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.

Tyro well that’s all the more reason to do it, no? The English/ Scottish thing I mean, with Brexit putting a contemporary spin on it! I believe some Scots people were even bonded as slaves and deported

This could be a thing!! 😉

(Sorry Not that what happened to Scots people was in any way a good thing at all, I mean for the current falling out I and others are in the middle of) 😬

"Society now sees racism as wrong" - does it bollocks! Society pays lip service to the idea while doing fuck all to change it.

Truer to say there's a subset of white society who accepts violent enslavement of men based on skin is ethically abhorrent. The lie that society sees racism as wrong is all about pretending that, because we're not physically enslaving black people as we did in the past, there's no longer any real problem beyond readjusting a few backwards people's expectations.

It's bollocks and exactly the same thing happens with sexism.

It's absolutely true that for me racism is largely intellectual - I grew up in a very very white area so not even seeing it second-hand - but the underlying human psychology still plays out. When there are no black women around to hypersexualise, men don't just shrug and make do without a rapeable class. They make one out of whichever subset of locally-available female bodies is most easily exploitable - and the local women back up their menfolk in the belief it keeps themselves safe.

Thank you Tyro

Yes and white working class women have been subjected to truly awful oppression, and still are.

In Rotherham white WC women were horrifically sexually abused and exploited, overwhelmingly by Asian men... just awful.

And historically white female servants were very vulnerable to sexual assault. Every society seems to have a “rapeable class...” well, until we defeat the Patriarchy that is.

'Blackface comes from an era when there weren't any positive representations of black people in society'

In which countries? Every country in the whole world??

This is incredibly USA centric.

English people have done a lot of shit to a lot of people to call on, there is no need and it makes no sense to say that white women in Norway or Scotland or yes even England have to consume USA history as our own. Each country has its own history and context. This is UK website. Why are we being asked to view everything through the lens of one small part of the world?

'The lie that society sees racism as wrong is all about pretending that, because we're not physically enslaving black people as we did in the past, '

My understanding as an outsider is that the USA still does this via the mechanism of imprisoning black men for years and years for petty crimes and making them work for free.

My understanding is also that the 'was on drugs' was to give a reason to go after black men really hard in order to achieve this goal.

I'm not sure I want to look to America as a leader on this topic either.

Yes we are racist here and it is institutional but we're not in the same league.

This is so narrow. USA is not the centre of the universe. Other countries, cultures, histories exist.

"I won't use the term 'womanface' because it's an appropriation"

Crikey.
When you elevate offence of women using the WORDS woman and face, over the actual ACT of men WEARING a costume of womanhood, and the 'appropriation' you care more about and condemn is the former, not the latter, I think your priorities are wrong.

Woman and face are my words to use, not possessed by others for me to be accused of appropriation.

I don't accept the policing, silencing and chilling rules from anyone, regarding what language I may or may not use to describe an aspect of women's oppression.
Not from TRAs and not from feminists.

*The utter reach required in a woman telling women they may not use women and face juxtapositioned to describe the offence of men literally painting themselves with a woman face - because women haven't been killed in sufficient quantities

2B

I'm a Scotswoman. I am well aware of my own people's history. I'm acutely aware of contemporary issues.

I am also aware of this case. Happening today. Right now. On 31st October 2019. Not historical. Right now. This is the result of accepting men's mockery of women's bodies.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7630973/Roderick-Deakin-White-murdered-Amy-Parsons-arguing-cross-dressing-fetish.html

You have not given me a term to describe this right here, right now, resulting in the brutal murders of women behaviour on the part of men. Comparing such brutality in the right here and right now to historic injustices against the Scots isn't really useful. Not least because the wokerati don't believe people with white skin can ever have been subject to oppression.

Give me a term and I'll use it. But it must convey the fact that mocking women's bodies is leading to murder. Today. Right now. Not just in the past.

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

Yeah, I find this really weird

I don't even really agree with the analysis in a lot of cases where people use the term womanface, or compare drag to blackface, but the analogy is useful in terms of understanding the analysis, so I can say "I disagree".

That doesn't make it offensive. It's not offensive if there are some important differences if the analogy is useful in other ways, either. It doesn't minimise anything, it doesn't mean something is less serious.

I'm just really not sure where this idea that there should be offence or upset over historical or ideological comparisons or borrowing language, that if someone asks you to explain your POV or disagrees it's somehow asking too much and is some kind of terrible requisition of emotional labour.

But not all men dressing as women is drag.

Some of it is done in porn and as a humiliation fetish.

Yes, Grayson Perrry goes out in public in stylised little girls' clothes because he finds it sexually exciting to be humiliated by being seen dressed like that.

We definitely need words for all this stuff.

For 1) “Womanface” isn’t about race is it - so there’s your answer regarding why it isn’t racist

2. “Blackface” was a form of degrading and humiliate black people who were forced to be slaves for years and decades.

I’m not exactly sure what is confusing about that.

Slavery was not race based so much as opportunistic.

Here in France we have a history of enslaving people based on religion.
In the 1600s and 1700s we enslaved Protestant men as galley slaves in our navy until death either in enemy action or dying of lack of food, beatings, sickness. Protestant women were made comfort women in military brothels also until death. They paid us to become slaves because the crown seized all their money and property. Trying to flee the country was punishable by summary execution.

We also did take part in the Atlantic slave trade of Africans, but not so much as other nations because we had local sources of slaves based on religion.

The Americas were unique in that over 95% of its slaves were African so racism developed along lines of free versus enslaved based on skin tones.

Karahair had a good analogy about English people oppressing Scottish people and compelling their speech and wearing tartan. Maybe people could use that!?

I would think that the comparison could be critiqued on the same sort of grounds as you are using.

The examples of “womanface” being very very fringe things like sissy porn is missing the point of blackface and minstrelsy which was mainstream. There will always be fringe fetishists that offend the mainstream. The fact they exist doesn’t make “woman face” a real thing on any similar level with blackface.

My family survived a genocidal event under British colonial rule. As a result of years of colonial oppression my mother grew up in poverty. As a young woman she had to endure racism, walking past signs in windows saying people of her race weren't welcome. She moved to a country where her ancestors were chained for their political beliefs and who became an underclass. When she had me, she taught me that racial markers such as my black frizzy hair was a sign that I was strongly representative of characteristics of my race. She taught me that when I was bad, it was because I was inheriting those racial characteristics. Things I read as a child reinforced those negative characteristics in my mind. I internalised them.

It’s the fact that for white women, sexism is a lived experience of oppression while racism is an intellectual exercise... hence even

So I'm Irish.

This is the problem of simplistically shoehorning a white/black dichotomy. It's got a really visible intellectual paucity.

I wasn't bringing up what the English did to the Highland Scots as a suggestion for using that as some kind of framing for what men are currently doing to women. I was pointing out that men always steal from those they oppress, whilst trying to stop the oppressed taking possession of what belongs to them.

We need our own words for men's fetishisation, appropriation and colonisation of women and our bodies. Feminists have always done this - coining our own terms for what men do to us. We'll do it again.

It's not just Asian men who exploit white working class women and girls either. The class angle tends to be handwaved or ignored when I talk to liberal Americans. Here it can't be.

I'm reminded of my former neighbour - grew up in care, neglected and abused, teenage mother, heroin addict, child taken away, horribly vulnerable, doing her best, sanctioned for three years, forced to prostitute herself. The people who moved themselves into her house and turned it into a crack den while beating her and letting her be raped by all and sundry - their actions weren't dependent on them having socially-powerful skin tones. They were black and she was white. They were all at the bottom of the economic ladder, to the point they were exclusively reliant on crime - not even working class but underclass. But they were men, and she was a woman, so she was fucked for their benefit.

Colour's the excuse du jour, men are the reason.

(I'm going to shut up now lest I put my foot in my mouth, but my thanks to the black women who've taken the time to explain their objections - makes a welcome change from Americans assuming I must be racist because I don't automatically and intuitively understand things from the perspective of Americans of non-European descent.)

Class.

Class.

Class.

Always these imported American approaches ignore the class. I'm a liberated woman and I will not refuse to give my opinion because other people tell me I mustn't. It's just like trans ideology.

When people use words like "painful to remember" and "exhausting to explain" I just tick my mental bingo sheet for US cultural imperialism.

It's not just slaves in America who had a shit life. Yes, their life was shit. But a lot of people - most women - in the past were utterly trapped and suffered appallingly by their circumstance. So to tell women not to speak because some rich white women owned slaves is elevating slavery in quite a... not sure what the word is... way that ignores and refuses to acknowledge suffering elsewhere. Class privilege... Cui bono...

Fraggling
This is not just US centric. The black and white minstrel show was ok British TV from 1958-1978.

Blackface / minstrel, as currently known, started in the US and came to the UK

Just as cricket started in England and went to other countries

You may be blissfully unaware, but this discussion (UK / US) had been going on for a while.

If it had been about cricket, and someone then posted a rather emotive thread to a US site, saying (in effect)...

“what are all these English cricketers going on about... I reckon they’re wrong about cricket?”

Then I’d expect some English perspectives on that.

If you want a UK-focussed discussion about a US feminist critique, then fair enough but people need to say that upfront

exhausting to explain

Reminds me of people complaining about doing "unpaid emotional labour".

It reminds me of how apparently student unions now have teddies to cuddle if you're feeling upset.

Activists used to be strong. Now they're busy telling people off while saying "it's not my job to educate you."

This isn't a widespread objection by black women though is it? To the phrase 'womanface' not to blackface obv

There’s isn’t really a widespread objection by women to drag either.

Women are saying it is offensive for men to dress as them. Why don't they have the luxury of being believed?

Black women are saying it is offensive to invoke blackface when critiquing drag. Why don’t they have the luxuary of being believed.

I don't see why anyone should believe any of them are offensive just because some women and some black women think so. That's not how it works, nor should it be.