I've considered myself a feminist since I was in my early twenties. I was what I would call a "pop culture" feminist in that I took what I knew about feminism only from popular culture. I was interested in academic feminism but I never took the time to research the history of the feminist movement and explore all of it's nuances.
I naively thought the race issues between white feminists and feminists of color was a nuance. It is not a nuance but is interwoven into the very fabric of all three waves of feminism. It is bigger than I can even comprehend.
I am a white woman and while I wholeheartedly support intersectionality, I have yet to claim the word for the reasons the meme above expresses. As a white woman do I have the right to claim to even understand intersectionality? Can I even begin to understand what it is like to be a woman of color in today's world?
What's worse is that white women throughout the feminist movement have not only claimed to understand it, they have equated their experience with that of the black slave, turned their backs on abolitionism, or are feminists who just simply ignore the fact that early feminists did turn their backs on the very slaves they originally were trying to help.
A Very Brief Look at a Handful of Examples
Here is a handful of examples. These can't even begin to cover the issue of race and feminism but I want to start somewhere. Entire books have been written on the topic and as I research the topic I will add blog posts to expand on it.
"Is one half of the human species, like the poor African slaves, to be subject to prejudices that brutalize them, when principles would be a surer guard, only to sweeten the cup of man?"
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Susan B. Anthony
"I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.” Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony worked alongside African American men and assumed that women would get the vote at the same time as they did. Unfortunately when this didn't happen, it's said that she turned against her former allies in the abolitionist movement, and instead aligned herself with a racist benefactor. She even argued for women suffrage by comparing educated white women like herself to the semi literate black men who were going to be getting the ballot first.
Ann Snitow
"Woman" is my slave name; feminism will give me freedom to seek some other identity altogether. Ann Snitow "A Gender Diary," Conflicts in Feminism
Betty Friedan
"But it is an undeniable fact that organizing, petitioning, and speaking out to free the slaves, American women learned how to free themselves."
Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique
There's nothing actually wrong with the quote itself. Friedan simply means they learned how to go about it. The problem I have is that in The Feminine Mystique, she fails to ever mention that once learning how to free themselves Susan B Anthony turned her back on the very abolitionist movement that helped her get their start. Instead she talks about how heroic she was completely leaving out anything that might blemish Anthony's reputation as an activist.
Current Examples
Back in May I blogged about the hashtag #yesALLwhiteowomen. The tag was created by 4chan who have since become rather notorious for their pranks in the feminist community. The guys at 4chan thought they were being original when they created the hashtag #yesAllwhitewomen but not one of them ever realized the similar hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen was created by feminist women of color back in 2013 in response to white feminists.
This past week I watched a well known voice in the feminist community decide to shut down her Twitter because she was being accused of lying about being a woman of color. She decided to start her Twitter over so that she could remain completely anonymous and protect herself from the harsh harassment. Was it a 4chan troll or a member of the MRM (Men's Rights Movement) that was harassing her and making the accusations? No. It was a fellow feminist this woman had considered an ally.
Why am I telling you this story? Because the meme at the top of this post epitomizes the point the woman of color was trying to make. If you are white than how can you possibly know what it's like for a women of color? How does your feminism fight for us?
But those are not the questions I'm trying to answer here.
How Does All This Tie in with Women Against Feminism?
I have a very simple point. It is why I wrote this post to begin with. It is a reality that, as someone who has considered herself a feminist for most of my adult life, I am having a rather hard time coming to terms with.
It is a reality that many supporters of #womenagainstfemism and #menagainstfeminism have been trying to tell me all along. (Well, now they are openly telling everyone.) This simple message is "what you believe might not be all it's cracked up to be." It's the message that "what the majority of feminists have been saying may not be entirely truthful."
At first it was pretty easy to ignore these messages. Things like "feminism is misandry," "feminists think women are superior," and even "patriarchy is not real" are opinions. But when I kept hearing the idea that "feminism has been rife with racism from the very beginning" I realized there had to be some truth to this.
Why? Because the feminists who are women of color were saying it too!
The worst part is that it went even further. Because the feminists in the gay and transgender community were saying they felt discriminated against by straight cisgender feminists. I especially saw it when the hashtags #yesallwomen, #eacheverywoman, and #allmencan were at the height of the popularity. Those that are transgender or gender ambiguous kept saying over and over "Stop alienating us!" but very few listened or even seemed to care.
I also learned why I was always so leary of the hashtag movement #bringbackourgirls. I always had this gut feeling that I was missing something important regarding the issue. I was horrified to learn this past week that while the hashtag movement was viral no one talked about the boys that had been murdered. I found an article by Naomi Wolf titled it Bring Back Our Girls. And Boys." She is the only feminist that I saw even talk about the boys. Society, the media, and feminists as a whole did not care about these boys. Just the girls.
Is this what feminism has become? Save the girls but we don't care if you kill the boys?
So these past few days, when I saw the Women Against Feminism holding up signs that said "feminism is hateful," "feminism is alienating," and "feminism is divisive" I found myself reluctantly agreeing. If you read my last post, you know I found myself agreeing with many of the points Women Against Feminism made.
So Now What?
After all that I have discovered, do I still consider myself a feminist? I don't know. I don't know if that is a label that I want to apply to myself anymore. If I reject some beliefs of feminism does that mean I have to reject feminism as a whole?
I have always considered my definition of feminism to be equalist, egalitarian, humanist, and yes even intersectional. Is it possible to continue to practice what I personally believe feminism is when feminism as a whole has so much baggage, negativity, and is perceived as hate?
Can I really make the world a better place if I am constantly having to prove how I'm not a man hating, alienating, angry, vengeful, blaming, perpetual victim? I found myself constantly having to prove to people that I'm not a stereotypical radical feminist even before Women Against Feminism went viral.
There's the rebel in me that says if I give up the label of feminism I am letting them win. The whole point is that feminism isn't a dirty word, right? The whole point is not to be afraid to call myself whatever I want...but even if clinging to that word means it gets in the way of the activism I actually want to do?
