Why I Hate White Feminism
Apr. 7th, 2017 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingSince the November election, "white feminism" has become a code for non-intersectional feminism, or a feminist agenda that strongly privileges the rights of one group of people over another. A common stereotype of this mindset is a white woman who claims to be a feminist but refuses to acknowledge the validity of the Black Lives Matter movement.
This discourse has bothered me ever since it began, but I was never able to put my finger on why. Why was I so upset that people are calling out white supremacy? As someone who grew up in the Deep South, I have an intimate relationship with aggressive white supremacy, and I should be happy that the larger culture is finally talking about this and exposing it for what it is. I've been waiting my entire life for this to happen, so why do I feel that something is wrong?
I think I figured it out. I finally got around to watching Get Out, and it's a cool little horror movie. If you take race out of the story, though, it's full of the same bullshit misogyny that horror movies always exploit in order to create a sense of menace and vulnerability. Like, seemingly superficial racially based microaggressions are indicative of deeper systems of inequality and oppression that routinely endanger the lives of black and brown-skinned people.... but underneath everything it's really women who are evil, which is why female agency is terrifying and dangerous.
And that's what gets me about "why I hate white feminism" – it's a bunch of women attacking other women without really addressing the social, political, and economic mechanisms that reinforce white supremacy. I am not the most socially astute person in the world, but even I know that a statement like "the system is broken and it's your responsibility to help fix it" will trigger a more positive response than "you are broken and you should go fuck yourself." This is not to say that white people can't be unbelievably shitty sometimes, and it's certainly not to say that anger and frustration is an inappropriate response. Still, I'm worried that the fundamental misogyny of "why I hate white feminism" is not so much disruptive as it is toxic.
To give a concrete example, there have been a lot of "53% of white women voted for Trump" posts circulating around Tumblr during the past few months. What the people posting and reblogging these posts don't seem to understand is that the problem is not that "53% of white women voted for Trump." Rather, the real problem is that only 40% of white women in America are registered to vote in the first place; and then, out of those women who are registered, fewer than half actually voted in the presidential election. The problem is not that the majority of white women are racists, then – it's that the vast majority of white women in this country feel so disenfranchised by our political system that they've become convinced that it won't help or protect racial and ethnic minorities even if they do vote. In addition, the same cultural messages that make white women feel powerless always end up having an even stronger effect on women of color. Essentially, the white women who did vote for Trump are a minority that was successfully mobilized through the creation of a common enemy. Considering that literal Nazis seem like a blindingly obvious common enemy to serve as an object lesson and rallying point for people who want to dismantle white supremacy, it's disturbing that the target of liberal rage has become liberal women. Whose interests does this actually serve?
It's of vital importance that we address intersectionality and strike down white supremacy as we move forward, but there has to be a better way to have this conversation.
This discourse has bothered me ever since it began, but I was never able to put my finger on why. Why was I so upset that people are calling out white supremacy? As someone who grew up in the Deep South, I have an intimate relationship with aggressive white supremacy, and I should be happy that the larger culture is finally talking about this and exposing it for what it is. I've been waiting my entire life for this to happen, so why do I feel that something is wrong?
I think I figured it out. I finally got around to watching Get Out, and it's a cool little horror movie. If you take race out of the story, though, it's full of the same bullshit misogyny that horror movies always exploit in order to create a sense of menace and vulnerability. Like, seemingly superficial racially based microaggressions are indicative of deeper systems of inequality and oppression that routinely endanger the lives of black and brown-skinned people.... but underneath everything it's really women who are evil, which is why female agency is terrifying and dangerous.
And that's what gets me about "why I hate white feminism" – it's a bunch of women attacking other women without really addressing the social, political, and economic mechanisms that reinforce white supremacy. I am not the most socially astute person in the world, but even I know that a statement like "the system is broken and it's your responsibility to help fix it" will trigger a more positive response than "you are broken and you should go fuck yourself." This is not to say that white people can't be unbelievably shitty sometimes, and it's certainly not to say that anger and frustration is an inappropriate response. Still, I'm worried that the fundamental misogyny of "why I hate white feminism" is not so much disruptive as it is toxic.
To give a concrete example, there have been a lot of "53% of white women voted for Trump" posts circulating around Tumblr during the past few months. What the people posting and reblogging these posts don't seem to understand is that the problem is not that "53% of white women voted for Trump." Rather, the real problem is that only 40% of white women in America are registered to vote in the first place; and then, out of those women who are registered, fewer than half actually voted in the presidential election. The problem is not that the majority of white women are racists, then – it's that the vast majority of white women in this country feel so disenfranchised by our political system that they've become convinced that it won't help or protect racial and ethnic minorities even if they do vote. In addition, the same cultural messages that make white women feel powerless always end up having an even stronger effect on women of color. Essentially, the white women who did vote for Trump are a minority that was successfully mobilized through the creation of a common enemy. Considering that literal Nazis seem like a blindingly obvious common enemy to serve as an object lesson and rallying point for people who want to dismantle white supremacy, it's disturbing that the target of liberal rage has become liberal women. Whose interests does this actually serve?
It's of vital importance that we address intersectionality and strike down white supremacy as we move forward, but there has to be a better way to have this conversation.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-08 12:33 am (UTC)But...yeah.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-08 09:45 pm (UTC)But I think that "this is why I hate white feminism" is something that made perfect sense within the context of Black Twitter but began to feel slightly off-key when it started appearing in less discursively defined spaces like Facebook and Tumblr.
Like, if you were following the conversation about the Clinton campaign on Black Twitter, in which there was a great deal of discussion concerning both Clintons' voting records on legislation relating to "crime" (meaning the criminalization of blackness), then you would understand how the concept of "white feminism" emerged as a critique of Hillary Clinton's reluctance to straight-up offer enthusiastic support for the BLM movement, and you would use the expression accordingly when speaking within a peer group that knew exactly what you were referring to.
When a fandom blog on Tumblr randomly reblogs a "why I hate white feminism" post without that context, it feels like the blogger has jumped on a bandwagon of it being somehow cool to hate liberal white women, which in turn echoes the recent tendency in Tumblr-based fandom to attack ships you don't like by accusing the shippers of various crimes against humanity, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and a number of other things I don't care to list (the idea being that someone who is truly committed to social justice is not supposed to defend themselves against such charges but internalize and accept them – in other words, a tool meant to help people overcome bias is being used as a one hit kill weapon).
Unfollowing someone on Tumblr for reblogging posts about social justice is one of the most dickheaded moves you can make, but holy hell have I unfollowed a lot of people in the past few months. And it's not just a race thing, tbh. As a gay girl, I don't have a great deal of tolerance for homophobia or heteronormativity, but I can't deal with the misogyny of "why I hate straight women" posts, that shit is crazy.
I used to get a lot of my news about the world from Tumblr and Twitter, but things have become so polarized that I've ended up unfollowing most of my news sources and buying subscriptions to the Washington Post and the New York Times – which, in a painful twist of irony, both read as uncomfortably conservative to me.
Sorry for the long response, but... We live in interesting times, I guess.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-19 03:30 am (UTC)* being an ally does not nor should it get you cookies but....man. maybe I'm just old or maybe I'm shitty at being a liberal, but it seems...I'm going with "shortsighted" as the kindest description I can think of, to basically tell anybody who isn't perfect to fuck off instead of saying "hey, that thing you did was not great, here's why, I hope you consider this for the future" and then....give someone a chance to prove they've done so? idk I guess I fail at ideological purity in favor of "can we just get shit done please."**
** obviously if someone continually fucks up in teh exact same way and does performative contrition rather than actual consideration and making new mistakes that's a different thing but I don't think that's what either of us is getting at here?
no subject
Date: 2017-04-08 08:46 pm (UTC)