A little bit more on ‘White’ Feminism

[ATieLikeRichardGere]

Hope we can continue what has been overall an interesting discussion.

I suggest it would be good if we could think more about the UK, because it has been under discussed so far.

Thank you Plan and inever.

I really appreciate these discussions.

I’m listening to an interview with Dr Foluke I Adebisi and she is talking about the “diversity industrial complex” where to an extent diversity has been used to cover up and continue, without underlying decolonisation, which is quite interesting, and they were also talking about how this might relate to the idea of diverse billionaires, which relates a little bit back to the Bill Gates thing.

There must be something wrong with me as I can't bring myself to hate white people or white women or blame all the ills of the world on them. To me, discourse around 'white feminism' or 'whiteness' seems like a lot of navel gazing and a way to avoid solving actual problems.

I do find British history and the contemporary effects around the world informative and enlightening, but then so is much of human history.

I prefer to look for pragmatic solutions to current issues that can positively impact as many people as possible. In the UK, that means taking into consideration the issues and concerns of white people in general instead of simply focusing on all kinds of minorities.

I'm not sure why racism is viewed as much, much worse than sexism or misogyny. Maybe because it also affects men as a previous poster mentioned.

I've never felt white women in particular 'owed' me anything. It's up to me to speak up and advocate for myself or for issues that concern me and build support from a broad range of people. I don't think guilt tripping people builds long lasting support. Yes in the short term there will be lots of grovelling by some types, but eventually the majority switch off and think 'whatever'.

Nonny I don't think anyone said they hated white people or white women

@VladmirsPoutine

Nonny I don't think anyone said they hated white people or white women

No, I don't mean in this particular thread. Sorry I wasn't being clear. It's the topic / issue in general - a certain mindset and approach that views white people or white women as some kind of enemy.

It's easily done when steeped in all the wrongs that have been done to you. I was a bit like that when younger. Before I moved to the UK and didn't know that many white people. Now I just find it tedious and counterproductive.

I see this in the way terms like 'whiteness' or 'white feminism' is used to induce panic and guilt, because white people, especially white women feel awful about being associated with such a label, even if they haven't don't anything wrong, but it rarely produces actual solutions, or at least I've never seen anything useful come out of such dialogue.

@NonnyMouse1337

So what are the biggest current issues that you feel we should be tackling?

[quote ATieLikeRichardGere]@NonnyMouse1337

So what are the biggest current issues that you feel we should be tackling?[/quote]
Gosh, where to start. So many pressing issues. Umm... Off the top of my head...

• There seems to be a lot of issues around educational outcomes. White boys from working class or deprived backgrounds are trailing behind. This will cause big problems down the line if not addressed soon.

• Better support for parents with young children, which will help with better outcomes in later life.

• Properly funded NHS.

• Housing that is actually affordable and of good quality.

• There needs to be better and honest conversations around immigration and job creation. We need heavy investment in building up and diversifying the skills of those who live in the UK instead of always falling back on the easy supply of immigrants. Immigration should help supplement any labour shortage rather than be the default and lazy route for businesses.
  We can tackle long-term unemployment by looking at methods like job guarantee schemes.

• Ways to encourage investment and growth in deprived areas, and incentives to spread out wealth and infrastructure rather than it being concentrated in a few cities or regions.

Basically most people want job security and economic stability, decent housing and healthcare and the opportunity to raise their families well.

I've never got someone in trouble in this way, can't imagine why someone would want to, I can't think of any examples from my personal experience

This is what i mean. You may never have done it (I believe you because I have no reason not to) but that doesn't mean you can't if you wanted to. It’s there for the taking but decent people wouldn't use the opportunity. Also, you may not be able to imagine why anyone would but people do and sometimes for stupid reasons. That's why I said it isn't personal. That you don't do it doesn't mean doesn't mean others don't

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of this exchange- "you haven't done anything bad but you have the capacity in theory to do so".

I'm not sure what I'm personally responsible for or expected to beyond apologising for being white and prostrating myself before Eddo- Lodge - neither of which I will be doing.

Whenever I hear ‘white feminism’ I always think about those poor girls in Rotherham etc.

Their whiteness was clearly no shield against classism and misogyny, yet those same women would probably be dismissed as ‘privileged’ in any of these conversations.

Intersectionality maybe useful when looking at trends on a societal level, but I don’t think it should be a stick to beat people with on an individual level. It just comes across as dismissive.

Whiteness maybe a ‘plus point’ on the ‘privilege ladder’ but this doesn’t mean it isn’t negated by other ‘minus points’, as in the example above.

Seeing whiteness as a ‘trumps all’ of privilege is a fundamental logical flaw in the argument of many.

‘So fear that a minority might turn into a Bill Gates means feminism should focus only on poor minority women? What do you mean by it depends on why we want equal status and power?

Sorry but I see that as a bit phobic of minorities really gaining equal status and power. Like deep inside you question whether we have same level of morality and good intentions as white people. You worry that for every white Bill Gates there will be what 2,3, more minority Bill Gates?’

Nope. I didn’t say that at all.

I focus on poorer women because I don’t have the knowledge, experience or power to assist wealthy women, so I am better off helping poorer women.

I don’t think feminists should help elites. No idea where you are getting it from that minorities would be even worse.

‘Whereas White Irish women earn 16.95. I think there is something else going on in this data tbh.’

It is the case on most equality data, including on pay, that white Irish people are paid much more and white Irish travellers do much worse. It is the same in education stats.

@NonnyMouse1337
I suspect that you are likely to get broad agreement on most of these issues like educational outcomes and affordable housing being important (not sure about immigration, that’s a bit more complicated perhaps!) but since these things seem to also involve racial disparities, can we not simultaneously focus on improving them generally and improving them specifically for people of colour at the same time? It just seems like we might be able to do two things at once. I think this is the idea we keep
coming back to.

@PlanDeRaccordement

No, not Roman women! Depends on country I think as some were more Romanised than others? In Britain and Germania wasn’t it more that there were Roman colonists and military occupation, but the tribes still had their chiefs/lands as client kingdoms and paid tribute to Rome in form of money, crops, livestock and men for their army? So the Germanic and British regular people carried on in their villages much as they did before with their own religion and cultural practices? Then Christianity (borrowing from Rome), came shortly after with Roman missionaries, it took hold and that changed life and status of average woman moreso than Roman occupation did? At least that is my impression.

But then the older colonies like Gaul, Romania and Hispania. They had been part of Empire for much longer and so they had been more Romanised, and with it had adopted Roman laws on women.

Also, I know here in France for example, oppression of women got worse during the Middle Ages. We had Queens regnant of kingdoms like Aquitaine and Navarre in early Middle Ages, but King Phillip the Fair got with help of church a law passed that no woman could inherit a throne (ever again). Too there is witch burning. Early Middle Ages it was common for a housewife to be a herbalist and make home cures for common ailments, do first aid, work as a midwife. This later came under scrutiny by the church as heretical and fighting gods will so witch finders and witch burning started in the 14th century.

Well, concerns about witches and such were not so much a medieval thing. In the early Christian period belief in magic and witches was considered heretical. There were some developments in theology in the high middle ages that meant it was possible to think of witchcraft as being a result of a sort of pact with Satan, but that wasn't really taken up in great numbers and it didn't really come to much until the early modern period.

For some reason, probably due to some rather bad scholarship in the 19th century, people attribute a lot of the failings of the early moderns to the medievals, quite unfairly generally speaking. It's worth remembering that the increase in interest in ancient Greece and Rome at that time created a lot of uncritical admiration for their ideas, about all kinds of things including magic, and there was a real increase in interest of practice magic, in the form of things like alchemy, in certain quarters. Certain innovations of the middle ages in areas like mathematics were actually lost because anything the Greeks didn't do was assumed to be inferior.

Most witch burning went on during this era, and it wasn't usually driven by the Catholic Church. Generally if someone accused you of witchcraft you would be much better off if you lived in a place where a priest with some authority was put in charge, because a lot didn't believe in that stuff or were more skeptical of charges even if they did. You weren't likely to be so lucky if you were among Protestants who embraced the whole idea much more enthusiastically, and you were most at risk if you were far away from centres of learning and authority where the law was a little frontier-like.

So fear that a minority might turn into a Bill Gates means feminism should focus only on poor minority women? What do you mean by it depends on why we want equal status and power?

No I don't think that's the concern at all.

It comes more from seeing a certain kind of antiracist discourse being used as a front to justify corporate capitalism and the ultra-rich who can influence politics for their own benefit.

So, the idea that so long as a highly economically exploitive system has the right number of people belonging to various racial/gender/sexuality groups, that is good and just. So long as the dirt poor have the correct % of white people, that's just natural.

I don't think you can expect people to want to promote more black Bill Gates when they don't think people like Bill Gates should exist at all.

[quote ATieLikeRichardGere]@NonnyMouse1337
I suspect that you are likely to get broad agreement on most of these issues like educational outcomes and affordable housing being important (not sure about immigration, that’s a bit more complicated perhaps!) but since these things seem to also involve racial disparities, can we not simultaneously focus on improving them generally and improving them specifically for people of colour at the same time? It just seems like we might be able to do two things at once. I think this is the idea we keep
coming back to.[/quote]
The problem is that currently (from my perspective):

1. Disparities are being framed predominantly through a racial angle and ignoring other attributes that may improve or worsen outcomes.

1. There are strong ideological forces at play - the left seeks to amplify certain factors to fit their narrative and make things seem worse than they really are, while the right seeks to downplay certain factors to fit their own narrative and make things seem less bad than they really are.

1. There is a reluctance to learn from people of colour / ethnic groups that generally do better than others.

1. The constant insinuation that white people are oppressors and those who aren't white are oppressed and marginalised actually strengthens notions of white supremacy. I mean, there must be something inherently superior about white people if they have managed to oppress so many other people for so long? What kind of message does that send to young people who think they will never get anywhere in life and all the odds are stacked against them unless white people are willing to give them a hand?

I don't mean we shouldn't pay attention to racial disparities and address concerns that people have. But I don't think current approaches and attitudes will be of much help.

[quote ATieLikeRichardGere]@NonnyMouse1337
I suspect that you are likely to get broad agreement on most of these issues like educational outcomes and affordable housing being important (not sure about immigration, that’s a bit more complicated perhaps!) but since these things seem to also involve racial disparities, can we not simultaneously focus on improving them generally and improving them specifically for people of colour at the same time? It just seems like we might be able to do two things at once. I think this is the idea we keep
coming back to.[/quote]
The thing that always comes to me is that for this to work, you have to know why the disparities happen. And maybe an equally difficult question, which disparities are important? Some are obviously so, but in other cases it isn't so clear.

For example, if you have a group of people who have a culture that tends to lead them to choose certain types of careers that are not as well paying, while another identity group tends to choose professional careers, ( and this kind of thing can be true and is in some cases) is that actually something that is problematic? It will tend to lead to disparities in things like income or maybe even certain other areas.

Personally I think it is just fine if cultural values and backgrounds lead to those kinds of differences, that's one of the things that I think is valuable about pluralism. So long as their is economic justice towards all workers, and it is open for those who choose to do something outside of that, why not?

It's also the case that some disparities may be related to class differences over generations, and these can tend to have a statistical effect longer than one might think. Some of the best things to remedy this though aren't based on targeting one race, they are based on targeting those who have less wealth, like education and health care and housing.

@SmokedDuck, thank you for the post on witches. That was fascinating.

The constant insinuation that white people are oppressors and those who aren't white are oppressed and marginalised actually strengthens notions of white supremacy. I mean, there must be something inherently superior about white people if they have managed to oppress so many other people for so long? What kind of message does that send to young people who think they will never get anywhere in life and all the odds are stacked against them unless white people are willing to give them a hand?

There is nothing quite as chilling as hearing a real, sincere white suprematist say that modern antiracism has been really good for his messaging. Because it cements in people's minds that our racial identity is real and trains us to think in those terms, to see race first, and in terms of who is at the top of the hierarchy. And it is easy to push a young person who comes with those assumptions built in from his education, but himself feels like life has set him in a pretty shitty spot, toward thinking about reordering that hierarchy. Because he is sure actually he is on the bottom somehow and not only is no one offering help, they are blaming him for whiteness.

And I think there is always going to be a tension between reinforcing race as a concept, and dismantling racial discrimination, because race was pretty much invented to create a basis for discrimination. It's difficult to deconstruct a concept on a social level though if you are targeting it all the time.

@LouiseBelchersBunnyEars

Whenever I hear ‘white feminism’ I always think about those poor girls in Rotherham etc.

Their whiteness was clearly no shield against classism and misogyny, yet those same women would probably be dismissed as ‘privileged’ in any of these conversations.

Intersectionality maybe useful when looking at trends on a societal level, but I don’t think it should be a stick to beat people with on an individual level. It just comes across as dismissive.

Whiteness maybe a ‘plus point’ on the ‘privilege ladder’ but this doesn’t mean it isn’t negated by other ‘minus points’, as in the example above.

Seeing whiteness as a ‘trumps all’ of privilege is a fundamental logical flaw in the argument of many.

I remember a Twitter conversation with an American woman discussing white privilege and I was reflecting on the issues here in the UK with grooming gangs, where white privilege between two racial groups did not manifest. The American woman replied the white girls were seen as more desirable (than girls of other races or ethnicities) by their abusers and traffickers, so their subsequent abuse was actually white privilege.

Perhaps her being American could explain some misunderstanding of the issue due to ignorance, but I’m still surprised that someone could be this short-sighted.

‘So, the idea that so long as a highly economically exploitive system has the right number of people belonging to various racial/gender/sexuality groups, that is good and just. So long as the dirt poor have the correct % of white people, that's just natural.

I don't think you can expect people to want to promote more black Bill Gates when they don't think people like Bill Gates should exist at all.’

Yes, all of this. We don’t need more elite people destroying Africa and wrecking women’s rights.

I remember a Twitter conversation with an American woman discussing white privilege and I was reflecting on the issues here in the UK with grooming gangs, where white privilege between two racial groups did not manifest. The American woman replied the white girls were seen as more desirable (than girls of other races or ethnicities) by their abusers and traffickers, so their subsequent abuse was actually white privilege.

Perhaps her being American could explain some misunderstanding of the issue due to ignorance, but I’m still surprised that someone could be this short-sighted

See, you come across things like this all the time.
I’m going to assume she was a white woman, as this to me is something only a white person of a certain ilk would say.

That American woman probably thought she was being a great ally, but she betrays herself, and her own racism here.

These Asian men preyed on mainly white, non Muslim girls. Because they see them as lesser. Impure. Unclean. Less than.

This woman cannot possibly fathom that.

In her mind, these girls must be seen as more desirable because she herself believes white girls are more desirable.
It doesn’t enter her head that there could be any other explanation.
These kind of people betray themselves again and again.
It’s the worst kind of patronising and condescending.

There was a really great meme I saw describing this, it was an image of a ‘typical’ blue haired ‘wokist’, with a captain that said something like ‘black women are so strong and independent. That’s why they need me to speak on their behalf’.
These type of people are constantly commenting on those ‘other’ white people, and are at pains to tell you they are the ‘good, different’ type of white person, not like that bad generic white personality over there, who I’ve never spoken to, but they must be bad and generic. Because they’re white.

But not me, I’m different etc etc etc

It’s quite sad really

@LouiseBelchersBunnyEars

I remember a Twitter conversation with an American woman discussing white privilege and I was reflecting on the issues here in the UK with grooming gangs, where white privilege between two racial groups did not manifest. The American woman replied the white girls were seen as more desirable (than girls of other races or ethnicities) by their abusers and traffickers, so their subsequent abuse was actually white privilege.

Perhaps her being American could explain some misunderstanding of the issue due to ignorance, but I’m still surprised that someone could be this short-sighted

See, you come across things like this all the time.
I’m going to assume she was a white woman, as this to me is something only a white person of a certain ilk would say.

That American woman probably thought she was being a great ally, but she betrays herself, and her own racism here.

These Asian men preyed on mainly white, non Muslim girls. Because they see them as lesser. Impure. Unclean. Less than.

This woman cannot possibly fathom that.

In her mind, these girls must be seen as more desirable because she herself believes white girls are more desirable.
It doesn’t enter her head that there could be any other explanation.
These kind of people betray themselves again and again.
It’s the worst kind of patronising and condescending.

There was a really great meme I saw describing this, it was an image of a ‘typical’ blue haired ‘wokist’, with a captain that said something like ‘black women are so strong and independent. That’s why they need me to speak on their behalf’.
These type of people are constantly commenting on those ‘other’ white people, and are at pains to tell you they are the ‘good, different’ type of white person, not like that bad generic white personality over there, who I’ve never spoken to, but they must be bad and generic. Because they’re white.

But not me, I’m different etc etc etc

It’s quite sad really

Actually weren’t the girls that were targeted all either in care or being neglected. Do we know all of the girls that were targeted were definitely all white? Recent experience should show us to be wary of that assumption. As in white victims get more sympathy so only white victims are shown especially when the perpetrators are not white.

No, they were not all in care or being neglected.

As we are talking about organised crime, there is very likely to be a link between grooming gangs and HBV and forced marriage. Both are related to information networks created through the nighttime economy and organised crime. But the ethnicity of the victim varies depending on the nature of the exploitation and abuse.

Actually weren’t the girls that were targeted all either in care or being neglected.

No they were/are not in care. Infact most were living at home and many of this I care were there to escape the gangs

Do we know all of the girls that were targeted were definitely all white? Recent experience should show us to be wary of that assumption.

Yes they were all white apart from some whose mothers were also victims of the gangs

As in white victims get more sympathy so only white victims are shown especially when the perpetrators are not white.

They didn't get any sympathy. That's the whole point!!

I remember a Twitter conversation with an American woman discussing white privilege and I was reflecting on the issues here in the UK with grooming gangs, where white privilege between two racial groups did not manifest. The American woman replied the white girls were seen as more desirable (than girls of other races or ethnicities) by their abusers and traffickers, so their subsequent abuse was actually white privilege.

I've seen conversations on SM where people have tried to explain to Americans what is happening and the Americans at first assumed the gangs were white and the victims not white. They showed huge outrage at the gangs and massive sympathy for the victims but when the real demographic was revealed to them, they either blamed the victims or the victims families. Racists against white people I suppose