Why is it socially acceptable to stereotype and vilify white women as a whole?

[TheTERFnextDoor]

I've seen this a lot recently, often from other white women bizarrely, and I don't understand why it's socially acceptable?

I think it goes without saying that in most groups, you get good and bad people. White women are surely no different in that respect? Yes, many of them are privileged, and they don't face the discrimination that other categories might. I accept that. However, that doesn't change the fact that they aren't some homogeneous mass of people, surely?

I am genuinely trying to learn here, so I'd appreciate all responses, particularly those that disagree

It's terrible behaviour. It also tells us nothing whatsoever about white women in general.

To follow up on something I said at 09:44 yesterday, it seems that some people like to sound as though they are ‘anti-oppression’, using all that lingo, but the truth is, they just want to be the oppressor themselves.

Yes. I think this is common. The most glaring example of this is probably the trans rights activist movement.

To this day I do not believe that the inaction of the authorities was due to the ethnicity of the perpetrators but rather to do with the low status of young teenage girls, especially if they are working class or in care. Which is where it is extremely annoying for people to bang on about their "privilege"

I agree with your second point, but political correctness was definitely a factor for the council in Rotherham, at least, an independent inquiry found.

caught up on the thread.

we've still not got to the bottom of how white women in the UK crying causes black men to be killed then.

I think I'm going to conclude that it's not a thing

That video is insane. A woman appears to have some kind of mental breakdown in Victoria's Secret, including screaming incoherently and throwing herself on the floor.

If anyone can explain how this video relates to the behaviour of white people in general and in the UK specifically I'd be grateful to hear it.

Another good example is after the mass New Year's sexual assaults in Cologne, the Guardian had the most hideously victim-blaming opinion piece I have ever seen.

Yes, I gave up on the Guardian at that point. They didn't report until they looked negligent for not doing so, then they produced a crappy thinkpiece about how the women sexually assaulted by migrants should be grateful for their smartphones. Then they also published a piece lying about the numbers of women assaulted and when called out, only made a correction in the below the line comments.

I never judge a woman for being afraid of a man.

To do so is misogynist.

This. White men pose a risk to women. Black men pose a risk to women. Christian men pose a risk to women. Muslim men pose a risk to women.

Yip. Women should follow their instincts, always. I've walked sharply away from many situations where I didn't feel safe, the men involved were white and if they felt bad or offended then it's tough.

I remember an ex boyfriend complaining that a woman crossed the road when he walked behind her, I had to explain a few things to him.

Yes it could have been a serial # mixup. I know she got the right bike, but he thought he did too and that it was on his account.

Sorry, when I said by his account and hers earlier, I should have been clearer that I wasn't talking about their citi bike accounts, but their accounts/retelling of what happened. So the boy's own story/account was that he knew the bike was not on his CB account at that point, but intended to use the bike later. So it wasn't a serial number mix up. Unfortunately, he only left the station on the bike 40 mins after first docking it, and, if someone else wants the bike and is willing to pay, you don't get to hog it that long without paying even if it is the much "coveted" and fairly rare ebike.

@JaneBeyre I would never deny the heinous legacy of the British Empire, but I also can’t understand why it’s accepted that some countries can/have made strides in addressing their pasts, but you’re saying that Australia apparently can’t?

Germany today is v. different from Nazi Germany 78 years ago, for example. Isn’t Australia v. different from its colonial past over 100 years ago? If not, why not?

Even the US has made progress in racial equality since the 1960’s, definitely not enough, but some. Are you saying that Australia hasn’t? Why not?

And, if @JaneBeyre is arguing that colonialism is still playing out, it's also a bit rich to be scolded about it by someone who - unless she is a First Australian - is one of the colonisers.

Youtube is full of idiots, of many different races, losing their shit and being prejudiced twits.

Does that really show us that these kinds of behavior are a common phenomena?

Because while I think sometimes you can draw some conclusions about cultural tropes from this stuff, the general situation is that there are just plenty of people out there who are manipulators, or psychopaths, or whatever, who lose their shit, cry, assault people, harass them, etc. Maybe on the basis of sex, or race, or something totally different, but really, that's not the point. THe point is they are not right in some way.

The only people they represent is themselves, or maybe other psychopaths and manipulators. This woman is just an example of herself, like the black man filmed on youtube racially harassing a family on the NY subway really only represents his own crazy self.

I remember an ex boyfriend complaining that a woman crossed the road when he walked behind her, I had to explain a few things to him.

YY. Men frequently get huffy about this.

I was once hurrying to catch my train and as I crossed Waterloo Bridge I sped up to a jog and a woman walking just up ahead of me turned round with a look of fear in her eyes which turned to sheer relief when she saw I was a woman.

I understood exactly why she was afraid and felt terrible for scaring her.

Another thing to consider about a lot of YouTube clips and TikToks, etc, is that there are a number of people who want to go viral and will do whatever it takes, so things aren’t always that authentic. “Look at this momma dog begging to rescue her puppies from a well!” - Its worth questioning who put the puppies down the well?

People willingly perform to stereotypes- for example young women being ‘dumb blondes’ on purpose- they’ll be conventionally attractive, young, wearing short shorts and a top with skinny straps - so showing skin but not overtly provocative, but attempting something really stupid, which is bound to fail - giggling and gasping “wow this is sooo coool!” basically engineering people to look for a long as possible (advertising $$$) and get lots of shares ($$$) with a comment like ‘look at these dumb blonde b*tches’.

There are also staged ‘Karen’ shorts too, or ‘racist’ people. In fact my DC showed me there is a sub culture of spoofing these set up ‘racist caught in the act’ videos. Eg- a black guy will be wheeling himself in a wheelchair saying “sheesh I’m so glad I just got my scholarship into Harvard, I have been studying so hard!” And then an evil ‘Karen’ comes out and says “Go back to your own country!” and he’ll say “Ma’am, I’ve lived here all my life and want to study”…. You get the picture.

There is a demand for ‘Karen’ clips, so people who want to go viral will deliver them.

*@JaneBeyreI would never deny the heinous legacy of the British Empire, but I also can’t understand why it’s accepted that some countries can/have made strides in addressing their pasts, but you’re saying that Australia apparently can’t?

Germany today is v. different from Nazi Germany 78 years ago, for example. Isn’t Australia v. different from its colonial past over 100 years ago? If not, why not?

Even the US has made progress in racial equality since the 1960’s, definitely not enough, but some. Are you saying that Australia hasn’t? Why not?*

I don't know - I think about it a lot. I'm not a historian or academic but my observations are that Germany is a country that has developed a whole culture around Vergangenheitsbewältigung or coming to terms with the past - if you visit a place of Nazi significance there will be signs telling you exactly what happened there, there is no hiding what they did, no telling people that the past is the past and move on.

They also had the Nuremberg Trials which I think made them face up to their own horror in a way the British Empire have never been made to do.

Australia was founded on the idea that the land was empty - terra nullius - and the little culture there was soon to die out – 'smooth the dying pillow' - ban them from speaking their language, pay them slave wages, take away their children during the Stolen Generations era, once you've taken the kids no one has any hope anyway.

In contrast to Germany, that mentality of white supremacy has never really been acknowledged. You go to Rottnest Island and it's a tourist paradise, very little to indicate it was a prison and a death camp for decades.

I am not saying no progress has been made. There is a resurgence of First Nations languages and writing and storytelling and art like the Seven Sisters exhibition that is touring the world, there is a lot of hope and more understanding. But there is still a lot of casual racism - just look at how a prominent First Nations journalist Stan Grant was more or less hounded out of his job through trolls attacking him.

ban them from speaking their language, pay them slave wages, take away their children during the Stolen Generations era, once you've taken the kids no one has any hope anyway

The British treated the First Australians appallingly, but all of these things continued for decades under Australian rule. The British did remove some First Australian children from their families, but this didn't become systemic till the 1910s, and it then continued until the late 60s. And the White Australia policies were brought in by an Australian government and not fully rescinded until the 1970s - more than 70 years after Australia gained independence.

As you're using Germany as a comparator, that would be like Germans having continued to enslave Jewish people and Roma until 2015 (70 years after the fall of the Nazis), and then blaming the Nazi policy in the 1940s for that continued oppression 7 decades later.

The British treated the First Australians appallingly, but all of these things continued for decades under Australian rule. The British did remove some First Australian children from their families, but this didn't become systemic till the 1910s, and it then continued until the late 60s.

The British set the standard for the treatment of First Nations (not First Australians btw, they predate the place called Australia by 60,000 or so years) with a racist white supremacist mindset that remains deeply entrenched in the culture. The British can not stand back and say that they don't have blood on their hands when it comes to the invasion of what is now Australia. The entire mindset that allowed people to walk into that place and say this is ours now is what the Empire was. And to try and back away from that is absurd.

And I'm not comparing what they did to what the Germans did, don't twist my words. I'm saying that the Germans owned up to their actions. And were made to face up to their deeds at the Nuremberg trials. There has never been an equivalent for Britain and it shows.

And were made to face up to their deeds at the Nuremberg trials. There has never been an equivalent for Britain and it shows.

That was the actual perpetrators, not their great-grandchildren.
What are you suggesting Britain does now, over a century later? No-one involved is still alive.

The British can not stand back and say that they don't have blood on their hands when it comes to the invasion of what is now Australia

No one has denied that, and the opening sentence of my last post explicitly acknowledged that. But it is absolutely pathetic to blame the racist actions of twentieth century Australians on the British.

However, I suspect the reason may be that you aren’t actually Australian. ‘First Australian’ is in very common usage for aboriginal people, alongside First Nations (just one example here).. I seriously doubt that anyone who disputes that is actually from Oz.

it's very important that british people who weren't alive when any of this stuff happened and don't live in australia admit their guilt for stuff they didn't do so that australians who live in australia where actual discrimination against first nation people is happening right now don't have to feel guilty about it

or something

And - if @JaneBeyre actually is Australian, she is one of the colonisers, whereas no one in the U.K. is. How deranged do you have to be, to want to try the great-grandchildren of the people who didn’t go to Australia, because you blame them for the actions of the people who actually did? It’s lunacy.

And were made to face up to their deeds at the Nuremberg trials. There has never been an equivalent for Britain and it shows

What you are saying is true in a general way, but I thought there was an awful lot that was still not talked about right up to the when Shoah was made. That in the 1980s Was the first full, real reckoning wasn’t it?

There we’re lots of secrets kept by grandparents I think.

There is an underbelly of Nazism still lurking too.

Indeed. 24 people were tried at Nuremberg, out of a population of 70 million. It certainly wasn’t any kind of general reckoning, and one of the main criticisms of the post-WW2 German states (FDR/DDR) was that no such reckoning took place.

For many white women, this is the most common kind of situation in which we are called 'Karen':

We are called 'Karen' by white men in altercations that have nothing to do with race.

I know what the term was originally intended to convey. I'm prepared to believe this specific kind of female behaviour is a current problem in the US. I'm less convinced it's a huge current problem every time Emmett Till is brought up as the main example because this was a murder that happened 68 years ago in Jim Crow Mississippi.

I also note that Caroline Bryant is practically a household name but nobody really talks about Roy Bryant or JW Milam - the two men who tortured and murdered the 14 year old Till. Blaming a woman for the violence of men is baked into one of the most powerful origin stories of the US civil rights movement.

We do not have the same culture or history here as in the US. That's not to say we are any less culpable in the transatlantac slave trade and everything that has come out of it, just that this country played a different role and our culture is different because of that. The slavery that built the wealth of this country happened over there, out of sight and mind, and the polite thing to do was to not mention it. Our whole culture is based on politely not mentioning all sorts of horrendous things, pretending it's not happening, keeping a stiff upper lip and most definitely not crying.

That's how Jimmy Savile.

Crying is still shameful in british culture no matter whose tears they are. It's a sign of weakness and not being in control of yourself. 'White women's tears' have never held currency here.

So 'Karen' has not travelled well across the Atlantic. It has arrived here as a powerful slur without a target and so it has been opportunistically applied to any white woman who stands up for herself about anything, mostly by young white men who still have issues with their mothers.