‘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

Talk to me about this as a known thing in the UK. White women. Black men.

Talk to me about smiley culture.

Why?
Either white feminism is real or it isn't.
Who cares what country it mostly comes from?
Surely what matters is whether it exists ot not.
Or are we back to the only some women matter viewpoint

This is a UK site.

You said 'It actually makes me feel a little bit sick, to know that me as a white woman could turn on the tears and be automatically believed or defended.'

Engage. Tell me about this in the UK. Talk to me about racism in the met.

Most women on here are from the UK. We have plenty to discuss on this topic in this country.

If you care about this, rather than just wanting to say you're awful. Racism. Here. White women weaponising their tears and being automatically believed (!) then show me. Tell me. Examples. Let's talk about the met and their racism.

Why not talk about smiley culture or mark Duggan?

This is s thread about racism isn't it?

'turn on the tears' - rank misogyny. The kind of thing MRA's say.

The US is culturally imperialist. That's why women from other countries don't want to be bombarded with their 'takes'.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I'm sure some of these proponents of white feminism would call it toxic and oppressive that I, a white woman, manipulated a major colour with my white tears.

I feel the same about this article now as when it came out: it's a shitty misogynistic trope that women use tears to manipulate. That's what my abusive partner said to me, that he didn't take my tears seriously because they were fake. You cant write women's feelings off because they are white.

I'm sorry you experienced that; I get it. Just another way to diminish women's experience of abuse at the hands of men. Anything to downplay misogyny.

Women cry to get what they want. What???!!! What the fuck? This is the most misogynist infuriating load of stereotyping shit in the world. It ties into. Women are manipulative. Women lie. Women lie and manipulate to harm others. Women lie and manipulate and somehow produce tears on order and everyone stops what they're doing and says MY GOD A WOMAN IS UPSET!!! we must take everything she says as gospel and immediately beat up/ cast out/ arrest/ imprison/ sack etc whoever she says upset her immediately no questions asked....

I agree. I don’t think women are automatically believed when they cry. I think they are automatically believed to be making it up.

Genuine question, have you read up on Emmet Till for example?
Why, if so, if you know his story, why would you have a problem with that?
The Emmett Tilll is an isolated case that happened in 1955 in the American deep south, so why is that being brought up as though representative of the typical British white woman in the workplace in 2021? I would say the UK has exceedingly little in common now or even in 1955 with an American deep south living under segregation. It's a bit like bringing up the case of Josef Fritzl and claiming all British men are guilty of incest.
Perfectly happy to discuss the idea of 'white tears' if it's at all a phenomenon that can be shown to be occurring in the UK, but I so far haven't seen any evidence it is. It sounds like an incel fantasy, the 'white damsel in distress' crying to 'bring out the cavalry' to get a black woman in trouble. People will stoop to all sorts of lows to get a colleague in trouble, I suppose, but there's no evidence given here that this is something happening on a vast scale in the UK. It's also notable that in the article the white women showing racist behaviours didn't even actually cry.

I'm genuinely trying to think of any times anything remotely like this has happened and can only think of a white girl and two white boys 'crying' to falsely accuse me, a white girl, in order to shift the blame when I was a child in school. Both boys were violent with me but falsely claimed I'd provoked them names first. Ah yes, actually my ex did that too, so actually it appears to be a more common behaviour in males to excuse violence against women. The girl I mentioned was a bit disturbed and a compulsive liar.
My mother would cry to get attention and to manipulate, but that's because she's a narcissist, not a racist, and I've never witnessed her doing that to a black woman to get her into trouble.
In conclusion, in my experience the ones doing this are violent men and mentally ill women, but they weren't doing this as racists.

I mean, we're basically talking about DARVO, aren't we? In that case, of course it's possible for a white woman to do this to a WOC in the workplace. I see no evidence of this being a 'phenomenon' though, something that all white women are guilty of and need to be taken to task for, but a case of narcissistic people being narcissists in the workplace.

If we're going to discuss 'white feminism' we should discuss things white feminists can actually be guilty of and trying to improve these ie. Lacking awareness of the issues WOC face and considering ways to ensure their experiences are included and worked on. Blaming women in the UK for historical racist crimes in the American deep South as though we're all casually getting black men lynched with just the slightest flash of ankle and a flutter of our eyelashes is just promoting incel talking points and has nothing to do with feminism whatsoever.

@Novelusername

I'm genuinely trying to think of any times anything remotely like this has happened and can only think of a white girl and two white boys 'crying' to falsely accuse me, a white girl, in order to shift the blame when I was a child in school. Both boys were violent with me but falsely claimed I'd provoked them names first. Ah yes, actually my ex did that too, so actually it appears to be a more common behaviour in males to excuse violence against women. The girl I mentioned was a bit disturbed and a compulsive liar. My mother would cry to get attention and to manipulate, but that's because she's a narcissist, not a racist, and I've never witnessed her doing that to a black woman to get her into trouble. In conclusion, in my experience the ones doing this are violent men and mentally ill women, but they weren't doing this as racists.

That’s nice for you but it has happened to a friend of mine after she ‘challenged’ the woman’s racism. This was in the workplace. Strangely nothing happened about the woman’s overt racism even though it was witnessed. Whether that was down to tears or due to the fact HR is primarily white female who knows but it was still an issue where my friend felt isolated and unbelieved.

This isn't church. We don't have to talk about guilt at all! We certainly don't have to go down the road of 'whiteness' being an original sin for which there is no cure but daily recitations of privilege.

TenaciousOnePointOne
No, it's not 'nice for me' that men have been violent towards me and then done a DARVO, nor that I have an abusive mother. Other women on this thread have said the same, so not sure why the need to be snide about male on female abuse. I am sorry that happened to your friend. Do you think that this is a widespread problem in the UK? If so, how do we tackle it.

It's depressing to share such traumatic and painful memories of racism and come back to pages of posts that basically boil down to "racism doesn't exist in the UK PROVE IT TO ME and anyway black women need to shut up about racism because it makes white women feel bad."

All the clever language about "identity politics" and "oppression Olympics" and "intersectionality" are just ways to manipulate and gaslight black women into shutting up about their personal experiences of racism. It reminds me exactly of the tactics TRA use to try to silence and bully women.

I want you to demonstrate to me. Convince me.
Jesus fucking Christ on a bike.
I am a biracial British woman standing right in front of you telling you to your face IT HAPPENS. I have personally witnessed it. I have witnessed it both in the context of police and in the context of workplace.

What the actual fuck is wrong with people that their response to black women discussing specific forms of racism is to hop and down screaming PROVE IT PROVE IT PROVE IT until they are hoarse. This is exactly - EXACTLY - like MRA and TRA demanding that women prove that sexism exists, or that violence against women exists, or that sexual harassment exists, or that rape culture exists.

Genuine question NiceGerbil how would you feel if a man demanded that you recite the details of every time you've ever been sexually harassed or abused in order to "convince him" that misogyny/rape culture is real. Knowing it might be upsetting or traumatic for you. Knowing it might trigger PTSD. Knowing there's a good possibility he's only asking in the first place because he gets off on hearing women talk about being raped, or he finds it amusing to make women jump when he says jump. Knowing that anything you tell him, he'll twist and deny and minimise. Knowing there's nothing you could tell him that would make him accept it anyway. But still knowing if you refuse to jump when he orders you to jump he'll use it as proof that he's right.

Actually, this is really simplistic, as income level is only one factor. You have to compare and consider all the other ACEs too I posted earlier, including alcoholism, mental health issues, physical or emotional neglect, physical or sexual abuse etc in order to answer this question.

The entire point of "white privilege" is to explore the impact of racism and how being a POC creates an additional barrier that white people don't have to face, over and on top of whatever other barriers they face on a personal level. So you have to compare like for like. It's not a race to the bottom/Oppression Olympics "who has it worse." Trying to prove that white privilege doesn't exist by inventing some hypothetical abused impoverished white working class boy is flat out racism-denial. The entire point of "white privilege" is to explore how two individuals in identical circumstances are impacted by race. So in the hypotheticals given, you would need to compare a working class black boy with an abusive alcoholic parent to a working class white boy with an abusive alcoholic parent. Not a working class abused white boy to a middle class black female CEO (who really are not as numerous as MN seems to think!). And black people are statistically more likely to live in poverty and statistically more likely to have higher ACE score than white people anyway.

I don't really know what people mean by "working class" but the quotes above are from a post about rural Scotland.

I made the post MissBarbary is referring to and quoted from and my post absolutely does not refer to rural Scotland in any way. I have no idea what MissBarbary is talking about. It did not refer to Scotland period.

This isn't church. We don't have to talk about guilt at all! We certainly don't have to go down the road of 'whiteness' being an original sin for which there is no cure but daily recitations of privilege.

This is such an incredibly bizarre, hostile response to black people saying "racism is a problem, and if you're white you don't face that particular problem, and it would be nice if you could listen to black women occasionally."

Look at this thread. Look at the million other threads about racism. Black women and other WOC sharing their personal experiences of being called n***, being called thugs and uppity, being treated differently just because of our skin colour, and a thousand other examples of racism, and the response is 21 pages of racism-denials, attempts to silence and censor us, accusations that we're being divisive, told we need to be nicer to wheedle white people into not hurting us anymore, had a thousand gaslighting tactics hurled at us, fielded loud demands for PROOF PROOF PROOF.

Just absolute sheer racism.

Who is telling you that whiteness is "a sin"? Why on earth do you think black women saying "we all face barriers and oppressions as women but there are some extra barriers we face that white women don't face" means you personally are being shamed and forced to do daily atonement for?

No one wants you to atone. No one gives a shit what you do or don't to, just stop being racist towards us please.

Do you think women pointing out that sexism exists are claiming "maleness is the original sin" or demanding that men perform the penitence of "daily recitations of male privilege"?

All the clever language about "identity politics" and "oppression Olympics" and "intersectionality" are just ways to manipulate and gaslight black women into shutting up about their personal experiences of racism.

No. I don't want you to shut up. I accept that structural racism exists and am interested in practical things I can do that don't involve me being told to shut up or having my own equally important experience of being a woman dismissed. I just don't think your analysis is the be all and end all of feminism. I think intersectionality within all social justice movements, not just feminism, is necessary but has some important flaws in the way it tends to pan out.

This thread was started to discuss the term "white feminism" and people are doing that. It's not a thread about racism, it's a thread about that term, which is not just used by non white people.

This is a thread, in FWR, about the term "white feminism". That is what people are discussing. You are trying to make out that people were asked to discuss racism in general. It is possible for people both to abhor racism yet still find the term "white feminism" deeply problematic in the way it is used for a whole variety of reasons, that have already discussed, in the 500 or so posts, mostly not made by you. This thread is about everyone's experience of that term. You have your view, I have mine. Other people have a different one. Not everyone has to agree.

The entire point of "white privilege" is to explore how two individuals in identical circumstances are impacted by race. So in the hypotheticals given, you would need to compare a working class black boy with an abusive alcoholic parent to a working class white boy with an abusive alcoholic parent.

Yes, that's how it should work. But it is emphatically not how it does work, most of the time, in social justice movements.

Just more racism-denial, and trying to gaslight and censor black women.

This thread was started to discuss the term "white feminism" and people are doing that. It's not a thread about racism

White feminism IS racism. The two cannot be separated.

You are trying to make out that people were asked to discuss racism in general.

That's simply not true.

This thread is about everyone's experience of that term. You have your view, I have mine. Other people have a different one. Not everyone has to agree.

Imagine if this was a thread about misogyny and rape culture where 90% of the posters are men, and where whenever a woman posts, she's shouted down and gaslighted and has her personal experienced dismissed and minimised by men. Told she's engaging in identity politics. Asked for proof that sexual harassment exists.

Try saying "both men and women's experience of misogyny is equally valid, not everyone has to agree."

Yes, that's how it should work. But it is emphatically not how it does work, most of the time, in social justice movements.

And you think the way to fix that is to invent ludicrous hypotheticals comparing a purely fictious "abused, negected, white working class boy being raised in dire poverty in rural Scotland by his alcoholic parent" to an equally hypothetical "upper middle class black university-educated CEO" with the sole purpose of dismissing racism and pretending that white privilege does not exist? Trying to pretend that deliberately cherry picking the most unfortunate white person in the UK and the most fortunate black person is in any way a valid comparison? Trying to pretend that black people don't also live in poverty, that black people can't also be working class, that black kids don't also experience abuse and alcoholism?

This is not a thread about racism
Er.... Does the title not give you a big enough clue that its kind of related, as in White feminism?!
Froggy
Great posts, and you're right.
Nothing's ever good enough, it's always prove it! Convince me!
You give proof, it's 'no, not like that that's years ago and not where I am so doesn't count'
If I give Amy Cooper as an example, going by past threads and comments it'll be a case of the bloke was being threatening because he asked her to put a dog on a lead?
What the fuck is wrong with people that they constantly ask for proof, why on earth should they have to prove themselves when nothing is ever, ever good enough or explained away, minimised or gaslight into no, that didn't happen?

Cross posted

And you think the way to fix that is to invent ludicrous hypotheticals comparing a purely fictious "abused, negected, white working class boy being raised in dire poverty in rural Scotland by his alcoholic parent" to an equally hypothetical "upper middle class black university-educated CEO" with the sole purpose of dismissing racism and pretending that white privilege does not exist?

I didn't actually invent such a hypothetical. I agreed with you that such hypotheticals are not how privilege should be used, but they would be used that way in "intersectional feminism" to dismiss any experiences the abused boy in Scotland has faced. Privilege is about structural oppression. It should not be used to point score about individuals and whether their concerns should be taken seriously. But come on, it often is. That is the issue under discussion.

White feminism IS racism. The two cannot be separated

I don't agree with the concept of "white feminism" being used in the ways people have laid out. I am not denying that structural racism exists.

This thread is about that term. I am commenting on that. I'm not going to comment on what you want me to comment on just because it suits your argument, I am going to comment as I see it.

White feminism is racism. The two cannot be separated.
Exactly.
How can you have one without the other?!
It's intertwined.

If I give Amy Cooper as an example, going by past threads and comments it'll be a case of the bloke was being threatening because he asked her to put a dog on a lead?

Stop insinuating that that is what I and other posters think.