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.

@Flaxmeadow

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!!

People have to make excuses as to why this isn’t a clear cut case of Asian men abusing white girls, they have to add qualifiers and what it’s and attempt to muddy the waters.

White victims get more sympathy is one of those ‘facts’ that gets thrown about, even when it’s demonstrably untrue.
In this case being white denied the girls access to justice because according to the official report, they didn’t want to ‘rock the race relations boat’

It doesn’t match up to their narrative that white privilege clearly doesn’t exist in the way they believe, as trump card.

I think in the case of crime reporting and investigations into crime, white privilege does exist, but for women, only when the victim is a clean-cut young girl. In the Yorkshire ripper case, for example, the prostitutes murdered were victim-blamed and disbelieved. It was only when a 'respectable' young girl who worked in a bank was murdered that the press and the public in general started to show any sympathy.
Incidentally, from recommendations on this thread, I've been reading 'Why I'm No Longer Speaking to White People About Race'. I found the first chapter very informative about the history of race relations in the UK. About a third of the way through though, I'm finding there's less reliable data and less thorough analysis being used when making claims about systemic racism and the current state of affairs in the UK. Bringing it back to 'white feminism', what stands out from the book as that absolutely zero examples have been given of women crying 'white tears' or committing racist acts. It is male violence of a territorial nature that is the issue in all examples given - men rioting, striking, murdering on account of competition for jobs and ownership of white women. White women appear in the book so far only in the interracial relationships that white men violently react to. I therefore stand by what I said before that this focus on white women crying 'white tears' to get POC in trouble seems to be a misogynistic attempt to shift blame and a seed sown to attempt to divide us.

It's always very striking to me how many prominent black men almost always have white wives or partners. There's a whole discussion to be had about that which is separate from this thread but I never cease to find it entirely fascinating.

@Flaxmeadow

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

You know what is odd about this at a basic level though - it's not like non-white gangs are unheard of in the US. Or that they never target white women when you are looking at the drug trade or pimping and such. I'm not aware of that happening systematically but that does not mean you don't get non-white gang members who exploit women who happen to be white.

I don't think the problem is just about the situation being different in the US vs the UK.

@VladmirsPoutine

It's always very striking to me how many prominent black men almost always have white wives or partners. There's a whole discussion to be had about that which is separate from this thread but I never cease to find it entirely fascinating.

Yes it's not a very inspiring phenomenon. I'm not black but I find it great when a well-respected black man's partner or wife is also black. For example; Barack Obama and Idris Elba 😍😍

"Yes it's not a very inspiring phenomenon. I'm not black but I find it great when a well-respected black man's partner or wife is also black. For example; Barack Obama and Idris Elba 😍😍"

I think that's understandable, but at the same time it makes me uneasy that we should give or withhold approval on people's partners dependent on their race at all - it's not like you can specifically choose to love someone of your own race over someone of a different race. I had a female black friend who was in love with a white man and felt guilty about it - just why?! He was a lovely guy. I just think it's a personal matter and no-one else's business. On the other side of the coin, I've dated both black and Asian men and I was horrified by the way we'd get hassle out in public - by white men, mainly. I've also had attitude from black women when out with a friend in an RnB club, as though I was there to 'take their men' - lol, as if! I just think it's unhelpful to reduce people to their skin colour and see anyone of any race as 'taking their men/women' - other people don't belong to you.

@Flaxmeadow & @LouiseBelchersBunnyEars so all of the publicity when the case was uncovered was not aided by the fact it was white victims with Muslim perpetrators? They didn’t get justice for a long time due to the police being wary of seeming racist (which was wrong) but the publicity was most definitely due to the fact they were able to show white victims. Also if there mothers who were victims weren’t white that would mean there were non-white victims... if you can’t see your own bias in this discussion there is an issue.

In this case if you were to dig beyond the publicity it was clear that these men targeted girls from a disadvantaged background.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306396819895727

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/19/home-office-report-grooming-gangs-not-muslim

However you carry on with your dog whistle on a thread trying to show it happens in feminism.

@Novelusername

I think in the case of crime reporting and investigations into crime, white privilege does exist, but for women, only when the victim is a clean-cut young girl. In the Yorkshire ripper case, for example, the prostitutes murdered were victim-blamed and disbelieved. It was only when a 'respectable' young girl who worked in a bank was murdered that the press and the public in general started to show any sympathy. Incidentally, from recommendations on this thread, I've been reading 'Why I'm No Longer Speaking to White People About Race'. I found the first chapter very informative about the history of race relations in the UK. About a third of the way through though, I'm finding there's less reliable data and less thorough analysis being used when making claims about systemic racism and the current state of affairs in the UK. Bringing it back to 'white feminism', what stands out from the book as that absolutely zero examples have been given of women crying 'white tears' or committing racist acts. It is male violence of a territorial nature that is the issue in all examples given - men rioting, striking, murdering on account of competition for jobs and ownership of white women. White women appear in the book so far only in the interracial relationships that white men violently react to. I therefore stand by what I said before that this focus on white women crying 'white tears' to get POC in trouble seems to be a misogynistic attempt to shift blame and a seed sown to attempt to divide us.

There are examples that WoC could give you regarding white tears sadly I cannot share the examples I know of as they are not mine. However, suffice to say a white woman threw a tonne of racist nonsense at my friend and when she spoke up about it this woman cried and HR rallied for the white woman. Her colleagues didn’t and were her (my friends) strength while it was raging on in the background. That’s the most recent example.

...so all of the publicity when the case was uncovered was not aided by the fact it was white victims with Muslim perpetrators?

The case? You think there is just one case? There has been dozens of gangs convicted so far. Convictions, even multiple gang convictions, in just about every town and city in Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire

They didn’t get justice for a long time due to the police being wary of seeming racist (which was wrong) but the publicity was most definitely due to the fact they were able to show white victims.

White victims who in court gave evidence that they had also been racially abused by the gangs

Also if there mothers who were victims weren’t white that would mean there were non-white victims...

But they were white

if you can’t see your own bias in this discussion there is an issue

Well I could say the same to you

In this case if you were to dig beyond the publicity it was clear that these men targeted girls from a disadvantaged background.

No they target any white girl or woman, who they, by their own admission, see as 'white slags'

The link to the Guardian article you provided is based on a report which studied 6 towns/regions. Not one of those places in the report was in Greater Manchester and West/South Yorkshire (combined pop approx 8m) . So forgive me if I can't take the report seriously.

However you carry on with your dog whistle on a thread trying to show it happens in feminism.

Please don't lecture me or tell me what to say on where I live and all about the victims I know here.

People are still minimising these extremely serious and widespread crimes in the north of England. Shut up and go away still seems to be the reaction, and hey pronouns in emails and all that

@Flaxmeadow

...so all of the publicity when the case was uncovered was not aided by the fact it was white victims with Muslim perpetrators?

The case? You think there is just one case? There has been dozens of gangs convicted so far. Convictions, even multiple gang convictions, in just about every town and city in Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire

They didn’t get justice for a long time due to the police being wary of seeming racist (which was wrong) but the publicity was most definitely due to the fact they were able to show white victims.

White victims who in court gave evidence that they had also been racially abused by the gangs

Also if there mothers who were victims weren’t white that would mean there were non-white victims...

But they were white

if you can’t see your own bias in this discussion there is an issue

Well I could say the same to you

In this case if you were to dig beyond the publicity it was clear that these men targeted girls from a disadvantaged background.

No they target any white girl or woman, who they, by their own admission, see as 'white slags'

The link to the Guardian article you provided is based on a report which studied 6 towns/regions. Not one of those places in the report was in Greater Manchester and West/South Yorkshire (combined pop approx 8m) . So forgive me if I can't take the report seriously.

However you carry on with your dog whistle on a thread trying to show it happens in feminism.

Please don't lecture me or tell me what to say on where I live and all about the victims I know here.

People are still minimising these extremely serious and widespread crimes in the north of England. Shut up and go away still seems to be the reaction, and hey pronouns in emails and all that

If my prejudice is that it’s not a colour thing but a male thing to groom young girls, then yes I’m prejudiced. Sadly the evidence favours me over you, you chose to ignore evidence which doesn’t support your agenda. Like there were victims that weren’t white and as a PP stated a victims mum was not white...

There are examples that WoC could give you regarding white tears sadly I cannot share the examples I know of as they are not mine.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I think discussions about 'white feminism' are important to have, and it's important for WOC to speak and white women to listen without defensiveness. The thing that gets my back up though, and does bring out my defensiveness - I'd argue fairly - are absolute statements such as 'white women don't experience racism' as someone said on the previous thread. This is not true and it's dangerous for vulnerable white women if that idea is enforced. Reading Eddo-Lodge, I agree with a lot of what she's saying, but unfortunately social media culture leaves little room for detailed discussion, and so women are written off as 'white feminists' as a slur if they even dare as question anything about the current mantras we're all supposed to be chanting.

From what I gather from the child grooming cases, both white and non-white girls were targeted. There was also racial abuse towards the white girls involved, you can hear a victim talk in detail about her experiences here.

I remember one of the ringleaders 'daddy' also made a speech in court along the lines of Western girls being slags (sorry, I couldn't find the actual speech just now, so those weren't his exact words).

...so all of the publicity when the case was uncovered was not aided by the fact it was white victims with Muslim perpetrators?

What a nasty comment, but one of many by this poster belittling and diminishing the horrific abuse the girls in Rotherham, Rochdale suffered.

Not directly related to feminism, but definitely related to discussions around 'whiteness' etc.

I enjoy listening to John McWhorter and he articulates many of the same thoughts I have, but much more eloquently.

Interview segment starts at 7:20 and runs to 22:10.

@MissBarbary

...so all of the publicity when the case was uncovered was not aided by the fact it was white victims with Muslim perpetrators?

What a nasty comment, but one of many by this poster belittling and diminishing the horrific abuse the girls in Rotherham, Rochdale suffered.

Yes, didn't the abuse towards hundreds of girls, go on for years and years, ignored by most services, including the police. A horrible comment and the ways these cases were (not) dealt with is hardly a shining example of 'white privilege' in action.

I think the discussion around white feminism and indeed white privilege is unfair to use to explain or counter what happened to those young girls in Rotheram. They were failed at countless junctions and it really did hit me hard that nobody seemed to give a shit about them. No amount of counselling or justice can really ever make them okay, and they were truly failed by not only those trusted to support them but also by systems in place to ensure that those things don't happen.

There is no one principle that explains grooming gangs; they involve a combination of factors.

One factor in the grooming gangs in the North of England were racist attitudes towards white women and girls by men from some Asian communities.

It is harder to understand grooming gangs if we do not understand the racist attitudes they hold.

We are not going to understand how to prevent crime of any kind if we mischaracterise a crime because it doesn’t fit with our own pet theories.

I am non white, but I don’t find the idea of privilege useful or classifying all racism as the same. I personally think different groups experience racism in relation to different things and from different groups (some of whom may also be minority groups themselves).

I think sexism again is experienced differently in different groups too. The sexism that people from E European communities experience may be different from welsh people - though they may be both seen as white. Sexism is fairly overt in my culture - I’ve seen a lot more of it there than in English culture and my relations with English people (but maybe that’s just due to who I know). Things are moving in the right direction though.

Not commented for a while as just been thinking about it all.

One thing I’m reflecting on is that at the same time that I do think whiteness, white feminism and white privilege are very useful concepts, there are - perhaps unsurprisingly - an awful lot of things that they don’t entirely explain, and scenarios in which they aren’t the most useful concepts to draw on to understand the situation. The issue of grooming gangs could be one of these things. I’m not sure.

I will agree with @Namenic that there is a lot of discrimination within Europe between people who are all considered “white”. Probably racism is the wrong term to apply to this, but I remain convinced that here are some very significant dynamics operating and that they too have significant consequences at a macro level, whether it is to do with people in the UK fearing migrants from Eastern Europe being criminals, or Northern Europeans harbouring beliefs about Southern European lax work ethics which go on to influence EU economic policy. I think that in the rush to apply critical race theory to everything, a lot of very significant issues like this could be missed. Or we could come back to the fact that whiteness as privilege still has to be applied contextually.

The more I am reading the more I am connecting “whiteness” to a set of beliefs that reside in a colonialist approach. It is fascinating and scary to me is how this colonialist mindset continues to perpetuate itself. However, in 2021 I also think that we also need to be clear that everyone is not perpetuating this to the same extent. Some white people might not be particularly significant agents in this, though we carry with us the encoded technologies of these dynamics which we have to critically examine and attempt to shed. Meanwhile some non-white governments at least are perpetuating neo-colonialism. Again, if you boil everything down to whiteness literally as “people with white skin”, some very problematic power dynamics could be missed.

And back to white feminism specifically, I feel that for me the meaning of this has crystallised around feminism that upholds the darkest sides of capitalism which is inextricably linked to continued colonialism and extraction. Clearly a female CEO at the top of an exploitative company or as the head of a fascist government is not a win for anyone.

Also this week I thought this was a brilliant episode of Thinking Allowed looking at colonialism and the English countryside. Really worth a listen. The way in which the violence of colonialism can be found just beneath the surface of what we consider to be peaceful and quintessentially British is really interesting! www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vh5d

I also meant to say that following on from the point by @Namenic about differently experienced sexism, that inter white discrimination I believe can perpetuate this sexism and mean that it is experienced differently by different groups. There are so many ways in which this may be. Some examples are that Western and Northern European ideas about productivity have this hegemony that can look upon some women as “unproductive” if their roles are not monetised. At the same time, I know my British sensibilities are considered almost intolerably unladylike in my DF’s culture - even he struggles with me in that regard - because a woman failing to uphold certain things makes you almost un-woman. Yet at the same time, his lifelong advice was to marry outside the culture, because of this “oppressive” aspect. Yet, also that for a British person, women adhering to some of these expectations of women in his culture can lead to a British person discriminating against them because from our context to uphold those things feels very “regressive”. So... there’s just so much depth there. So many layers.

Something to think about, maybe, is that it was not that long ago that different sorts of Europeans largely thought of each other, and spoke, as if they were different races. To be a French person was quite different to being English, or German, a different kind of person.

I'm not sure how the concept of "whiteness" interfaces with that, but I also wonder about whether that would imply we should extend the meaning of blackness?

To me both seem to be essentialising skin colour and equating them to other things, so an inherently racist perspective.

I’m not totally clear how whiteness interfaces with that either. I understand that Europe developed some pseudoscientific ideas about race that brought these groups together under a single banner. I also understand that particularly in migrating to the US and gaining labour rights these disparate groups in some sense became “white” through that process. I understand that whiteness is an emergent property of slavery because it’s a means to justify it on the basis of inherent difference. I still feel that there are a lot of blanks to fill in though. I’m sure also that people of colour feel that European history has been centred for too long anyway and probably don’t want to hear anymore about it! But I do kind of feel that for white people themselves it is still important to develop a full understanding of our position and I just don’t think it’s there yet.

This book looks interesting, I think I’ll try to get a copy www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/emma-dabiri-what-white-people-can-do-next

Something to think about, maybe, is that it was not that long ago that different sorts of Europeans largely thought of each other, and spoke, as if they were different races. To be a French person was quite different to being English, or German, a different kind of person.

Wasn't this more by nationality than race.

The idea that Europeans saw themselves as racial different seems to be more an American thing

Considering that race is a social construct, it’s not so easy to define the difference between things like race, nationality and ethnicity. The way these words align in different European languages is also not straightforward. I would say it’s more of an American thing that these groups are lumped together.