What inspired me to write this post was seeing something on tumblr about how “whiteness” is desired in Asian cultures. The research spanned Japan, China, Korea and other Asian countries and depicted the beauty practices that the women partook in so that they could hopefully become whiter.
Something didn’t sit well with me about it, and I checked just to be sure, and I was right in my hunch. All five researchers and writers of this topic were men. The men came from different cultures, ranging from America to Japan. I don’t know if they quoted the feminists who had researched this topic before them, but I doubt it. They were peddling this research as “new”.
It irked me because there is often an unwritten assumption in this type of study on whiteness that white women are to blame for the status quo. That they benefit, and are therefore culpable.
But white women do not control the industry marketing products to Asian countries. It is both white and Asian men who do so. Men are in control every step of the way. The cosmetic surgeons in Korea who westernize women’s features are Korean men. The pressure to “beautify” is driven by a misogynistic culture.
Why do I feel the need to defend white women? Is it necessary? As a feminist, am I barking up the wrong tree in doing so?
White women are often racist, but as powerless people, in other words, as women; they did not create the structure upon which racism was built. This lack of control in no way excuses white women, but their racism is different to white men’s, who emphatically do hold power over whether patriarchy continues or not.
If white men decided it was to be so, patriarchy would end in half a day.
When a white woman is a racist, she does not realize that pecking at the next one down in the pecking order does nothing to improve her lot. Women peck at their children and other women more vulnerable than themselves. What white women are doing is trying to divert patriarchal wrath away from themselves: “See her? Direct your bile towards her. That one. See how different she is from me? Compared to her, I surely deserve your kindness”. When a battered wife directs her husbands anger, or sexual abuse, towards her children to save herself, she is repugnant, to be sure. But should we suggest that she designed the situation or that she wants it to be this way at all? Her husband, the batterer, wants it to be this way– he wants to have dominion over another, a power reinforced by the violence of his class. He doesn’t want anything to change.
With the dissolution of patriarchy– the first system of slavery ever created– racism would surely become obsolete. And yes, patriarchy is a system of slavery where women have for a long while been bought and sold like chattel, held to the highest bidder by their father in marriage, or in its crudest sense, through porn and prostitution.
Being close to white men does not make white women safe. On the contrary, institutionally, they have been targeted for destruction on account of their sex, simply by being in close proximity to white men. Women of color have also been targeted for sterilization and other grotesque procedures, but no more that poor white women have been.** Lobotomies and other psychiatric and gynecological procedures have been carried out on white women with just as much impunity as they have been carried out on women of color. In fact with greater impunity in some countries because there were more white women available in the vicinity for the industries of death to get their hands on. Everybody is in uproar about the savages abroad who practice female genital mutilation so that we apply selective amnesia and forget about all the psychiatrists and other medics who were excising little girls’ clitorises, some as young as three years old, in Western countries in the 19th and 20th century order to “cure” whatever behavioral symptoms they had deemed inappropriate for girls.
What I’m trying to speak out against is men of any color shifting blame away from themselves and onto white women for events and circumstances that are beyond women’s control. Men should not be taking part in this conversation.
Catharine Mackinnon wrote about the issue in What is a White Woman Anyway?:
“In this connection, it has recently come to my attention that the white woman is the issue here, so I decided I better find out what one is. This creature is not poor, not battered, not raped (not really), not molested as a child, not pregnant as a teenager, not prostituted, not coerced into pornography, not a welfare mother, and not economically exploited. She doesn’t work. She is either the white man’s image of her–effete, pampered, privileged, protected, flighty, and self-indulgent–or the Black man’s image of her–all that, plus the “pretty white girl” (meaning ugly as sin but regarded as the ultimate in beauty because she is white). She is Miss Anne of the kitchen, she puts Frederick Douglass to the lash, she cries rape when Emmet Till looks at her sideways, she manipulates white men’s very real power with the lifting of her very well-manicured little finger. She makes an appearance in Baraka’s “rape the white girl,”(14) as Cleaver’s real thing after target practice on Black women (15), as Helmut Newton’s glossy upscale hard-edged, distanced vamp (1976), and as the Central Park Jogger, the classy white madonna who got herself raped and beaten nearly to death. She flings her hair, feels beautiful all the time, complains about the colored help, tips badly, can’t do anything, doesn’t do anything, doesn’t know anything, and alternates fantasizing about fucking Black men with accusing them of raping her. As Ntozake Shange points out, all Western civilization depends on her (1981, p. 48). On top of all this, out of impudence, imitativeness, pique, and a simple lack of anything meaningful to do, she thinks she needs to be liberated. Her feminist incarnation is all of the above, and guilty about every single bit of it, having by dint of repetition refined saying “I’m sorry” to a high form of art. She can’t even make up her own songs.
There is, of course, much to much of this, this “woman, modified,” this woman discounted by white, meaning she would be oppressed but for her privilege. But this image seldom comes face to face with the rest of her reality: the fact that the majority of the poor are white women and their children (at least half of whom are female); that white women are systematically battered in their homes, murdered by intimates and serial killers alike, molested as children, actually raped (mostly by white men), and that even Black men, on average, make more than they do. (16) If one did not know this, one could be taken in by white men’s image of white women: that the pedestal is real, rather than a cage in which to confine and trivialize them and segregate them from the rest of life, a vehicle for sexualized infantilization, a virginal set-up for rape by men who enjoy violating the pure, and a myth with which to try to control Black women. (See, if you would lie down and be quiet and not move, we would revere you, too.) One would think that the white men’s myth that they protect white women was real, rather than a racist cover to guarantee their exclusive and unimpeded sexual access–meaning they can rape her at will, and do, a posture made good in the marital rape exclusion and the largely useless rape law generally. One would think that the only white women in brothels in the South during the Civil War were in Gone with the Wind. (17) This is not to say that there is no such thing as skin privilege, but rather that it has never insulated white women from the brutality and misogyny of men, mostly but not exclusively white men, or from its effective legalization. In other words, the “white girls” of this theory miss quite a lot of the reality of white women in the practice of male supremacy.
Beneath the trivialization of the white woman’s subordination implicit in the dismissive sneer “straight white economically privileged women” (a phrase which has become one word, the accuracy of some of its terms being rarely documented even in law journals) lies the notion that there is no such thing as the oppression of women as such. If white women’s oppression is an illusion of privilege and a rip-off and reduction of the civil rights movement, we are being told that there is no such thing as a woman, that our practice produces no theory, and that there is no such thing as discrimination on the basis of sex. What I am saying is, to argue that oppression “as a woman” negates rather than encompasses recognition of the oppression of women on other bases, is to say that there is no such thing as the practice of sex inequality.
Let’s not forget the deliberate intent to separate women, and to divert attention away from their unifying attributes. Because such an identification can lead to liberation, deriding this commonality among women has gained traction in the “trans” movement, which has become more public in the past decade. Racial and class privilege is bandied about as a means of declaring that women have no shared oppression, or shared experience.
Thousands of Indian women are now, this week, being killed for being “witches” , which harks back to the millions of European and American women who were killed for the same “crime”. White women are not, have never been, safe on account of their skin color. Paradoxically, white men could end the Indian “witch” killings tomorrow by threatening India with their weapons of mass destruction, as they are wont to do in other cultures for spurious reasons (they could give warning to evacuate then bomb the infrastructure and temples) if they do not cease the slaughter. But they will not. The news of the killing and torture is little more than a footnote in western newspapers. What is interesting about the women executed for being witches is that they were frequently “privileged”. In India, as in Europe in the past, no secret is made of the fact that there is link between a woman being accused of witchcraft and her being in possession of land, or healing propensities. The land is promptly seized by local authorities (men). This seizing of women’s land took place consistently in Europe over a series of centuries, and today in 2014 men own almost all the land in the world. Ergo, “privilege” for women offers no protection under patriarchy and can often pose a threat to her well-being if she is perceived as being too independent.
Digs at white women, on account of their race, by all men are acceptable. White men chastising white women about their relative privilege compared to other women is obscene when they themselves created the status quo. While a witch-hunt is actually taking place today in the East, the second-coming of a witch craze in the West is brewing. Mary Daly thought it would come from women the second time round. But no. True to form, I feel it will come from white men yet again. They are gathering their supporters. White men have the power and the means to enact their second bout of the systematic slaying of white women. They will rid the world of the scourge.
**Please see the comments below for an edit to the post.
“But should we suggest that she designed the situation or that she wants it to be this way at all?”
But the problem is that there are some white women, who also call themselves feminists, who do want it to “be this way.” They don’t want to end the misogynist pornstitution industry, they just want a woman who looks like them on the cover of Playboy. They just want a bigger seat at the table, and the fact that they were given a seat at the table in the first place, albeit one with many unfair conditions, is a hell of a lot more than nonwhite women get.
I can appreciate what you’re trying to say with this post, and I can also appreciate the quotes by Catherine Mackinnon. I admit I have been feeling some feminist fatigue recently, since whenever I call out my fellow radfems on their antisemitism (I’m Jewish) all of a sudden I must really be a man trying to destroy feminism on the inside, or a kike bitch using the Holocaust for oppression “points.” I’ve had feminists I’ve used to respect say that Jewish women can’t be feminists because we don’t really care about women (Jewish women aren’t “really” women) due to our “loyalty” to patriarchal Jewish men. So when I see a white woman say something that keeps marginalized women down, my first instinct isn’t to think that she’s oppressed too and doesn’t know any better.
Hi Morag, thank you for your comment. Well I can’t comment on your experiences of antisemitism in feminism, other than to say I believe you’ve experienced it, and well, Dworkin was Jewish, and one of the best feminists who ever lived, so you could point that out to the next person who tries to say you’re not a feminist. She was also married to a man, so, no feminist points for her there either but the work she has done for women has stood the test of time.
But as for those white women who want porn to exist and for women who look like them on the cover of playboy, that might be true, but it is most certainly the sign of a colonized mind, surely?! What I mean is, women who think like that (and I’m going to say it) aren’t right in the head because their vision is stunted.
I agree with you about the colonized mind part of it, I just wish that some women would just take some responsibility for once. I see the same conversation happening over and over again: a marginalized woman will call out a white woman’s racism or her prioritizing white men over other women. WW says that she has no choice in partnering with a man, exploiting immigrant women, deliberateley playing the docile bimbo, etc, and then accuses the marginalized woman of being like an abusive man and displaying “horizontal hostility.” These are the type of women who hate to be reminded that they didn’t have to live like that, that there are plenty of women who devoted their lives to other things. I’m tired of giving certain women a pass in the name of some imaginary sisterhood, and it’s time that WW acknowledge when they wield their privilege. Let me clarify that I don’t begrudge a woman for having privilege, it’s when she actively uses it to harm other women is the problem.
Aside from racism, everything else that you mentioned (pairing with men, exploiting immigrant women, playing the docile bimbo) can be equally applied to women of color. None of those faults are the exclusive traits of white women. And racism is also not the exclusive premise of white women: Asian women look down on women from other Asian countries. WOC can be just as racist to other WOC. Because of the social dynamics, WOC cannot be racist towards white women but they can certainly be “classist”. And on it goes.
The point of this post was not to argue that white women cannot be racist, but to show that white women are nevertheless women, and belong to the caste known as “women”, and any privilege they may possess relative to other women does not allow or enable them to escape that caste.
Trans politics attempts to erase women as a caste/class in their own right, claiming that there are no commonalities between women. Radical feminism reminds that all women do share the commonality of sex-based oppression.
“White women are nevertheless women”
I completeley agree that all women face sex based oppression, but my issue here is that I’ve never seen anyone-feminist or not-argue that white women aren’t women. In fact, white women are often considered THE women. And I don’t mean that in a transactivist “there’s no shared girlhood and vaginas are cissexist” way, I mean that the economically privileged and western white female experience is centered. Yes the privilege WW receive is conditional (such as being the epitome of beauty and motherhood-except when they get old and unfuckable) but I can’t give a pass to those women who want to win the title of The White Man’s Favorite Sexbot over the pain of marginalized women. Like I wrote before, I’ve experienced marginalized women being called “just like oppressive men” for daring to call WW out on how they hold up white supremacy, but I’ve never seen a WW’s femaleness disregarded in such a way.
Of course being white doesn’t shield one from sex based oppression, but we can’t ignore that a white mother like Michelle Duggardwill never be referred to as a breeding cockroach like Nadya Suleiman for example. Or that a black lesbian in the US is considered even less of a “real woman” than a white lesbian for both her skin color and sexuality.
I agree with a lot of what you wrote here ftr, I just don’t understand why you framed the article as an argument that “white women face oppression too” when so often that’s a line that WW say to marginalized women to deflect away their racism, classism, etc. I think in feminism atm “white women are women” is the default, and the sex based oppression of marginalized women, in conjunction with the other oppressions they face as women of X group, should be explored further. I completeley agree though that at the end of the day it’s men who have created these systems and who benefit the most from them.
I have to say that I do hate writing about this topic because it does come across as though I’m trying to defend white women’s racism and classism, but I’m not.
What happens is that every now and again I begin to see an increase of anti white-women articles on the internet, usually written by white men incidentally, not so much by women of color. The articles begin with some condescending comment like “Dear White women”, and then proceed to explain why feminists have no right to fight for liberation when they are so privileged. These articles are designed to obliterate the work that women (of all backgrounds) are attempting to do in order to further women’s liberation. I say “of all backgrounds” because such authors declare (untruthfully) that feminism is the prerogative of white women alone, that WOC have more important things to think about than silly irrelevancies such as women’s liberation, and the movement is therefore silly and narcissistic because white women are too privileged to know what oppression really is. What the fuck they actually mean by the term “white women” is never really defined when they use it in this context, and the Mackinnon quote demonstrates how stupid the term is when used in this way.
If white women do indeed have more power than other women, what then happens when anything they do, or say, is discredited based on the fact that they are white?
Some people ( both men and women) get a little misogynistic thrill out of blaming white women for the state of the world, without looking carefully how how very little power they actually have . WW’s power is truly minuscule. As mentioned in the article, men of all races own over 90% of the world’s land. I should imagine that women of color worldwide own proportionately more land than white women do in their respective countries. A land grab is currently going on in India, where women who are being killed for being witches are having their land seized. This happened in Europe centuries ago and today in Western Europe, women have no land left to seize. There has been an ongoing land grab over the last decade by western supermarket conglomerates from developed countries who have collaborated with local (male) governments to usurp women’s land (smallholders) in developing countries but this could not be done in the West because white women literally do not own enough land for men to bother with.
White women are held up as the bar of how liberated women are able to be, when the measly successes of western feminism don’t even come close to the political and social power that women of other cultures have experienced, before it was all taken away by colonizing white men. It is a racist concept to suggest that white women live in a more enlightened culture and that white males are more benevolent towards “their” women, when this is patently false. It goes side by side with the pornographic image of WOC being more submissive by culture, and by nature.
Again, without denying the race advantages that white women have within racist patriarchal western cultures, it’s important to point out that white women have never had the social status that women of other cultures have enjoyed. See Zeph’s latest post on Cherokee women.
http://reallyrad.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/the-power-of-cherokee-women/
‘If one did not know this, one could be taken in by white men’s image of white women: that the pedestal is real, rather than a cage in which to confine and trivialize them and segregate them from the rest of life, a vehicle for sexualized infantilization, a virginal set-up for rape by men who enjoy violating the pure, and a myth with which to try to control Black women. (See, if you would lie down and be quiet and not move, we would revere you, too.) One would think that the white men’s myth that they protect white women was real, rather than a racist cover to guarantee their exclusive and unimpeded sexual access–meaning they can rape her at will, and do, a posture made good in the marital rape exclusion and the largely useless rape law generally. ‘
The above extract from Catharine A. MacKinnon’s essay on ‘What is A White Woman Anyway?’ proves that white women do not have ‘privilege’ because white men are the still the ones clinging tightly on to their ‘power and privileges.’ Non-white men want the same rights and power as their white brothers and as always male rights supercede female rights.
White women are not autonomous beings because their so-called privileges are only gained by their social/sexual relationship to white men. White womens’ ‘privileges’ are taken away by white men whenever white men view white women as violating white male supremacist ideology. In other words being white and female does not automatically accord women protection from mens’ violence or male oppression. Certainly many white women enact white mens’ racist ideologies but women are fooling themselves if they think being racist will accord them some of men’s political/individual power – because it won’t. Women will still be men’s pawns and will be discarded once their usefulness to men has expired.
It is men’s old ‘divide and conquer’ regime which is constantly being enacted – women from differing ethnicities/races looking down on other women and ignoring the fact real political/social power continues to be male only. Many white women collude with white Male Supremacy but the reality is white women do not have power because this power still resides with men.
Antisemitism affects Jewish women and men so according to male (il)logic it is real and important. But universal male oppression over women because their sex is female isn’t real and important because men are not the ones being oppressed because their sex is male. So yes Jewish women are subjected to both antisemitism and misogyny just as non-white women are subjected to racism and misogyny but as usual white men only see ‘antisemitism and racism’ as important and real because men are included in these groups. Universal male oppression of women because their sex is female is ignored by men because as I said above – men aren’t the ones being oppressed because their sex is female. So as Catharine A. MacKinnon succinctly states ‘there is no oppression of women’ because they are women according to male (il)logic.
Andrea Dworkin’s book Right Wing Women explores how and why innumerable women collude with their male oppressors in the vain hope of being awarded ‘token political/individual power.’
Thank you for your comment Hecuba. It’s spot on, as usual. I’m glad of the support. I hate writing about this topic because it always feels like a direct collision with patriarchy. As you say, they deny women can be oppressed because we’re women, which is infuriating because the oppression of women is the original oppression, and all other oppressions are modeled upon it.
I’m sorry, but are you Jewish? B/c no, antisemitism is not taken seriously at all, whether it involves Jewish men or women. I really dislike when people argue that “antisemitism/racism/etc is taken more serioulsy than sexism” b/c that’s simply not true at all. Can you understand why other women may have a problem with this? Speaking for myself, I don’t feel as if my Jewishness is simply secondary to my femaleness.
But men are arguing that women don’t exist, morag. Laws are being passed saying that because we don’t exist we’re not oppressed. They’ve always done this. Trans is just the updated version. The daily gynocide of women goes unnoted because of this.
You can’t torture and murder something that’s not real: this is the philosophy of patriarchy. This is precisely what men all mean when they say ‘what happens in porn is a fantasy’.
How can you every say they take what they do to women seriously when they don’t acknowledge any of it. And their power is absolute. And JEWISH men and other men of all races are complicit in this utter destruction of women. All men benefit from patriarchy and they ALL want it to stay just the way it is, with men vying between themselves for who gets to be the men on top. Their discussions take place without even considering the possibility that women are autonomous people because patriarchy could not exist without female oppression.
I realise you can be both a Jewish woman and female-identified and feminist, but I don’t see how you can acknowledge the truth of patriarchy as a radfem and then go on to say that women can be the agents of cultural and racial oppression. Consider this: men offer certain women a few more crumbs and scraps to keep all women scrapping amongst themselves. They know exactly what they’re doing.
Cherry, I think this is an important theme. There’s a stereotype of white women that doesn’t fit too many of the white women I know. What about obese white women? Their numbers are increasing. The more obese, the greater the oppression. I know some of these and I can tell you they are more discriminated against than a slim professional/upper class woman of another race.
What about poor white women who have no power no money no education but lots of children and an abusive husband? Having roots in Appalachia I can guarantee you that living in the woods with no running water but lots of kids does not fit that stereotype either. For one thing, you will smell terrible as will your kids and be looked down on, seen as a horrible mother because they are not clean or don’t have proper clothes. And a middle-upper class woman of any race in the U.S. would be compared favorably to that woman. Fathers in the situation are not held accountable. Of course, there is a stereotype of the Appalachian woman that is incorrect, too. Growing up poor, I’ve been treated in awful ways by women of “higher” classes all my life. It’s what patriarchy does.
Then there is the white woman who has been severely sexually abused throughout childhood and who plays right into that stereotype, being traumatically bonded to her abusers. She becomes the stereotype if she can. She is groomed for it.
There are examples of worse and better situations for women of all races. Not to deny that statistically white women can be seen as better off on a number of measures. Certainly a larger percentage of non-white women/children are impoverished in the U.S. But apparently the absolute number of white women/children in poverty is greater. Again, this belies the stereotype.
People have discussed the danger of the “oppression olympics”, that’s a male-based no-win game. Does it border on identity politics? I don’t know because that politics never made sense to me. What has meaning for me is examining these stereotypes, which are promoted for a reason, to keep women from rising up, all women. Because we are talking about women as a class here and looking at how this operates. This is a policing stereotype. It polices different women in different ways. That’s what has meaning in writing about white women, to me anyway. Because this is the stereotype used most for policing.
In other words, not denying the terrible force of race-based oppression, but saying that misogyny is at the root of it all and the race stereotypes are devices based on misogyny designed to perpetuate it.
Thank you for this comment WordWoman. White women’s privilege is often brought up it is usually to assert the trans/patriarchal claim that sex-based oppression does not exist, as though patriarchy is a figment of our imagination. Women who support this division of women, especially by fueling hatred of white women, are working as men’s handmaidens because they’re claiming that white women are not oppressed as women. Or that their oppression doesn’t count because they’re white, or whatever the hell it is they’re trying to say.
White women can be multiply oppressed: a large group trafficked into prostitution are Eastern European white women. But oppression Olympics aside, imperialism and racism are rooted in patriarchy and THAT is what nobody is supposed to realize. Racism is a product of patriarchy and patriarchal misogyny is directed EQUALLY towards ALL women. NO woman escapes the white hot rage of misogyny. We’re all supposed to experience amnesia when it comes to this because some patriarch has taken it upon himself to defend women of color against white women. It makes me sick
Especially because Hecuba is right in saying that white women are not autonomous beings. Any privilege they posses is DERIVATIVE.
The history of Irish slavery practiced by the British underscores that this is a product of patriarchy. I found this summary of the book, “White Cargo” to be of interest. I’ve quoted some of the passages below. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076 According to the book the majority of the early slaves to the American colonies where white. This summary says that most of these were not indentured servants (voluntary) but actual slaves (involuntary). I became interested in the fact that there were white slaves when I first read Toni Morrison’s book, “Mercy.” Another thing of interest is how many Appalachian whites are of Irish descent. It explains a lot about this particular white subculture, I think.
Some quotes from the “White Cargo” review/summary:
“the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.”
“African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.”
“In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.”
This last bit demonstrates how patriarchy invents new misogynist schemes without blinking an eye. And how baldly women’s reproductive capacity is targeted. None of this denies the fact that the descendants of Irish slaves, being white, blended into the mainstream white culture and so their history post-slavery has been different. But easier to cover up these abuses as well.
They’ve covered that up pretty well haven’t they is my first reaction to that!. I had never heard of any of that! I knew the Irish were treated badly in England (No dogs, No Irish written on shop doors) but I didn’t know they were part of the slave trade.
It is absolutely disgusting to read about the way women (of all colors) were bred under slavery. Reproductive slavery means reducing women to animals. They couldn’t just take women’s labour, could they? No, they had to have everything.
My God, it’s easy to see WHY this is not common knowledge: it’s because when you know that white women were kept as slaves too, it then becomes impossible to cover up the sex-based component of slavery i.e the sex based motivation of keeping slaves.
We’re supposed to believe that the acquisition of female slaves was something “extra” that the slave owners did on top of having male slaves, but in reality it looks as thought keeping male slaves was some sort of afterthought and in fact female slavery was what it was really all about.
A woman whose view of the world is compiled from excerpts of other privileged, western, middle-class white women on the internet who purposely try to marginalise themselves in society, by crying sexism — at every conceivable opportunity.
I just let this comment through so that my readers can see what I’m talking about. In fact this comment lends credibility to my entire post. Thank you, gellatmeister. Any subsequent comments of yours are going in the bin. Now toddle off back to your porn or whatever it is you do in between trolling feminist blogs.
Cheers.
CBL
I find it incredible that women who are also feminists use their platforms to talk about other women. Women they refer to as ‘certain types of women’.
Their can be no ‘sisterhood’ if women (any woman) objects to or are offended by other ‘types’ of women.
The idea that we should be the ‘right type of women’ in our thinking, politics, feminism is perhaps the single most destructive concept in the women’s movement. It is also the element which ensures that the patriarchal status quo (of the good vs bad woman) is upheld.
I find it incredibly offensive and downright dangerous that we as women should be dividing ourselves this way. We are all women. There is nothing else. That is the starting point. Other labels are our identities and should be viewed seperately. In my mind, that we are all women, is what the sisterhood should be.
Apart from transwomen of course. They’re men. Although I’m sure you weren’t talking about those delusional people.
My point is that DESPITE THE ACCUSATIONS LEVVIED AGAINST IT feminism is not an exclusively white woman “thing”. The very idea is ludicrous. The concept has been MADE UP by men.
I’ve just re-read your comment and wanted to apologize for being glib in my reply. I’m so wary of new commenters. Sorry! Don’t want to scare you off.
I agree with you completely that women who are feminist do not dismiss or disregard other women as not being the “right type” of woman. As wordwoman says below it’s because women’s oppression has become as natural to us all as breathing that women don’t even see it. They simply cannot believe that women are oppressed on the basis of their sex even when there is so much evidence proving that we are.
Lucky you that you get to define yourself as just a woman, and not a Jewish, Chinese, Iranian, etc woman. Sorry I can’t separate my Jewish “identity” (and it’s historically white people who have made it such a focal point) from my womanhood to keep your feminism nice and pure. It’s not marginalized women “dividing ourselves” within feminism, it’s white women who dominate the discussion and push other women to the side b/c racism is just so passe. And once again it’s the nonwhite women blamed for ruining feminism and not being a good sister. Your comment truly sickens me. NB: I’m not denying that women face sex based oppression, b/c hello, I’m a woman too. How can feminism be about ALL women when too many of us have to repeat “listen to me, I’m a woman too”?
I think it’s more about whether or not WOC can put the women’s movement above their class association with men. Working class white women are often staunchly anti-feminist because they’ve been told that feminism is a middle class thing and they feel as though they’re betraying their men, and their class, by aligning themselves with middle class women. I’ve seen working class women speak very passionately (i.e with hatred) against what they perceive to be a middle class movement. I don’t know why they fall for this when working class women have historically been so instrumental in fighting for women’s rights. They’re speaking from a place of misogyny. I also don’t understand why anyone falls for the idea that there are no Chinese feminists, or Iranian feminists or Jewish feminists, when there obviously are, and they share a commonality with women fighting for liberation everywhere. It’s just falling for propaganda to say that middle class white women invented feminism and if you join them you’re selling out. I very much criticize the idea that white women have been at the forefront of women’s liberation despite the fact that in academia and other establishments in western countries it’s true that feminists have a louder voice, but they’re rarely radical feminists.
If we’re moving onto talking about how, and in what circumstances women can work together within feminism in western countries where there is a history of racism then that’s a separate issue, which absolutely must be be addressed when the need arises.
I think I’m just going to go back to writing about radfem topics and not these liberal feminist type topics. Radical feminism is so much simpler.
@Hecuba “So as Catharine A. MacKinnon succinctly states ‘there is no oppression of women’ because they are women according to male (il)logic.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about this and how very INVISIBLE the oppression of women is made to seem. Women of all races have a difficult time believing that they are oppressed AS WOMEN and that this oppression is THE universal and deeply horrendous one.
Yet statistics tell it. Every day, every minute of every day. Women enslaved into prostitution. Mutilated in various ways. Women of all ethnicities are murdered by men they know well/live with/are related to. As I write this women are being murdered, raped, destroyed. It happens more than any other thing. It is terrorism that may burst out at any moment. The form it takes varies with culture. In some places women are publically stoned to death because their husband wants to get rid of them. Or the man “goes crazy” and kills “his” women and children, but public sympathy is still with him (poor thing, he went crazy, under too much stress, etc). Women in public are often likely to be murdered. In private, moreso. do not believe this is happening universally with any other group.
Yet women are made apologetic about noticing they are oppressed. It makes this most visible of all oppressions somehow invisible. Women learn to be invisible for safety whenever possible. Then we are made to doubt that we even exist. Because this terrorism, this pain is not real according to patriarchy. So, we must not be real either.
Noticing this terrorism, this pain is noticing that we exist. It needs to be made visible.
I’m a (lurky) fan of your blog, cherryblossom, and really glad to see you posting again. I agree with a lot of what you’ve written here, in particular that women did not create structural racism and are not in control of industries that continue to profit from it.
For me, the most valuable point you made here was to name the fact that men use racism as a divide and conquer tactic among women. It really can’t be overstated; I see white men doing this online almost every damn day. The voices of WOC are required to tackle racism within feminism, and men have no place in those conversations. I also certainly agree with you that “racial and class privilege is bandied about as a means of declaring that women have no shared oppression, or shared experience”. I believe there is a concerted effort to do this among other political groups (trans and pro-prostitution in particular), and I’ve argued against one such explicit attempt to do this here: http://www.feministtimes.com/%E2%80%AA%E2%80%8Egenderweek-race-shatters-the-idea-of-a-shared-female-experience/#comment-73175
However, there were also a few points in this post that troubled me. In particular, the claim that a woman’s racism toward other women “does nothing to improve her lot”. My impression from this post and the comments is that you’re trying to oppose the idea that white women do in fact benefit from the oppression of women of colour (or “privilege theory”). A few examples from the top of my head: missed economic for women of colour due to racism directly benefit the white women who is more likely to get them; women of colour are disproportionately represented in the prostitution industry due to poverty; and missing black girls get a fraction of the media coverage of missing white girls. For me, these examples illustrate how women of colour experience compounded oppression that – to some extent – does shield white women. This seems complementary with your analogy of women who try to outsource their abuse in violent relationships. It may not dismantle the patriarchal situation, but it does function as a survival tactic to the detriment of other women regardless.
I think your point that “being close to white men does not make white women safe” would be better used as a case against the racist stereotyping that shields white men from accountability for their violence, and to highlight the fact that men are violent regardless of race. This point does foreground the shared oppression women experience at the hands of men on the basis of sex, and that is valuable. But I don’t think it makes a successful case against the relative privilege of white women, which operates on the basis of race. Whether this privilege is derivative or not strikes me as somewhat beside the point.
The final point I’d like to comment on: “with the dissolution of patriarchy– the first system of slavery ever created– racism would surely become obsolete”. I agree with you that male oppression of women provided the first model of slavery, and that racism is a product of patriarchal rule by virtue of being preceded by it. However, I don’t think it logically follows that the dissolution of patriarchy will therefore dissolve racism; racism is a system that is already up and running, and requires an analysis of its own. I don’t think it is the case that if you kill the mothership (or rather, fathership), all its progeny will drop like in an alien movie. If we ‘kill the patriarchal fathership’, the spawn will still be here, and will necessarily require specialist solutions.
In short, I think if we want to say that feminism is somehow inherently anti-racist, that requires us to actively build anti-racism into our feminism. It doesn’t mean that all feminist work will ultimately serve to fight racism simply because it is feminist. I don’t mean to imply this is what you intended, but I think there’s a danger that this post could be read that way.
hello umlolidunno,
Please do remember that ALL women are living in a state of terror. Patriarchy is a living hell for ALL women so on that basis racist white women must be judged as cowardly and weak, yes; hateful, yes; but the orchestrators, creators and organizers of racism they are not. It is impossible to overestimate the power differences between white men and white women.
Again, I am not denying how white women behave within patriarchy but please remember that there is a finely tuned male-organized mass media which openly encourages mistrust of people of color and it does so shamelessly. The very same media attempts to brainwash ALL women into behaving like lobotomized fembots, as we know, and that’s before we get to porn where all women are dehumanized and yes women of color are doubly dehumanized based on not just their sex, but also their race, but the fact that men have decided that certain women will be doubly abused does not give other, marginally less abused (white) women any POWER or PRIVILEGE at all. Fuck men, seriously. The bar is so low so that we call white women privileged because men abuse them less even though they still violently abuse them.
Without men around, in other words, when men don’t exist, how would racism be enacted between women? When there is no carrot left what would be the point? Do you believe women will hoard resources, and keep them from others, just like men have? Research shows that it was with the advent of patriarchy that men began hoarding resources through developing agriculture and as far as I understand it, shortly before this change took place men had already begun owning and exchanging women. Racism developed much later as another way of stealing, dividing and keeping resources. So because racism developed within patriarchy in order to uphold patriarchal power, I see no reason why it would still exist post-patriarchy. Do you believe that white women will organize as a group to take over the weapons of mass destruction, the armies, the police force in order to oppress other women based on their color? Really? When men don’t exist what would be the point of oppressing another woman? There’d be no point at all because women won’t need to mine and enslave other women for their reproductive powers because they posses them themselves. Are you talking about white women violently taking away other women’s land based on their color? Post-patriarchy women will not notice another woman’s color at all. It takes a LOT of violence to a) categorize a group of people then b) oppress that group of people. Men are happy and willing to use the level of violence it requires in order to do so. I’m not sure that women are invested in violently oppressing women because, well, because they’re not men.
Thank you for taking the time to clarify, I think I understand your point better now.
“Do you believe women will hoard resources, and keep them from others, just like men have?”
I suppose I do. It seems to me there’s little point in speculating that women will not vy for resources that are relevant for survival (and, therefore, reproductive success) in the absence of men. We are many and resources are now few.
When women are in spaces without men, racism persists; we ‘hoard’ discursive space and deny it to our WOC sisters. We do not do this for any carrots from men, we do this because we can and it suits us.
I realise that this can be chalked up to patriarchal enculturation, but the fact is that these social categories and dynamics now exist. Whether they originated from men’s dominion or not doesn’t pertain much to how they proliferate after men have gone; I can easily envisage, for example, a post-patriarchal world in which some women are far richer than others.
If men had never existed, and women had shaped the world we’re in, perhaps it would look as you describe. But that is not the situation we will be in post-patriarchy. Culture is necessarily shaped by what has gone before.
It’s for this reason I made the point that we must actively “build into” feminism the goals we want. If we do not want the cultural products that men have created to continue, we have to actively do something to get rid of them. We have to actively redistribute land and resources, we have to actively create racial equity, and so on. Simply removing men will not do that work. If all men disappeared tomorrow do you think racism would disappear with them? I really don’t.
Well yes women must be conscious of racism and all other types of bullying within feminism. And we must take steps in the here and now. And of course racism still exists even in women only spaces because that feminist meeting is taking place in a war zone known as patriarchy.
But what I will say is that there is often less racism going on in areas where all women are economically marginalized and where there are less men around, in other words in the types of places where poverty defines the identity of the people in a particular area, and where women kind of have to muddle through together and rub shoulders with one another (an area with a lot of benefit-receiving single mothers, for example). In this type of environment racism among women seems to go out the window, and women of all races can become firm friends. This is what tells me that if we’re ever in a world where men just LEFT US ALONE to interact with the world as we see fit, to run our own businesses, grow our own food, make our own silk or whatever, then women would have many more reasons to get along with each other than to fight. Women are so talented and intelligent too and they recognize the talent in each other. Men by comparison are so dried up and talentless which is why they fight for things they want instead of just setting up shop and making it themselves. Yes I believe that racism will dry up along with patriarchy and it will be revealed as the stupid, male invention that it is.
@umlolidunno you write that
‘“Do you believe women will hoard resources, and keep them from others, just like men have?” I suppose I do. It seems to me there’s little point in speculating that women will not vy for resources that are relevant for survival (and, therefore, reproductive success) in the absence of men. We are many and resources are now few. ‘
Does this not pre-suppose that women’s main function is breeding? I don’t think that there would be an investment in the kind of breeding that leads to overpopulation if there were no patriarchy. We are watching the ruin of the planet by this system. There is a direct link to the enslavement of women and this breeding idea.
Also, it’s connected with the evol psych ideas that men have put forward. The ideas of evol psych are some of the most blatantly patriarchal/misogynist in all of psychology/philosophy. Someone wrote about this a while back and the feminists who challenged this whole idea, but I don’t remember who (radicalhub perhaps?). It’s basically unscientific and B.S. The whole “reproductive success” thing is just a meme justifying using women as breeders.
Other species reduce breeding activity in the absence of sufficient resources for survival. It is often said that “Humans are the only species that continue to breed in the absence of resources.” Well, this is not really correct. It is male humans that do this by forcing women to breed.
In the absence of male presence and pressure, without patriarchy, I trust women to figure out how to live in balance with the resources that are available. I do agree with you that we need to build these ideas into our planning for the future.
Great points WordWoman!
IN fact you’ve just summed up patriarchy so succinctly and perfectly. Men are to blame for all of it. Every little problem we’ve ever had on earth is down to them. Forcing women to procreate and become mothers on a massive scale is what they’ve done for thousands of years. Stealing everything from women so that we have to be with men in order to survive economically is such a disgusting concept and yet it is still alive and kicking today. Women all over the world are still getting married, or putting themselves in situations where they have to get fucked by men, even when they don’t want children. Women are still having children to secure themselves a house and a pension from a particular man because in doing so there’s a slightly better guarantee of securing a roof over their head in old age than there is by opting into the workforce as a woman. Of course most women have no choice but to do both (babies and workforce) in order to survive. And then other women find that they have to stay with a violent partner precisely because they’re mothers.
THERE IS NO NEED FOR ANY OF THIS. Upon birth every child should be guaranteed an apartment of their own for life so that no woman is ever again exploited in order to keep a roof over her head. Of course that won’t be enough to protect women because men will keep taking what they want from us by force, as they are doing now, but it will help somewhat with all the women who end up “choosily choosing” to live with men when the truth is there’s nowhere else for them to go.
I included a reference to reproductive interests because cherryblossom talked about that as a driving force for men hoarding resources. I put it in parenthesis because it was orthogonal to my main point, which was individual survival.
I am not particularly invested in the continuance of the human race; I remember FactCheckMe somewhere on her blog remarking that we ought to seriously entertain the idea that we may need to get comfy with the idea of dying out, precisely because it’s not our job to ensure humanity’s future. I agree with her.
I am very familiar with evolutionary psychology and its various misapplications by men. I wasn’t invoking any of that in my comment.
Men frantically and violently hog resources, probably because they’re biologically less resiliant than women, they live shorter lives, and they need a lot of resources in order to live those lives well. Women survive and thrive on so much less. I see old men in Japan who literally would not be alive without their wives, because their wives shop for fresh food and cook for them every day. The old men are physically unable to do what is required of them to keep themselves alive. The women, on the other hand, are carrying the burden of at least two people (themselves, and their husbands). Men need lots of “things” in order to live, and they need lots of food. And most seem to need a wife. Women don’t need these things as much.
Besides that, women are not the enemy of other women, in a biological sense. As you probably know, contrary to what evo psych tells us, women do not need to compete with each other for men. By hogging resources patriarchy has skewed this but if women had the resources they needed to raise a child, they would probably not mind sharing a man for procreation. They might prefer to share a good-looking specimen with other women over having an exclusive partner of their own. The majority of women would choose not to reproduce, because it is SO risky to our lives.
Men on the other hand must compete with other men because all men are essentially expendable and useless. Ironically patriarchy has made them even more useless and expendable and I think they know this.
No, all signs point to the fact that women would not organize themselves the way that men have done, if they had power over their own lives and communities.
It is interesting to read about the silk road route because that was an environment where people of many races worked together as merchants and traders on equal terms for thousands of years. (Women, of course, were not equal) Racism had to be invented and then systematically maintained using a variety of methods such as (today) the mass media and institutional violence (police, army)
Radfems talk about living apart from men, or without men in the future. It makes sense to completely disengage from your oppressor. Post patriarchy, what would prevent WOC from completely disengaging with anyone they found to be oppressive? If they preferred never to see white women again, would WW actively prevent them from moving away and living elsewhere? That kind of oppression (preventing freedom of movement) requires a lot of violence, of the kind that I’m just not quite sure WW, or any women for that matter, are up for– because they’d rather just get on with their own lives. And I think we can safely assume that post patriarchy all women would easily be able to provide for themselves. Preventing women from providing for themselves is how patriarchy perpetuates itself and of course this requires so. much. violence.
Perhaps women would segregate themselves naturally according to race, but I prefer to think that it would be more similar to how it was on the silk road for thousands of years, with race taking second place to how talented the person is at making or trading silk, in other words, it would be irrelevant or go unnoticed.
@umlolidunno “we ought to seriously entertain the idea that we may need to get comfy with the idea of dying out, precisely because it’s not our job to ensure humanity’s future. I agree with her.” Yep!
It’s a lost cause, anyway. Take any trend (climate, nuclear anything, extinctions, destruction of the environment, epidemics, etc) and extrapolate and they all pretty much end up in the same place. With or without breeding, the human race is done for. Without forced breeding would be better. Of course patriarchy will fight this with more forced breeding. Men will lose in their insane lust for power and violence. Unfortunately they’ll take women and an enormous number of non-human beings with them.
After an exchange with somebody called tiqui_taquatte on twitter I’ve decided to be more specific about this line, which she criticized:
“Women of color have also been targeted for sterilization and other grotesque procedures, but no more that poor white women have been.**
When I said “but no more than poor white women have been” I meant the figures in absolute terms, but did not want to minimize the fact that WOC had been targeted on account of their race as well as their sex so I will say here that WOC have been disproportionately targeted for certain gynaecological procedures at certain points in history because of their skin color in the U.S and elsewhere. I should have been more specific about which gynaecological procedures and where and when. I wanted to draw attention TO the GYNOCIDAL nature of these atrocities, not draw attention AWAY from the racial motivations.
In the US we can see how African American and native American women have been targeted.
http://mississippiappendectomy.wordpress.com/
In California, the figures show that African Americans made up 1% of California’s population but accounted for 4% of the sterilizations (Stern, Eugenic Nation, p. 111).
The proportion is higher in other states. On North Carolina
But originally forced sterilization was a policy designed for white immigrants. According to Salamishah Tillet
This grotesque concept was invented by men. We know this because we have their names in the historical records. Men were proud of their sterilization programmes. Being a woman was the deciding factor on whether or not you were going to be targeted in this particular way.
I was actually thinking of the young women sterilized in homes for unwed mothers in Ireland when I wrote that sentence.
The Irish Times defends Ireland against the mass sterilization of young (white) women, who were often rape victims by pointing the finger at Sweden .
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/david-quinn/single-mothers-were-forcibly-sterilised-in-sweden-we-dont-hear-much-about-that-30351488.html
Between 1937 and 1956, 36% of all girls leaving Swedish special schools were sterilized. Similarly, sterilization was sometimes specified as a prerequisite for obtaining an abortion, or permission to marry http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucbtdag/bioethics/writings/eugenics.html
British and UK eugenics campaigns (ALL created by men) were originally not about race but focused on “mentally defectives” and the “feeble minded”
Men, men men and more men, making policies and legislations. Men drunk on power. Men with so much power they spend their days concocting up evil.
So I stand firm in my point that if women had power, then gynaecology would never have taken hold because it is a form of institutionalized hatred of women. Pure misogyny medicalized.
Daly called her book Gyn/Ecology for a reason. She cites much evidence showing that medical atrocities are gendered, meaning it is always men who are in power when the crimes are committed and it always men who decide when, where and how these things will be done. They use their committees and laws and policies and their white coats in an attempt to legitimize their evil, and their primary target is women.
Aside from forced sterilization, other unnecessary gynaecological procedures were the product of women hatred. The plan below focused on women who happened to be white.
When I said that white women were at risk by simply being in close proximity to white men I was talking about gynaecology in Victorian England, where white women were targeted.
tiqui_taquatte hasn’t engaged with the thread, but she now has white men favouriting her tweets about this post.
cherry blossom @cherryblossomer · 15m
@tiqui_tacatte You’ve got white men favouriting your tweets. Your feminism is definitely not compatible with mine.
tiqui_tacatte @tiqui_tacatte · 11m
@cherryblossomer fuck off, my feminism isn’t for them and don’t pretend they’re the only ones who agree
Reply to @tiqui_tacatte
ccherry blossom @cherryblossomer · 8m
@tiqui_tacatte NO White man agrees with ANYTHING I’ve written in my post. Ask yourself why.
I wish I hadn’t got sucked in on twitter. .
How can you talk about male dominance with a woman who is telling you that white women hated black women because their husbands were raping black women and that made them jealous?
Where do you even start with somebody who thinks that ANY woman wants to be married to a rapist, and one who rapes other women with his wife’s full knowledge no less?
If we can at least agree that women don’t want to be married to rapists then we must ask ourselves what the fuck these white women were doing staying married to these men.
If anyone bothered to investigate, would they have found that these white wives were being raped themselves, because it is still LEGAL in many places for a man to rape his wife? Is it possible that if a man is a slave-owning rapist that he is also raping and terrorizing his wife and children behind closed doors? It was his legitimate right to do so– men had written this into law. Or maybe he wasn’t touching his wife anymore after using her for breeding and was demonstrating his contempt of her by raping his slaves and letting her know about it. What options would a wife have after learning her husband was a rapist? Did she have anywhere else to live or go? No. Nor did a woman have the ability or resources to organize politically against her husband, her owner, her master. Two women a week are killed by their spouses in the UK. There’s no such thing as “wife-power”
What can we surmise about a woman who feels JEALOUSY towards her husband’s victims rather than DISGUST and HATRED towards the man himself?
We can surmise that she has no autonomy or power of her own.
Only a misogynist would say that a woman CHOOSES to stay with such an abusive man.
Hi Cherry and everyone.
wrt privilege: white women aren’t privileged because of their race, but exempt from certain degrees of violence and institutional oppression. To me the difference between both concepts is massive. In order to be privileged, women would have to be the direct agents and beneficiaries of racism, which isn’t the case.
We have to remember that the primary function of racism in patriarchy isn’t for some men to enslave males from colonised territories, but for males to be able to rape females from colonised territories at leisure. The very reason men colonise lands is to increase the poole of rapeable, prostitutable women and to loot the resources within that land: this is how they increase the power of their male caste. Even today, young men are recruited as soldiers knowing that once at war, sent to invade other countries, they’ll be able to rape as many women as they want. Jihadists recruit young boys by promising them that if they die, they’ll have access to as many women as they want in paradise.
For every single ethnic group, women of “other” countries or groups are always viewed as the free-to-rape women, whereas women of “their” group are the breeders: and men must not touch the property of men from their own group. This iss why men created the system of prostitution to make sure that all men could have females to rape for leisure, to decrease the chances that men would fight over female property and thus to increase male solidarity.
Racism (and classism, both have the same purpose and mechanism) IS patriarchy and misogyny. Racism will only persist if misogyny persists, because racism divides women, not men.
Therefore, if women overcome patriarchy, that is, *all* forms of violence and oppression instituted by men, racism will disappear.
I wrote about this in my series on intersectionality, so if this above seems a bit confusing
https://witchwind.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/cutting-through-the-throes-of-intersectionality-part-ii-on-the-structure-of-mens-interlocking-chains/
within feminism itself, I’m far more concerned about the damage of pseudo-anti-racism disguised as feminism, which is used to bully women, drive women out of feminism, divert women’s attention to turn their anger against women, etc, than racism itself. I find this FAR, far more damaging to ALL women within feminism as it installs a climate of fear and terror in which no-one is allowed to think for herself or criticise the evident bullying and gaslighting that’s going on. The irony is that usually it never even serves the goal of improving understanding about racism from a woman’s perspective because it’s all about attacking a woman by using male legitimacy to do so (ie male definitions of what oppression counts as real and what doesn’t).
I find it far more problematic than the problem of racism per se within feminist circles, because this destroys feminism more than racism itself does, and it’s totally deliberate. Once women become radical feminist, the vast majority a acutely aware of the different systems of domination in patriarchy and are very careful to pay attention to different women’s needs and usually do their best not to reproduce behaviours of domination and subordination. Racism being a problem defined by men and thus defined as real (although not racism as experienced by women), most women are often MORE careful not to do or say racist things than they would even with misogyny, because racism is considered a far greater crime than misogyny in patriarchy.
Now my next point is when we talk of racism WITHIN feminist circles, we’re not talking of women who make money off exploiting poor or marginalised women, who work in the institutions that kick female immigrants out of the country, who work in corporations that invade and loot people’s land, who manages the slaves of her husband / owner, etc, etc. We’re not talking about any “severe” level of responsibility in racism (there aren’t that many women who participate in racism to that degree anyway). No. We’re talking about things that women SAID, as in WORDS. Or maybe, at worst, women failing to include different classes of women in all stages of the organising process of events, projects etc, and mostly limiting the group of women to her acquaintances and colleagues which reflect her class belonging, to some extent. Or a woman bought a Nike T-shirt. Or whatever.
These very minor behaviours will be treated by women in feminism as irredeemable crimes of the highest order worthy of being banned from the ‘movement’ forever. And very often, I’ve seen women being accused of racism in spectacular ways for no reason at all. Well yes there was a reason, each time it was in a context of the accused woman criticising men, men’s sexual violence or aspects of male violence. It was very specifically anti-feminist, and framing it as anti-racism was a way of making the attack unassailable by conferring activist legitimacy to it.
It is really laughable to accuse and attack feminists in this way for barely saying or doing anything (but often it’s simply used as a way to silence women who denounce male violence and refuse to be guilt-tripped by so-called “intersectional” analysis) when in such contexts the REAL agents directly responsible for racism (men and their institutions – state, corporations, media, etc) are never even named (let alone directly attacked), and rarely if ever do we discuss concrete ways to support our sisters against these institutions, rather than against fake female feminist enemies.
I have never seen concerted, organised group efforts to attack women in front of everyone in a racist way, however I’ve seen again and again women attacked in the most vicious ways, that literally took the form of a trial, under the guise of purging racism from a group. What it did was to purge feminists from a group.
I have never, ever seen one single dramatic “racism!!” accuser within feminism suggest anything concrete to make things easier for women who suffer from institutional racist oppression, or even suggest ways of understanding racism that improves communication, cooperation and understanding between different classes of women and actually helps understanding concretely the different ways in which women are oppressed – and thus actively contributes to making the place more feminist and safer to women. It has always, always been framed as “you are guilty of this great (invisible, multiform) crime, and if you don’t feel guilty it’s because you’re in denial of your own guilt”.
And this creates a climate where anyone and everyone can be guilty of something even without knowing, like there’s something bad and rotten inside you that can spring up any time. So it’s a climate of terror because you’re made to believe you can be BAD in spite of yourself and you don’t know when it’s going to happen, so you have to contain yourself and survey your thoughts and actions all the time because you’re terrified of being accused of racism as it can cause you to be kicked out of feminism and that can mean depression or death if it’s the only thing your life holds on to at the moment. These accusations are terrible for women because it instrumentalises a deep-seated misogynistic belief that we are born bad and inherently guilty.
So this is an excellent way to censor women and make feminist women fear to speak and even think. How convenient! Also persuading women that they might be racist even against their own perception (ie if I don’t feel guilt I should, or if I’m annoyed by what she said it’s because I’m in denial of my racism) is also telling women to not trust their own perceptions as to whether or not they’ve tried to dominate someone else (it’s not something that can be done unconsciously) and to believe anyone who accuses them – they’re just inherently guilty, even without reason or evidence.
The other thing that makes me absolutely SICK is that in the same contexts where women are dramatically accused of racism as if they had massacred 20 women, nobody bats an eyelid when anti-women decisions are regularly taken, when something misogynist is said and goes unchecked, etc. This might happen 20 times maybe in 30 minutes, the level of misogyny might even be excruciating but, it doesn’t matter, because it only affects women. It’s just misogyny, that’s totally normal.
I’m so fucking sick of this double standard.
I know that women who do this accusing and bullying are themselves colonised by lefty male standards and definitions of racism and usually hold a lot of contempt for feminism, so much so that they feel confident and legitimate in lecturing an entire assembly of women or radical feminists who have decades of political experience with absolute lousy, non woman-centred political analysis, on the grounds that it presents as anti-racism. I’ve seen it time and again. This legitimacy comes from men, which is why from this perspective women’s work and women’s collective has so little value as it to be acceptable to destroy sometimes decades of community work in one single session of accusation.
What I’d like to see happen wrt anti-racism in feminist circles, is:
misogyny to be considered always as seriously as racism, classism, anti-lesbianism, and especially to consider all the latter as variations stemming FROM misogyny (and thus as having the same effects on women: female-hatred, division, oppression, allegience to men etc), and therefore treated in the same way we’d treat misogyny in women: consciousness-raising, or self-protection when the woman is too violent to be dealt with.
That as a rule we stop attacking women in feminist circles for any reasons whatsoever, whether it be racism, misogyny, whatever. As said above, we should protect ourselves and our work from women who are too destructive to be dealt with but that’s all. Never attack women. Never ever.
I want to see an anti-racism focused on identifying, naming and challenging the institutions and men responsible for racism and on researching how racism operates specifically in our area, instead of focused against straw feminist/women enemies (who, alone, won’t ever have the power to change other women’s situation anyway, because we are all oppressed by men);
And especially, an anti-racism based on seeking to develop ties, friendships and networks with as many different classes of women as possible – and to integrate this as a constant feminist ethics of liberation – in order to better understand how specific groups of women are affected by the various forms of patriarchal oppression and especially to be better placed to help improve their condition by preventing some degree of institutional persecution, so we can be stronger together; Developing strong ties is also the only way to truly include more marginalised women in organising processes and projects, instead of token inclusion which is complete and utter bullshit and totally insulting to the intelligence of the women invited.
oh right, that was a long rant. Sorry for overflowing your comments cherry!
THANK YOU for your comments Witchwind!
huh, last comment :P
Re-reading my longwinding stuff makes me realise even more that accusing women for WORDS like they’re CRIMES that KILL is such a trannyesque thing to do. Or MRA. Or pro-prostitution lobby. It’s the same tactics.
Like feminists who “kill” prostituted women for being prostitution abolitionists.
Or feminists who “annihilate” trannies by calling them men.
The pattern is the same over and over again: women name the truth about men, and these women are accused of committing crimes worse than genocides simply for pronouncing these truths about men. It’s a way to silence feminists.
Good point.