When a feminist isn't a "feminist"

[cimorene]

I spent hours yesterday and today reading up on this trainwreck in the feminist blogosphere after links from miriam_heddy and ciderpress. It's about racism and intellectual theft, and how white feminists use their priviledge, consciously or un-, to coopt the voices of women of colour, claiming their ideas in the process of making those ideas heard without attribution instead of working to make the voices of women of colour heard as well.

As my mouth fell slowly open in horror yesterday, I understood for the first time why some women who believe in the systematic oppression of women and believe that it's wrong choose not to call themselves "feminists." For the first time, I understood that this has nothing to do with a misunderstanding of terminology on their part. What this battle over terminology has to do with is yet another one-way visible veil of priviledge blinding us over here on the priviledged side of the veil. We have the luxury of saying that the history of the movement doesn't matter because of the dictionary definition, of all things. We have the luxury of saying, "But look at the dictionary! You meet the dictionary criteria, so if you claim not to be a feminist, you're wrong." But women of colour don't have that luxury. They can't define a political movement by the dictionary in defiance of its history and its present when it's busy silencing them, instead of doing what it says on the tin and working to change their marginalisation.

I'm ashamed and disgusted that I didn't see this before and that I inadvertently contributed to the attempts of systemic priviledge to silence the marginalised by arguing this point with them before. I'm sorry, belatedly, to my friends and to anyone who's listened to me say those things, whatever side of the fence they're standing on. I was wrong.

Comments

[dreamnnightmare.livejournal.com]

take everything you just said is given. I didn't see it myself before, but it should not be a surprise. However, I've met quite a few women who see the oppression of women in our society and hate it, but who refuse to call themselves feminists. I don't think very many of these women do it because of the further oppression by white feminists of feminist women of color. I think most of these women do it because they don't want their family members and coworkers and fellow churchgoers to think of them as liberal extremists. Even though some of them are. Now, I'm not going to argue this is a terrible thing. If you can do the work of liberation, and conceal that fact from people you have to see every day who would harass you about it, maybe that's the way to go. You save more of your strength for the real struggle. yes, those sexist people need to wake up and smell the coffee, but it's not the job of every single liberal to work twenty four seven to accomplish this.

Back to your original point. Stealing ideas and holding people down is wrong no matter who does it or why, and it's even worse in a movement that really tries to do the opposite. I'm going to try to see this happening speak up about it in the future. Not that I'm active right now, but I will be again.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I think those people are more like feminists who, by lying in their day-to-day lives about it, are busily contributing to the norm of systematic oppression of women. Although usually unintentionally. It's a separate issue. There are also slightly more politically conservative women who believe in women's oppression but are perhaps nervously fond of the status quo and believe that they reject the principles of feminism because they confuse feminism with radical feminism or with lesbianism or whatever. Not so much malicious lying there as internalized prejudice. On the other hand, I think if for example a passionately religious anti-abortionist by some miracle nonetheless believes women should but don't have equal societal standing with men, if she still wants the law to control other women's bodies I'm not sure she is a feminist. If someone rejects the principle of a political movement with open eyes, whatever their reason, who are others to second-guess?