cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (serious)
[personal profile] cimorene
I spent hours yesterday and today reading up on this trainwreck in the feminist blogosphere after links from [livejournal.com profile] miriam_heddy and [livejournal.com profile] 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.

(no subject)

Date: 13 Apr 2008 04:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bibliotech.livejournal.com
I don't know what to say to this, and anything I do say, I probably shouldn't say here (not that any of it would be remotely negative, just that every now and then I'm a little shy). But I'm reading and re-reading it and processing it.

No, I'll edit to say this much: in the past year or so, quite a few people have drawn away from me for saying that I don't think/feel that feminism is for WOC. Not much, hardly at all, maybe not even a little, who knows. And I've been told over and over that it's just that I don't "understand" what feminism is, that it's on me for not getting the true message of "this isn't for you", and while I'm sad that it took something like this to make my position understandable and not just be a case of me being an Typical Angry Black Woman who can't find a dictionary, I really wish it hadn't been necessary that it comes to this. I'm really going to miss that site, but I don't blame her for leaving. I'm hoping this doesn't affect the WOC blogosphere in general, because I depend on it so much for community and conversation that I can't get anywhere else.

(no subject)

Date: 13 Apr 2008 07:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cimness.livejournal.com
I was about to say that I welcomed whatever you had to say about it. I'm glad that you've edited to say at least part of it - whatever you feel comfortable with. I don't want to make this all about me, or all about the white feminists who have had the same realisation during this debate, because although it's good that we've had it, in the long run it's not doing anything significant outside our own heads. But I want to answer you anyway because, well, you're a friend and we've had conversations about this before that I would probably feel even worse about if I remembered them in more detail right now.

I can only speak for myself when I say that I guess I thought that to insist on defining feminism based on its history/reality/behaviour instead of out of the dictionary was a kind of "not getting it". I thought it was hurt, blaming feminism for the racism of individual feminists, that led you (all) to define it this way. I believed the illusion that systematic oppression is some sort of massive coincidence of unconnected individual events without broader blame. And I should never have fallen for that one with all the systematic oppression I've seen. I'm sorry I was part of the chorus saying that "it's not for you".

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