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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism as Racist Backlash

64 replies

IwantToRetire · 10/03/2023 16:54

Just in case you weren't aware that women are to blame for everything, now you can learn how feminism is an extention of racism! (Although it implies that 21st Century Feminism is not driven by Racism?)

How Racism Drove the Development of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Feminist Theory - part of the University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts and Humanities Decolonisation Series

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/feminism-as-racist-backlash-fah-decolonisation-series-tickets-522058409757?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

OP posts:
mach2 · 10/03/2023 19:04

He is also arguing that it is misandrist

Bloody hell, the full set. I wonder at which point identity politics will eat its own body.

ApocalipstickNow · 10/03/2023 19:20

TheMatriarchy · 10/03/2023 18:54

I don't understand why white women are the enemy. When I look out across the world at the brutal subjugation of my black & brown sisters in the global majority, I feel nothing but fury & solidarity. And if they look up, it's not a woman's boot on their neck, it's a man's. United we stand, but divided we fall.

I think the explanation is right there in what you said.

Women are the enemy (to other women) because of the man’s boot on the neck. Don’t look at us, look at other women kind of thing.

EsmaCannonball · 10/03/2023 19:25

These days the UK suffragists are frequently accused of not campaigning against racism and for the working class. Firstly, this isn't true. Secondly, why would anyone in power care what women think about race and class unless women have the vote? Women are always expected to put everyone else first.

Grammarnut · 10/03/2023 19:42

namitynamechange · 10/03/2023 17:24

If I wanted to paint feminism in the UK context as bad/regressive I would concentrate in the interest in eugenics some of the women's rights campaigners in the 19th and early 20th century had. But that would ignore the fact that pre WW2 not everyone understood the horror of where that would lead. And also of course the fact that the eugenics movement originated in California and was considered at the time to be the height of progressiveness. Thank goodness people over there no longer think sterilising mentally ill or "inverted" children/adults .puts them on the right side of history....

I see what you did there, with 'right side of history'.

Grammarnut · 10/03/2023 19:56

nepeta · 10/03/2023 17:26

From that page:

By looking at the primary racial target of feminist thought and activism over the centuries, the Black male, I argue scholars can more accurately trace the theories feminists used to derail Black American’s struggle for civil rights.

An unusual take. But then he is professor of Black Male Studies, not professor of Black Female Studies, so that will affect his approach.

I would have thought that the primary racial target of feminist thought and activism over the centuries, if 'a primary racial (rather than sex class) target' could be argued to exist, would have been the white male, given that the societies where most feminist theory was written down were populated by white people and ruled by white men.

Feminism had and has racist elements, just as anti-racist movements had and have sexist elements (Stokely Carmichael's comment etc.), but this take really is extremely weird, and entirely US centred. Feminist theory was created in many countries.

He's a racist as well as a misogynist. And takes US history to be the history of the world. And decolonisation is a system for suggesting that magical theories and methods are the equivalent of the scientific method, suggesting that the scientific method is eurocentric, when it is not. Lot of bollocks, and Tommy Curry appears to be a main proponent of it.

Maduixa · 10/03/2023 20:50

namitynamechange · 10/03/2023 17:19

To be fair, there is truth to the argument that the extension of the vote to women in America was in part argued for as a counter to concern about giving black men the vote. But that only applies to America whilst doubtless there was/is racism in the UK people weren't ever denied the vote on the basis of their skin. So whilst that history is undoubtedly interesting in its own right it doesn't really relate to the progress of the UK suffrage movement at all. Just an example of the way in which "American history" is read as being world history.

This isn't directed at you specifically, namitynamechange, just wanted to take your observation as a jumping-off point as there were a few questions on the US background (re women's suffrage and racism) on the thread -

In the mid-1800s, various campaigns to extend suffrage in the USA (at the time confined to white male property owners) coalesced. The largest, most organised groups advocated for (1) women, (2) blacks, and (3) working class and lower middle class urban people excluded by the property restriction. Because a change to the franchise USA-wide required a change to the US constitution (which is a huge deal, requiring either a 2/3 majority in both Houses of Congress OR a simple majority in 2/3 of the state legislatures), campaigners thought it made sense to plead the various cases together so a single amendment could be agreed and implemented to make the franchise “fair”.

When the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution took effect in 1870, it said: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Women were still 100% excluded in spite of the organising and work they had done. It took another 50 years, until 1920, for women to be guaranteed the vote via the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which said: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

During the intervening fifty years, campaigns also continued for universal suffrage, for removal of the requirement to own property, and to combat laws that various states were introducing to inhibit black men from voting, such as literacy tests. Because the women’s suffrage groups were well-organised and often had the ear of influential men through personal connections, the other groups wanted their help in campaigning. Many women/groups did want to do this, but there was also strong feeling that sharing resources with other groups might have contributed to being excluded from the 1870 Constitutional changes. They decided to sharply target a Constitutional amendment specifically disallowing discrimination based on sex, no distractions. Once this was done, women campaigners could use their new powers to help other groups with their aims.

It’s also complicated by differences by individual state. The earliest woman in Congress were elected before the Constitution was amended in 1920, running in states where the law had already changed and they could count on women's votes. Campaigns took on different tones and focuses to placate and convince the local men, who in spite of a few elected woman still had most of the power to say yes or no. There were arguments that would be recognised as blatantly racist today used on occasion in the southern states, and classist and anti-immigrant examples used in the urban areas of the Northeast (for example)

Individual women may have personally been racist and classist and anti-immigrant. "Society" certainly was. But objectionable tactics and arguments were used, when they were used, mostly because they were effective. Not enough of the men who needed to be won over (remember, 2/3 majority) had been persuaded that arguments about equality, dignity, human rights, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", etc. (which HAD been decisive in the decision to remove the race restriction) applied to women. But many were persuaded by the idea that women from their own families, social groups, etc. would vote similarly to "their" men in the most important ways, diluting the impact of the expected influx of voters from other demographics (freed slaves and non-Anglo/W Euro/Christian immigrants included). The main arguments along those lines were not so much "give us the vote, not them", but more "giving the vote to everyone BUT women is a missed opportunity". Or something.

It's wrong that these things happened. They do have downstream impact. It certainly should be talked about and analysed, in a feminist context and in a US national context - both the race issues AND the class and nationality/immigration ones (the last sometimes also antisemitic). Individual state voting laws that were clearly discriminatory against black Americans weren't fully prohibited until 1965 - and even now, discrimination still occurs despite the law. But I'm personally wary of a male academic focusing even in a purely and clearly US context on the unique badness of the women involved, as a decisive historical driver, if he's ignoring the actions of contemporary men and the context of the patriarchal power structure. (I'm not sure if Curry does this; I've never heard of him before - but there's plenty of it all over social media and in my experience disproportionately from men.)

nilsmousehammer · 10/03/2023 21:18

IwantToRetire · 10/03/2023 18:15

I must admit I dont know much about American history (if any via Hollywood so not reliable!) but I thought many women in the Suffrage movement were also part of the anti slavery movement.

So did I. Louisa May Alcott for example, who was active in abolitionism and supported the underground railroad, and went on to become a Suffragette.

It does seem a never ending tide of male centred people thrashing around trying to find a justifiable reason why women having equality is a bad thing and no nice woman would want it. And when you look at why they are keen to find reasons, the linking factor is usually women having boundaries that inconvenience males who would like to use those women and a) not face consequences for it and b) not feel shame or experience censure for doing so.

GrinitchSpinach · 10/03/2023 23:06

THANK YOU, Maduixa, for taking the time to write that all out. A much better effort than my "it's complicated!" 😂

I'm personally wary of a male academic focusing even in a purely and clearly US context on the unique badness of the women involved, as a decisive historical driver, if he's ignoring the actions of contemporary men and the context of the patriarchal power structure.

This is such an important point.

IwantToRetire · 11/03/2023 00:09

For me the irony is given that the person proposing this has clearly quite a hard line on racism, and why shouldn't he.

But his platform is part of the white privilege system, where despite attempts at diverstiy, most students will be white.

Isn't he in danger of just be their token contribution to challenging racism, but with the added benefit of a very contemporary approach.^^

I've never quite understood why those with radical politics think the way to advance them is in elitist institutions.

^^ University ‘forces out’ diversity adviser for supporting bullied professor Kathleen Stock www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/university-forces-diversity-adviser-supporting-bullied-professor/

OP posts:
CryptoFascistMadameCholet · 11/03/2023 00:09

Well, this chap is a rather curious character isn’t he?

Has anyone got a spare share token for this?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/will-we-have-the-courage-to-topple-suffragette-statues-m7xx676lv

Somewhat curious as to why someone with a special interest in black male studies would land the at uni of Edinburgh (a city where 1% or less of the population are black men) and I found this article, about how Curry got himself into a bit of a pickle at a previous university in Texas:

amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/03/what-is-a-black-professor-in-america-allowed-to-say-tommy-j-curry

Feminism as Racist Backlash
Feminism as Racist Backlash
IwantToRetire · 11/03/2023 00:10

Just to say thanks to those who have posted info about history of US suffrage movement. Too tired to take it all in.

Also link to speed at WDI.

OP posts:
BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 11/03/2023 00:24

NotTerfNorCis · 10/03/2023 18:48

the primary racial target of feminist thought and activism over the centuries, the Black male

Way to centre feminism around men.

A reminder: it's not just white women who want equal rights.

Indeed. Even if we accept his assumption that the US is the world, how does he explain the women's rights activism of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth?

HorribleNecktie · 11/03/2023 00:54

TheMatriarchy · 10/03/2023 18:54

I don't understand why white women are the enemy. When I look out across the world at the brutal subjugation of my black & brown sisters in the global majority, I feel nothing but fury & solidarity. And if they look up, it's not a woman's boot on their neck, it's a man's. United we stand, but divided we fall.

And 9 times out of 10 the foot inside the boot on those women’s neck is the same colour as them.

Sazzasez · 11/03/2023 02:19

EndlessTea · 10/03/2023 17:21

Cheeky bugger. Feminism came about after women who fought for the abolition of slavery thought - “hang on a minute, we are chattel, what about our rights?”.

Indeed it did!

The first US convention for women’s rights in the US, Seneca Falls in 1848, came about because at a conference on abolishing slavery, the men voted that the women delegates should not be permitted to speak.

The main speaker at Seneca Falls who advocated fighting for the vote for women was Frederick Douglass - who was black & a former slave.

CryptoFascistMadameCholet · 11/03/2023 03:02

An article re: Curry’s move to Scotland

www.diverseeducation.com/latest-news/article/15104261/dr-tommy-j-curry-is-leaving-the-us-to-establish-black-male-studies-in-the-uk

EfingNora · 11/03/2023 07:15

A man mansplaining feminism and telling us uppity women how badly we've been doing it all along? Well what a surprise.

DemiColon · 11/03/2023 14:15

I am not convinced that any of this is real history. This is an instrumental historical exercise for some activist political purpose today. The idea that black men right now are commonly scared of white women because racially motivated lynchings instigated by false claims by specific white women several generations ago is quite the leap. As are other claims using the same logic.

nepeta · 11/03/2023 17:11

nilsmousehammer · 10/03/2023 21:18

So did I. Louisa May Alcott for example, who was active in abolitionism and supported the underground railroad, and went on to become a Suffragette.

It does seem a never ending tide of male centred people thrashing around trying to find a justifiable reason why women having equality is a bad thing and no nice woman would want it. And when you look at why they are keen to find reasons, the linking factor is usually women having boundaries that inconvenience males who would like to use those women and a) not face consequences for it and b) not feel shame or experience censure for doing so.

Yes, though now of course someone has argued that Alcott really wasn't a woman at all but probably a trans man...

The abolition movement had several of the women as active participants who later worked for women's rights. One woman abolitionist sailed to England for a meeting and when she got there found out that women were only allowed to be present behind a curtain (if I recall this right). That turned her into a feminist.

Sojourner Truth was certainly both an abolitionist and a feminist, the Grimke sisters etc.

IwantToRetire · 11/03/2023 17:30

Have just read the article about why he moved to Scotland, and more confusingly he talks about exploring the issue of racism in the Global South.

So dont see how focusing on (white) feminism in northern industrial countries will in any way be enlightening.

Who knows, maybe his lectures are fascinating, but stoopping to use clearly attention grabbing headline titles, seems to undermine what he might have to say.

Although who knows, maybe he will be able to show that poverty and exploitation in the global south is caused by all us Karens.

It reminds me a bit of 70s or was it 80s left politics here in the UK. Someone like Galloway, which may on one level work for a speech, would litter what he was saying about right wing politics with over the top analogies or clever word play.

It just seems that feminism has now become the go to menace to society from just about every corner of politics.

OP posts:
nepeta · 11/03/2023 17:39

IwantToRetire · 11/03/2023 17:30

Have just read the article about why he moved to Scotland, and more confusingly he talks about exploring the issue of racism in the Global South.

So dont see how focusing on (white) feminism in northern industrial countries will in any way be enlightening.

Who knows, maybe his lectures are fascinating, but stoopping to use clearly attention grabbing headline titles, seems to undermine what he might have to say.

Although who knows, maybe he will be able to show that poverty and exploitation in the global south is caused by all us Karens.

It reminds me a bit of 70s or was it 80s left politics here in the UK. Someone like Galloway, which may on one level work for a speech, would litter what he was saying about right wing politics with over the top analogies or clever word play.

It just seems that feminism has now become the go to menace to society from just about every corner of politics.

Feminism, as a movement, has always had weaker boundaries and a greater feeling of duty towards other oppressed groups. This is both bad and good, good because feminism has the ability to improve over time based on internal criticism, bad, because it causes these attacks from outside and because it can be taken over by other movements and their goals.

I think the best way to understand this professor is that his work aims to attack everything he feels attacks his persona.

That is one of the pitfalls of the current way of viewing social justice only from the viewpoint of suffering groups and not from the viewpoint of which phenomena actually cause injustice and how.

I can't express that in clearer terms yet, but I think we are losing sight of what actually causes institutional injustices of various kinds because, what the main causes are. For instance, intersectionality now sometimes only focuses on other axes of oppression than sex, even inside feminism. It's as if we focus only on the crossings of the streets and not that the streets are there and that being hit by even one lorry or bus will kill people, even though being hit by multiple ones will cause a surer death.

EndlessTea · 12/03/2023 09:33

Feminism, as a movement, has always had weaker boundaries and a greater feeling of duty towards other oppressed groups. This is both bad and good, good because feminism has the ability to improve over time based on internal criticism, bad, because it causes these attacks from outside and because it can be taken over by other movements and their goals.

Yes patriarchy, female socialisation and probably biological drives too, make it almost impossible to put women first for five seconds. Divide and conquer is easy. Getting women to undermine our own interests is easy. Getting women to accept blame and responsibility for men’s actions is easy. Getting women to turn ourselves inside out and tied up in knots of self-criticism - looking to make things better for others is easy.

The hardest thing is getting women to focus on women, while telling the men who want us subjugated, and their female handmaidens, to fuck off.

CryptoFascistMadameCholet · 12/03/2023 09:50

I think the best way to understand this professor is that his work aims to attack everything he feels attacks his persona.

I notice he’s written unfavourable stuff about BLM too.

Having read a few articles on him and skimmed through some of his own word salad I got the impression that he really wants to be some sort of firebrand-maverick-antagonist-type but got a bit scared when Texans pushed back against his ‘get guns, kill white people’ schtick, so he ran away to Scotland (no guns) and started attacking feminists (not likely to react with violence) from an academic ivory tower where he could be a big fish in a small pond (no real competition in the field of ‘Black Male Studies’ in Edinburgh).

TheBiologyStupid · 12/03/2023 12:34

namitynamechange · 10/03/2023 17:24

If I wanted to paint feminism in the UK context as bad/regressive I would concentrate in the interest in eugenics some of the women's rights campaigners in the 19th and early 20th century had. But that would ignore the fact that pre WW2 not everyone understood the horror of where that would lead. And also of course the fact that the eugenics movement originated in California and was considered at the time to be the height of progressiveness. Thank goodness people over there no longer think sterilising mentally ill or "inverted" children/adults .puts them on the right side of history....

Thank goodness people over there no longer think sterilising mentally ill or "inverted" children/adults .puts them on the right side of history....

Indeed, "progressives" would never support something like that. Oh, wait...!

Baaaaaa · 13/03/2023 10:01

namitynamechange · 10/03/2023 17:19

To be fair, there is truth to the argument that the extension of the vote to women in America was in part argued for as a counter to concern about giving black men the vote. But that only applies to America whilst doubtless there was/is racism in the UK people weren't ever denied the vote on the basis of their skin. So whilst that history is undoubtedly interesting in its own right it doesn't really relate to the progress of the UK suffrage movement at all. Just an example of the way in which "American history" is read as being world history.

The bit that stands out to me here is that black men got the vote before any women got the vote. More sexist than racist.

Proudtobeabitch · 07/06/2023 14:51

So much ignorance, even now, of what feminism is all about. To me it just means fair. I don't think the gender pay gap is fair. I don't think domestic violence is fair. I don't think the murder of a woman every 3 days in this country is fair. Are some women racists yes just as some men are racists. Did we cause racism absolutely not. When a black man is lynched for falling in love with a white woman the KKK will come after him whether the woman cares about him or not. Racists don't need an excuse. We can fight racism and misogyny at the same time. Don't black women suffer violence too?.
Feminists don't hate men; they just don't hate themselves. All women of every colour are my sisters.

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