Why is comparing Womanface to Blackface offensive?

[Backinthecloset123]

I've seen quite a few people state this is offensive and still don't understand why.

Here's an example.

twitter.com/Bon_QuiGirl/status/1189546024479707137?s=19

Could someone explain?

The way I see it, the abhorrence of the history of slavery and racism, and of course blackface, can be equated to the abhorrence of Womanface due to the history of the rape, abuse, murder and hatred towards women by men, the FGM taking place to this day, the murdered female infants, the list goes on.

I am trying hard to understand and would love to hear why my thinking is wrong, and the comparison offensive. I have no hidden agenda.

Are we allowed to point out that women don’t only experience misogyny from white men. My observation is that men are more misogynistic to women from other backgrounds (colour, class) there’s a greater sense of other and it’s easier to dehumanise them cf Rotherham. The worst misogyny I’ve experienced is from white ‘working class’ men and very wealthy, older white men. Also HUGE amounts travelling in Mexico, India. I’ve rarely experienced it from men of a similar educational background (regardless of colour), colleagues etc.
I think I’ll continue to use the term ‘womanface’ in uk discussions but not with US based people. The parallel in the uk between the black & white minstrels and the bbc drag show prog is so jarring - it’s a powerful and effective use of the term imo.

fraggling, well, as you appear to have missed my original response to you, I'll c+p it so I don't have to type it out again.

Drag is entertainment based on stereotypes, often negative ones, of women. Blackface was entertainment based on horrible caricatures of black people

Drag is horrible caricatures
How can people not see that.

You've misunderstood my post, which is probably my fault for not constructing my parallel there using exactly the same terms. I agree with you. They both use hideous caricatures of the targets of the parody.

My point was that the purpose is not the same. Blackface was an active propaganda tool against black people in the US to stoke up violence toward them. DragRace is deeply horrible mockery, but it isn't being used to justify violence against women.

As I said, the tweets picturing hanged women and vaguely 'feminized' men with weapons are a much closer analogy.

Drag on the other hand while insulting, is not being used to stir up hatred against women and justify acts of violence against us

Drag doesn’t need to “stir up” hatred against women : it simply reflects the hatred that already exists.

I'm actually completely unfamiliar with blackface, but wasn't it a form of entertainment (as ridicule)? How in this context can it have been an "active propaganda tool"? Were the Ku Klux Klan funding it? Were they performing it? Were Jim crow politicians organising its broadcast? Genuinely confused.

'Drag doesn’t need to “stir up” hatred against women : it simply reflects the hatred that already exists.'

This.

Blackface was an active propaganda tool against black people in the US to stoke up violence toward them.

But '**face' is also used as a general term to cover all racist caricatures in the arts and entertainment, including those that are unrelated to the US.

I think it's fair to make the argument that 'blackface' is a very particular term that should only be used to refer to a particular historical event, and that to generalise the usage of ' face' is to water down its meaning - but then logically it is also wrong to use phrases like 'yellow face' and 'jew face' to identify one dimensional caricatures, and no examples of 'black face' exist outside the US.

Insightful comments

.

I really disagree with the comments about drag in those screenshots.
Drag is so much more than rebellion against heteronormativity.
I have never seen drag representing “strong women” or admiring women for anything other than in a sexual way.

"the other symbolises rebellion against heteronormative society".

Except it doesn't.

To agree with this you have to:

1. Ignore the long history of men dressing up as women that predates the 70's club scene.
2. Accept without question the idea that drag is a rebellion when it reinforces the idea that particular kinds of behaviour and dress are not appropriate for men.

sittinonthefloor
You said just what I was thinking. Lets not forget that black men’s sex often gives him power over white women.
I’m a white British woman and I was living in the states in 2008 when Obama and Hillary Clinton were battling in the primaries. So much talk of the symbolism of a black president (quite rightly) but in secret, between me and my dh, I wondered if the symbolism of a woman president was lost on many Americans. I stand by what I said then - America hates black people, but it hates women more.

Those comments are insightful and interesting, but the rejection of comparison with drag is poorly argued.

Why are we even talking about this! It turns out as recent comments state, this is an internal disagreement within an American discussion group. So not US identity politics/grievance studies/ignorant cultural imperialists pushing their views on the wider world as implied earlier.

I feel that some outsiders have read these tweets and are bending over backwards to accommodate an America-centric world view and show black American feminists how allied they are. Chomsky would be laughing bitterly to see it.

America hates black people, but it hates women more

How does America feel about black women?

Hatred

Drag is used as a tool to perpetuate the subjugation of woman it is not harmless poking fun at stereotypes. In our current society womanface is just as damaging as blackface, except one is no longer allowed and the other is celebrated as stunning and brave. Fuck that.

What American discussion group?

There have been various public discussions online over the last few months.

I would not have raised it on MN but when someone else did, I had to add my 2 (million) cents worth because the black feminists in the OP aren’t here to defend themselves

Just a thought on those screenshots - blackface being designed to dehumanise but drag doesn't shape society's view of women - drag doesn't need to, because that view was shaped, that effort put into dehumanisation, rather a lot longer ago and to great effect.

They don't need drag to get society on board with dehumanising white women sufficiently to ensure no one gives a shit when we're raped or beaten or pimped out or punished as faulty domestic appliances. Society's already on board with that.

White women caricatured as subhuman and exploitable is so rife in western white society, that most people don't even notice it. It's that normalised.

I suspect some of the defensive feeling on white women's part in this conversation is because when black women (entirely justifiably) say 'white people' it ignores the fact that they do it to us too. They've been doing it to us for millennia. And we can't get the individual white women who benefit from attaching themselves to the oppressor class to give a shit about us either.

If I was descended from the likes of the women in Gaskill's Mary Barton I'd be pretty prickly about being told I benefited from slavery because some white women owned slaves.

blackface being designed to dehumanise but drag doesn't shape society's view of women - drag doesn't need to, because that view was shaped, that effort put into dehumanisation, rather a lot longer ago and to great effect

Exactly this.

"Drag" has a long history starting in the West anyway, with ancient Greek theatre, when women were not permitted to perform publicly, so men cross-dressed to perform female roles. That tradition persisted in the UK, until 1662. In other parts of Europe, women performed on the public stage earlier than in Britain.

Pantomime dames were comic cross-dressing starting in the 19th century, and i think this is where contemporary drag comes from - all based on ridicule of older, often widowed women. All the stereotypes - sex-mad but totally unattractive; fat; over the top; deluded about their attractiveness.

And Queen Victoria on the throne at the time? Coincidence? I think not ...

White women caricatured as subhuman and exploitable is so rife in western white society, that most people don't even notice it. It's that normalised

Yup.

I suspect dehumanising stereotypes as entertainment goes a lot further back than Ancient Greece. Raping and enslaving the women of outgroups certainly does.

Can I put my hand up and admit to actually not having the faintest idea what "racially essentialising" means?

It's essentially saying that race is part of the fundamental essence of a person.

One of the major criticisms of identity politics is that it takes this idea as it's basis, and so is unable to challenge the idea of race, it can't deconstruct it as a valid category - even though ever and always the idea of race always exists for racism - and that is true whether we attach it to skin colour or not. On the contrary, it tend to reenforce and deepen the idea of race and its hold on people.

Indeed.

But 'face' is also used as a general term to cover all racist caricatures in the arts and entertainment, including those that are unrelated to the US.

And in fact now it's being used when it's not a racist caricature at all, but simply a depiction where someone plays a race that is not their own, or even if it's meant to purposefully deconstruct racist stereotypes. And "brownface" is being used as if it's the equivalent as well, so playing a role that requires almost any modification of skin colour.

There is something kind of weird when that sort of growth of the concept is allowed without any real discussion of whether it's valid to compare a minstrel show to a white man playing Othello, or a guy dressed up as Black Peter, but on the other hand you can't use it specifically as a comparison when it's clear from the context there is no claim of any kind of historical connection and it's simply drawing attention to a similar kind of thing.

I figured the definition would be something like that, Goose - but then that's describing people as possessing fundamental essences. My reference points for understanding language like that are religious ones (it sounds reminiscent of souls). Examples of fundamental person essences would be useful if anyone has got any.

It's obvious that race affects how one's mind/self/identity emerges over time - but that's contingent on the state of the local culture. Black in the States - whoever you become is moulded by (amongst many other variables) lived experience as a member of a very obviously and violently oppressed class. The resulting trends of experience, worldview, life chances, etc etc - they're not intrinsic to being black, but to being systematically oppressed.

I don't mean 'African-American' when I say black though - that's not what black means to the English. That's another point of potential misunderstanding and frayed tempers on this topic, isn't it? Making mental more to be mindful.