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.

Well as I said, patriarchy infects everything. But not not all drag is necessarily so, whereas I think all blackface is.

I think it's fine to draw parallels, but I think the term "womanface" is appropriate and suggests a sameness that isn't real.

Appropriative. Not appropriate.

One of the things that seems to me to be missing here is the fact that drag is largely performed by white men, not black men. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) So perhaps black women don't feel belittled or insulted by it because for the most part it isn't directed at them.

When I look back at my childhood, it was quite common to see men in drag on television - Danny La Rue, Les Dawson, Edna Everage. I never felt comfortable with it, but couldn't really articulate why. It's only in the last couple of years that I've come to see it for what it is - a way for misogynistic men to mock and ridicule women. I don't buy into the idea that because a lot of drag is performed by gay men that somehow makes it subversive - we know quite well that gay men are capable of being misogynists. Look at Owen Jones and Peter Tatchell for starters.

And I don't like the idea that women are, once again, being told to shut up about something that makes us uncomfortable. It's always been the case on the left that sexism comes way down the list of priorities - after racism, after homophobia, after everything else. We live in an era where any assertion of basic feminist belief, such as the right to single-sex spaces, is met with accusations of bigotry and threats of rape and murder. If some women find drag deeply distressing and offensive, why does anyone else have the right to tell them that they're wrong?

*I think it's fine to draw parallels, but I think the term "womanface" is appropriate and suggests a sameness that isn't real8

Yes, I agree. Using that term is not the best way to go - and just distracts from the valid comparisons.

One of the things that seems to me to be missing here is the fact that drag is largely performed by white men, not black men. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

That may have been true, in Britain, in the past...but not any more - and certainly not in the U.S. We even have Ru Paul's Drag race on British TV now.

I’m a bit hesitant to join in here, as I don’t feel like I’ve thought much about either blackface or drag - please excuse me if I say anything offensive, it’s ignorance rather than bad intent.

I’ve never thought that drag acts were funny, though I have sat through them for the sake of others. I do think it can be funny when a man very badly impersonates a woman for comedy - for example when Bernard Breslaw tried to disguise himself as a woman, and despite his terrible efforts another man would start to fancy him.
Anyway, my point is that the one benefit of drag is it demonstrates how terrible, how absolutely awful, men are at pretending to be women. It looks ridiculous and awkward.

Just thought I’d leave that there.

Thanks cookie and I agree with you - this is a world away from pronouns.

Pronouns: White persons born [male] (mods, please don’t delete as I truly cannot explain otherwise) are forcing women to call them women. So successfully, that women on a feminist board can no longer say the word [male]!

Blackface: Black women have been explaining and asking for months now, that when white women critique drag (as you are fully entitled to do), to please do so without comparing to Blackface. Why? Because it is a poor comparison for A,B,C reasons and also painful for X,Y,Z reasons.

It reminds me of men who keep saying “but you have a gender neutral bathroom at home LOL!” Despite women explaining, repeatedly, why it is a poor comparison for ABC reasons.

Because it is a poor comparison for A,B,C reasons and also painful for X,Y,Z reasons.

But what if you find those reasons unconvincing? The advantage of using the blackface analogy is that it's easy for other people to understand. You can ask: why is drag acceptable, but blackface not? Recently the Guardian reported on the horror caused by Justin Trudeau's use of blackface years ago, and then a day or two later did a piece on Ru Paul's Drag Race and how wonderfully subversive it was and how we should all applaud it. Pointing out the inconsistency (and arguably hypocrisy) of that position makes for a much more compelling argument than simply saying: "Drag is offensive to women."

Black women do feel belittled and insulted by drag though.

Black women also feel belittled, insulted and dehumanised by Blackface... which historically was as popular with white women as white men.

It is totally F I N E to hate drag and critique it! 100% fine. No BW I know had said “don’t critique drag!”

But every black women I know or follow in this discussion (including a couple in UK) has asked for white women to stop comparing drag to Blackface (either directly, or by liking / retweeting someone who did)

'You can’t compare the public lynchings and slavery to female oppression'

Is this a piss take?

The history of the brutal oppression of women globally and still continuing in extreme forms in some countries is not so bad?

We used to be drowned. Burned. Chained. Women were property. I'm plenty of countries still viewed that way. Saudi Arabia had /has a legal system of male 'guardianship' (they are relaxing a bit at the mo but still) where women need permission to do pretty much anything. Remember the take an? And these are recent I find it baffling that on a feminism board women are so quick to say things are not so bad and have not historically been so bad for women around the world. I don't get it at all

Remember the taleban that should say.

'You can’t compare the public lynchings and slavery to female oppression'

Baby girls are killed just for being born female.
Female foetuses are aborted.
Little girls are mutilated (FGM).

These things are still happening.

I am not suggesting that female oppression isn't that bad. Fucksake, nothing I have ever said on FWR has even intimated that. Female oppression is ongoing, violent and an existential threat. So I want to use any means I have to fight it effectively. Clumsy and inaccurate comparisons and analogies are not going to stop it. So I'm quite happy to leave them behind.

Are we just expected to stop using the term "womanface" or are we expected to never draw any kind of parallel whatsoever between blackface and drag? Because the former might be reasonable, but the latter is definitely not.

English people can be as ethnocentric as Americans (I am neither), fyi.

Females have always, historically, been oppressed by males: I agree, 100%. No one is saying otherwise.

But White women (as a class) also oppressed black and brown women (as a class) (and I’m talking about my own family tree as well as history books)

While you were oppressed by Patriarchy, you also (as a class) benefited from the racism black women suffered from

I know it is starkest in the US, where WW owned black women (40% of enslaved people were owned by WW).

Some WW were complicit in WM raping black women (see: Celia the slave, a legal case), and in selling BW’s children for economic gain, even when BW begged them not to.

Not all white women! Obviously! Many white women were poor and had nowt to do with it! Just as not all men actively oppress women.

However. Black women (as a class) have not historically oppressed white women (as a class) - just as females have not structurally oppressed males.

This is the weirdest hill I’ve ever seen people die on.

I read that thread, and gave it thought, and I disagree.

I reject the idea that for any analogy to be allowable the history and useage must be identical.

Men, wearing fake breasts, fake hips, fake names, fake pronouns, fake hair, fake mannerisms are mocking and caricaturing a group of people who they have oppressed from the beginning of time.

I'm not going to compare and contrast the history of HOW the relative fakery of race vs sex was wielded, because that is not the issue.

The issue is the entitlement of one group of men to mock, degrade and imitate another group of which they are not part.

I will not enter into a competitive who has it worse challenge.

I simply don't accept the argument that the portmanteau of woman and face is verboten because someone declares it so.

And if my intent to use 'womanface' to describe men offensively playacting a grotesque caricature of women results in me being called a racist then that explains a great deal about the lack of validity of that person's argument.

Nicely put, Barracker.

I read that post as you comparing and finding women's often brutal oppression pretty much everywhere and as long as anyone can remember, not so bad.

I have not compared anything. You made that comparison and said it can't be made as weekend oppression isn't so bad.

And then followed up by saying that it's not the same as white women can be fucking awful too. Well fair enough but newsflash most of the women in the world are not white western women.

*While you were oppressed by Patriarchy, you also (as a class) benefited from the racism black women suffered from

I know it is starkest in the US, where WW owned black women (40% of enslaved people were owned by WW).

Some WW were complicit in WM raping black women (see: Celia the slave, a legal case), and in selling BW’s children for economic gain, even when BW begged them not to.

Not all white women! Obviously! Many white women were poor and had nowt to do with it! Just as not all men actively oppress women.

However. Black women (as a class) have not historically oppressed white women (as a class) - just as females have not structurally oppressed males.*

You didn't go to Evergreen College by any chance?

The English gallivanted around the world wreaking hideous atrocities all over the place.

I don't understand why this means that women's oppression, as a discrete and actual global long term thing, can't be discussed.

It seems very USA centric tbh. Your history is not global history. Fucking awful things have been done to all sorts of people by all sorts of other people in loads of organised ways forever.

It's not a competition.

And yes men ' dressing up' as women to take the piss out of us, trivialise our lives, mock our bodies etc is pretty bad as oh look men have oppressed women forever and they do all sorts of shit to us all over the world every day.

Thanks bemoremagdalen and mrsbert

A lot of black feminists had “GC” in their bio and no longer do, and it’s not because their beliefs changed

It’s because when Blackface has actual, historical links to the murder of your great great uncle or the gang rape of your grandma

(because Blackface did not only mock: it dehumanised Black people and low-key legitimised their murder and rape by portraying it in a funny way)

It is so exhausting trying to explain, again and again and again

That you can critique drag, in all its awfulness, without bringing the pain of Blackface into it

Only for white feminists to say “okay so you don’t like us weaponising your historical suffering in this way... but we loooooove this comparison and won’t stop using it.”

I never said I love this comparison.

You are putting words in people's mouths.

The idea that dehumanising women is not a part of the mechanism through which we have always been oppressed is cockeyed as well.

Many men don't really see women as full human beings. In some countries this is codified in law. In many countries it is socially encoded so eg in UK rape of women and girls over about 12 is essentially legal.

Dehumanising us is essential. And presenting women as 2d caricatures is dehumanising, how can it not be.

Personally, I don't think it's a great thing for US understanding of race and ways of dealing with racism to be exported, it's not like the US is a bastion of best practice!

I really like this point.