity politics - getting him to be president - didn't magically make the system more progressive or weaken one percenter capitalism.

When cops or the management of wherever we were occupying said 'we want to speak to the leader', we would say 'we have no leader, speak to all of us'.

quencher I love your posts on here, they are always thought provoking. That's one of the reasons I get annoyed with the "white feminism" tag. I'm really interested in what women from all different backgrounds have to say and I know I'm lucky to be white British middle class.
I just don't like "white feminist" being used as a silencing tactic when people discuss e.g. trans rights. I think most feminists are pretty self aware liberal people and too quick to accept the shitty guilt label so it's a good way to shut them up.

a team organised the event. At the same time it came across as exclusionary. Similar to what most black feminist thought always happened. I don't know whether that was pointed out or not. But an effort was made to change that.

didn't magically make the system more progressive or weaken one percenter capitalism.
No! What it did was attack the hornets nest of racist. This is where racism prevailed over patriarchy for women who voted for trump. The women didn't question their sex and position in society and if they did, they saw someone like trump to be worth more than their dignity.

Are you saying that the only reason Barack obama become leader was because of our need for intersectionality? Please! do not blame Barack for white women voting trump. Or americas hatred for people they think is other.

I don't think we have an obsession with leadership. A lot of people are unintentionally biased or racist. Quotas are only put in place to help with bridging divides for groups that would be ignored even though they have similar skill and abilities to perform in some areas where they are excluded.

What you have said is similar to those who complain about people of colour getting certain roles on tv. What they believe is that everyone has the ability to work and Get similar goals. We all know that bs because different circumstances hold people back. Women who are feminist should know better. The limitations do not only apply to women. If there is a woman who has the same or more credentials or ability to the males counterpart she is in competition with. She should be able to get the role. She should not be ignored because she is woman. The same thing applies to racism. The same thing applies between women of colour and white women. There is nothing wrong with.
If diversity is requested to represent a group that will be at that match there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone speaks for who they are. Different issues similar goals.

Sorry Quencher I don't have time to read fully or consider fully but I'm sorry if I came across as someone who dislikes quotas. I'm fully in favour of them. I've been reading Adolph Reed Jr who says that if identity politics is followed logically, then we have quotas amongst the one percent but no material change for the majority.

Also my point about Obama was nothing to do with the way people voted for Hillary or Trump, more that he was lauded as a black leader but he hasn't actually been able to change anything. So we need to target structural problems that cause racism.

I'm making a Marxist argument essentially. We need to challenge class and capitalism. Sorry I have to go now.

With most umbrellas of terminology and movements can become too big for their boots. It always happens until they break off and new ones are formed.

Devi thanks. Answering here earlier I felt like one of those women who bring up "what about the menz". I only answered because intersectional feminism does includes black woman. I hope it's not looked at as diverting away from the intended conversation and debating or silencing anyone.

Barcoo the people you come a cross on Facebook is the reason I avoid some places on line like the plague. That includes Facebook. Am happier person for not looking on there. They used to make me feel depressed.

Sorry quencher I'm back now and have read your post properly. I agree with everything you say about quotas. Again I'm sorry for my misleading comment.

I think within activist groups or progressive discussion groups there is a problem with leadership, because identity politics is about who is entitled to speak and who should shut up and listen. It's not an equal environment and actually does the disadvantaged minority person a disservice as it separates them from a collective which should have robust discussion and interrogate its own ideas and thoughts.

I should clarify as my post about how my activist groups used to operate may have sounded callous about whether BAME people felt included. It may not have been a perfect system for including and nurturing them, but it was a hell of a lot better than what we have now. Everyone (absolutely everyone) who wanted to participate had their skills nurtured. We need to do a leaflet - who hasn't done one yet - you? Who would like to show x how to lay out a leaflet? You? Perfect, your names are down. Who hasn't bashed a lecture yet? You? and you? Who will volunteer to train and support these new lecture-bashers? And so on. It was very nurturing and insisted on ensuring everyone had a broad swathe of activist skills. Also we always made sure chairs were rotated by sex.

@Barcoo2
I just read your link to the Muslim women article. I can understand why they would want halal nail polish the same way a vegan feminist would want a vegan one too. It is debatable whether it's a feminist issue or it should be under religious one. However, if the people who feel to be affected the most are women. I would not be stoping them if they feel they have to carry it under their banner.
I can also, understand how a feminist who is a vegan will be at odds with Muslim woman who wants the animal product to be halal. The best option would be to have animal free.

They gave you the link to the colonial point and didn't bother reading it. Would this make sense.
They fail to notice that many of the regions where these practices occur are victims of Western imperialism and that many groups that carry them out, like Boko Haram and the Taliban, are direct results of colonialist regimes.
The link posted has this to say.
Borno Emirate, where Boko Haram started, was an ally of the British, so when it became part of the Empire in Africa in 1905, the ruling dynasty was kept on. The idea of administering colonial possessions through traditional rulers (“indirect rule”) was promoted by colonial administrator Lord Frederick Lugard, who extended the practice to other Muslim principalities. As governor of Northern and Southern Nigeria from 1912-1919, Lugard continued the policy of leaving the North essentially neglected under the control of traditional feudal rulers, while southern areas were developed more but without concessions to labor unions and democracy.

They are not saying that colonialism caused FGM or the kidnapping of the girls. They are talking about how colonialism work. One part of that country was neglected. Extremist factions grew and with it things like FGM too as they took more control of different areas.

Firstly, the British colonial rulers brought groups to together that should have been kept separate. Two or three separate state or countries because of different belief systems.They developed one part of the country more leaving the north to feel neglected.
After the Biafran war, the Muslim population have tried to have their views and points heard or included in the government laws. There was and they still get resistance. However, a number of state have implemented sharia law a long side state. Extremist views like boko haram began to grow because they felt they were not being listened to.

They kidnap the girls and we proclaim how abhorrent their behaviours are when we forget the roles colonialism has played. We do forget that they are being funded by Muslims groups from the east. A lots of the guns and weapons in the east has funding from the west in so many different ways.
Not forgoing those from North Africa.

quencher please post whenever you like! I'm like everyone else, happy to be told when stuff is racist/exclusionary by a black woman. Not when I get tone policed by someone white.
Interestingly I have never seen a BAME man in these discussions. Only white men.

@Morriszapp
Can I just ask, what things do white feminists do to exclude black feminists?
I have just come a cross a counter argument to three different thinking pieces written by white women from a white woman's point of view criticising a certain person without understanding the historical context while trying to shut that person up. It showed the divide in feminist understanding of the female body from racial background point of view.

	<strong>Black women do not have the same relationship with maternity as white women do. Why? Years of systemic racism, chattel slavery, white supremacy and because the dissemination of</strong> <a class="break-all" href="https://hamtramckfreeschool.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/hooks-bell-aint-i-a-woman-black-woman-and-feminism.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">negative portrayals of black motherhood are pervasive in American culture</a>e<strong>*.</strong>

•   <strong>*Pregnancies and labor</strong> <a class="break-all" href="http://www.npr.org/2011/07/08/137652226/-the-race-gap" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">tend to be riskier</a>r<strong>* for black women because of systemic racism within healthcare and the lack of access to good maternity care pre and post labor.</strong>
  

•   <strong>*While many white women fought for reproductive rights, black, latinx and native women were fighting for reproductive justice as a result of</strong> <a class="break-all" href="http://msmagazine.com/blog/2011/07/21/sterilization-of-women-of-color-does-unforced-mean-freely-chosen/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">forced sterilizations and eugenics programs</a>s<strong>* in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.</strong> If I remember rightly, in the seventies these where still being carried out. A lot of black and mixed race children who where born under the nazi Germany where also sterilised. It's because the race was not seen as a threat but could be stoped from breeding further.  
  

It's one of those things that would have come a cross as trivial. But because some of the women decided to weigh in with their views that their luck of understanding was shown through their misogynior. One body is seen as more acceptable to look at than the other based on race.

Great thread, thankyou everyone that's posted. I'm a lot of online spaces and many are American in origin and I've been told to shut up and sit down as a white feminist and a terf for pointing out that the use of the word hysterical is sexist and not appropriate language for women to use to attack other women... Which is neither white feminist or terfy but because I'm white they're convienient silencing tactics. I've learned a lot about intersectionality and how white women benefit form a structure that benefits them from its inherent racism but I do not think in many cases throwing around 'white feminist' is used as anything other than a put down to undermine women. Identity policy's and liberal feminism is in many ways going down a route that is divisive. I remember reading about intersectionality in its infancy in the second wave movement and how at public meetings women were expected to list their oppressions to validate their right to hold opinions, 'my name is X I'm a working class black women who has survived sexual abuse and and discriminated against on the basis of my disability X... I really hate the oppressions olympics that go on in current liberal spaces, it feels so counter productive. If we can't focus on class analysis and must constantly consider each individual we will lose our energy for a tusk effective activism. I'm all for intersectionality just not how I see it being practised in the groups I'm in.

Quencher thanks for your reply. I do understand how colonialism has lasting impacts today. Indeed, if you impose a map of the world's most failed states over a map of the European Empires, you find that Britain was the worst colonial ruler of all in terms of the legacy (and savagery at the time, no doubt, although that doesn't accord with the Whig discourse which always points to the French or the Belgians as being more violent towards the colonised).

However I also feel that liberal feminism or intersectional feminism is co-opting postcolonial critiques in order to disempower real, legitimate concerns with the situation of women. Indeed, if you look at that illogical rant against the Vancouver Women's Library, it equates or links the treatment of trans people by feminists within the colonial project.

I don't see women's equality and women's rights as a decadent Western concept. I'm not a cultural relativist when it comes to women's rights. If that makes me a hateful racist bigot, so be it.

I do think that halal make-up is not a women's concern, even though that article is (gently?) encouraging Western women to support it because it is 'what Muslim women want'. However this is essentialising Muslim women just as much as what the author is opposing. I see Halal make up as a simple capitalist, consumer driven supply and demand issue. I don't think it's a feminist issue, because I don't think rights are being infringed if women who want it can't access it. This recent discussion on the Reddit page shows different Muslim women's views: www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/5rx41f/i_cant_stand_the_american_lefts_use_of_the_hijab/

Surely we feminists can choose what we want to support from the various campaigns and causes around the world, whether Western or not. Ideology is everything, what our local 'leader' wants is variable. Intersectional feminism prevents us from doing this. Women or anyone from around the world can feel free, as far as I'm concerned, to condemn the statutory savagery against women's bodies in Ireland (I'm part Irish). I don't care who brought the Catholic Church to Ireland, I just want it to stop.

In fact, our local 'leader' is supporting a ridiculous illogical stance on racism (that comes from the American Everyday Feminist borg), which directly contravenes an important court case that determined it was racially vilifying. So this person is actually vilifying herself and her community. Her white sidekicks are supporting her with 'right on!' type comments and I just think, well, you're actually breaking the law based on the precedent established by that court case.

Sorry correction: halal make-up is not a feminist concern

Barcoo, what's the article from everyday meninism you're referring too, and which court case? Was the court case in the us or in Ireland?

It looks like an endless game of top trumps. Where the overall winning card appears to involve the having of a penis.

The accuracy of what is being said seems to have become unimportant. The focus having shifted onto defining how "right" something is based on who is saying it.

Which means an awful lot of bollocks gets given a lot more time, weight and attention than it deserves.

It appears to encourage opression olympics, whereby people feel forced to dig out and amplify all the ways they personally feel more disadvantaged, as a move to defend their right to a voice/opinion at all. Which probably isn't doing much to maximise the number of powerful, stable and "fact based" people willing and able to fight women's corner in a way that will generate tangible results in the real world.

Aliasnumberone I'm in Oz.

The court case was Bolt v. Eatock. Bolt is a poisonous Murdoch columnist who did personal 'exposes' targeting Aboriginal people who had 'pale skin', arguing that they were abusing the system by getting jobs and grants reserved for Aboriginal people. Effectively, his argument was that they had white privilege.

The person in question on my facebook group said that white presenting Aboriginal people (like herself, she said) had white privilege.

If you know anything about Aboriginal history, you will know that the government targeted paler children to remove from their parents in the Stolen Generation, the idea being that they would be easier to assimilate thereby hurrying up the cultural genocide. So to argue that white presenting Aboriginal people have privilege is quite nonsensical. And offensive.

Thanks barcoo, and sorry I have no idea where I got Ireland from.

I've actually seen a lot of blow outs in the American based intersectional spaces online between indigenous WOC and black African American WOC, seems that even within some intersectional spaces WOC are accused of, in some cases, either being anti black or racist towards indigenous WOC. The level of criticism is astonishing. I have to say though it does make some very interesting reading and I've definitely learned a lot but it does seem that it takes the wind out of the sails of a lot of potential for action.

What you said ^^ about the nonsense of white privelege for aboriginal folk who are white presenting rings totally true. It's understandable that from a white supremacist PoV where white is the pinnacle of privilege it doesn't matter what the pathway to holding that privilege is but of course from a. Historical and cultural analysis it stems from systemic racism and abuse. It must be incredibly hard to reconcile those two conflicting ideologies on a personal level and I thing that conflict is exploited by the uber liberals who later this guilt onto people... In this case white presenting WOC.

It's somewhat become a competition to see who can beat themselves down enough and not uphold each other, which is what feminism should be at its most basic, and surely where the Crenshaw meant for her intersectional analysis to lead, not to this self flagellating narcissism? And I do mean that, it is narcissistic, it's virtue signalling when applied incorrectly, which seems to happen more often than not.

I'm entirely happy to be corrected though, this is all relatively new to me and I do recognise that white privilege is real and I am white and do benefit, and as such my analysis may be totally skewed.

I remember when I was involved in Land Rights marches in the 80's meeting an Elder who spoke of how her "race status" would change depending on the season. She would be classed as an octaroon in winter and a quatroon in summer. She was part of the Stolen Generations, stripped of her language, family and mob. Bolt's articles and insinuations are disgusting. And lack facts.

Sorry, nothing to do with intersectional feminism at all, but reading about that case has pissed me right off.

I am female and disabled. (And also feminist).

I think there is unconscious disabilism in a lot of feminist activity and theory. One underlying cause, in my opinion, is the equation of feminism and female independence. Thus 'disabled' is treated as 'dependent' and thereby anti-feminist.

elfing I'm sorry you've experienced that, I'm interested how it's manifested itself?

ElfingHeck wrote - "One underlying cause, in my opinion, is the equation of feminism and female independence. Thus 'disabled' is treated as 'dependent' and thereby anti-feminist."

What similarities and differences, if any, do you see in the way that feminism treats voluntary dependence (e.g. being a so-called trophy wife) and involuntary dependence (e.g. disability)?

Can I just ask, what things do white feminists do to exclude black feminists?

I've an example from a few years ago now when in the US there was a big push by a prominent white feminist for women to report sexual assaults, DV etc to the police. Similar to quencher's example of how maternity care for BAME women is very different than for white women, this declaration totally disregarded how black women are treated by the police and this would be putting their lives and freedom in danger. BAME women are far more likely to be arrested and charged themselves than white women and they were far more likely to suffer police brutality and backlash once they were back home. The complete lack of awareness from the white feminist (whose name escapes me, sorry) was very exclusionary and she didn't acknowledge her errors or the dangers of what she was asking women to do.

@Scallops I do agree with what you have written. The way black women and young black girls are handled and treated by the police is similar to how they would handle a man. They lack the sense that they have different body weights and power. Man handled and thrown about as if they would be able to take it.

One of the things that white feminist don't understand, is that a black woman's need to be treated like you would treat any woman. To be looked at on the same level as any other woman. To be on the same level of respect as a white woman. To be looked at without being judged based on sex as woman but also, as black woman. Just to be a woman.

It's even worse if a black woman is ever considered to be feminine. That's the right reserved for white women wether it's good or bad. Any black woman who is thought of as feminine, beautiful and meets the European standard of beauty is and will be considered exotic looking. If they ever try to be sexual in any way shape or form. They will be called sexually aggressive because it's part of the culture. This also affects how they treat black women who report sexual assault and rape cases.

This mentality is there. White feminist don't have to deal with it because they at the stage where they have to protect what belongs to them. We are trying to get our foot in. Our vaginas and wombs do not have the same rights to be treated equally.

Elfing that sounds really hard. I too would be interested to hear more indepth about the conflict between feminists idealising women as independent and being physically dependent.

Alias have you got any articles or sources where the issue of 'white privilege' is discussed from an American indigenous perspective? There's obviously an issue with simplistically transplanting American concepts onto another jurisdiction. We don't, for example, have the extra layer of an appallingly treated racial group that is more prominent/populated than the original inhabitants. We do have racial groups who have experienced racism (refugee waves), but many of them were educated intelligentsia or from a mercantile class so brought with them some level of agency. The new groups of Sudanese who have come via UNHCR camps and are new to Western education etc are vulnerable targets by racists, and the media are quick to leap on any example of individual criminality and then extrapolate it to the whole group. The women, of course, are the ones who have the worst experience as they are trapped and isolated in suburban homes with very little support structures or access to English language acquisition.

Barcoo2 I don't know the case you are talking about. From what you have posted, I get the gist and I have read about the breeding they did. Watched a movie on that too.
What I would say is that the journalist has a point when it comes to privilege. They defiantly don't have the same privilege as the next white Australian.

However, Some of them can get away with it.
I do remember reading an article about an athlete who refused to revel his ancestry. It made news in the uk and I was shocked that he was being forced to do so by the media. I didn't see the benefit of him doing so to the people who wanted to know. By that a lone. He has the privilege to disguise his heritage and benefit by accepted in the sports. Anyone other average aboriginal would struggle from the sense I gathered when reading the article. The difference between him and the others is that he grand parents who married white Australians. Something like that.
Where I would have an issue, is that the hatred he would receive for just being who he is if he had revealed.
It's a shame that he could not stand tall and say am mixed aboriginal and proud.

Similar thing happened to slaves in America and the Caribbean. The lighter slaves where more expensive. That led to lots of rape of female slaves. And the rape mentality lived on until 20th century. Colourism among black people flourished.