This is not going to be easy for some feminists to hear, but oh well, fuck them.
I am going to talk about it anyway.
There’s a HUGE problem that continues to exist in our circles, that of the tone deaf, self centered white feminist. This sunny faced live, laugh, love creature who proudly waves her degree from an Ivy League university and labels herself a feminist, a liberal, and who also inexplicably claims to believe in intersectionality, has continued to undermine and talk over not only women of color, but the LGBTQIA community, sex workers, single moms, essentially every woman who takes a path that doesn’t resemble her own.
Yet, this brand of feminist not only demands but expects all women to drop their own self interests in order to support her cause i.e. to be as respected as a white man only to then leave these same women in the dust once they’re no longer needed. Don’t be fooled. This is not a modern day problem but an established history for white feminists.
From the time the suffragettes emerged, white feminists have been fighting for their ability to enjoy the same rights as their white male counterparts. While no one can dismiss the fight they undertook as being brave and paving the way for future generations, it was also sadly and not surprisingly all too predictable. Women like Susan B. Anthony and Margaret Sanger have since been revealed to have been racists. As a matter of fact, Anthony and fellow suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought hard to ensure that white women received the right to vote before black men could. They even went so far as to say that white women had to have the right to vote before black men because “if white women were given the vote, they would protect civilization from decline, by which she meant Black influence.”
https://progressive.org/latest/theft-disguised-liberation-farley-211005/
While on the surface white feminists today appear to be open to helping black and brown women, they still continue to silence non-white women and focus on the issues that white women care about. This erasure is all too common amongst white feminists who often use it to their advantage. Following the brutal murder of Nia Long, black women took to Twitter to ask white feminists to lend solidarity with seeking justice and to demand more media focus on this heinous crime. The national media was largely ignoring the murder and frustration was understandably growing amongst black women activists. As Rachel Elizabeth Cargle wrote in her 2018 article for Harpers Bazaar,
“Instead of sharing in the outrage of Nia’s brutal murder, they came with fury for being tagged in a post that they felt challenged their own perceived feminist accomplishments. There were grand displays of defensiveness, demands that they be acknowledged for all the things they had done for black people in the past, and a terrifying lashing out that included racial slurs and doxing.
The fragility of these women was not a surprise to me. In a crucial moment of showing up for our marginalized community, there was more concern about their feelings and ego as opposed to the fight forward for women as a whole. What could have been a much-needed and integral display of solidarity and true intersectionality quickly became a live play-by-play of the toxicity that white-centered feminism can bring to the table of activism.”
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a22717725/what-is-toxic-white-feminism/
Once again, white feminists ignored what was clearly an issue related to women’s safety and racism and chose instead to contribute nothing more than indignation and salty white tears because they place their white race above that of actual womanhood and sisterly solidarity.
Of course this is what the FINOs (feminists in name only) secretly prefer. It has helped them to attain the privileged lifestyles they so unapologetically flaunt as badges of the effectiveness of ‘leaning in”.
Under white feminism, only a few privileged women enjoy a life of relative ease and comfort. White, upper and middle class women are able to attend college, enjoy careers in a wide range of fields, get married or not get married, buy homes, etc. However, while they were aiming to smash that proverbial glass ceiling, they left black, brown, and trans women behind to seek a life that was nowhere near as picturesque.
In late 2019, a group of activists comprised of black, white, latinx, and trans sex workers united in Washington D.C. to support a bill that was being proposed to decriminalize sex work. The bill would have saved countless lives as well as provided regulations that would have kept so many sex workers safe. NOW, the National Organization for Women soundly and unsurprisingly lobbied against the bill.
“D.C.’s decriminalization proposal would remove criminal penalties for adults engaged in prostitution — selling sex and buying sex, as well decriminalizing non-violent third parties like managers or security, and sex workers’ places of business. The campaign to support this full decriminalization bill, DecrimNow DC, was created by sex workers, with black and trans sex workers the most visible public speakers and leaders. They have been joined by national LGBTQ rights and racial justice groups like the Human Rights Campaign, National Center for Transgender Equality, Lambda Legal, Black Lives Matter DC, and Black Youth Project 100. The communities they represent have all faced police indifference, harassment, and abuse — even death.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/155481/liberal-feminism-sex-work-problem
With the high rates of trans women being targeted by violence and even murdered, many of these women are killed while engaging in sex work, this issue is imperative. White feminists didn’t even want to acknowledge sex work as being actual work and only discussed sex workers as being “prostitutes”, which completely delegitimized the need for such a bill. in the eyes of these feminists, sex workers are just victims so the industry must continue to be criminalized. Case closed.
This of course is par for the course of white feminists.
In a 2021 interview with NBCBLK, Koa Beck stated, “The goal of white feminism is not to alter the systems that oppress women — patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism — but to succeed within them.”
“My takeaway is that white feminism is enduring because it’s so palatable and because it doesn’t really challenge much about our structure, our life, the way we make money or the way we relate to other women. There’s something so easy about it, and it fits within the rhythm of the shows and media we consume. You can basically identify as a “feminist” without really challenging power, and that’s very satisfying and welcoming to a lot of people.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/koa-beck-dismantling-persistence-white-feminism-n1253555
If we consider how COVID-19 devastated so many people over the last two years, and how many of the worst impacted individuals were women and children, the ugly reality of just how white feminism has left so many behind is disgustingly obvious.
According the NewAmerica.org, “When COVID-19 infection rates began to rise in March 2020, women lost more than 12.2 million jobs, and still had a net loss of 5.1 million by February 2021. Overrepresented in the sectors most impacted by pandemic layoffs, such as hospitality, leisure, and retail, women of color and women in low-paying jobs were left reeling. In May 2021, months into recovery, Black women’s unemployment rate was 1.5 times that of white women’s and similarly, Latinx women’s was 1.6 times higher than their white counterparts’.”
The women who were lucky enough to keep their jobs continued to face even greater struggles.
“On the front lines, women of color were overrepresented and at higher risk for contracting COVID-19; they too struggled to access care for their children when 60 percent of childcare centers across the nation closed during the pandemic’s peak. This is the state — the reality — of gender equality in the United States.”
https://www.newamerica.org/the-thread/the-gaps-of-white-feminism-and-the-women-of-color-who-fall-through/
Kyla Schuller wrote in her book, “The Trouble with White Women”,
“As a blatant attempt to join the status quo, white feminism is increasingly suspect, but as a lifestyle ideal, the optimized woman shimmers forth from Barre class, Instagram scrolls, protest marches, and even, in the Trump era, the White House.”
Another malignant problem with white feminists is their inability to include trans women in their definition of women. This was all too obvious during the innauguration of Trump when they could be seen in droves waving their I have a vagina blah blah blah” signs while sporting their bright pink “pussy hats”. Every time it was brought to their attention that not all women are cis gendered, there was instantly an violent outcry, and when that didn’t yield the desired results, they let forth the tidal waves of tears.
Tears, always tears.
In the last chapter of “The Trouble with White Women”, Schuller says “In the TERF worldview, race, capitalism, and family are all distinctly secondary to the primary fact of sex identity, an identity it insists flows transparently from the body at birth.”
Contemporary Second Wave feminists such as Janice Raymond and JK Rowling have been outspoken in their TERFdom. Often such white feminists cite women’s history as their reason for excluding trans women under their feministic umbrella.
So why does this particular brand of white feminism seek to gain privilege for only the few? Sadly, because, as Audrey Farley stated in her review for “The Trouble with White Women”, they susbscribe to an idea known as “zero sum thinking”.
https://progressive.org/latest/theft-disguised-liberation-farley-211005/
Zero sum thinking is the idea that in order for some to succeed, many have to fall behind or flat out lose.
“The zero-sum bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to mistakenly view certain situations as being zero-sum, meaning that they incorrectly believe that one party’s gains are directly balanced by other parties’ losses. For example, the zero-sum bias can cause people to think that there is competition for a resource that they feel is limited, in situations where the resource in question is actually unlimited and freely available.”
https://effectiviology.com/zero-sum-bias/
This is a viewpoint that is most often held by older white conservatives, especially in regards to immigration, social benefit programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare. Its the outcry of the person who thinks everyone is getting something they are not and if somehow you help anyone other than them they will cease to exist. In other words, “Ok, Boomer”.
So, what exactly is the solution? Well, just like with any other problem that continues to be try to inhibit progress and stifle marginalized communities, it HAS TO BE DISCUSSED. A LOT. Not just by a small group of outspoken people, by as many people as possible. White, black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, we all have to talk about this.
Sure, Karen memes are funny and we have all seen the call out videos of Karens Gone Wild on social media, but we have to push past the typical reactions of “Karen is at it again” and broaden the dialogue. We have to talk about exactly what these white feminists are doing, how it affects, every person of color, even poor white women and their children. Despite the lovely slogans and words of these problematic Second Wave feminists, the focus is not even close to being about unity or empowerment. It is only another Ponzi scheme.
