‘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

Cakedays. Your post is the best thing I have ever read on MN. Thank you x

So, what issues are 'white feminism'?

OP, you've mentioned career progression? Are there any others?

The feminist issues I can think of today are:

VAWG inc rape culture
prostitution
sexist/gendered roles and treatment of children
the dismantling of the definition of 'female' and pushback on the EA
FGM
women's work being unrecognised, esp care work
women's health issues being ignored (mesh, etc)
pensions
a lack of female representation in politics
Women refugees, Yarl's wood etc
pornification/objectification of girls

Which of these issues are exclusive of black or brown women?

Which ones am I missing?

The thing is, "second-wave" feminists were already debating this (and there were many black feminist writers in the debate such as bell hooks, Angela Davies, Audre Lorde) throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s. In their writings the idea of "intersectionality" was already there, coming out of a Marxist view of the intersections of structural class oppression

But they also advocated radical changes to education, work, society and consumerism as a result. These don't fit with the individualism and market-based ideals of current identity politics such as liberal feminism or transactivism

"intersectionality" now just floats around as a buzzword, a virtue signal where you say it or spot it and your job is done.

Cakedays, thanks for your clear observations and well-informed analysis.

I once thought second-wave feminist politics had been largely forgotten because it was considered old-fashioned and boring. Now I see that it is far too challenging for those who benefit from a 'feminism' that soothes men and is fine with current power structures.

@HandInGlove85

And that there are no white women who need 2 hours a day to make their hair presentable?

I really don't think there are tbh. I am a white woman with exceedingly difficult hair, but I've never spent 2 hours a day on a regular basis on it (although maybe that is why my hair looks so shit - my lack of commitment)

Do you know every white woman on the planet? What an extraordinary thing to claim.

@ArabellaScott
Career progression - significant intersectionality with race
Female representation in politics - significant intersectionality with socio-economic status and political leaning.
Women health issues - massive differences based on race and wealth and disability
Pornification and objectification of women - intersectionality with religion as can be seen in the normal bunfight on the burka issue 😃

I feel I am being expected to self flagellate because by my misfortune I am white and, from the ops perspective, my making my way in a male work environment has done nothing for her as none white because the racism remains ( or dominates over the sexism )

@midgedude

I feel I am being expected to self flagellate because by my misfortune I am white and, from the ops perspective, my making my way in a male work environment has done nothing for her as none white because the racism remains ( or dominates over the sexism )

My progression in a male dominated environment is probably doing nothing for you either 😊.

It doesn’t bother me, as my career progression is to my benefit, and I rarely cast my achievements as a beatific gift to all womankind.

And I am well aware that my biggest supporters have been men in leadership positions, and in that sense, I have benefited from the white male patriarchy 😊

Brilliant work @Cakedays

I don't understand the two hour hair thing?

@stumbledin

Women's studies became gender studies because many of the women involved accepted a pretty extreme type of social constructivism.

And why did they accept it?

Just as with funding once some (and it only needs to be a few) women accept a paid position that allows them a life styly beyond the means of most ie being able to take on a mortgage are then trapped into that life style by the need to continue to get maintain that.

It is well known that the CE on one of England's supposedly representative groups for the women's sector took the job to pay her mortgage and get her daughter into university. And the group survives not because it represents the voices of less prestigious women's groups, but because it serves the purposes of the funders to have a tokenistic group they can then present as them being in touch with women's needs.

Interestingly the start of the concept of funding women's groups (and also Black led groups) was part of Ken Livingstone's red labour GLC. The motivation being that once you "owned" a group through funding it you then controlled it.

I am sure there are still groups doing "good work" but it is very much in the style of the lady of the manor dispensing largesse to the poor.

Nowhere is is allowed that the women needing support are the ones who run the service.

And the media loves the lonely heroine narrative. ie everyone thinks that Erin Pizzey (an anti feminist) started the first women's refuge in the UK. Whereas in fact is was a local Black Women's Group in Brixton that create the first "refuge" for women.

Worth remembering that the concept of conciousness raising, that formed the basis of the network of small groups that was Women's Liberation, was a concept created by the Black Liberation Movement in the US.

I'm afraid I'm not quite sure where you are going with this post, I feel like I am missing a connection in what you are saying. Maybe you can see where I've missed the idea:

As far as why did feminists working in women's studies accept social constructivism - for many I think they were true believers. It allowed them to crack the nut of social differences between men and women in a straightforward way, and in a way that paralleled the Marxist approach. And there are still lots of feminists who take an almost complete constructivist viewpoint, and can in fact be quite disparaging of those who don't considering them to be gender essentialists.

In a nutshell: if the social outcomes for men and women are different, and that difference is due to elements that are socially constructed (gender,) then by abolishing gender we can have equality. Apart from gender men and women are almost identical. So these people see their study as focused on gender rather than sex. And it's very appealing, this idea that there is a straightforward path.

The perhaps unexpected element is that this social constructivism seems to have led to a vision of gender as not constructed, but I suspect that most did not foresee that.

If we want to talk about why states and economies liked this model, or why the bourgeoise like this model, it's absolutely great for capitalism. But some of the biggest winners in this were professional women, and women can be good capitalists just as well as men can be. I don't think capitalism as such cares any more than it does about race, if anything sexism and racism are not ideal for capitalism, it doesn't need them to maintain its control and they often get in the way of efficiency.

So I am just not seeing how something that was bought into by many women, and benefited many women, can be blamed to such a degree on patriarchy.

Apologies I haven't read the full thread. I highly recommend reading Audre Lorde and bell hooks for insights on the intersection (before 'intersectional' was coined) between race and sex.

I imagine somebody has www.feministcurrent.com/2017/07/26/white-feminism-thing-gender-identity-ideology-epitomizes/ already posted this, but just in case:

I once thought second-wave feminist politics had been largely forgotten because it was considered old-fashioned and boring. Now I see that it is far too challenging for those who benefit from a 'feminism' that soothes men and is fine with current power structures.a

Liberal feminism has accepted that as long as women have bodily autonomy and the buzzword "agency" then they have power within traditional patriarchal structures. Some women do. The reality is that many women are exploited in the same, but even more extreme way (esp when you consider porn) because sexual liberation within the confines of the same old social hierarchies doesn't equal liberation. We can pretend it does. We can pretend that it isn't mostly women on the breadline being exploited because "empowerment". But it isn't true.

@MorrisZapp

I don't understand the two hour hair thing?

I think the idea is that if you have difficult hair it oppresses you.

The mores substantial version is that society expects women of certain ethnicities to style their hair in a way that is time consuming. Which can be true though I think that a) it's much less true than it was particularly among the middle classes where more natural hair can sometimes now seen to signal more education and higher class origins (YMMV on this though depending on where you live.) b) a lot of the community pressure over this can be internal to the ethnic community, and c) while a PITA I don't know that this creates a really substantial kind of pressure that affects things like career progression.

[quote WeRoarSometimes]@HecatesCatsInFancyHats

Girls who entered the care system are amongst the most vulnerable women in society and also most invisible when it comes to safeguarding, and policymaking.[/quote]
We are not much concerned as a society with girls and women who are problematic. We prefer to pretend that these issues don't exist.

I once thought second-wave feminist politics had been largely forgotten because it was considered old-fashioned and boring. Now I see that it is far too challenging for those who benefit from a 'feminism' that soothes men and is fine with current power structures.

I do really firmly believe this. Second wave feminism was amazing. There were some women writing during that time with amazing insight and prescience. Look at Andrea Dworkin: for decades she was a complete hate-figure, a joke, literally the worst kind of idea of a "feminazi" people could imagine. Men hated her and said she was disgusting, fat, ugly, bigoted against men and hateful. Women used to say "I'm a feminist, but not like THAT!" But you read her work on pornography now, and it's hard to imagine anyone better articulating just how bad things have become for women in porn culture. She was absolutely savage in her forecast of what pornography would do to women and now it's all here on pornhub where your kid can access it with a few clicks.

It's extremely convenient, though, for people who have an investment in not challenging porn culture to pretend that second wave feminism is outmoded and "phobic" and has nothing to say relevant to today's young women.

Well my biggest supporters have also been male, because women leaders didn't exist in my organisation when I started. I have never had a female manager in all my years

But I do think I have in a small way helped , men being shocked and having to reconsider some of thier beliefs when they see a woman can be technically minded . And it has helped the younger generation to see older women in the organisation. The changes I have seen have been quite dramatic . They even know now that they do want a diverse organisation not a paper ticking exercise

Some fantastic posts, cakedays

We are not much concerned as a society with girls and women who are problematic.

Wow. That reads like something from a social worker’s report.

Women and girls with experience of the care system are not ‘problematic’.

We have often had dire experiences which many others struggle to empathise with, and we have often been let down by systems and individuals again and again, frequently leaving deep scars. Yes, we are vulnerable because we do not have support structures in the way people assume is typical. We continue to be vulnerable to ‘charities’ who want to solicit and edit our experiences to match their own agendas. We are a disparate collection of individuals each with our own story of our achievements - despite the narratives about how we are doomed to failure.

@findaplace

We are not much concerned as a society with girls and women who are problematic.

Wow. That reads like something from a social worker’s report.

Women and girls with experience of the care system are not ‘problematic’.

We have often had dire experiences which many others struggle to empathise with, and we have often been let down by systems and individuals again and again, frequently leaving deep scars. Yes, we are vulnerable because we do not have support structures in the way people assume is typical. We continue to be vulnerable to ‘charities’ who want to solicit and edit our experiences to match their own agendas. We are a disparate collection of individuals each with our own story of our achievements - despite the narratives about how we are doomed to failure.

I do not believe those women are girls are problematic- I believe society views them as problematic. I should have used quotation marks. You've come for an argument where there isn't one.

Women and girls that should read, not 'are'

I have long posted on FWR that the reason certain institutions are a testing ground for gender neutral policies is because society doesn't care about what happens to certain groups of women, not because those women are fundamentally problematic, but because society is mercenary:

I think white feminism exists. I am white and a feminist, I am also living in the global north and earn above an average salary.
I can see and hear that the ways in which misogyny is expressed against black women’s is different to white. I see that sexist stereotypes are different for Asian women, SE Asian women, and all other ethnicities.
I can see these things and see my privilege in terms of race, nationality and income level without feeling ashamed of those privileges nor thinking any of them in any way negate the effect of the patriarchy on all women, including white and wealthy.

Maybe I'm wrong but I thought intersectionality was an important facet of feminism, full stop? Has something changed? I, too, am a bit sick of being viewed as a racist just because I'm white, but apparently racial prejudice is okay when it's directed against middle-aged white women. If somebody can find my privilege, I'd be happy to check it.

Am I a 'white saviour' to consider issues such as FGM, or that black women are five times more likely than white women to die in childbirth to be feminist issues? Or am I not allowed to give a stuff because I'm not the right colour? Should I just stay in my lane? Which lane belongs to who? Is there a list?

I feel like women are being fed lies to stop them actually talking to each other. I suspect this divisionism is deliberate, and I take that as a sign that the feminists are winning. I reckon there's 'interested parties' that want us to fight amongst ourselves... There used to be a name for them... mean? stale? pale? hmm...

SmokedDuck - you are missing the main point. Gender studies were enforced (by those with the money) at the expense of Women's Studies. Those who had been teaching women's studies either had to agree the new gender agenda or leave. ie those with the money, men, chose what women should or should not think.

And lets face it given the current onslaught on the concept of the oppression of women being that fact that as the female class they are oppressed by the male class, is the most talked about issue on FWR means that of any of the negative consequences of the power of patriarchal funding, this is the one of coming home to roost.

The other being the decision by Red Ken's GLC that because they didn't want any funding to be seen to be needed because of male violence, refuges were funded through use of the HB system. Such is the power of men when they instinctively protect each other and the behaviour towards women, and women have to be grateful for the crumbs they throw us. And this pattern of refuge bed space funding is the one that became the accepted standard.

@humansare who has called anyone a racist here. Try harder.