The problem with white feminism

[FrackOff]

Listen to this amazing podcast on white feminism, the link with the right wing, racism and colonialism pca.st/vzbdlq7j

You need to hear the whole thing to get the whole argument

I think this place would feel a lot less hostile if people didn’t react in certain ways to instances of injustices faced by black people, as I’ve not seen the same level of attitude to other reports and statements affecting other groups.

Ah, so you're passively aggressively accusing us all of racism. Gotcha.

Something else that bothers me about the term 'White Feminism' is that it is always used to describe radical feminism. This implies that radical feminists are all white which is simply not true and in fact, it's usually the opposite. Liberal feminists are mostly wealthy white women.

I've seen a lot of black, Latina and Korean radfems online point this out. It silences their voices in this debate and assumes that any non-white feminist is a liberal feminist, when in fact there are fantastic radical feminist groups in Korea, Spain, parts of South America and no doubt many other non-white countries as well as Black radical feminists in the UK, the US and Canada.

Its awful that trans activists shouted at Linda Bellos for being a lesbian, and that she was taken to court for saying she would defend herself if threatened.

I think this place would feel a lot less hostile if people didn’t react in certain ways to instances of injustices faced by black people

What specific instances have people on here disagreed with? I still haven't seen any coherent evidence that UK feminism only follows white women's priorities and should be dismantled (as Alison suggests) in favour of not punishing rapists and supporting self ID.

I think the people getting irritated by the suggestion that feminists like Linda Belos should be less White about things and listen to Alison about what black women want might be motivated by a little more than white fragility.

Wow Early

I remember the thread where you kindly put me straight about lesbianing all wrong and how I was a homosexual who was homophobic. Now I see I'm womaning and ethnicitying all wrong too. Thank goodness for you.

As an Asian woman, I hate the term 'white feminism' because I have always always only seen it used in a context where white feminists are being told to stfu.

Did you know in the UK, Black women are 5x more likely to die in childbirth?

I know that black women are more likely, even given similar socio-economic situations to other women, to suffer from certain health conditions which are problematical during pregnancy. What are the reasons as far as you understand? Do you think any of that might be down to factors operating within the black community itself:

"Dr Clarke believes other factors are at play, including culture and the narrative of the "strong black woman", which prevent some from speaking up about their concerns during pregnancy and birth"
"She says her grandparents' generation keeps quiet about pain and trauma and this affects how some black women are treated - even by women of their own race".

I think this place would feel a lot less hostile if people didn’t react in certain ways to instances of injustices faced by black people, as I’ve not seen the same level of attitude to other reports and statements affecting other groups

I think you'll find that most women posting here have friends and colleagues of many ethnicities and races, and are well aware of the issues these women face due to specific conditions and pressures within their own communities, and are deeply sympathetic to them.

Have you ever thought you may be perceiving hostility because you are displaying it yourself - in trying to find separate cause, rather than common cause?

I wish all women, regardless of race or ethnicity would seek common cause with other women. What unites us is oppression in a male dominated culture. Race and ethnicity is a factor that sits on top of that, as far as I'm concerned. it does not supersede it. Same with social class.

"Dr Clarke believes other factors are at play, including culture and the narrative of the "strong black woman", which prevent some from speaking up about their concerns during pregnancy and birth"
"She says her grandparents' generation keeps quiet about pain and trauma and this affects how some black women are treated - even by women of their own race"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-47115305

white feminism is when white women claim to be feminists and then describe the experiences of women who have different life experiences from them as niche subjects.

It's also the moments when sisters need to get together for this thing I'm interested in.....we'll do your thing later and later never comes. And oh my the tantrum if women do not rally in the right way for important white lady thing.

Just your displaying perfect but I have a black friend it's cliche.

it's cliche

My most hated Americanism. It's a cliche or it's cliched.

Petty but gets my goat.

In terms of being less likely to be harassed, not having to worry about his choice of underwear being used against him in a rape trial, not having to hold his career to have children - or worry about the judgement if he doesn’t, being able to walk or drink alone without fear of being raped and many many more.

I know this is how the term "privilege" is used but I don't think it's particularly helpful in the context of these examples. These are really just crap things that happen to women. It's not that we want men to have to worry about these things too, we all want to be free from them. I understand why it's sometimes helpful to get someone who doesn't have to go through these things to think about that, but I don't think that the term "privilege" really works in this context as it sounds like something that should be taken away.

Where I do think that the term "privilege" is useful is when a group gains a unearned and unfair benefit (whether intentionally or not) because another group is being discriminated against. Eg the fact that many employers are less likely to hire young women who might want to have children soon means that men have a greater chance of securing a job than they would do if there was no discrimination. Nobody else seems to make this distinction but it seems sensible to me.

I find this issue bizarre and unnecessarily divisive.

Can someone please point me to the feminst issues which affect black women which don't affect white women, or vice versa? Not issues of scale (this groups is affected twice as much as this group etc) but actual whole issues. Which are the issues where white feminists say: "Nah, that just affects black women, we don't deal with that one."

I can only think of FGM and I think the white UK community is dealing with that a fuckton better than the cultures that practise it.

You kinda pointed out the issue Anti if BAME women say something disproportionately impacts them white feminism can say that's not the most important issue now because they aren't so impacted. Then if white feminists want to be out and out racist they can pull out the your aggressive and divisive we're all ladies here let's pull together.

The white feminism brand also includes classism. So if a woman on benefits says hey this sucks right now with this Tory gov white feminists can say yes but that's not the most important issue now we must all pull together on this issue I believe is most important.

lang oh dear. My grammar above might be bad knock yourself out

Can someone please point me to the feminst issues which affect black women which don't affect white women, or vice versa? Not issues of scale (this groups is affected twice as much as this group etc) but actual whole issues.

To be fair, I think it's more complicated than this. Sometimes black women are discriminated against in a different way to white women, and so if you only address the way that white women are affected you won't deal with the problem in a way that helps black women.

Someone gave the example on another thread of combatting sexist stereotypes. White women are often portrayed as being weak and we may want to fight that, but black women are often stereotyped as always having to be strong and not feeling allowed to show any weakness, so if you just fight the weakness stereotype you won't be helping black women.

Or you could take the difference in mortality during/after childbirth. If there is a specific problem with midwives not listening to black women when they say they are in pain/something does not feel right etc., then that problem won't be solved by generic campaigns for more research into medical issues which arise during birth, funding for more midwives etc.

your aggressive and divisive we're all ladies here let's pull together.

Yeah....no.

Why are we even having this discussion? Alison Phipps is herself a white feminist, doing very nicely thank you in one of those white supremacist, male supremacist institutions, academia.

She's using black and ethnic minority women as a weapon to attack radical feminists, who are not all white, because we're not toeing the line on trans. She doesn't care about black women or she'd be supporting Linda Bellos and Alison Bailey from attacks by the pro-trans white establishment.

Ethnic minorities and Muslims are usually the dahlings of woke, SJW liberal types... The 'let's all wear the hijab in solidarity because it's so empowering' ...

When Yaniv wax-my-balls was deliberately targeting minority women due to their religious beliefs and ethnicity, I didn't see any of these holier-than-thou white feminists standing up for these women. Oh no, they were more concerned about anyone misgendering Yaniv.

As Driechdrizzle says, they also don't seem concerned by the harassment and intimidation being carried out against Linda Bellos and Alison Bailey.

Maybe these white-but-better-than-white feminists could lead by example and practice what they preach instead of lecturing the rest of us (which includes women from all ages and backgrounds) ? Just a thought.

When Yaniv wax-my-balls was deliberately targeting minority women due to their religious beliefs and ethnicity, I didn't see any of these holier-than-thou white feminists standing up for these women. Oh no, they were more concerned about anyone misgendering Yaniv.

The lack of support for the women Yaniv targeted was so incredibly telling. Who could possibly be more deserving of the support of anyone who claims to care about women in general and women of color in particular than those women? Yaniv specifically went after Sikhs because Yaniv is virulently racist, and the few women targeted who weren't Sikh were still recent immigrants. Not so much as a whisper of support for any of them from the aggressively woke.

if BAME women say something disproportionately impacts them

As I say, like what? And it can't be racism, that is a separate issue to sexism. Feminists can't be expected to fight every other prejudice or there'd be no time for feminism if we also have to solve racism, disability, classism, ageism, accents, appearance, disfigurement, religion, occupation etc before we're allowed to speak.

I said FGM above, I'll add honour killings. No, white women have not swept these under the carpet as irrelevant, even though FGM is entirely imported by non-white communities. But white feminists are the bad guys

As I say, like what?

What about the examples in my post above? Mortality rates in childbirth are surely a feminist issue.

I agree 100% that there is a tendency to overlook issues that affect BAME women and that absolutely has to be worked on and addressed. But I think that the term ‘white feminism’ is used predominantly as a slur and attack on the rad fem movement. If anything, radical feminism has real potential for addressing issues of classism and racism too because it calls for breaking down oppressive structures rather than upholding them.

Obviously in an 86% white country, the vast majority of feminists will be white. But being white obviously doesn’t stop Alison from speaking out and spreading her shit views, so why should other white (real)feminists be prevented from doing so? However, I do think that means paying attention to things like not linking up or appearing to support someone with extreme racist views. For WOC, they can’t just put issues of racism to one side because people like that are threatening their very safety and existence and we need to be mindful of that. I also think WOC from affected cultures should take the lead on issues like hijab rather than white women imposing our views. Yes, it may be patriarchal but we engage in plenty of our own submission to patriarchy (taking husband’s name on marriage, being given away- all of those have unpleasant patriarchal connotations). Why can’t we listen to women from those communities and respect their views?

I also don’t agree that race just isn’t the issue it is in the US. Racism is deeply ingrained in this country too and this is what POC are saying. I say we listen to them. White people don’t experience racism so we can’t reliably say it doesn’t happen. It’s equivalent to men saying that sexism doesn’t happen anymore. How would they know when they don’t experience it? We’d be furious if men claimed to speak for us and told us to zip it ‘because we’re all human’ and I can absolutely see why WOC get angry when told to shut up for the greater good.

And as for saying that poorer birth outcomes are related to class not race, you can’t separate the two. Why is it that members of a certain race have poorer socio-economic conditions, poorer educational outcomes, less representation at higher levels of society? That’s part of the problem and needs to be addressed and it’s absolutely a feminist issue that we should be deeply concerned about.

The problem is that people like Alison who complain about white feminism doesn’t do anything to counter it. She thinks she is addressing it by inviting a black or Asian professor to speak at her conference or by tweeting outrage that there aren’t many black history-PhDs. Her beliefs directly contribute to harm to women of a lower socio-economic class because these are the women who may need to use shelters, refuges etc. She claims to speak for all women but she lives in an ivory tower. When she interviews sex workers, it’s middle class webcam girls and strip club workers, not heroin-addicts selling themselves for £15 on the streets and being beaten up by their pimps. Rather than helping women in the sex industry, she is almost exclusively concerned with point-scoring against radical feminists, making up insults and slurs for those who who are motivated exclusively by trying to help women. Completely pathetic.

I thought why am i trying here when somebody better said it so well... haven't read the thread so apologies if she's been linked to already.

"There needs to be scope for women to explore the lows as well as the highs of practicing feminism – in particular, space for women marginalised through race, class, and sexuality to address problems created in our lives when the women who have more power than we do decide to wield it against us. Those exchanges are painful and demanding, but without them the women who ought to be centred within feminism end up pushed to the margins or growing so alienated that they leave the movement altogether. I have watched women with good hearts, sharp minds, and highly relevant critiques leave the feminist movement when the women holding the lion’s share of power refuse to hear them.

Radical feminists pride ourselves on being women who speak truth to power, and rightly so – but so much of what is good about our movement breaks down when women among our ranks are the power to whom truth must be spoken, when those women refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of critiques directed towards them. "

She's @Claireshrugged on Twitter for those of you who haven't been banned

sisteroutrider.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/dispatches-from-the-margins-on-women-race-and-class/ (I need more coffee forgotten how to make it clicky)

Yes, Claire is fantastic. We would all do well to listen to her.