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?

I really enjoyed a tweet about the Newcastle meeting where some one had a shout at us in proper geordie, saying all you feminists have got your pet lip out.

Haven't heard that for years.

Relevance to thread?

I've never heard 'pet lip' Picassos, what does it mean? I'm guessing it's similar to 'talking proper'?

Picasssos... got your pet lip out

Unfamiliar term, for me - and I have my own UK dialect to contend with!

What does it mean?
Ta!

I guess it's relevant in that what we think of as polite "middle English" is actually an exclusive dialect that not all of us are brought up with. Even when English is our first language, we dont necessary speak the same English.

And of course for many English is not their first language. That's relevant to how we can talk about race and class in open and inclusive ways.

Pet lip means stock your bottom lip out - i think...so sulky. In Newcastle someone said sulky feminist??

Stick*

It's an old Northern saying about sulking.

When bairns (children) shove their bottom lip out after being stopped from doing something naughty, or nice to them obviously.

You then get told off for having your pet lip out.

Quite right Mist. In Geordieland anyone with a pet lip is sulking.

Ah thank you, never come across that before!

Yes on the meeting twitter thread a woman had a rant about the meeting and said we had to be nice to everyone and not get our pet lip out for not getting our own way.

I don't live in Newcastle now, I do still live in the NE and people can guess immediately I'm a Geordie by accent and certain words/sayings.

I think this question is framed in a slightly problematic way TBH.

• I don’t believe it is possible to remove racism, classism etc or even sexism from feminist discourse because these problems are pervasive (particularly economic class) in the UK. It is silly to assume that we haven’t all internalised these things to some degree.

• what matters is that what we do does not perpetuate hardship re other class issues

• this is the principle behind equalities impacts assessments, mitigate the effects of prejudice by assessing impact on other equalities in order to ensure it is not discriminatory. They haven’t been done particularly effectively in the public sector but the principle is not a bad one. It’s a thought process I try to have regard to but obviously there will be times everyone gets it wrong, people need to be open to discussing why it might have gone wrong.

• I would hate in equal measure if feminism ended up eating itself re centring lived experience and identity above anything else or if what feminism achieved was marred by perpetuation of other class based problems

• re discourse I think everyone needs to be prepared to; hear things they don’t like, say things they think, talk to people they don’t know, help out people who are struggling, find out what they don’t know and reassess their position.

• structurally when it comes to action, as with all things, safeguards and checks and balances are important.

• since the expansion of the equalities portfolio people have been making stupid mistakes like assuming immigrants are not racist or disabled people aren’t misogynists etc this hasn’t resolved the problems where the privileged usually rise to the top. It will probably be better resolved if we move away from identity and lived experience and more towards making an effort to understand the meaning of what is being said. IMO although these things are emotional because they have such real meaning for people’s lives it is very important to try and remain as patiently objective as possible and to try and separate the actual meaning from superficial stuff like who is saying it and how it is being said.

• I don’t think too much weight should be given to initial prickling re criticism or people should be made to moderate criticism too much either. Prickling is a natural defensive response and moderation tends to obscure the weight of the point.

• ultimately feminism cannot be fragmented into separate interest groups divided by intersections with other classes so we all need to be able to handle these disagreements and conflicts effectively.

So, shouting "uppity women" at women who are standing up for women and girls' rights, then? Shouting "uppity women" because women are arranging and meeting to discuss said rights currently under threat by the most dominant social class ever - i.e. men?!

I think this is where I came in.....

Who’s a Radical Feminist

I’m not, because I’m a bloke. But this is a really good piece.

Oh and usually these things happen in discourse only. Where they have started undermining the natural unity and care for others that comes along with collective action it has been because things have been disrupted by emotion, group think or identity politicking and oppression olympics stuff. It is not just that way re feminism, it is an age old problem referenced by things like ‘unity on the left’ and the four yorkshiremen...

Your link didn't work for me miranda, did you mean this one:
wlrnmedia.wordpress.com/2017/06/11/whos-a-radical-feminist

That is a good article, yes.

I can never pin this down. I'm white and middle class. When I ask what I should be doing to not be a white feminist it all breezes away and I'm left with 'just listen to people' or other totally intangible woke speak.

Tell me what I should actually be doing or pipe down I reckon. I don't know any black people, and my friends are all of a similar background to me.

Morris if you dont know anyone who isn't like you how can you listen?

If you don't like the thread hide it.

Miranda and Joan great article thanks for sharing.

woke speak is actually cowing women that will be shat on by the same old same old uterus discrimination no matter what their background is.

We should be using our clout to shit on the shitters that maintain the status quo.. Middle class women now have power. We need to slap harder on the processes that drive financial decisions that shit on lower paid women for the sake of a profit. Unprofitable industries are propped up by corporate welfare. Business only make a profit because of inadequate state subsides on low pay paid women doing insecure jobs. The Boards of these organisations don't even realise they are dependent on this corporate welfare, I've pointed it our to them and they have no idea. Appalling.

I think that was morris’ point TBH. What use is advice to listen to certain people when you don’t know any to listen to?

IMO that whole thing is kind of the opposite of what’s helpful. I don’t see the value in finding a token xyz person and attempting to parrot what they think.

We should, IMO, be trying to be more objective than that. It should not be about who someone is but the actual power dynamics of things.

People on the individual level are pretty fallible and everyone is affected by unconscious bias. Can we just get away from making it about different people’s various individual characteristics and actually engage with the substance of the power dynamics at play?

It’s like when people order ‘SWERFs’ to go talk to sex workers, talking to sex workers doesn’t really change the power dynamics at play and it’s the power dynamics that matter. Maybe there is value in explaining why you think someone has misunderstood the power dynamics but just talking to a token person is really dubious. It depends what that person has to say TBH.

So yeah what feminism actually does can’t end up perpetuating the problems of some women because of other types of class issues that apply to them, but is the best way to address that by engaging with arguments based on who someone is/how they say it, rather than what they are actually saying?

There's a barrier for women from non white non middle class backgrounds in entering feminist spaces, conversations, etc, literally made unwelcome from a section of middle class white women who say that they are feminists.

It's not about interviewing someone different from you.

I would hope that everybody acknowledges that those barriers are there but I’d be inclined to think that that wasn’t actually a feminist space if those barriers meant women were actually excluded.

Here is a pdf that was written some time ago on the matter.
www.interpretereducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/white-privilege-by-Peggy-McIntosh.compressed.pdf

I remember when I was five in 1951 and my cousins came to visit us. We walked to the corner store for penny candy. They were afraid of our neighbors because they were Black. They did not know, nor had they met, any black people in their short lives but they had seen them on TV and heard people talk so they knew knew to be afraid. I did not understand at the time that their parents were racists and had taught them to be racists. I just thought they were being stupid.