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In 1983, when I was in kindergarten, white (Jewish) lesbian feminist Adrienne Rich implored a white-led feminist movement: “Without addressing the whiteness of white feminism, our movement will turn in on itself and collapse.” Twenty-five years later, I’m dubious about a movement — “ours” or otherwise — that has not only failed to honestly and consistently address its whiteness but has also, in so doing, become something far less than a movement for social change.[1]

My comments here are hugely influenced by critiques of white feminism put forth over generations by women of color,[2] critiques I’m guessing you’re familiar with. Maybe you’re even nodding because you feel like you’ve reckoned with them. Maybe it bums you out that past generations of white feminists had such a white-supremacy/class-privilege problem. Maybe This Bridge Called My Back was required reading in your first women’s studies class and you know all about “intersectionality,” making a point in your feminist projects to “include” the voices and issues of women of color, working-class and poor white women, and maybe even trans folks and members of other groups historically marginalized by dominant feminisms. I’m pretty sure about all this because many of you have told me so — in personal conversations and workshops, in your books and blogs and …

Yet it doesn’t look to me like you’ve really reckoned with those critiques. It looks more like you appropriate or tokenize them, using their language while continuing to center white, class-privileged women’s experiences in your “feminism” and engaging in political work that upholds and strengthens white supremacy and economic exploitation — sometimes directly undermining the social-change work of feminists of color.

And, yes, you deserve some concrete examples of that, which is why I’m writing. My intention isn’t to repeat the critiques of feminists of color, but to offer some specific instances in which I, a white, class-privileged feminist who is often privy to your conversations and who can identify with the experiences and perspectives of privilege, have recently seen this playing out. At this particular historical moment, it seems to happen frequently around the disconnect between white feminists’ notions of “safety” as an ideal we should organize around, and, on the other side of the not-so-fun funhouse mirror, organizing by feminists of color around policing/prisons and immigration/borders — issues that expose the fantasy of “safety” as a product of privilege; issues that feminists of color have increasingly centered in their activism while white feminists seem to be struggling to understand whether they are feminist issues at all.

And thank fuck, finally, for the bit in bold, which has been bothering me for some time. Jessica uses the words ‘entitlement to safety at one stage as well, which just makes me go ‘Yes! Finally!’.

Difficult to pick specific bits to quote, but all the same:

Where are white feminists?

As far as I can tell, white feminists’ “solidarity” with the immigrants’ rights movement amounts to occasionally featuring a woman who works at an immigrants’ rights nonprofit in a publication or panel, and occasionally mentioning a sensational case of violence against a particular immigrant woman on a blog. I was at the mass May Day marches for immigrants’ rights in 2006 and 2007 in Los Angeles, and I saw no notable presence of any of the major U.S.-based feminist organizations. In 2007, I could find no mentions of the upcoming marches, or report-backs the next day, on popular feminist blogs. Hundreds of — some places millions — of people were on the streets for social justice. Where were white feminists?

Even coverage of outrageous cases of state violence against immigrant women has been scarce in media created by white feminists. In July 2007, a trans woman named Victoria Arellano died after being denied AIDS medication and proper health care in an immigration detention center for men. White feminist media makers mostly missed the story — though it was reported in the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and other major media outlets. It seemed simply not to register as a feminist issue.

Confused by this, I mentioned it on an e-mail list where most of the active participants are white, self-identified feminist journalists. That day, they were discussing the demise of GreenStone Media — a liberal/centrist, white-, rich-, celebrity-dominated “women’s” radio network founded by Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, et al. The conversation, which started as a call for a moment of silence to collectively grieve GreenStone’s short life, broadened into a discussion of the scarcity of funding for feminist media, which led to a few mentions of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded — the incisive, grassroots-organizing-focused anthology by INCITE! Some folks even expressed interest in forming a reading group to discuss the book. Meanwhile, my questions about feminist media makers’ lack of attention to Arellano’s story were largely blown off. When a couple of these journalists did eventually mention Arellano’s story on their blogs, the focus was on violence against trans women of color (framed as perpetual victims), with no analysis connecting the story to movements to abolish the prison system or defy the legitimacy of national borders.

What, I wondered, is the feminist media they so desperately want funded for? That the conversation for a moment veered toward The Revolution Will Not Be Funded was only more disturbing: a book by radical feminists of color calling for mass, autonomous movement building as an alternative to the state- and capitalism-based “nonprofit industrial complex” that has co-opted social-change activism was being plucked for possible use (co-optation?) by privileged and powerful advocates of precisely the kind of liberal/reformist so-called feminism that has relied on and actively developed that structure.

No, I thought, the revolution will not be funded. And also: the revolution would not have been broadcast on GreenStone Media.

 

Privilege is a kind of poison — insidious, it obscures, misleads, confuses — and this is part of how power is maintained, as well-meaning privileged people miss the mark, can’t clearly see what’s going on and how we’re implicated, are able to comfortably see ourselves as not responsible. Liberalism and assimilationist politics are safe ways for privileged people to believe they are fighting the good fight; liberalism and assimilation, I think, are privilege’s — power’s — instruments.

On the afternoon of May 1, 2007, I stood with a friend on the sidewalk outside MacArthur Park in L.A., where immigrants’ rights advocates had relaxedly gathered after a long day of marching. A cop decked out in riot gear told us — the only white people in sight — “You’d better get out of here; we’re gonna clear everyone out.” We talked back, asked whether he was gonna tell everyone else and what he was gonna do if we stayed put, rolled our eyes, wondered if these rows of LAPD officers wielding batons and guns were really about to enter the park unprovoked, and stayed where we were. Minutes later, the cops did indeed enter the park, where they brutally shot and shoved to disperse the crowd, injuring many. The next day, my friend and I wondered why we didn’t think of calling or texting our friends inside the park to warn them about what was looking increasingly likely to happen. Inexperienced because of privilege, we hadn’t thought well on our feet, and we’d been in a certain denial about how bad things might get; we’d been pissed and well meaning, but not useful. (“I’m wearing flip-flops,” my friend said to me with sad eyes as we walked away from the park that night, after the violence. We’d shown up feeling that safe. I hope my eyes told her, “I know, I know . . . “)

 

If feminism is about social change, it is about recognizing that safety in this society is a fantasy afforded only by assimilation to power, and the cost of that fake safety is the safety of those who cannot, or will not, access it. If feminism is about social change, it is about radically challenging prisons and borders of all kinds.

If feminism is about social change, white feminism — a feminism of assimilation, of gentle reform and/or strengthening of institutions that are instrumental to economic exploitation and white supremacy, of ignorance and/or appropriation of the work of feminists of color — is an oxymoron. And it is not a thing of some bygone era before everyone read bell hooks in college. It is happening now; you might be part of it.

Struggling not to quote the whole thing here. Go read the rest, there’s plenty more!

This was linked to another great post at La Chola, by the way, go read that too. This bit particularly resonated with me:

I had thought at one time that feminism was about justice for women. I had thought it was about centering the needs of women, and creating action in the name of, by and for women. I had thought that feminism has its problems but it’s worth fighting for, worth sacrificing and sweating and crying and breaking down for.

It was all worth it to me, because it meant that I existed and my daughter existed and the women I love existed and we had the right to demand the violence committed against us ends.

I see now that feminism is nothing more than erasure. A conversation between white women and men. A commitment to the safety and well being of people who are never women of color.

But all the while–even as there is a studied avoidance of the women of color in the room, the women of color are there nonetheless. They are working and agitating and moving and changing the world–and they are doing all this without money, without support, without mainstream media, without jobs, without praise and admiration. And to me, it’s a sin and disgrace to force such an unworthy label on them–they who wouldn’t steal food from a neighbor if they haven’t eaten all day.

You see, sometimes when people don’t want to be called feminist, it’s not because they don’t know what feminism is, so there’s no need to explain it to them. It might be because they know all too well.

Assuming that last one was about Teodor Adorno, that mix of hardcore feminist theory and horror sci-fi B-movies is pretty gratifying.

If I could just direct you people to these links:

Defining Black Feminist Thought

Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination

The Personal Is Political

Minimal Moralia

The Thing

The Thing from Another World

Her statement of purpose looks promising, here’s an extract:

It is impossible to sort out sexist oppression from racism, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, abelism, or any other form of oppression. Modern ideas about gender roles, for example, the idea that women should stay at home while men go out and work, are racialised and classed. Working-class women and women of colour were expected to work, not only because the capitalist system demanded their labour (wouldn’t want to have to pay a man enough to support a family), but because the ideal of “domestic motherhood” for middle-class white women could only exist in opposition to a constructed “other”. If every woman stayed at home, then domestic motherhood would not longer be a marker of class and race privilege , and as such, would no longer be so highly valued.

Therefore, sexism cannot be fought effectively if we are not simultaneously fighting racism, capitalism and other forms of oppression. There is no such thing as a “women’s issue” separate from “race issues” and “class issues”.

Go read the rest here

I’ve made the odd post on how I’m annoyed when the entirety of a country’s popular culture gets dismissed as being horribly sexist, or when we even exclaim over one single film, manga or video game. Actually, this goes for any assumptions about the sexism, or lack thereof, of anything in particular.

Around this time last year, I wrote a post on the female characters in Akira, and one commenter said she thought that the attempted rape of Kaori in the movie seemed like ‘some kind of horrible fan service’. At the time, I protested that this was making some pretty uncharitable assumptions about the fans. But really, how can either of us possibly know? Similarly, when Nintendo puts out a particularly ‘sexist’ game, like Cooking Mama for instance. Feminists over here took offence, but tons of Japanese games involve cooking, fishing, gardening, and so on, done by men and women. The recent Atlus RPG Contact (okay, not too recent in gaming terms) had a trendy, quite macho young teenager learning how to cook as though it was the coolest thing ever. Warioware is full of cooking-related minigames.  

It’s probably pointless to come up with anymore examples at the moment. Although a different one might be the way feminists in the UK have embraced Miyazaki so whole-heartedly. And I’m a fan too, I’ve just read five volumes of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (volume 6 is out of print and costs £8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, drat!), and I’m incredibly impressed by the depth of the female characters. But it might be sexist in ways I can’t even distinguish. We can probably assume that the Rapeman anime isn’t particularly feminist – thinking in two-dimensional terms of sexist vs feminist for the sake of this particular point – but even then we can’t know. After all, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is often considered feminist, and what does she do? She constantly has to kick the crap out of creatures who are all about sex, then they bite you and become your father. Could be seen as feminist, could also be seen as incredibly neurotic. Then again, accurate portrayal of this kind of neurosis could be seen as feminist. And on one count, the female characters in Rapeman meet some feminist criteria – they’re strong women, they’re as big as their attacker, with massive biceps, and they defend themselves. Also, the hero is portrayed in the same way as some feminists tend to portray rapists: he’s single-minded and predatory. But, does the narrative condemn what he does? Does it accept it as natural? Is it humourous? It’s hard to say.  

For a start, the Japanese language alone is completely different from European languages. Sure, there are words adopted from English, but that means nothing. The structure of the language is so different it’s incredibly hard to translate – there might be hidden depths in the handful of manga I’ve read, and there might not. Possibly not, as they’re kind of visual. Still, Japanese is gendered in ways you probably hadn’t even thought of – and then un-gendered in the ways you’d expect it to be gendered. And that’s just the language. Next to that, there’s all the other stuff. It’s possible to piss each other off with incorrect idiom and body language even within one country. So imagine the stuff you can’t possibly even notice when watching cartoon characters speak a completely alien language all the way across the world. What you take to be horribly sexist, or wonderfully empowering, could be meant completely differently. It should also be taken into account that, when something is sexist or violent, different things about violence or sexism will be emphasized, so it will seem more shocking to us.  

What this means is that, of course, you can interpret these films, books, and games however you want to. They can be whatever you want them to be. So what we say about them quite often reflects our prejudice about the country where they originate. And actually, I have quite often read quite categorical assertions on feminist blogs that sexist bastards are at it in Japan again, and those guys are always sniffing panties for fun. But it’s not only Japan, and it’s not always negative stereotypes. Think of the adoption of Buddhism by Hollywood stars, for instance. For one, the religious texts are in a language which is going to be alien to them even if they can read it a bit. Then there’s all the cultural stuff besides the language that you’re not going to get. So in the end, Buddhism can be whatever you want it to be. Like for Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, the central principle of Buddhism is ‘Every man for himself’. That’s a caricature out of a not-terribly-subtle comedy, of course, but it’s still striking how easily a complex philosophy that takes years of study can be turned into a tourist brochure, a sales pitch for silk prayer cushions, or a blockbuster movie poster. Let’s face it, we fuck up with feminism, according to the Feminist Majority Foundation being a feminist means being whoever you are – oh yeah, and A is A, guys, and that smoke coming out of the tip of your cigarette really shows how hard you’re thinking*. So imagine what being a Buddhist means, to the spiritual equivalent of the Feminist Majority Foundation? It probably also means being whoever you are. And collecting little statues of cross-legged fat dudes to grow your plants out of. And having great tonsisticity** in your day to day relationships.  

Sure, there is a good argument against cultural relativism, when people are actually hurt by it. We shouldn’t abandon women who are getting hurt, locked up or killed or harmed in any way just because ‘it’s their culture’, because that’s deeply racist. But that really has absolutely fuck all to do with anything when you’re reviewing video games. Doesn’t it say something that the further removed from us a culture is, the less we’re able to tell the difference between designing computer games and killing people? It’s like these people and countries don’t exist outside of our fantasies, in certain cases even when we’ve actually been there. After all, colonialism was a vast exercise in dehumanising whole races just to justify some convenient prejudices about them, so they could be exploited as being less than human.  

As the descendents of those colonial powers, we still tend to think that way. We also have a certain sense of entitlement that means when we think ‘oh, that’s terrible!’, we instantly jump to ‘that’s objectively bad!’. With that comes the assumption that we know everything, or at least what we do know is the important bit. It’s like the book described in the recent Zoe Williams article, about French women  (one of the rare cases of a Zoe Williams article not causing much Marge Simpson grumbling from me). It’s irrelevant that the author of the book doesn’t know all French women, she can make generalisations because she knows the important ones, the ones who matter. And she also knows what matters about them, since she’s such a connoisseur. This is similar to the attitude of feminists bashing women of colour for supporting Obama over Clinton, or saying that in general gender trumps colour in terms of oppression. What they’re basically saying is that their oppression is the relevant one, and what they know about it is all there is to know.  

[And on a side note, Hilary Clinton isn’t a feminist in any shape or form, unless you think a feminist is a woman who became successful in a patriarchal society. Which amounts to trying to sell the bootstrap argument to all the women who haven’t. Which is pretty anti-feminist if you ask me.]

 I realise that I’ve reinvented the wheel somewhat in this post, but given the largely blindingly white, middle-class nature of the UK blogosphere, all this is well worth bearing in mind.      

*Ayn Rand really thought that smoking was deeply symbolic of being a great intellectual, and was pretty pissed off to get lung cancer as a result of being such a great mind 

**made-up word

Yesterday was the 97th anniversary of the Triangle Factory Fire. I didn’t have a chance to blog yesterday, but would recommend this post by Brownfemipower, and the Triangle Factory website she linked to (and I linked to here). They have lots of interesting testimonies from factory workers, and other cool stuff. Well, ‘cool’ is possibly the wrong word since they’re commemorating the death of 150 people.

It might be a good time also to think of the working conditions of immigrant workers today, which aren’t that much better (if at all).

I have to take issue with another part of Mr Tatchell’s article though:

“If Sylvia was alive now, I suspect she’d be leading a left-wing feminist movement, WomenRage! They’d be occupying business headquarters and government offices to demand equal pay for women (it is still only four-fifths of men’s income), free nursery places for every child, and equal representation for women in all leadership positions.

To this end, she would probably endorse the call for electoral reform to create two-member constituencies, where every electorate would be required to vote for a male and a female MP. It is the only sure way to end women’s under-representation in parliament.

Because of her commitment to internationalism, Sylvia would also be prominent in the green, anti-war, human rights and anti-globalisation movements, and support the campaign to cancel Third World debt.”

Whoa, whooooaaa there, hang on a minute, calm down. Sylvia Pankhurst is not Socialist deodorant. You don’t get to wear Sylvia. You probably shouldn’t claim that if she were alive today she’d agree with you or be a prominent member of your organisations. We all love Sylvia very much. However, I don’t think it’s fair to hoard her all to yourself, or for us all to split her into little bits. Sylvia didn’t belong to anyone, she did her work when she was alive – and fine work it was too -, she left a legacy and a responsibility to remember the work she did and try not to shit – or indeed, jizz – all over it. I think we should respect that, don’t you?

I’m unhappy with a lot of major feminist events, but there are a lot of women doing lots of fantastic work locally that just get completely ignored, and to be honest from this I don’t get the impression Peter Tatchell will be happy with them until they recognise all the good he’s done for them and join his organisations.

You know, cause if they don’t, obviously they’re just being silly and unreasonable – a bit of a recurrent subtext in a lot of left-wing groups, I find. I mean, yawn, 40 years ago just called, it wants its debate back. Can we progress a little now please?

Okay so I’m a little late on this one, but the Wicker Man remake seems hilariously terrible.

Here is a version cut down to the most relevant bits.

At least we can be satisfied that he gets punished for throwing women across rooms with a single punch thanks to THE BEES! THE BEES! AAAUGH MY EYES!

And remember, if you see this man, GIVE HIM THE BIKE! THE BIKE! No questions asked, or he might pull his gun on you and make you laugh yourself to death with his terrible acting.

Seriously though, this punchathon seems a little strange, not to mention a little gratuitous, considering the original is pretty great on the whole.

(Image of the amazing Christopher Lee from the original, much better, movie. Unfortunately, the world didn’t hear from him again. But you knew I was going to say that.)

There is another reason though. How many right-wing pundits’ complaints about feminism contain the phrase ‘since times immemorial’ in them? You can find a great example of this way of thinking in this article by David Gelernter posted on the F-Word a while ago (and yes, that’s me getting my hair off in the comments thread, I’m not too proud, but terms like ‘street lingo’ really make me fuming mad). The bit I’m interested in is this:

“Who can afford to allow a virtual feminist to elbow her way like a noisy drunk into that inner mental circle where all your faculties (such as they are) are laboring to produce decent prose? Bargaining over the next word, shaping each phrase, netting and vetting the countless images that drift through the mind like butterflies in a summer garden, mounting some and releasing others—and keeping the trajectory and target always in mind?”

So, let me get this straight, David, you were sitting in a beautiful garden where it’s always summer, enjoying the wonderful ballet of the butterflies, when all of a sudden KABOOM drunk lesbians with machine guns leapt out of the bushes and destroyed your ability to form an English sentence?

What’s interesting here is that language, of course, is all about people, yet Gelernter’s fantasy is completely devoid of them, he’s all by himself in a garden. The other interesting thing is that it’s a summer garden, i.e. always the same season. There’s no history here, just a mythical land of ‘the way it’s always been’. Historical figures are mentioned, but they’re just these mythical great men and great women whose greatness ‘transcended time’ anyway. But Gelernter himself is outside of all that, in his summer garden.

In a case like this, history is incredibly useful to feminists, because we can say, hang on, it wasn’t always like that at all, rigid spelling and grammar conventions are actually incredibly recent, and for centuries there were only very loose rules that mainly revolved around making things easy to read when they’d been hand-written by monks with severe writer’s cramp – it might be useful here to mention that I miserably failed Old English because I couldn’t be arsed to do the work or buy any of the books, but my point still stands.

Etymology is often considered to be the enemy of feminists, just because of douchebags like Gelernter or downright cryptofascists like William Safire. We’re supposed to be inventing new words for stuff all the time, and since we’re all enlightened 21st- century women now, what’s important is the way language is used now, and if you bring up language history, you’re untrustworthy and probably anti-feminist. But that tends to piss me off just as much as the right-wing position. Why? Because it erases history just as much, and in much the same way – we’re all enlightened now and this word is used this way so shut up. It also denies how important language truly is, which is pretty damn important since it is, like, the stuff we use to communicate with each other. Oh, that stuff.

When taken out of the hands of right-wing pundits – and let’s face it, they don’t really have a clue what to do with it – etymology isn’t at all about establishing the original, ‘correct’ meaning of a word. Because that would be utterly, completely and devastatingly stupid, not to mention impossible. But it is incredibly useful to find out about the history of a word, and what meanings it still carries with it today. I always go on about the history of the word ‘rape’, for instance, not because I think the original meaning (yeah, which one?) is correct, but because we’re still using the language of a time when women were men’s private property a lot more so than now, and maybe we need to rethink that. In fact, it’s interesting when you see expressions like ‘the rape of the English language’, because it’s clear that someone like Gelernter is treating language in a very territorial way – the summer garden- but he’s also feminising it somewhat, putting it on a pedestal and demanding that it be treated passively, admired like a beautiful thing, and respected at all times.

Other things, like ‘he’ as a neutral pronoun, are definitely worth thinking about, in light of the fact that men are often considered to be the default human beings and women the modified ones. So, I haven’t really had a chance to look it up to see if it was at any point, but I certainly don’t find the idea too far-fetched or offensive.

I do have a huge problem with fucking about with language without getting to know it first. That’s because language is something incredibly valuable. It’s something that gets banned when countries are conquered. You feel that if you go to Wales, or Ireland, so god knows what it must be like in Africa, Asia or Australia. Not to mention America, where so many languages were completely lost through the people who spoke them being systematically killed off or adopted into the invaders’ society. People did, and still do, get arrested, beaten, or killed, for speaking their language. That’s how powerful language is.

All I’m trying to say is, language is incredibly important and needs to be treasured. Don’t leave that to ignorant overpaid right-wing pundits, do it yourself.