How do we scourge out racism and classism in feminism?

[Treesybreezy]

I need to apologize upfront - I am disabled and also looking after a baby so I'm not going to be able to check back on this thread as frequently as I'd like. I will be back tho.

I've just read this by sister outrider sisteroutrider.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/dispatches-from-the-margins-on-women-race-and-class/amp/?__twitter_impression=true . I know there have been other threads where black women (or other ethnicities) have said, racism is a massive problem and there's been a large, reflexive defensive reaction from white women here.

I'm too tired to articulate this properly now in support of what sister outrider has said, but I've definitely seen both racism and classism in action.

How do we set this right?

Nobody in power I mean.

I mean does anyone really trust that the push to demedicalise what is currently known as GID will ultimately result in anything else other than cutting of essential services for this vulnerable group?

I don’t.

Has anyone arguing in favour of it really looked at how medicine actually treats women’s health?

Joan, it definitely is a sidetrack - cba to look back and see how it started.

People always reference these "choice" feminists but seriously, they're not the sorts actively engaged with feminism are they. I've never met a anyone who would defend that as a position round here for example, probably because it's patently shallow.

I think however that is frequently used as a gross over-simplification of the Liberal feminist position. I'd call myself libfem, although it's not a clean cut distinction. And like many libfems that's because I think the best way to unshackle women is through lobbying for practical changes within the existing system, rather than proposing a radical reordering. Although I agree in many of the "new order" ideals.

TIRFs definitely do exist. We had one round here not long ago and me and her since become friends. Her feminist credentials are irrefutable, and she is a member of at least two groups who share her trans-inclusive stance. So TIRFs definitely do exist. And they can't so easily be dismissed as the "choicey choice" non-feminist kind.

Anyway as you say, that's neither here nor there on this thread. Hopefully there will be another edition of lib vs. rad as there often is and we can hash it all out on there

I find the title of this thread hugely offensive.

Seems like an attempt to smear and demonise feminists to me.

There has been an unrelenting effort to undermine gender critical/anti-prostitution feminism for a while now by flinging shit at it, to see if it sticks. M/TRAs have been handing rocks to young, ignorant, blood-lusting pomos to fling at smeared, dehumanised feminists (TERFS & SWERFS) quite openly.

The thing I found astonishing was the way that bastardising intersectional feminism to centre men and demonise radical feminists (whose class analysis is where intersection theory rose out) has been actually successful, and some BAME women actually buy into the utter bullshit that white males suffer two intersecting oppressions in the way that they themselves do - white men are oppressed both as 'women' and opressed as 'trans' - all that male entitlement and privilege disappearing in a puff of smoke the minute they get it into their head to live a lie of pretending to be the opposite sex and violating and abusing women's spaces and services to validate that lie.

It is ludicrous and beyond offensive.

TIRFs definitely do exist. We had one round here not long ago and me and her since become friends. Her feminist credentials are irrefutable, and she is a member of at least two groups who share her trans-inclusive stance. So TIRFs definitely do exist. And they can't so easily be dismissed as the "choicey choice" non-feminist kind.

Oh absolutely. One of the most raddiest of rad-fems you could hope to meet, Catharine MacKinnon, is trans-inclusionary. I believe Sara Ahmed is too. Absolutely no doubt whatsoever about their feminist credentials. The two are not incompatible.

Actually just to bring it back in line with where we were in the thread (kind of), if you accept the need to acknowledge intersectionality in terms of race and class so as to promote the interests of all women, by the same vein you have to at least be open to considering the intersectionality surrounding trans. Because otherwise one runs the risk of one's Feminism being for the good of all women except a small few, regardless of whether you think those few "women" are the trans women or the trans men. Someone still gets left behind.

I don't think anyone will ever logic their way out of people calling themselves trans. That doesn't mean any women should be left behind.

Whilst that's not the crux of my own personal position on tans issues I do think it's one with considering.

Although the issues of race and class intersectionality do affect a far greater proportion of women; I would say that's irrefutable.

Whoops, x post! Must type quicker (and less).

The title is offensive

I have met Catharine MacKinnon as it happens but her only comments on trans that I know of were wrt transsexual people, not supporting self id, and I very very much doubt she would support women being told they are not allowed to have boundaries anymore because a male who self identifies as a woman is sad about it.

Are there not enough threads about trans identified males? Can this one not be about the impact of race and class on women instead of on the demands and sads of males?

True Joan and I have met her too! No, I don't believe she has written anything specifically on self-ID to be fair. Sara Ahmed's work is more recent though. Idk, the thread is about race and class, I just picked up on Rat's point that radical feminism is not inherently incompatible with a degree of trans inclusion.

McKinnon is surely more accurately described as a marxist feminist and Ahmed as a liberal feminist?

Radical feminism and marxist feminism both seeking radical change but rad fems treating the source as gender and Marxists feminists treating it as capitalism...

Can this one not be about the impact of race and class on women instead

YY, let's revert following detour.

oncenturyavenue.org/2015/03/harm-is-harm-hello/

Although reading this recent piece, I wouldn't be so sure that she would definitely not agree with self-ID. This is from 2015 and she says "I aggressively don't care" about the bathroom question. And she is here referring to transgender, not her previous considerations of transsexuals.

I thought Ahmed was a queer theorist/pomo.

McKinnon is surely more accurately described as a marxist feminist and Ahmed as a liberal feminist?

Catharine MacKinnon is definitely a radical feminist. Ahmed more liberal.

"How do we scourge out racism and classism in feminism?"

The inference is that feminists are stuck-up, white, middle-class racists and there is a desperate need to whip them into 'wokeness'.

Feminists are far more self policing about classism and racism ime than any other group I am involved in. They do not need whipping into shape, in fact I think intersectional feminists need to do some self-examination about the misogyny inherent in their obsession about what women say and do, not what the actual men in positions of power do. Women are the easy target and putting them on the back foot for the crime of having white skin, or god forbid an education, is far more gratifying than the uphill strughle of fighting Patriarchy.

I thought Ahmed was a queer theorist/pomo.

She is. And also utterly impenetrable, as you'd expect.

The inference is that feminists are stuck-up, white, middle-class racists and there is a desperate need to whip them into 'wokeness'.

Is that the inference? Would there be the same inference if one said, "how do we scourge out child sexual exploitation from overseas aid charities"? Isn't the inference simply that racism and classism exist within feminism (just as they do everywhere) and what do we do about it?

Women are the easy target and putting them on the back foot for the crime of having white skin, or god forbid an education, is far more gratifying than the uphill strughle of fighting Patriarchy.

I think women discussing amongst themselves how to fight the patriarchy for the good of all women - regardless of race and class - is in no way synonomous with putting women on the back foot for the crimes of having white skin and an education. But way to go suggesting that the white, educated women are the ones fighting the patriarchy and all the other women are just making it hard for them, bleeting on about their race and class issues within feminism.

But I'm sure that isn't what you meant.

To go back to something that was touched on earlier:

The problem I have with the practice of "calling out" is that it seems to be increasingly used as a power play in left wing circles. So person A innocently makes a comment that could be interpreted as 'problematic' and gets called out. Person A then basically has two options: offer a grovelling repentance, or stick to their guns and be labelled a bigot and find themselves marginalised. So calling out effectively carries the subtext of 'submit or be shunned'.

Meanwhile the person doing the calling out can bask in the enhanced status of having demonstrated to the crowd how "woke" they are, so there's a strong incentive to "call out" even at the slightest perceived infraction.

It makes it hard to have any kind of good faith discussion.

Isn't the inference simply that racism and classism exist within feminism (just as they do everywhere) and what do we do about it?

No. That title would read "How can feminism lead the way in scourging out racism and classism from society" or something similar.

way to go suggesting that the white, educated women are the ones fighting the patriarchy and all the other women are just making it hard for them, bleeting on about their race and class issues within feminism

Of course I didn't mean that. There are feminists fighting Patriarchy in all cultures and from all ethnic heritages. I'm specifically speaking about the breed of youngish pomo misogynist twats who obsess about 'White Middle-Class Feminism'.

‘Woman is a political class’ (not a biological one) is a Marxist feminist position not a radical feminist position.

Caveat; of course it is rare that anyone neatly fits into one ideological box.

Permission I read it as saying, "how can we ensure that our Feminism benefits ALL women, regardless of class and ethnicity?". I don't think it's about eliminating classism and racism in society really.

"how can we ensure that our Feminism benefits ALL women, regardless of class and ethnicity?"

That is a very gentle interpretation of labelling feminists as classist and racist and needing a whip to train them out of it.