FEMINISM: IS IT BECOMING A DIRTY WORD?
This is a difficult topic. I have always believed I'm a Feminist. I still do. Why? Well, to me, the idea of being a feminist hinged on a simple conviction, that humans should all be equal. As a British citizen, it was clear to me that women were not really afforded the same respect as men from an early age.
I won't list why, or talk about what I've now understood about institutional inequalities or patriarchy, but I will recall my earliest inklings that we could do better. How about when first looking up at a top shelf in a newsagent and seeing naked women on covers, looking at the children's shelf and seeing young girls I was meant to identify with, very made-up?
There was the first occasion a friend's family had the Sun newspaper and I saw page 3. What about the multiple times I would be with my dad, a builder, who would take me inside little cabins to speak to managers on site, or buy things in warehouses, and there would be calendars or pictures pinned up of naked women. They always made me feel dirty. And angry. All these frozen naked women: thin, curvy, long-haired and white, mostly. All just objects.
For me, equality means that across gender, race, culture, class, sexuality and border lines, every human should be safe, treated with an equal level of respect and have access to social mobility without entering into systems of exploitation.
I know now, at the deepest level, that the problem is, this belief is not upheld through my actions. If I believe in equality, why do I shop in Primark? I know that people who make those clothes are exploited. But, my privilege means I am not only not at risk of being in the same situation, but the individuals making my clothes will remain invisible. It's a lot easier to engage in an ugly activity if it seems normal, and you don't directly see the consequences of it. Why else would so many of us still eat meat?
When in Cambodia and Peru, I made a concerted effort not to engage in playing with children, taking photos with them or buying things from them. Why? Because I knew that by doing this I would be contributing to them failing to get an education. They are on the street in the middle of the day because it is considered profitable. Taking tourist's change is not sustainable and makes these children vulnerable, as you have no idea who gets that money at the other end. I could see my direct impact. It was easy to say, hang on, I wouldn't just go chill with kids on the street, in the middle of the school day in the UK, so why do it here?
When we say we believe in equality, it is obvious that we should prove that with our actions. What is less obvious, is how we can talk about why we don't. Recently, I have left a number of feminist groups, I am also unfollowing more people on social media and avoiding certain topics across all areas of my life. I leave the groups because I find the dialogues inflammatory, angry and short sighted. I unfollow people because I find their accounts so proudly homogeneous and ideas too narrow. I'm self-censoring because I don't want to offend or to be misinterpreted.I hate it when others take your words and make them something they are not.
Then tell you that they know your intentions better than you do because you are too privileged and spoilt to know your own hypocrisy and essentially, corrupted soul.
What am I getting at? A lot of people don't like politics, don't like feminism, don't like talking about race/religion/sexuality. If your instinct is to roll your eyes at those people, so is mine. But, it's not helpful. Nor, is the current craze for constantly using acronyms, as if they are weapons to prove your intelligence and somebody else's ignorance. Terms like BIPOC, Cis or TERF, might be commonplace to you, you might have used hashtags like #MMIW or #YouAintNoMuslimBruv
, but they are not readily accessible to everybody, by ignoring that you are excluding people who sorely need to be part of the dialogue. Using formal, politically correct or academic language doesn't legitimise something or make another person's contribution less valid if they don't use that language. This form of elitism really gets to me.
There are people saying, "don't tone police us" in response to questions. Questions allow for answers, they are not statements, it is not tone policing unless you are questioning the delivery of something the person you are questioning wrote/said. I have angered people in regards to questions about Trans inclusivity and angered people when trying to join in with the #meandwhitesupremacy exercise. Both instances I was told, you need to do this work yourself! Trans and Black people shouldn't have to explain things to you! I'll admit, I did feel defensive and then mad. This is probably an immature reaction. However, I felt it was equally immature to assume that just because I'm neither Trans or Black, my question wasn't legitimate.
To assume that by asking, I'm demanding justification, that my own identity bubble is so rigid, that it will be used as a dividing marker; and I couldn't possibly want to know more from people who are publicly involved in conversations I want to be part of. In moments like that, I just want to remove myself from the conversation. I want to slow my heart rate. I don't want to be angry.
You can say it's
my
privilege to disengage, that it's
my
white fragility. But it's also
your
privilege to have the forum to be heard by someone in a different country to you, to have thousands of people interacting with your messages. Ignoring that privilege doesn't really sit well, as there are other issues that people face under equally grievous systems of oppression that are not supported, whom you are not yet allies to yourself. We, as feminists, should not be raging against every form of oppression that has ever been, but looking at how it has informed our position now and what action can be taken.It's not ok, that if somebody says they find The Carters Apesh*t video and song pointless or flashy or not to their taste, some people will argue that is because we have been indoctrinated not to respect black art. Conversely, it's ok to like N.W.A. exactly because you feel the political statements in their music were so valuable to highlighting oppression, even if you are white and have never been subjected to police harrassment.
Art is a forum where we can leave our experiences and personal locale to inhabit spaces less defined, and that's why it draws us in. That's why it is integral in progress, it starts conversations, sparks reactions, allows us to safely discuss identity.
I questioned the comments of an IG account holder, (she had asserted it was white women who were reporting her posts and having them taken down, I wanted to know if you can get the stats on things like that, could it be bots? Specific political groups? Men? I asked because I shared the outrage and wanted to know how to complain, armed with the right info) and my question led to very quick ridicule from people, I got told that white people like me are the problem. I was told I'd spoken in a better manner to white respondents, I hadn't clicked on their profiles, unlike the people gunning for me. I was furious and hurt. My feelings and that moment passed, it's not uncommon over the internet to feel something inflate quickly. However, a snide comment about how it was white women who had voted in Trump, making me guilty and complicit by association, prompted me to research that, as I had no idea.So, let me ask you, is it so bad that as a white woman, in the UK, I couldn't imagine white women in the USA voting for Trump? Do you know the voting trends of people within your country, or in Japan or Bolivia?
I don't think it's healthy to reject people out of hand and tell them, "do the work" because they don't know all the information you do. As soon as someone mentioned voting trends of white women in the USA I did my own reading, but I needed the pointer, and if you are going to use a public forum and talk about progress, you need to be willing to accept we are all going to join that conversation from different levels.
There's no baseline for the shared experience. You don't get to reject people from the same conversation you are going to need them to help bear fruit from.Anger is a catalyst for many people, but it doesn't mean you get to direct it at others who are naive or uninformed, unless what they say is intentionally damaging, unless they are spreading hurt, unless they are rude to you. Just stop. Stop alienating people who want to be part of something better. We don't all immediately know where to start, or have the tools to reflect well, it doesn't mean we won't, or can't, or don't want to.I understand that in no way is feminism as simple as saying, 'we are all sisters'. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards that. The assumption that when a white woman says that, they are trying to sweep away the inequalities within feminism, or transgressions within the past and present of the movement, is unfair.
I hear so many feminists telling people to vote, but I doubt there will ever be a political candidate anybody embraces every single value of, agrees with every single rule they'd like to enforce or is comfortable with every narrative they seem disinterested in.
If we apply the same logic as transphobics within feminism do, (arguing that trans visibility in some way undermines lesbian visibility), trying to streamline a stance and make it inflexible to change, then none of us could vote. No movement represents every individual equally, or can always highlight oppression in the same area, but we can definitely move towards listening to concerns about that and acting accordingly. We can apply pressure for our elected representatives to do the same.I want to be part of a feminism that has evolved to include ALL women.
However, I might need some of those women, who are outside of my own realm of experience, to step in sometimes and highlight things I might not consider, or reproach me for not addressing the full scope of what it means to be female. I am open to that. Even if it might sting a little.
Are you?
Is feminism?
"There’s definitely an all-or-nothing approach to current discourse that’s upsettingly unrealistic; ideological purity is a pipe dream, and we all need time to unlearn our own toxic ideas about ourselves and others."
Sam Riedel, writer for Bitch Media and The Establishment. Fantastic coverage of Transgender issues and Culture. Can be found on Twitter
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Further reading:
http://blessthiswildmess.com/home-1/2018/7/6/meandwhitesupremacy-part-i-intro-and-day-1
