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

White women and "WOC" may have some different experiences but there's a hell of a big overlap, enough of an overlap that it's perfectly reasonable for both groups to talk about issues that effect all women as well as their own more particular ones.

I'm now wondering what North Americans call plasters.

Band aids?

I would also like to point out that the overlap between the problems of women and transwomen is extremely small in comparison.

That's adorable :)

The problem is the elision of class. Even in the US, what interests/commonalities does a middle class second gen immigrant with professional parents have in common with a black American descendant of slavery? Everywhere you look, modern "progressivism" elides actual structural inequality with superficiality.

So pardon me, Frack, but I'll leave Alison with her politically illiterate, ahistorical, class-ignorant, bourgeois word salad in the full knowledge that she wouldn't recognise inequality if it got up and slapped her in the face with a wet fish.

I'll stick with heroic women like Pragna Patel, who have a genuine understanding of structural inequality, a sense of liberationary internationalism, and what intersectionality actually is, rather than what superficial bourgeois people like Alison would like it to be.

Want to know what middle class white feminism really looks like? Find a picture of Alison and her Wokeist chums.

I actually went as far as looking at photos of 1970s feminist conferences to see the demographics, they were certainly not 100% white, there were WOC in the audience and on the panels, although numbers varied by location and it would be difficult to argue completely proportionate, there were also conferences organised by and for African American women. Also present were, shock horror, old women, often wearing hats! History is being edited and rewritten in my opinion. Young women need to be more curious and do their own research.

"White feminism" as a masochistic term of abuse by white people is a weirdly white thing.
I can't imagine Japanese feminists disparaging the feminism of their country in the same way. (Not that I know anything about Japanese feminism but the Japanese tend to be proud of being Japanese despite them having a dodgy imperialist past too)
I'm neither ashamed or proud of being white it's just what I am. My feminism is rooted in the issues I experience. All women's feminism should be like that.
Me disparaging white feminism and trying to promote the feminism of other women is like middle class lefties saying they are fighting for the "working class" who they see as an exotic species and don't really understand.

History is being edited and rewritten in my opinion.

It's really not, it's out there, it's just the mainstream has latched onto American history and applied it to the UK.

"I am not saying that white women do not suffer sexual violence....We are entitled to be angry; we are entitled to cry. But we are not entitled to politicise our pain"

Bang goes radical feminism then. Does that mean white men can't politicise rape either? Alison will have to tell all those Russian soldiers in Germany after WWII who are estimated to have raped two million German women and girls. Or there were the white Bosnian Serbs who used rape when they were "ethnically cleansing" Bosnian Muslims. Or there's just your average white rapist who can keep women in a state of low level terror simply because we know he exists and he's going to attack at least one of us. We're supposed go ignore that men have used rape as a fundamental tool of male supremacy ever since they invented the patriarchy.

Alison makes me think of that white female academic Robin DiAngelo who has made a huge name for herself with the term "white fragility" (a term which Alison uses). Her book was at the top of the New York Times bestseller lists. Are there black women who get the same profile for the same kind of analysis, or are these "white women" taking jobs and space from women who have actually experienced white racism directly?

It’s been said over and over that there is the lack of a class analysis
The interesting thing 2Rebecca as I discovered via the knitting argument is that a Japanese person would be considered a “BIPOC” by the US-centric wokesters and therefore massively oppressed. As you say, dodgy imperialist history completely gone over the heads of the woke.
They have divided everyone into white and non-white. Non-white people are one big mass to the woke. I can’t see people going for that.

Hey @FrackOff, come and tell us what you think of Alison's podcast. Do you agree with it? Why?

Isn't using baby formula white colonial feminism?

I think she is asking white feminists to try to understand the historical roots of our traditions and to recognise their roots in a colonialist philosophy which benefitted from dividing people into acceptable humans and unacceptable humans

Sorry, confused. How does the average modern day feminist divide people into acceptable and not acceptable people?

Speaking as a feminsit who dreams about the day t the need for feminism goes away , but recognises that today we need feminism because many people can not see past someone's sex and hurt people accordingly.

Oh great, you're back @FrackOff

so this podcast says

Rad feminists define women by their capacity to reproduce which apparently excludes black women

can you explain how that works?

do all white feminists practise 'white feminism'? or do some like the redoubtable Ms Phipps practise some other form of feminism?

Is it colonialist to object to rape and prostitution FrackOff? Is it colonialist to develop a politics based on women's experience of men's violence which works to liberate us all?

Wouldn't you agree that it is colonialist for white men to use poor women from developing countries in prostitution. What about the cover ups of British army rapes in Kenya. Are they colonialist?

Good to hear she disapproves of calling women t**fs then and thinks fighting not to be discriminated about because of your sex is a good thing

I'm now wondering what North Americans call plasters.Band aids?

That's what most people say, though if they want to avoid propriety names they might say adhesive bandages. I've really only heard that from medical types though.

Isn't it horribly racist to criticise people for being "white feminists" when talking about issues other than race (specifically trans issues)?

As pp have said there are some serious problems that black women face both in the UK and elsewhere (eg the increased mortality figures when giving birth are horrifying). But Alison Phipps isn't focussing on those problems. I know that she would say that she's using "white feminism" as a shorthand for non-intersectional feminism, but the whole thing seems to be dishonestly appropriating black women's struggles. Why is she taking the spotlight away from black women and why do you support her in doing this @FrackOff?

If you Call them Band Aid's in the UK Bob Geldof will sue you.

why do you support her in doing this @FrackOff?

In 6 to 10 days Frac will make a thread responding to this message with a fairly reasonable block of text spanning 6 posts with most of the text copied from google scholar and answering nothing.

@FrackOff

I I think she is asking white feminists to try to understand the historical roots of our traditions and to recognise their roots in a colonialist philosophy which benefitted from dividing people into acceptable humans and unacceptable humans

Why would anyone listen to that?

1. She provides no evidence for her assertion that all feminism is 'colonialist'.

1. Saying white women's views are inherently bad is dividing people into acceptable and unacceptable humans.

1. She has no specific suggestions beyond, perhaps, not locking up rapists and not sacking sexual harassers (though even these positions are poorly defined), it's all just 'waaaa, feminism bad'.

I don't really see this as different from other racists who make wild, baseless claims and then see their rejection as evidence they are correct but everyone is against them.

I think she is asking white feminists to try to understand the historical roots of our traditions and to recognise their roots in a colonialist philosophy which benefitted from dividing people into acceptable humans and unacceptable humans

It seems like you see her message as fairly simple really, and most of what she says just as supporting that.

I've noticed that's a not uncommon with this kind of talk or an article - for some people it's not looked at in a ton of detail, it's about what ther sense of the gist of the message is.

I think with this talk though, if you dig into what she's really saying, a lot of it is gobblygook, and a lot is fairly objectionable identity politics. Things that are either historically inaccurate or shallow, or would, if we took them seriously, lead to some unpalatable conclusions.So they tend to undermine the idea of being careful about taking too narrow a perspective.

Personally I have a hard time listening to anyone who talks about white fragility. There is something very distasteful about telling people their considered objections to a POV are inadmissible because of their race, and that if that annoys them it's a sign of some sort of special fragility. The only proper response, apparently, is obedience.

I think she is asking white feminists to try to understand the historical roots of our traditions and to recognise their roots in a colonialist philosophy which benefitted from dividing people into acceptable humans and unacceptable humans

Wouldn't it help if she had any understanding of those things herself?

Perhaps, for example, the concept of political blackness in the liberation politics of the UK - which took into account the shared struggle of postcolonial/Commonwealth post-war immigrants to the UK? A concept rooted in class structures intersecting with racism. Does Alison wonder why the Southall Black Sisters are so-named, despite comprising mostly of and catering mostly for, South Asian women? Has Alison even heard of SBS?

Does Alison understand how class was a vital component in historical anti-racism work in the UK? Does her analysis incorporate this vital difference between the concepts of (liberational) political blackness and (identifarian) PoC?

Can Alison explain why up until a few years ago, her US culturally imperialist "brand" of analysis reacted with fury to the concept of political blackness (see, for example, the many critiques of the Sky show Guerrilla) yet now espouse the term PoC with such enthusiasm? Could it be because the axis of class has been removed and so it suits her bourgeois sensibilities?

I could go on.

It's really not, it's out there, it's just the mainstream has latched onto American history and applied it to the UK

Good point!