‘White’ Feminism

[Sociallydistancedcocktails]

I was recently on a thread which got me thinking about this.

Do you think ‘white’ feminism exists?

And your thoughts on the article below. I am quoting an excerpt

“White feminism is a term that has been on the tip of everyone's tongue since actor Emma Watson addressed past criticisms of her feminism in statement to her book club about the topic in early January. Though it's difficult to find an exact definition for "white feminism," it has come to describe a not-quite-feminist mindset that doesn't take into account the ways the women of color experience sexism, and how it differs from the way white women experience it. Simply put, white feminism is for white women who don't want to examine their white privilege. The term "intersectional feminism," which stands in opposition to white feminism, was coined by civil rights advocate and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to help describe the experiences of Black women who not only face sexism, but systemic racism.

Understanding the ways race, gender, and other factors (such as disability, class, or sexuality) intersect is crucial to making our feminism more effective and impactful”

www.bustle.com/p/what-is-white-feminism-here-are-7-sneaky-ways-it-shows-up-into-your-life-7921450

It's a load of cobblers really because it doesn't have an aim. If white feminism is a problem then there has to be a meaningful way of changing our behaviour (I'm white).

But if you ask how white feminists should change, you get some unfocused youth/American /twitter speak about centering, uplifting, and doing the emotional labour.

I don't know what any of that is so I'll crack on with ordinary feminism.

There are a number of different questions I think

Intersectionslity where people have multiple different characteristics that people discriminate on, class , race , disability etc, snd people who don't experience those things don't always understand them

Geography, where the issues faced by women are not the same the world over, but it's often a subset of western women ( time rich ?) that have the ear of decision makers , but they don't have all the necessary knowledge

And then there is the issues like grumpy raises , being feminists doesn't stop people being racist

But I also agree it's used as an insult and a way to dismiss people and a way to try and shoehorn men in into feminism

I dislike the term. I particularly dislike when it used to shut women down and put them in their box.

I'm not terribly eloquent or educated on this so I'll give my (probably very simplistic) view.

From what I've seen,heard and read it seems to be a certain type of feminism where the support of black women is expected and demanded because they're women. We're all sisters and we should care and fight about x. No dissent , reluctance or deviation from the x "cause" is allowed when black women say it doesn't really work for them because they're also black.

Then when black women have an issue it gets dismissed and support is scarce because it's a "black people " issue not a feminist issue.

That leaves black women disheartened , disgruntled and disfranchised . Wondering where they belong. Feeling left out and taken advantage of. Feeling othered. The sisterhood only works one way.

Feeling like they're good enough to be fighting in what they see as white feminism fights, sometimes to their own disadvantage, but when it comes to their own issues they're left on their own.

Hope this makes sense.

It's also symptomatic of the stealth approach used by LGBTQ organisations in the states. So for example Arcus funding in the US has gone into collaborating with black women's organisations, particularly around reproductive rights. This false teaming means we are being urged to consider trans women (some of whom will previously have been privileged white males) as part of that intersectional approach. So men are effectively positioning themselves lower than women in a false hierarchy and then decrying "white feminism" which helps to spread misogynistic propaganda. The states has a lot to answer for.

didn’t respond because I didn’t understand the point - who is being shut down and how?

Perhaps you should try to understand this specific reason rather than ignore it? You know, as you asked what people thought about it. And more than one person has explained how.

Intersectionality, as articulated by Crenshaw, is hugely important.

But the concept has been appropriated and is now used, along with the concept of 'white feminism', as a way to minimise and even dismiss the existence of sex-based oppression, by holding the position that sex based oppression isn't a form of oppression in its own right, and only matters insofar as it intersects with what misogynists on the left accept as 'real' oppression (i.e. that which is based on race or sexuality or gender identity).

Today, so-called intersectional feminists don't even acknowledge being biologically female as an axis of oppression for women - they reposition it as 'cis privilege' instead, which tells you all you need to know about their motivations and priorities (hint: it's not feminism).

Recognising that women who are not white, straight, and able-bodied will face multiple forms of oppression which can exacerbate their oppression and marginalisation is important. Ensuring that the voices of those women is uplifted and their concerns brought to the fore is important.

But feminism is about liberation from sex-based oppression. So-called intersectionality that doesn't even recognise sex (as distinct from gender identity) as its own axis of oppression, and therefore shames white women for calling out the ways in which sexism impacts their lives, isn't feminism .

@WhereIsMyMojoGone

It's another way to divide and cause friction amongst women. I also find the whole thing very demeaning.

I had a massive online debate (argument) with a group of intersectional feminists who insisted that I had internalised racism because they check their white privilege and I said don't bother, I'm fine. I don't need anyone to feel bad about accident of birth and I certainly don't need anyone to patronise and feel sorry for me because I am not white. Just fuck off. I am not any less than other women, I'm equal to them. Most of the problems we face are the same. There are, of course, extra issues for BAME women and, within groups in that category too, but we share more issues than not.

It's like that other thread about Dr Cathyrn Edwards that was taken down and someone brought race into it and I was thinking wtf, can't we just celebrate a woman for once?

I agree with this (as someone else who is not white). Ime, a lot of the noise about intersectionality comes from privileged white women (and some men) who don’t actually want to listen to women who aren’t white but certainly want to use us to shore up their social status. We’re just an opportunity for virtue signalling and the entrenchment of privilege that comes with being able to patronise someone.

"All of that is on top of the double discrimination on account of my skin colour and sex which white women wouldn’t understand, even if they lived in non-white countries because it is really negative discrimination." Not to undermine the racism and sexism you have faced, but this is not true. I have lived and worked in Asian, Middle Eastern and North African communities as a white, working class woman and have regularly been discriminated against on account of the intersectional characteristics of my race, class and sex. I've been treated as morally degenerate, trivial, a slut, sexually harassed, undermined and sexually assaulted. It's simply not true that white women cannot be discriminated against, white working class women in particular. 'White feminism' is used to mean white, middle class women, making working class women yet again invisible.

What's doubly irritating is the intellectual laziness of dismissing (older) feminism you don't like as "white feminism", but by doing so, actually completely erasing the important intellectual work of many women feminists of colour in the process.

To me it's basically just a way of saying "naff off, grandma, our feminism is better" to older women, instead of actually celebrating and valuing a serious intellectual tradition of our own. As I said above, there isn't a male tradition of thought that gets paid so little respect.

It's a terrible world.

The experiences of women around teir femaleness are going to vary based on any number of things. Race, sure, but also within a given race there will be different experiences based on ethnicity, class, how long the family has lived here and where they came from, religion, education, where in the country they live, their career path....

Basically different people have different "intersections" on an almost infinite number of variables, which is to say we all have somewhat different experiences.

Trying to quantify that into some sort of hierarchy of oppression is unless and impossible.

People will not always understand others experience, and it takes some concerted effort and conversation to try. On the other hand, just because someone says they are not being understood on the basis of some category does not mean that is accurate, people can lack perspective from any direction.

I didn’t want to get into the trans issue.

I did want to discuss the intersectionality of race and sex, as that is hugely important to a lot of women.

I'm afraid I don't think it's possible to get into the "white feminism" propaganda without doing that.

'Intersectionalism' has become a word that has changed meaning though. The original concept wasn't just around race, it also talked about things like class and disability as intersections. So it was very simply recognising that all women face sexism, some women also face racism, ableism and classism. And that the response to one probably wouldn't work on its own, we had to tackle the whole system of oppression.

White women (obviously) don't face racism but they do face other intersections of oppression. Saying 'white feminism' isn't intersectional is not, therefore, correct for all white women.

It's kind of become a shorthand for speaking over woc and I agree that this is something where feminists need to put in the work to make sure all female voices are heard. But then by all voices I mean disabled women, working class women, etc etc. We do have work to do here, absolutely. Women have have fought hard to be heard and it's hard to recognise that sometimes the best thing to do is to pass the mike, especially when it feels that we haven't made anything like the progress we want to make.

I would also note as a pp did that the nuances of white feminism tend to be USA-centric and part of the 'Karen' movement, which is not exactly women friendly.

But if you ask how white feminists should change, you get some unfocused youth/American /twitter speak about centering, uplifting, and doing the emotional labour.

I don't know what any of that is so I'll crack on with ordinary feminism.

Exactly. Intersectionality should be constructive. Calling people "white feminists" isn't constructive. Implying women shouldn't speak even on matters which concern them isn't constructive.

@Sociallydistancedcocktails

I didn’t want to get into the trans issue.

I did want to discuss the intersectionality of race and sex, as that is hugely important to a lot of women.

We’ll discuss it then. Tell us what you think. As a woman of colour (I assume), how have you experienced white feminism, and what do you think about the things you are asking us to discuss?

I did want to discuss the intersectionality of race and sex, as that is hugely important to a lot of women.

Yes. The problem is that the term "white feminism" has been co-opted by the trans issue. So anyone bringing it up at this point is going to get responses based on the way the term is used now, in the trans issue.

A lot of people are a bit cynical about motivation at this point.

Which means black women being hurt, again. Thanks, activists.

But please, do go ahead and try to have some discussion about actual women, and I think we should be able to stay on topic.

Your OP was just a bit too open-ended - with no other context you inevitably got the "white feminism = trans activist trope" response.

@Sociallydistancedcocktails

I didn’t want to get into the trans issue.

I did want to discuss the intersectionality of race and sex, as that is hugely important to a lot of women.

The term 'intersectionality' has now been co-opted by trans activists to mean something very different to Crenshawe's original definition. You can't have a discussion about intersectionality without discussing what it means and how it affects different groups

@Sociallydistancedcocktails

I didn’t want to get into the trans issue.

I did want to discuss the intersectionality of race and sex, as that is hugely important to a lot of women.

Do you mean in the context of USA, uk or???

'Intersectionalism' has become a word that has changed meaning though. The original concept wasn't just around race, it also talked about things like class and disability as intersections. So it was very simply recognising that all women face sexism, some women also face racism, ableism and classism. And that the response to one probably wouldn't work on its own, we had to tackle the whole system of oppression. White women (obviously) don't face racism but they do face other intersections of oppression. Saying 'white feminism' isn't intersectional is not, therefore, correct for all white women.

Yes exactly - originally this came from a Marxist analysis of class (structural) oppression - in which social class, sex, race, sexuality etc. were all "classes". But these often have different social axes, so the idea emerged out of the "intersections" of different forms of structural oppression. It was originally part of theories that recognised that tackling structural oppression demands radical social change, e.g. that it all goes down at the root to the economic structures of capitalism itself, and the economics of property ownership and labour.

Now, though, it floats around disconnected from the original structural Marxist analysis it was part of, which was about how race, social class and sex are all related to the economics of production. So it sort of recirculates the discourse but without the deeper connection to social change (largely because modern Anglophone societies do not want to think about Marxism and they certainly don't want to think about any solution that might run counter to the idea that you can have both social change and all the capitalist things you like as well).

Don't dare put me down because I have a vagina.
Don't dare put me down because I have a vagina and white skin.

HoldontoOneMoreDay nice Wilson Phillips username, I like

@Novelusername

"All of that is on top of the double discrimination on account of my skin colour and sex which white women wouldn’t understand, even if they lived in non-white countries because it is really negative discrimination." Not to undermine the racism and sexism you have faced, but this is not true. I have lived and worked in Asian, Middle Eastern and North African communities as a white, working class woman and have regularly been discriminated against on account of the intersectional characteristics of my race, class and sex. I've been treated as morally degenerate, trivial, a slut, sexually harassed, undermined and sexually assaulted. It's simply not true that white women cannot be discriminated against, white working class women in particular. 'White feminism' is used to mean white, middle class women, making working class women yet again invisible.

I have worked in those same places and white women get treated a lot better than women of colour do. There is a hierarchy and women of colour always lose. I lose even in India where white is so preferred that I become invisible by virtue of my colour.

@2bazookas

Don't dare put me down because I have a vagina. Don't dare put me down because I have a vagina and white skin.

Don’t ignore the perspective of a person of colour with vagina but all of you white feminists have totally ignored my lived in experience to wax lyrical about what you think white and non-white feminism should be.

I'm interested GrumpyHoonMain

I don't think the status of white woman around the world is always top , although India does not surprise me. As someone else mentioned, some cultures associate white women with prostitution

I don't think the op phrased the post as a discussion about any particular intersectional issues as such though, which would be more interesting than terminology