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

The mob justice culture of posting videos online to shame private individuals has to stop. Nothing good has ever come of it however righteous it makes some people feel.

Videoing is one thing, it's sensible to collect evidence if you think you might have a complaint.

Releasing the video online is a separate decision.

If it's a public authority like the police, DWP, NHS etc. then fair enough, they deserve the maximum public scrutiny, but even then the identities of individual, low waged, frontline workers should be treated with care.

I don't think the video I posted above should have been released online even though it's a great example of what has gone wrong with 'Karen'. He deserved to lose his job but I don't think he deserved to be named by the daily mail and for all his neighbours to be interviewed about what they reckon.

I'm old enough to remember 'stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about'.

Yes I agree. Though I admit to being satisfied at him getting his comeuppance, actually we don’t know what happened beforehand. In theory (though I don’t believe this did happen) the customer could have slapped him or been screaming and swearing. That would have put his behaviour in a very different light.

Video fools us into believing we are seeing the full picture, when we aren’t. And that’s before deep fakes have really got started 😬

From everything I have read he was wrong from start to finish but the way to deal with that is through the ordinary, boring complaints procedure for the customer, and the ordinary, boring disciplinary procedure for the employee.

Submit video evidence as part of that if it's helpful and escalate if you're not being taken seriously.

Putting the video out there and inviting the whole world to judge is something entirely different.

About nations being culpable for things….

I am not really down with it.

When we say ‘the British have blood on their hands’ - what do we mean by that?

Everyone with a British passport?

Everyone who who benefits from the assets of the country? Visits the museums and attends the universities etc?

If so, then we must include everyone who became British via the Windrush, etc. They must have blood on their hands.

Or is it specifically the descendants of the decision-makers, the navy, East India Tea Company, landowners, the beneficiaries, etc. Which would mean that the descendants of the slum-dwellers, cotton mill workers, merchants, etc, wouldn’t be culpable, even though they are British with British ancestry.

Germany gets a free pass, because they can say - “It wasn’t us, it was the NAZIS” - even though the NAZIS were German and German’s still use NAZI built facilities. In fact, we’ve all benefitted from the work of NAZI rocket scientists and sicko NAZI medical research. Is everyone who benefits from that also culpable?

Why can’t we say “It wasn’t us, it was the Whigs”, or what have you?

And the reality is that -especially in the Americas - most people are descended from a combination of the oppressed and the oppressors. DNA testing is revealing how much more racially mixed populations are than we previously realised.

That is in no way to deny that people who present as black currently face discrimination but, if we are going to pay reparations based on historical culpability, who pays whom? Does someone who is 10% Cherokee and 90% white European owe money to someone who is 20% Cherokee? And what about people with Chinese or Pakistani heritage, as well as European? Or Hispanics - disadvantaged in the US, but usually part descendants of Colonists?

Yes it’s all totally crass and unworkable.

As you say ‘people who present as black currently face discrimination’, and looking to the past is important for understanding how we got here, but it doesn’t tell us how to move forward.

Reparations are not unworkable for both Black and First Nation peoples. It’s only going back four generations before me to get to the 1850s. I know my grand-parents and they knew their grandparents who lived it. Family history and genealogical records would be enough.

DNA testing only proves rape of female ancestors by white men not % membership with oppressor class like @MissLucyEyelesbarrow is hinting. Not necessary and the discussion of % this and that ancestry is whataboutery.

How/who pays the same as all other reparations are done. Paid from the nations treasury as payment from the government to qualified recipients. Same mechanism as the Covid payments the US government sent out.

Many countries regularly process ancestry citizenship going back in time just as far in a few months. No reason why it can’t be done, other than a lack of willingness.

The mob justice culture of posting videos online to shame private individuals has to stop. Nothing good has ever come of it however righteous it makes some people feel.

Videoing is one thing, it's sensible to collect evidence if you think you might have a complaint.

Releasing the video online is a separate decision.

I agree.

So 'Karen' has not travelled well across the Atlantic. It has arrived here as a powerful slur without a target

@LangClegsInSpace Thank you for calling the “Karen” term what it really is, a slur. It’s designed to denigrate and silence a group of people, as slurs have always been used.

If it can only be applied to white women, presumably it’s also intended as a racial slur?

I don't think you are at all understanding the comment you are responding to.

No one is suggesting it's impossible to trace ancestry, though it is certainly not always as easy as many imagine.

The treasury is not some kind of money generating space. The money it has comes from actual people. People who have no culpability personally, and in most cases their ancestors have no culpability either.

We all have evil oppressor ancestors, who stepped on the neck of the weak, it's how they survived to produce us.

It's like no one reads any history past a tiny window.

DNA testing only proves rape of female ancestors by white men

Surely, if we must pay for the sins of our ancestors, then that must include our ancestors who were white men/rapists too?

Do we get to pick and choose?

Are our male ancestors only those who we can prove had consensual sex with our female ancestors?

@TheHoover
"the comparisons with misogyny and patriarchy are striking. Would you prefer a man - any man - to stand up and go ‘yes I am part of the problem’? Or should they start threads on social"

Sorry - I know I'm a day late replying to this but actually no! Because someone randomly going "I am part of the problem" does nothing. If said man (for example) has been: catcalling women from his van; ignoring the contributions of female colleagues at his work; ignoring his friends hassling women; leaving all the childcare and "wife work" to his partner etc etc etc and he decides not to do that anymore, then that's helpful. Changing behaviour is one thing. If someone has done nothing wrong, then no they shouldn't apologise for existing. No-one is "part of the problem" because of what they were born as. That's horrible and completely counter productive.

Yes, I am starting to feel that about for example, the gym harassment videos you get. Many of them are genuine examples of men being super creepy/staring at women exercising. Fine. But some of them are just normal gym behaviour. Normally when these are posted other people are very quick to point out that the man isn't doing anything wrong. But it feeds into the "men are victims of modern society/women falsely accuse men" narrative that some parts of the manosphere really love to run with. I understand the reasons - its because I think there's a sense that the only way to get justice for being sexually harassed or racially abused etc is through the power of the online mob. But that in itself is a sign that trust in basic social institutions is failing. Replacing them with vigilantism won't help (and in the long run it is those with less power that suffer more from this since racists and sexists can also mobilise themselves online).

@namitynamechange
there is such little understanding of what structural racism is on this thread that it beggars belief. The prevalent view coming across is ‘don’t blame it on white women’. But continuous white denial perpetuates the status quo (of structural racism and inequity).
Everyone really should read ‘Why I am no longer talking to white people about race’. every single defensive argument in this thread is described in the book in the most uncanny terms.
of course no-one will read it though because it’s willingly ‘stepping forward to be scolded’. But until eyes are opened and people accept that they are part of the problem then nothing changes. Also Reni Eddo Lodge writes a nice summary here:
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race

I know what structural racism is. I have read it "Why I am no longer talking to white people about race". I agreed with some of it, and found other parts genuinely eye opening. Other parts I disagree with.
However, if the only response to racism/structural racism is to walk around saying "I take responsibility for my part in all this by being white" then that fixes nothing. Just like a man saying "as a man I am part of the problem" fixes nothing. I know that's not actually what the book said exactly. Its what angry people criticising the book said it said. But for people to internalise it and start telling other people that's what anti-racism is all about makes everything hopeless. Because you can change behaviour. People can't change who they are (and shouldn't want to).

People in some kind of position of power can affect change in small ways in their own domains. But only if they choose to and care enough about it. There are multiple anti-racist leadership programmes teaching leaders exactly how they can do this.

But until eyes are opened and people accept that they are part of the problem

You're asking people to cultivate a sense of self-dislike though.
It's not realistic, and as discussed upthread regarding many UK working class communities, you are simply going to cause offense at the suggestion that they hold privilege within what remains a predominantly class based society.

Simply put, the message "it's wrong to judge or exclude anyone on the basis of their ethnicity" lands well, "you are part of the problem because of how you were born" doesn't. You're never going to win people over that way beyond a small section of liberals.

Well on the topic of ‘causing offence’ i would defer you to White Fragility as your next read.

Of course it’s uncomfortable.

I'm not uncomfortable, I just disagree, and I'm not keen on these pat little terms either.

I'm actually not sure why anyone feels entitled to demand discomfort from another person.

FrostyFifi · Today 06:32
I'm actually not sure why anyone feels entitled to demand discomfort from another person

er….to address ingrained structural and systemic racism?

how well is ‘it’s wrong to judge or exclude anyone on the basis of their ethnicity’ working? And are you in a position to judge?

er….to address ingrained structural and systemic racism?

That is something I also wish to see improve. I just disagree that your approach will be productive beyond quite a small sector of wealthy liberal society, and will probably in fact be counter-productive and divisive.

Round and round it goes. This thread is about blaming women for male behaviour, but it is taken as a denial that any kind of racism exists in the UK.

Racism quite clearly exists, it hasn't gone away and it causes material, measurable harm to communities.

Women are half the population and are just as likely to be racist as anyone else. It is equally valid to point out racist behaviour in a woman as it is in a man.

Women of all races are not responsible for the behaviour of men. When a black man commits a crime it is not the fault of black women.

When a white man commits a crime, it is not the fault of white women. Blaming white women for the behaviour of white men is misogyny.

Women routinely face blame for male behaviour, and when notorious crimes involve a woman, however tangentially, women have been disproportionately blamed.

Pointing this out is not a denial of insidious or structural racism. The two things are true at the same time.

If in fact there is specific harmful behaviour that white women perpetuate and white men don't, then it is fair to criticise it. But it is not fair to extrapolate it from other cultures and then to use general structural racism as a reason why we have to accept these examples or else accept that we are racist ourselves.