Mind the Gap

Depending on who you are and what your position in the food chain is, people have no scruples about stealing your work and claiming it for their own. We feminists are smart, sassy, and in-your-face, stealing your ideas out of your mouth just as soon as you put them into words.

I’ve been wondering what exactly brought on Sudy and Belledame’s posts yesterday, not to mention BFP’s own post which I linked to yesterday and is no longer there (it was pretty restrained, considering what it turned out to be about). Now this morning I notice that BFP’s site is gone (archives appear to be still there), and we have clarification from Gwen at High On Rebellion.

Others have already put it better than I could, so I’ll quote Gwen:

It’s all too easy for white women to get away with stealing the ideas of women of colour.  Women of colour often have less access to the mainstream media or mainstream academia, making it harder for them to become known to a wide audience.  Adding to the temptation is the fact that white women will get credit for being remotely anti-racist in a way that women of colour will not.  A white woman with an Audre Lorde quote for every occasion can build an entire academic or media career out of being an “intersectional” feminist.  A woman of colour who raises any of these points is just “angry” (ironically, the same thing that men say about feminists).

and Sudy from A Womyn’s Ecdysis:

And what irony I found today, the day where I needed a good laugh - the day when Brownfemipower ceased her internet presence after years of blogging about media justice, womyn at the border, transformative feminist theory, advocacy for Brown womyn, and safe space - is the same day that I find that the authors of Stuff White People Like has a new book through Random House and Jessica Valenti has a new upcoming book on sexuality. And Post Secret is probably going on Book #5 with Harper Collins sometime next Sunday.

And finally Belledame:

Meanwhile:

“A” my name is “Asshole,” my weaknesses are “Arrogance,” “Avarice” and “Ambition,” my skin is “Alabaster,” my tongue is “Acid,” my Analysis often comes off as “Airheaded,” and as Machiavellis go I am an “Amateur.”

I’ve already felt like a cog in other people’s book deals, journalistic careers, and political careers, just by becoming involved in feminism. And I’m white, and relatively middle-class. When I say relatively, I mean I don’t consider that I need or deserve to be paid for being a feminist. Then again, people relative to whom I’m most certainly working-class consider that they do deserve to be paid. 

It’s not a good feeling, to feel like a cog - it makes you feel like a sucker for caring about something that’s being used to justify privileged people’s entitlement to their money. I still believe that there’s a lot more to feminism than that - in a way, it’s incredibly convenient to some people to forget that The Personal Is Political doesn’t actually mean Lipstick Is Important, and particularly to forget what the pro-woman line actually is - , but that’s how I feel at the moment - just one of the voices being used, whether we like it or not, to boost the careers and entitlement of a few white, middle-class, ambitions, unscrupulous women. For me to feel this way is one thing, but for someone like Brownfemipower, who has been talking about issues surrounding women and immigration, for years now, to get plagiarised, is completely outrageous. And that’s not even half the problem. Using the issues surrounding women and immigration as a way to gain kudos and a bit of a career boost for yourself is beyond despicable. People being mistreated somewhere? Just another big fucking diamond for your crown!

I’m absolutely steaming about this. On a personal level, I learned shitloads from reading Brownfemipower, I discovered a couple of writers I’d never heard of even in the short time since I started reading her, and I was also incredibly glad that such a voice existed, that feminism wasn’t all about rich people’s book deals and getting misrepresented in the press as, basically, an opportunity for accomplished women to socialise with like-minded people.

So what can be done about this? The first step is, I know there has to be more than half a dozen of us who actually give a shit, who are tired of getting dismissed as ‘oversensitive’ or ‘humourless’ when we point out racism and classism, and who want to point these things out because they are incredibly important for feminism not to disappear up its own diamond-studded arsehole.

The first thing you can do, is go to Angry Black Woman’s site (see post below) and submit your posts to the Carnival of Allies.

And on a deeper level, if you give a shit, just speak up. Aside from anything else, we’re all still accountable for what our ancestors did. Being afraid of being clumsy and accidentally racist isn’t an excuse for keeping quiet. Being offended that you’re asked to care about something that your ancestors did and you’re personally against is doubly not an excuse - if anything, you’d be perpetrating their actions by being silent about it. Feel like you’re being too harshly criticised for making unwittingly racist comments? Boo fucking hoo. And just in this case, yes, you could feel like you’re unreasonably being a bitch to Ms Marcotte, but imagine how you’d feel if someone nicked your work and no-one said anything about it?

So, speak up. Personally, I’m fed up at being asked to lovingly suck the toes of high-selling book-published liberal feminists while all other voices get ignored.  

Oh, and also, speak up about this specific incident, because we all know who, one day, will get a chance to go to the mainstream media and be all ‘Oh I was criticised, people can be so awful, it was a nightmare’.