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.

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. Yup! I have come across this too.
You should include South Americans too. One of the biggest ones is that the black South Americans don't want the Americans to include them in their racist issues because they don't consider themselves as black. That does not seat well with black Americans in America where everything is judged through race. With creoles that is a whole kettle of fish and hatred.

What I would say is that the journalist has a point when it comes to privilege

Quencher I can see that from face value, it would seem that paler skinned Aboriginal people would be able to benefit more. The argument by racists here is that they are choosing to identify with their 'Aboriginal side' and not their European side.

However there are certain aspects about history that need to be understood. Aboriginal people from the south east (the most populated/urbanised areas) had their culture and nations decimated. Where I live there are no known Indigenous names for so many of the local flora. The people were forced on to missions and forced to train as servants etc. In Tasmania - well, if you want to know the specifics look it up. Horrific. For so many children of black mothers and white fathers - the father was taking advantage, perhaps rape, perhaps the mother was forced into a situation of prostitution, obligated by an employer. These children didn't have a 'European side of the family' that chose to acknowledge them. Have to go now, baby is awake...

...sorry, back now. So yep, from the south east. There is so little in the archives and from oral history to try and piece together the culture. In fact, the government wrote into the rules that to make a land rights claim, you had to show a continuous connection to culture since colonisation. Making it impossible for anyone but those in desert type places that the Europeans didn't want to exploit. Also if you are Aboriginal then it doesn't matter how 'pale' you are, you still face discrimination. For want of a better description, Aboriginal people with no European heritage are not really visible in the south east. There is no sliding scale of racism where the 'darker' you are the more racism you get. If you look even slightly Aboriginal then you have historically had discrimination. Also, for the children who were removed from their families, they have the added trauma of motherlessness and lack of family bonding. The northern remote communities have lots of problems that are different, but it doesn't mean that the 'pale skinned' ones are more privileged.

Hopefully this is helpful to understand the specific context in Australia. I imagine it's very similar for First Nations in Canada and the USA. Also for the record Bolt, that journalist, says that the Stolen Generations didn't happen. He says that the children were taken because the parents were bad parents. So he is very offensive and ignores all of the evidence.

I'm finding it hard writing this because now with 'intersectional feminism' I feel that it's not my experience to talk about. Yet what we have understood over the last few years is that it is not Aboriginal people's jobs to educate us - we need to educate ourselves. So I'm educating all of you but am I doing it ok...? Makes me and others I've been communicating with very nervous about doing any actual discussion of the issues.

@Barcoo2 that's really helpful. I have always tried to understand the aborigines. Little snippets I have come across have always shocked me and the fact that they have always been faceless in Australia's media and everything else.

What I have also realised is that I probably didn't understand the way the journalist is thinking and how his point of view is coming across and the intention.

With your last sentence, are people not allowed to discuss it?

With your last sentence, are people not allowed to discuss it?

We are, but we're worried we will get our heads snapped off for saying the wrong thing or 'triggering' or whatever, by the leader. She made it clear that disagreeing with the concept of white presenting = white privilege was unacceptable.

Barcoo, thanks for that. I totally understand what you mean about not wanting to talk about aboriginal discrimination and the history of the abuse suffered with regards to being told to stop talking out of your lane. It's a problem with intersectionality that I find incredibly frustrating. I'm in so many Facebook groups, mostly babywearing ones randomly, where non BIPOC are told to shut up, sit down, get back into their own lane, find their own spoons, told to google, stop expecting other people's labour, etc etc that people simply stop asking questions for fear of being dog piled and called white feminists. I honestly think 'white feminist' has become a slur in many instances.
While I sympathise with people who are genuinely exhausted by constantly answering the same questions or fending off the same micro aggressions I don't think it's a healthy way to encourage understanding and education to humiliate anyone for asking questions. And if anyone dares to say that, then they get shouted down for crying salty white tears and being a 'becky'.

Incidentally was anyone a member of the "guilty feminist" podcast group on facebook? It basically imploded and was shut down as it became quite a horrendous space similar to what alias describes. While aspects of intersectional feminism seem hugely important - in my opinion - it seems like it is being misused and misunderstood massively. In more extreme cases it's being used to silence discussion in an almost totalitarian way.

corabel no missed that drama altogether!

When I first started becoming aware of social justice and intersectionality I had a pm on Facebook from a perfect stranger who sent me in the direction of a few groups, not because she wanted to recruit me as a lib from but because she wanted me to see the fuckery. She told me she thought the social justice warriors on the babywearing pages would end up eating their own tails, looks very much to me like a lot of them have, and alienated plenty of allies in the process.

Some people are just arseholes I've decided, and it's perfectly reasonable to decide someone's else's opinion is a crock of shit if you've considered it and assessed it as such. just because they say they're oppressed on X y and z axis doesn't mean you have to throw yourself at their feet and renounce your privelege for being white cis Hetero educated ablebodied neuronormative or whatever else and accept their narrative without question. That's ridiculous, the only way we grow as individuals and a movement is to use our critical analysis to question probe deepen our understanding of the world around us and how we inhabit it.

I'm not sure though how intersectionality can be brought back from the brink of the extremes it's got to.

Wow aliasnumberone love your analysis. Also yy to babywearing groups getting sucked in to intersectionality. Breeding ground for antivaxxers too.

I tend to think intersectionality is often a way to water down feminism and to exploit female socialization by demanding that women take care of the interests of other groups. No one is telling the BLM campaigners to spend time and energy on promoting women's rights, are they?

Feminism puts the interests of women - all women - first or it's not actually feminism. It's definitely not going to achieve anything either - which I suspect is part of the point.

prawn I agree, I'm just reading a thread on one of the babywearing groups I'm in where a WOC stated in her op that white women shouldn't comment on any cultural issues that affect women off other cultures. So apparently we should trust women activists working within their own cultures to stamp out harmful practices... Yeah cause that's going so well for all the girls who are suffering fgm on a daily basis. See this is the type of sit down shit and stop centering your white fragility rhetoric that means feminism has lost its fangs. One of the MRA arguments is that women in western. Ou tried have already got equality but when we say who gives a fuck look at all the countless women suffering rape, fgm and underage marriage were now not supposed to point that out as indicated by our own natural allies.. Ie other 'feminists'? And by the quote marks I mean, defanged liberal feminists who have incapacitated themselves with hand wringing

I tend to think intersectionality is often a way to water down feminism and to exploit female socialization by demanding that women take care of the interests of other groups. No one is telling the BLM campaigners to spend time and energy on promoting women's rights, are they?

Yeah.

I don't listen to people who talk about "intersectionality", really. If they want me to listen, and there are actual women actually affected by the thing they want to talk about, they can call it feminism, plain and simple.

It seems to me that intersectionality is used as a crutch for liberal feminism.

If liberal feminism's approach to "Women are made responsible for childcare and are not paid for it and thus have no financial independence" is "Hire a nanny and get into paid employment" then someone will call that "white feminism" or "middle class feminism", and will look clever and everyone can then talk of how difficult it all is.

Once you get away from the assumption that women are oppressed because of our gender identity or because we are to stupid to make the right choosey choices, you are much less likely to come up with ideas that only work for white middle class women.

Someone made reference to this essay from 2013 on the reddit Gender Critical page. I have found it brilliant in summing up a critique of identity politics from a left perspective:

andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/the-problem-with-privilege-by-andrea-smith/

Back in the 1980s a Bradford head teacher, Roy Honeyford, caused a furore when he attacked fashionable multiculturalism.

I remember hearing him say that every year underage girls in his school were taken out of school to go "home" to their DPs or DGPs country of origin and forced into marriage there. They never came back to school, but nobody went looking for them. The local authority completely ignored the phenomenon. He was outraged that politicians and educators were turning a blind eye. They said criticizing the families was racist.

Ray Honeyford said the opposite was true. Had these been little white girls, he said, the nation would have been up in arms. But because the girls were brown we were supposed to accept it because "it's their culture".

He made a big impression on me. He really cared about those girls. He was quite right that the supposed multicultural approach was racist because it treated BME girls as lesser. To him all the girls should have the same protections.

He was intersectional in his views because he thought all girls should be protected against forced marriage. However his career was ruined and, even now, you see people arguing that the oppression of girls and women has to be tolerated because culture.

You do, Prawn, I agree. I have a real problem with this.

That's really interesting prawn. I think it connects a lot with the ignorance of the intersectional feminist movement about cultural relativism. The idea that it is Islamophobic to oppose FGM is harming girls and protecting the patriarchy.

As well, of course, is the fact that we in the West had a lot of the stuff that is now being defended as uniquely Oriental/cultural. Like arranged marriages (hellloooo read Pride and Prejudice), marriage between cousins (a Celtic tradition in the backblocks, as I understand it), marrying a teenage girl to some old widower who wants free labour to look after his existing children (the Sound of Music!).

The liberation of women and girls is not a decadent western luxury.