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.

Making mental more note. Bastard autocorrect!

That WW equating blackface with drag is a painful and inaccurate comparison for BW

Just to clarify - is it only 'equating' that is the problem, rather than just pointing out that there are some similarities/parallels between the two?

Also, would the problem from your point of view (2b) be statements explicitly equating womanface and blackface, or do you have a problem with the use of the word 'womanface' full stop?

I found people drawing attention to the similarities really eye-opening and the idea that doing that is 'weaponising' someone else's suffering quite difficult to accept, as it seems to imply that no one, ever, can draw attention to similarities between the tactics of different oppressive groups, because somewhere, some group will always have suffered worse than all the others from one particular tactic. That would mean that naming that tactic and noticing it elsewhere even in different forms and strengths would be impossible, because it would 'belong' to the group that experienced the worst version of it.

OTOH I can see that a simplistic equating of the two as a sort of lazy 'gotcha' in an argument about 'womanface' is not appropriate. Does just using the word 'womanface' do that? Doesn't the word 'womanface' have its own independent function so it can be used and discussed in its own right without its mere presence indicating that the person using it thinks that the actions of drag, agp or whatever are completely equivalent to 'blackface' in intent and effect? I would say it should and does.

It is interesting, whatever the history of blackface, that these days there is outcry if a white actor is chosen to play a character of a different race... but drag is becoming more mainstream and more acceptable.

Going "don't compare it to blackface, it's offensive! " is just another way of silencing or diverting the discussion.

Drag is damaging to women due to perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Surely that's enough for it be a problem.

Representation matters. Women are woefully under represented as complete, autonomous, human beings in all media... then you add in some of the representation of "women" being these awful sexualized caricatures. It's not great.

Also, some people might say "drag is a kind of womanface" and "womanface has some similarities to blackface", but that's not the same thing as saying "drag is equivalent to blackface" because that's missing out an essential step in the middle.

'Womanface' and 'blackface' have differences as well as similarities. Some people might disagree that drag is an example of womanface, while agreeing the womanface is a useful way to describe a particular kind of mocking imitation of women that does happen in some contexts.

There’s a lot of nuanced arguments here and more than one can deconstruct in an Internet forum post.

One thing that strikes me though is on the one hand you have posters saying that bad black face and lynching is American but on the other women and girls are being killed just for being born girls and subject to FGM on account of the same. Surely the majority of baby girl killing and FGM happens outside of the UK.

It seems to me a little disingenuous to say that US doesn’t apply to the UK but to claim experiences that also happen primarily outside of the UK.

FGM happens in the UK. And some British girls are taken overseas for it.
plan-uk.org/about/our-work/fgm

It seems to me a little disingenuous to say that US doesn’t apply to the UK but to claim experiences that also happen primarily outside of the UK.
My comment on what happens to women and girls was a response to someone who said that women as a class weren't persecuted, and that female oppression wasn't comparable to lynchings and slavery. I don't see what's 'disingenuous' about that.

I agree with @EssentialLeap that looking at similarities can be illuminating and useful. Can also understand as a human being the annoyance at people equating two separate experiences. Drag for example isn't part of a history where in modern times woman are innocently shot by police. I find drag hugely offensive and lampooning of women every time I see it.

What I can get my head around is what is the logical difference between a male claiming to be a 'medical woman' and a white person saying they are black? Rachel Dolezal seems as 'earnest' in her belief that she is trans as any trans woman/ man I've seen. I don't understand why it's ok for black people to find RD offensive but I can't be offended by a man stating he is having PMS?!

I am aware there are instances of FGM in women in the UK hence I said primarily outside. It isn’t anything like the scale of slavery though. In any event, it’s almost always black women it happens to so is another example of the additional issues that affects the black community.

I think playing the ‘my impression is worse than your oppression’ game isn’t very helpful, but I can understand why black women may take issue with the comparison we are talking about. I suppose it’s up to the person making the arguments whether they want to spend additional time and potentially distract from the issue at hand by getting caught up in this side debate.

I don’t really see it as so much of an issue in the UK though where blackface wasn’t used in the same way. It’s hard to limit your audience though.

Interestingly enough, in the Netherlands, blackface is still common and every Christmas Santa’s helpers (slaves) are white people in full on black face. Many people are adamant that it isn’t offensive. It just goes to show the opposite end of the spectrum. The comparison wouldn’t work there either.

Plato I agree, the problem is mainly Americans imposing their world view on the rest of us. Some of them just don't seem to understand that the rest of the world doesn't share their history and culture, and things that are unacceptable in the US might be seen as perfectly OK elsewhere, and vice versa.

I don't mind Americans saying that blackface is a very particular form of entertainment that is specific to the Jim Crow Era.

The problem is that if blackface is a very specific thing that relates to a particular period and place, we also need language to talk about other racist caricatures; and arguably you shouldn't use the term blackface to describe Justin Trudeau dressing up as Aladdin - it might be racist but it isn't blackface.

@aliasundercover your comment was ages ago but I wanted to let you know I appreciated it (and there was nothing offensive whatsoever about it)!

I think quieter posters can be hesitant to post on these threads as they are scared of getting their head bitten off, whatever they say. Every voice has value so I’m glad you added yours.

I said earlier people could AMA if they were confused about what happened (not that I’m anyone - only that I’ve followed the discussions/ fallings out closely).

That offer is still there if anyone is lurking - AMA (=ask me anything), I won’t bite anyone’s head off!

Well I was definitely hesitant to post, and I appreciate you acting as a sort of cultural ambassador slash translator, 2B.

The only thing is, the explanations leave me thinking "Yep, the parallels really are incredibly strong for me."

I use the word womanface for males wearing the stereotypical attire forced onto women like me - the pornified sexualised stereotype of the modern day whore.

My personal experiences are typical of how white English women are pushed into the unrapeable underclass of 'sex work' in all its many guises. The entire system is set up to force women with my experiences to submit to having been forcibly shoved into the prostituted class. So when I see a male being obnoxiously male about the stereotypical costume of clothes and behaviour that my subset of women are violently forced to adopt through the actions of the oppressor class in order to justify and excuse exploiting us as nothing more than subhuman performing wanksocks - I don't call that costume on males womanface in order to weaponise another culture's suffering.

I do it because black American women have given me the words my own culture hasn't, to describe what my culture does to me.

The word I need isn't womanface. The people I'd hitherto described with that word are wearing whoreface. Black American women are saying "this is how they justify and excuse forcing us into the unrapeable whore underclass."

The unrapeable whore underclass isn't determined by race here. Some of us are born to it with no realistic means of escape, some of us are shoved into it much later. And they justify and excuse shoving us into that stereotype and keeping us there with these obnoxious celebrations of the 'costume' they've attached to us as part of making and keeping us dehumanised.

I get how frustrating it is when white women don't understand black women's insider perspective on blackface. It's paralleled in how I feel when my fellow white women are defending the celebration of the current iteration of the whore-stereotype as just a bit of fun, light entertainment, a celebration of the history of a subset of my oppressors that I need to stop being so humourless about.

It's cultural variations on the same thing, whatever words we use for it.

The problem is that if blackface is a very specific thing that relates to a particular period and place, we also need language to talk about other racist caricatures

It seems that for Americans it does have a very specific meaning, but for the rest of the English-speaking world it has a broader or different meaning. But Americans can't tell us that because that's what 'blackface' means to them, we can't use it to mean something different. It's our language too, and we shouldn't have our language policed by Americans.

Americans do have a habit of trying to force their culture on everyone else. We should be allowed to resist.

@EssentialLeap I’m on my phone so can’t copy your comment but will try and answer in order

the real problem I see is not even BF / drag but the response online (FB, Twitter) to black women sharing how this affects them.

Being called by a small no. GCF - “divisive,” “over-sensitive,” and worst of all... white men (posing as black women), WTAF

These were young brilliant, black radfems who supported white GC. Who were tagged into shit shows with TRA to help fight the cause (and did so gladly). Who were fighting the same battle.

It’s really sad and shocking to me. Sorry I’m not sure I answered your q, will come back later

2B the Twitter response you describe is grim. Too many white women don't see drag for what it is and haven't really worked out how it fits into our own culture. They don't quite get the emotional gutpunch black women feel when someone says 'blackface' because they haven't really connected it to our own culture's version of 'sexualised stereotypes as a mechanism for ensuring the maintenance of the whore class' manifesting as drag from the inside.

"her race is the defining factor in how people treat her - even though she's well-educated, well-spoken, well-dressed, well-everything"

That's your colleague's opinion @breakfastpizza but perhaps lots of other women would feel that, for them sex would replace race in that sentence.

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.

I think from a philosophical perspective you can think of inner essences in several ways, and some of them are quite compatible with materialism. You could think about something like, what is it that makes a woman a woman, or a human being a human being, or a dog a dog. The answer is material in one sense, but not exclusively; there is a real certain "isness" to each of those things that makes them mean something, materially, quite different from the others. A materialist would tend to say when speaking that way that what we're calling essence is completely married to the material, and also that there are no essential things that aren't married to the material.

Someone who is a platonist of some kind on the other hand would make a less definitive marriage between the essential and material, but in terms of material things would probably make a similar kind of statement about the two being essentially two sides of the same coin.

In fact I think this is the real link between gender ideology and race ideology that people sometimes find confusing - why someone would reject the idea of transracial but accept the idea of transgender. People who think this way think that race and gender are both essential internal essences. So transgender is only trans in relation to sex, you simply are the gender you are, which you know by how you feel. Race is defined a little differently, often according to the American cultural definition which tends to be the one drop perspective, but again, you are what you are and can't change.

It seems that for Americans it does have a very specific meaning, but for the rest of the English-speaking world it has a broader or different meaning. But Americans can't tell us that because that's what 'blackface' means to them, we can't use it to mean something different. It's our language too, and we shouldn't have our language policed by Americans.

Well, on the one hand they make it specific to that tradition, and on the other they use it to criticise things that have zero to do with that tradition, like Black Peter as someone mentioned above.

TBH, I even find the discussion of the minstrel tradition is pretty unnuanced. You only ever hear about it being a deliberately offensive thing. I only knew Al Jolson for example as a promoter of racism through that medium, and only found out recently from someone who happened to live in the same community that he did that he was very involved in the civil rights movement from as early as the first decades of the 20th century, and was respected by the black community where he lived. Which suggests people's feelings might actually have been more mixed about such depictions then compared to now.

I’m not American or UK. You are both pretty obnoxious in terms of thinking your country is the centre of civilisation and forcing your culture on others - maybe they inherited it from you? 🤔

A couple of black feminists expressing a view on Twitter is not cultural imperialism, get a grip. She was responding to UK people who, online:

• use imagery from US minstrel
• images of old US tins with Blackface
• compare drag / WF / to “Blackface, which in the States... etc

Black women have been entirely collegiate about this, particularly a few months ago when it first came up. Why are they being portrayed as the baddies here, WTH is going on?

It sounds like Blackface has a very different history in the UK. It is not linked to enslavement, rape and murder and Black English people do not still suffer from it.

Hence in the UK, the comparison is both effective and not offensive to anyone - so that is GREAT!

This is a solution - UK people could just stop using US blackface in comparisons, and use UK blackface instead.

Problem solved! Deal?

I’m not American or UK. You are both pretty obnoxious in terms of thinking your country is the centre of civilisation and forcing your culture on others - maybe they inherited it from you?

You're right. The British do this too. I suppose I notice it more from Americans because we're on the receiving end. And America is much more powerful than Britain now.

A couple of black feminists expressing a view on Twitter is not cultural imperialism, get a grip.

If that's a reply to me, I was talking about American attitudes in general, not this particular instance. Like in this thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3703610-Cast-Off-Diversity-wars-are-raging-in-the-knitting-world

Oldcrone it was in response to undertones thru the thread that Americans are trying to police us / silence us / impose Their Will !

No, it’s left wing radfems responding to UK people using US black face as a tool, in a way they feel is inaccurate and disrespects the many black women raped and some killed, and many black men killed, which had causative links to minstrelsy (blackface)

Tyro just to be clear , those Twitter responses from white GC , were in response to black radfems’ critique of the black face / drag stuff

Not “agree to disagree” but “stop being divisive!” Almost like some GC are welcoming of input on shared causes (TRAs etc) but when black women raise their own cause, no one wants to hear

This is a blind spot for GC

"Stop being divisive" - how is it divisive to acknowledge that one's perspective on an issue is informed by one's experience of class membership? We're not a hive mind so division on issues is entirely to be expected. It'd be weirder if white British feminists (of various stripes) and black American radical feminists uniformly agreed, surely? We're from quite distinct cultures after all.

And yes, I do look at America as a whole in a manner reminiscent of Doctor Frankenstein - we exported the psychology of a particularly virulent strain of patriarchy along with the petty criminals and the planet and all its women are suffering for it. We caught it from the Middle East a very long time ago; I've no idea of the skin colour of the tribes in question.

I'm really not getting why black radical feminists are being accused of "cultural imperialism" when blackface is an American term. Black Americans were the target of blackface, they have every right now to have opinions on how the term is used politically and in what context -

also black-face, 1868 (the phrase itself seems not to have been common in print before 1880s) in reference to a performance style, originated in U.S., where (typically) non-black performers used burnt cork or other theatrical make-up to blacken their faces, from black (adj.) + face (n.). The thing itself is older, from the 1830s.

The old-time black face song-and-dance man has disappeared from the stage. At one time no minstrel or variety company was complete without a team of these stage favorites; and who can ever forget their reception at every performance? It made no difference whether they represented the genteel or the plantation negro, they were always welcome, and as a rule were the big feature of the bill. [William E. "Judge" Horton, "About Stage Folks," 1902]

Blackface isn't a british term, it's American. In the context it's being used here (not drag, but males actually claiming to be women), it's inaccurate. White men who blacked up for the stage or screen in the US were never claiming to be black themselves, so why not find another term that actually describes what is going on here?

Missed out a bit - what is being called 'womanface' here is not analogous to blackface. There's a huge key part missing that an analogy with 'blackface' simply doesn't cover.