Against White Feminism

[Allycott]

Yesterday I heard an interview with the author of this book. I listened to her views and rationale for writing the book.

Has anyone read it?

The way to protect your position is to do what you were put there to do and do it well.

if that has always been enough throughout your career, then you have been very fortunate

Regarding the book, I plan to read it. I don't melt if I read stuff that I disagree with! It may possibly help me understand America better.

However, I have my doubts that it will make me a better sister to British women from ethnic minorities in the UK, after the comments on twitter. Joan Smith's username is clearly a riff on the "dumb blonde" trope. She was establishing her career as a force to be reckoned with back when misogynistic "dumb blonde" jokes were all-pervasive, and one of the ways to deal with that type of misogyny is to get in there first with a joke yourself. This is why Jo Brand always opened higs with a fat joke. If you're not familiar enough with UK culture to spot that, then it is going to be a very US-centric book.

CorrBlimey's post hasn't helped either. If you can see that institutional racism in the UK leads to disproportionate incarceration rates for women from some communities, and yet plug placing white males like Karen White, Jessica Brennan in prisons with those same women, then I see an absence of logic in your thought patterns. I wouldn't normally be following you for book recommendations on goodreads!

But for the sake of being fair, I will read the book rather than condemn it on the basis of another reader's personal foolishness.

But that's what I mean @Jaysmith71 - I literally have never heard it used except about white men. Or at most a group of mixed race men/boys.

Gang is the word used for groups of Asian and black men in the U.K.

@CorrBlimeyGG

Feminism often fails to be intersectional, and chooses to ignore the particular issues faced by women of colour. Keep ignoring that fact and you remain part of the problem.

paid sick leave; maternity leave; maternity pay; a free at the point of need healthcare system; a different prison system

Women of colour are more likely to be in low paid work with poor benefits. They have worse health outcomes, particularly in maternity care. They're far more likely to be sent to prison than their white counterparts.

But yes, all fine here. Right?

Intersectionality does nothing for those who genuinely need a hand up, or more space, or a better start. It is ghastly: racist and sexist.

You, for example are illustrating the typically racist thing of seeing all women of colour as the same. The experience of a black woman in the UK is not the same as black woman in the US for example. The experience of a black woman in the UK is not the same as the experience of an Asian woman in the UK. And the experience of a black woman of African heritage in the UK is not the same as the experience of a black woman of Caribbean heritage.

There will a multiplicity of other factors making up someone's background - to focus only of the headline features of race or sex is both racist and sexist and misleading. Their family background (ie stable, two parents, or otherwise), their social class, their religion, their educational ability, whether they are disabled, their position in the sibling order (first borns have a statistical privilege - when did you last centre that for a child number 2 or 3?) even their looks, even their height, can all have an effect. They best thing to do is to treat people as people - that gets everyone the best help by enabling a teacher, social worker or medic to assess a person's individual needs, instead of making the person needing help a tick box on a chart so some intersectional warrior can make themselves feel better by literal point scoring.

Thanks for the good article by Tomiwa Owolade, whoever posted it.

And thanks, Embarrassing, for that v useful info on baking US/UK - I had no idea! This explains a lot.

@PermanentTemporary

I'd love to hear recommendations of books that do enlighten in the UK context. I'm quite intrigued to read this one tbh. British racism is rife but different and there's no doubt how intersectionality works over here will be different too.

I really enjoyed Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga. Obviously not a feminist work but gave a very readable account of Black British history. It's on audible as well.

Another vote for Olusoga. For an academic history of British Empire slavery, James Walvin. And for a rattling good read about the British Empire, James/Jan Morris Pax Britannia triology.

Thanks @HPFA for sharing that article. I thought the ending nailed it, illustrating that there are "those of us who believe in tolerance and those whose minds have been degraded by a politics that speaks the language of compassion but is in practice vindictive."

One of the troubles of intersectionality is it ignore when the power pyramid does not do what they think it does in terms of 'privilege' - like the white girls of Rotherham or Oldham, but also historically - in 1914-18 you were definitely better off being a young woman than a young man. Pre the legislation legalising homosexuality you were better off being a lesbian than a gay man, during the aids crisis of the 80s and 90s, you were better off being a lesbian than a gay man. don't get me wrong, I believe there is much sexism and racism existing today but I don't think focusing on it to the exclusion of all else helps. It is why I hate all women shortlists - it is patronising and in politics for example ends with poor quality candidates like Claudia Webbe getting through. The bigot sees the poor quality woman in the job and assumes they're all like that and has his (or her) views reinforced.

Her twitter feed comes across as though it was written by a teenager.

It's a shame she has to take such a divisive tone. And that she presumes her US centric critique is at all translatable to the UK. It guess it just shows how little she knows.

There are valid points and discussions to be had about diversity within Feminism. But her book isn't the place to have them.

You, for example are illustrating the typically racist thing of seeing all women of colour as the same. The experience of a black woman in the UK is not the same as black woman in the US for example. The experience of a black woman in the UK is not the same as the experience of an Asian woman in the UK. And the experience of a black woman of African heritage in the UK is not the same as the experience of a black woman of Caribbean heritage.

And you really can't talk about the experience of black American women as if they were the same either. The black middle class is not a small number of people, something like 40% of the black population, many of whom live in the suburbs right nest to white middle class people and work white collar jobs. Some more recent black immigrant groups have had quite a different experience than the longer-standing black population - Nigerian-Americans are one of the most successful ethnic groups in the country. And then if you expand to other identities that now sometimes call themselves black or brown, there are even more variables. Both economic, social, and political.

It is borderline tragic and amusing to see white feminists switching from happily branding all men as a homogenous mass riding a tidal wave of privilege, to suddenly trying to justify their own with 'but it isn't the same for everyone - you need to look at the complexity'. What's that word beginning with 'H'...? Society is rather nuanced after all, I guess.

For anyone looking for a more nuanced take on the subject (I'm sorry, I can't take anyone seriously who posts 'okay boomer' repeatedly on Twitter, this woman from the OP just sounds like an idiot) Roxane Gay's column on privilege and intersectionality was a really nuanced and thoughtful read, I thought. (Gay is American.)

The column is nearly 10 years old.

therumpus.net/2012/05/peculiar-benefits/

It is borderline tragic and amusing to see white feminists switching from happily branding all men as a homogenous mass riding a tidal wave of privilege, to suddenly trying to justify their own with 'but it isn't the same for everyone - you need to look at the complexity'. What's that word beginning with 'H'...? Society is rather nuanced after all, I guess.

I don't think feminists brand men as a homogeneous mass. Yes, in the way that we don't know which men might abuse us, but I think we're sophisticated enough to know that an Oxbridge educated CEO of a multinational company or a vice chancellor of a university has more privilege than Jason the plumber.

White privilege certainly exists but the current attacks on 'white feminism' are both an undermining of those forms of feminism which present the biggest challenge to male behaviour and yet another way of placing all society's ills on the shoulders of women. None of this is asking anything of men. Why is this writer more angry with women than men? Why is this all about women scrapping over the crumbs and letting men carry on eating the cake?

@JurgenKloppsCat

It is borderline tragic and amusing to see white feminists switching from happily branding all men as a homogenous mass riding a tidal wave of privilege, to suddenly trying to justify their own with 'but it isn't the same for everyone - you need to look at the complexity'. What's that word beginning with 'H'...? Society is rather nuanced after all, I guess.

I suspect you'll find people here have a variety of opinions. I don't think class privileged in as used in identity politics is a useful construct, nor do I think that patriarchy is a useful construct. I do think that the fact that we are a sexually reproducing species means that reproductive role can impact the structure of society and human behaviour when analysed at a population level. I certainly think that any assumption that every man has more power or advantage than every women is incorrect, and that in some areas such as education women on the whole may be advantaged in some ways over men.

One of the significant differences between sex and most other identity characteristics is that it is fundamentally about a material difference that impacts us in many concrete ways, even apart from culture. Whereas constructs like race could actually be completely extinguished if we lost the idea of them - people of a specific race aren't materially different than other people.

Others will have their own perspectives.

wrt accounts of history that are eye-opening, earlier this year I read part of an academic text that shocked me as I'd never heard of this phenomenon in England in a context other than faith-based schools:

The 'desegregation' of English schools
Bussing, race and urban space, 1960s-80s

Dispersal, or 'bussing', was introduced in England in the early-1960s after white parents expressed concerns that the sudden influx of non-Anglophone South Asian children was holding back their own children's education. It consisted in sending busloads of mostly Asian children to predominantly white suburban schools in an effort to 'spread the burden' and to promote linguistic and cultural integration. Although seemingly well-intentioned, dispersal proved a failure: it was based on racial identity rather than linguistic deficiency and ultimately led to an increase in segregation, as bussed pupils were daily confronted with racial bullying in dispersal schools. This is the first ever book on English bussing, based on an in-depth study of local and national archives, alongside interviews with formerly-bussed pupils decades later.

manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526148018/

Privilege takes different forms. One of my friends is white and middle-class with a good job but a fairly elderly, alcoholic homeless man was able to beat her to a pulp and hospitalise her. He was lucid enough to target the lone woman rather than one of the many men who were in the busy vicinity. I guess this shows how privilege is always relative. In most other aspects of life she was more privileged than this man but he still had the power to kill her with his bare hands if he chose, and he still had his misogyny.

I'm American and I just went into my refrigerator and looked at the ingredients on my milk carton. It said "organic milk, vitamin D3." I guess that's two things. But is that so horrible?

That's really interesting EmbarrassingAdmissions.

And a reminder that black British actors of proven ability frequently go to other countries, especially the US, because they just cannot make any headway in the UK. If it's happening in theatre it's happening in other industries.

And a reminder that black British actors of proven ability frequently go to other countries, especially the US, because they just cannot make any headway in the UK.

They definitely get more opportunities over there. Someone like David Ajala, so good in Star Trek DIscovery, who had a small part in the Kidulthood series but couldn't get past the typecasting after that.

British black actors in the US show they are British by their ability to play characters rather than versions of themselves. Acting is being what you're not.

white parents expressed concerns that the sudden influx of non-Anglophone South Asian children was holding back their own children's education.

The irony there is that in many towns and cities, RC Schools survive only because they are favoured by some British Muslims who prefer a Christian school to what they regard as a godless school.

I fully understand that racism does exist as does sexism. However, both are wider social problems. To focus on 'white women' as being the cause and/or problem of racism or the main demographic that needs to shift is simply ridiculous.

In a very male-dominated profession where black men outnumber white and black women should a black man give up a CEO position or similar for a black or a white woman?

[quote ArabellaScott]For anyone looking for a more nuanced take on the subject (I'm sorry, I can't take anyone seriously who posts 'okay boomer' repeatedly on Twitter, this woman from the OP just sounds like an idiot) Roxane Gay's column on privilege and intersectionality was a really nuanced and thoughtful read, I thought. (Gay is American.)

The column is nearly 10 years old.

therumpus.net/2012/05/peculiar-benefits/[/quote]
That was an interesting read, thank you.

This has been a thought provoking discussion, and has prompted me to reasses where I donate money, and volunteer my time.

I thought it was an interesting read too and was curious about the author, Roxane Gay. I had a look and see that she supported the letter which was a coded denouncement of JK Rowling.

It seems that when Gay (stated pronouns she/her) has a sense of what's at stake for her she urges nuance and care and when she doesn't see how she might be affected, it's time to jump onto a passing bandwagon.

When it comes to identity politics, a lot can change in 8 years.

Here's the problem: The author does make some good points. But she aims herr ire at white feminists, when she needs to aim her ire at the patriarchal power structure that allows these harmful things to happen. . Here on Mumsnet, some people either honestly don't understand the context of American politics (in which the author is operating), so they honestly have a hard time evaluating what the author is getting at, and others are showing a genuinely bigoted reaction "Americans..like their bread...melting..." which cloud their judgment. That kind of bigotry is just stupid when we need solidarity as women to fight against the harm of gender ideology. Plainly, even if intersectionality was originally an American idea, those British individuals who chose to adopt it were not helpless victims who had no choice about what ideas they could or could not have, unless the British are an incredibly weak-minded people. I think the British are as intelligent as any other humans and can agree to, reject, or even come up with their own ideas, just like anyone ese.