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.

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)

The key thing for me is that you can draw a straight line (causation) between blackface propaganda in the US and the murder/rape of black people.

Whilst drag (in particular modern interpretations of drag) undoubtably is sexist and contributes to an overall misogynistic society it's more nuanced in it's origins and I don't think you can draw the same straight line from drag to murder and rape.

In respect to blackface being propaganda designed to dehumanise an entire group of people I feel that pornography is perhaps the closest comparator.

There might not be the imitation aspect at play (bar the more niche category of TG porn) but arguably it is mass propaganda designed to dehumanise and debase females and we can also draw a straight line from violent pornography to the rape and murder of women.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/kim-wall-peter-madsen-snuff-porn-submarine-inventor-submarine-swedish-journalist-a8322076.html

In respect to blackface being propaganda designed to dehumanise an entire group of people I feel that pornography is perhaps the closest comparator.

I would agree with that.

A couple of black feminists expressing a view on Twitter is not cultural imperialism

No, but then if that's what's going on, what to make of the claim that it's what black women think so everyone else just needs to listen and accept that it's the case, which seems to have been where the conversation began?

I don't know that people do this on purpose, but again and again I see issues where a particular group is said to have a certain viewpoint, particularly about something being offensive, as if it is unanimous or so nearly so that it's the same, and the idea is that because this particular community with the lived experience etc agrees, we must accept their view or else we don't respect that community, are oppressing them or something like that.

But it's so very rare that this kind of unity is actually the case.

The key thing for me is that you can draw a straight line (causation) between blackface propaganda in the US and the murder/rape of black people

However this is not the only argument commonly made about why blackface is a problem.

It's extremely common at the moment for people to say, including many in the black community, that blackface or any kind of mimicking of another race for any reason is problematic because it is inherently dehumanising, making a costume out of other people's skin.

I think the idea of womanface, applied either to drag or gender ideology generally, is actually coming out of that idea.

However, I have not heard people asking that those making such arguments stop using the word, or that they stop using the term brownface as in the Trudeau business.

But if the reason is really that blackface should be reserved specifically to refer to the minstrel shows and similar kinds of purposes and outcomes, I should be hearing some voices in the black community asking people to stop using the language for those other things, or extending the idea of blackface to any use in theatre etc. I'm not really hearing that request, much less claims that it is offensive.

There seems to be two meanings of the term "blackface". One is specifically related to the minstral shows and the other is related to any using the skin of another as a removable costume...

Is this the problem?

Agree with PP in that porn is more closely analogous to the minstral shows and drag more analogous to the second, less specific, meaning.

I have a general feeling that making analogies to other Bad Stuff is not necessarily the most useful way to argue that something is bad. I see this line of argument a lot with trans rights stuff related to gay rights stuff and remain unconvinced.

I think it's not necessary for the condemnation of drag as problematic to women to draw the comparison with blackface at all.

I have a general feeling that making analogies to other Bad Stuff is not necessarily the most useful way to argue that something is bad. I see this line of argument a lot with trans rights stuff related to gay rights stuff and remain unconvinced.

So, I tend to agree with this. It's not a rigorous argument, because it's inevitably the case that there are some important nuances or even more significant differences, and those may in fact be important.

I think though that sometimes as part of a more careful discussion, a comparison like this can be useful. It's really just saying "in this way, this thing is similar to that thing" which can help point the listener to the concept the speaker is trying to express.

Porn is the visual capture of what is now global, industrial scale sexual and physical abuse of other human beings. It's much worse than blacking up or donning drag.

Blackface and womanface are both mimicking of the appearance of another historically oppressed group. There are clear parallels and the term 'womanface' made the offensiveness of drag far more visible to me and rightly so, I now think.

Women are currently being trafficked into porn and prostitution. This is a manifestation of actual modern slavery. (Skin colour no impediment.)

Antibles

Blackface was used to recruit for the Klu Klux Klan (see Birth of a Nation). Claiming that porn is worse is incorrect and I speak as someone who has been anti-porn for thirty years and actively campaigns against it.

As has already been said, blackface was used to incite horrific violence against black people and to legitimise past violence, including 18 million dead in the transatlantic slave trade. Pornography and blackface are on a par, although again not identical.

I feel ridiculous trying to drop my ‘credentials’ in there but I’ve been called a handmaiden on this thread and I don’t want it to happen again.

Ovahere thank you for highlighting causation.

There are causative links between Blackface (watched by white women and men) and the rape and murder of black women and men (by white men).

I’m not aware of causative links between drag and violence against women (if you are, please share). I only know of two drag-adjacent murders, both of gay men.

(To be clear, I do not like drag. I find it offensive and demeaning and think drag story time and child drag stars needs to stop.)

In the absence of causative links though, “Drag causes the deaths of women [so equating it to Blackface is valid]”

Sounds a bit like:

“T**Fs cause the deaths of TW [so screaming at women attending a meeting is valid]

An emotive but (as yet) un-evidenced claim, made to justify an action planned (even if other interested parties object).

ova that “show any evidence” was to any readers, not you specifically

karabair thanks for all you’ve added on the thread.. and I thought I was the handmaiden, not you!

We do need an accurate word for six foot five males with pink handbags, screaming "It's ma'am" at cowed shop assistants. Or males claiming they have periods or can breastfeed. It isn't "womanface' though.

Haha, I think we both fall in that category 2BthatUnoticed. You're welcome, and ditto.

I’m not aware of causative links between drag and violence against women (if you are, please share). I only know of two drag-adjacent murders, both of gay men.

Perhaps this is because when you are thinking of drag you are thinking of Ru Paul in New York, not Widow Twankey in Margate?

I think there is a causative link between both racist and sexist stereotypes depicted on UK television in the 1970's and 80's in the UK and racist and sexist violence in the UK. I think there is a large group of people who cannot bear the idea that a woman or non-white person should hold any power, and comedy that relies on one dimensional stereotypes makes racism and sexism permissible.

Again, I can understand the argument that the generalisation of '**face' is offensive because 'blackface' refers to a very specific historical event.

However, drag was not invented in New York clubs in the 1970's and there is long history of racism outside the US.

I have previously used the womanface / blackface comparison, because it was useful to me to get the point across.

But I also see the parallels between women asking men for consideration and being denied it, and black women asking white women for consideration and being denied it. So I don’t use it any longer. I tend to use the - admittedly not as snappy - “male performance of womanhood” instead.

I don’t want to be to black women what misogynistic men are to me. And that is not for one second to minimise the oppression of women by men that still is far too prevalent today. It’s just on me to find a way to discuss an aspect of that without causing harm to those who should be my allies in the GC cause.

But I also see the parallels between women asking men for consideration and being denied it, and black women asking white women for consideration and being denied it.

Exactly this. I've seen black women co-opted by the TRAs ("we are women as black women are women"), so I've stopped using woman-face as an expression as well.

This isn't some able-bodied rando saying 'blind spot' is offensive to the visually impaired. It's a consistent message from multiple black feminists.

I'm late to this thread but it's been interesting. 2B I think I share your views on it.

I'm not sure of my thoughts on this entirely and I confess I haven't read the whole thread yet. However, I think that any comparison of 'different differences' can be potentially insulting as it glosses over some of the nuances which may appear unimportant to outsiders, but are actually deeply significant to the minority group in question. The Twitter thread on the KKK film being a good example

Back up Goose - flip it and put the weakforce back in, go quantum.

Identity-vector differential bias is what's going on.

You accidentally express this is between "American female (black)" and "Peoplelike (me)" through your sentence construction.

The ephemeral 'they' considers it differently.

Goose's unconscious linguistic choice to verbally condense the American out is a sign of real-world racism-experience demonstrating goose's weaker position along one axis.

Calling it cultural imperialism makes us all disidentify with it so we can't see it, is what's happening. The capacity to differentially experience guiltcomplex is polarised across different axes; it only hits self-awareness in up to five at a time. Different cultures, different fives.

Basically the English pick up racialised bias via the screen. We pick up american-male-pattern bias.

Flip to see the parallels processing. Locate the parallel in the hell of the German brothel.

By a roundabout route, England is reminding America that it's Germany's fault too, and America is blaming the wrong parent. England assumes America will infer from the transmission that America is having a massive teenage tantrum to hide from the reality that black isn't really what makes good/bad happen and America hasn't the maturity to see what it's doing. Really it's a living language evolving problem.

I surmise guilt-complex 're WW2 is very real, but more detectable at one remove. It's harder to spot unless the observer is able to identify with both the weaker and the stronger variations.

Also the religion-guilt-complex function is at play; black-American-woman triggers our anti-white-man defence systems because the slaves incorporate the master to survive and we can see it in the religious/spirit aspect of the language barrier. White English woman rejects the inferred presence of her father in the language she receives through the screen.

You can follow the evolution of male-bias in the auto correct function. People are always pointing it out. Look at the bottom of your screens.

I don't really know what comments you're responding to, so none of that makes a lot of sense to me.

I know, I'm sorry.

Difficult to express unless we've got the right reference points established. Communication is hard; we keep trying. Sorry if I'm going across as a dick; it's not intentional.

There just really is something awfully exciting about the way people notice autocorrect is out to get them; it's a pertinent mirror to the Otherised experience being discussed.

The parallel quality each 'side' divines from the hyphen-face construction is represented in living English at the upper end as 'cunt' and the lower end as 'dick.' We miss it on this side because of the way 'cunt' operates in English-English.

They say intersection, we hear dichotomy. That's all I'm saying really.

I've read this whole thread (OK skimmed some of it) and it seems to me that the main arguments against the comparison are:

1. Blackface was used to portray Black people as subhuman in their intellect and personalities. White people would wear blackface and then behave like people who are so stupid they have no real personality and are just things to be enslaved. (Whereas "womanface" does not)

1. Blackface was used to portray Black people as hyper-sexual (whereas "womanface" is not).

1. Blackface was used to portray Black people as violent, dangerous criminals (whereas womanface is not).

1. Even if the comparison is valid, we should not use it because may Black women have told us it is hurtful to them due to their particular history and experience.

I am confused why anyone would suggest that 1 and 2 hold. Of course men put on false breasts and high voices and act subhuman, stupid and hyper-sexual. They do this is drag shows and they do it in real life, too.

As for 3, well I would argue that that is absolutely happening, and in a more insidious way that just dressing up and acting out criminality in a film or play. Men are putting on false breasts and other "womanly" features (or using drugs to grow their own) and then IN REAL LIFE murdering and raping women, with the result that those crimes are being recorded AS WOMEN'S CRIMES.

The blackface equivalent would be if a white man painted his face black, then murdered or raped somebody and it was therefore recorded as a black person's crime! This, thank God, never happened (as far as I'm aware) but it is happening to women right now.

However I think objection 4 is worth considering. I'll risk bringing in yet another analogy ... As a Jew, I feel really upset when people compare Israel to Nazi Germany. But some of my friends do it, and people who I otherwise think are nice people who don't want to offend, who would never want to be anti-semitic or any kind of racist. They are very angry about the actions of the Israeli state and to their mind the analogy holds. But I have a visceral reaction to it due to being born into a family that was virtually wiped out, and growing up with the grief and terror of it in the very core of my being.

Any amount of arguing that really Israel is like Nazi Germany in this or that way would not make it any less painful for me to hear. So I find myself saying "Please could you not? I object to a lot of what Israel do too, and I'm more than happy to discuss it, but surely you can find another way to express it?"

Just like the women saying "please don't use the blackface analogy, because it hurts".

I also agree with the pp saying that porn is even more comparable. Porn portrays women as subhumans who have no autonomy, self-respect or even care for their own body or mind. Perfect objects for enslavement. They are even represented as enjoying torture, or being too stupid to know the different between enjoyment and humiliation.

Relying on chaotic's reading of the thread.

Agree with you on all but can not agree on 4 - NEVER! because women are asked to listen to others but nobody listens to women.

Another UK white women here. I have read the very informative Twitter threads by black women (all USA?) as well as this thread (mainly UK white women?).

I am happy not to use the term "Woman Face".

From reading the Twitter threads, it seems as if the explicit purpose of KKK "black face" is different to what is going on with drag, OTT TW "whore face" (did someone call it that in this thread earlier?), etc.

This does also seem to be partly a case of "Two counties divided by a common language" and partly different histories and traditions, eg. all the fulminating in the USA "Bible Belt" press about the "trans immorality" of the new Cinderella film with a black, male Fairy Godmother - that foaming at the mouth looks bonkers from a UK perspective. A Cinderella Panto without a female Prince and male Pantomime Dames playing the "Ugly Sisters" would be weird, so why not a Pantomime Fairy Godmother??

When anyway did we even start using the term "black face" in the UK in common parlance, as opposed to academic discourse and "woke speak"? The "Black & White Minstrels Show" featured white men who "blacked up" (apart from Lenny Henry, of course) not white men who "did black face".

If "black face" means what the KKK were doing then the Minstrels weren't "doing black face" when they were "blacking up" to do their "Minstrel parody". I am not suggesting that what they did was inoffensive, only that it was not done with the purpose of inciting lynchings, which is the key message repeated over and over again in the Twitter threads.

The first time I came across the term "black face" was earlier this year. It was in an article about the poet in Arizona who wanted a restaurant to remove an old photo of Welsh miners black with coal dust. He said that even though he knew what the photo depicted it made him "feel unwelcome" - because "black face".

Having read those Twitter threads about the KKK "black face" I now have some sympathy for that reaction. At the time I thought he was an ignorant, pompous jerk. Now I wonder if it was an involuntary visceral reaction rather than the intellectual one I supposed. My thoughts still go to the fact that those could have been the same miners who became friends with Paul Robeson when they welcomed him to The Valleys. That some of them could well have been black under the coal dust.

www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/02/how-paul-robeson-found-political-voice-in-welsh-valleys

Also, that if white women in the UK are capable of understanding the objections that black women in the USA have to the term "woman face" that they might recognise that our use of the term was/is unwittingly offensive rather than racist. Also that there are other sensitivities and historical resonances that they do not experience or do not feel as strongly as white women in the UK. Class is an obvious one.

Not to derail (please) but as has already been mentioned there are also historical ethnic (and religious) differences underpinning oppressions, persecutions and atrocities in the UK. Has anyone got a better explanation for the continuing bullying, ridiculing and physical assaults of children with ginger hair by other kids than the fact that they represent the vestiges of an indigenous population of the UK? The negative stereotypes of the Welsh, another indigenous people of the "Celtic Fringe", as sneaky, thieving, dishonest types? The Irish, in living memory grouped with "Blacks and Dogs" as unwelcome in boarding houses? (Damn! This is inviting derailing but you get the picture.)

I am not having a go at the English BTW - it was all the fault of those damned Normans! Oh - and the Saxons. Vikings, anyone? Meanwhile the Barbary Pirates were raiding coastal village for slaves but as they did not hang around they are a side show to the mainly but not exclusively white melting pot.

Anyway, I get the thing about "black face" and "woman face" in the USA context. The main criticism in the Twitter threads is specifically about white women who are "GC RadFems" in the UK. I wonder if a large part of the reason for that is that we have imported the term "black face" from the USA thinking that it is equivalent to "blacking up" when it does not have the same meaning or resonances. (In which case, the same issues should apply to "yellow face".)

I will confess that the first Twitter thread I came across was not the one with all the awful images of lynchings and my reading of that first one was that it was an attempt by TRAs to undermine UK GC RadFems. One of the Twitter threads linked to this discussion on Mumsnet. When I followed it here I was further reassured by the posts from regular Mumsnetters that this really is "a thing" and not just got up to be divisive or diss UK GC RadFems.

The black women in the USA objecting to "woman face" must know what it is we are getting at when we use that term. I am genuinely interested to know what term they would use instead. It might be another term that does not "travel" well but it would be useful to know.

---

ps. I looked for the story about the photo of the Welsh miners in the Arizona restaurant and found a "follow-up" article that is very relevant to understanding the issue of "black face". Interesting to see that the article talks about a "visceral reaction", that the UK academics asked to comment on the photo talk about "blacking up" rather than "black face" and that the majority of white people (USA) who responded to the original article did not get the issue being raised. Not only that but the author was sent horrible insults and threats! Vile.

eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-best-reads/2019/02/15/photo-coal-miners-drives-debate-over-blackface/2875921002/