Spinster aunt slowly emerges from stupor

That’s exactly what I thought that you thought. I think you were clear enough.

I think I got that. Also (and correct me if I’m wrong) that by talking almost exclusively about patriarchy, rather than other oppression systems, you weren’t saying that those others weren’t important; merely, it appears that this is the blog for patriarchy-blaming, and others should definitely set up equivalent blogs for the blaming of heteronormativity, racism, first-world-ism, and classism (inter alia), and we will all do the butt-dance together.

Also, the new masthead font brought a smile to my face.

Thank you, Jill, for making it clear. [I’m personally stuck on the ‘first: women’s liberation’ thing, so maybe I have a little bit of tunnel vision].

(I’m going to make a really nerdy philosophy reference here, sorry!, but) sounds like you, Jill, are like Leibniz: monads, to my Spinoza: “one substance, its attributes and modes.”

The one substance, I think, is hatred of women. It’s the one thing at play, distorted and magnified however many times (if men can hate their own mothers/women they will surely have no problem hating other men). You obviously differ. But maybe not quite, because you think the Substance at Play here is Domination, except every domination is a little different.

Anyway, I’m getting myself confused now and bringing dead white men into the mix too (blah).

Glad the temperature there became a more life-supporting one. Because we missed you.

The common denominator is the oppressor. Don’t forget who dominates. Focus on who is responsible for the -isms.

Melinda, I would say it’s part of our wiring as in social conditioning, because hierarchies actually work pretty damn hard to enforce themselves.

Now that temperatures are down, the great Twisty brain is obviously at its optimum functional level again.

Oh, Twisty! Tell us stories circa 1987! Will our lobes have the ability to absorb such brainitude?! Let us all gather by the fire, now, soft blanket swathed.

cin17: Indeed, patriarchy will be the death of us. Especially if you let a dude prong you (http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/332470/), or if you don’t let a dude prong you (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/essex_house_sicko_pleads_guilty_vwIx2eba9Ixaq5yzZU6iHJ), or you know, whatever else you do that some dude doesn’t like.

“Okay, but women are not a subclass, a subset, a little branch tucked off to the side of our oppression diagram, we’re actually half the human race.”

While this is true, nor are POC, the poor, queer people et al subclasses or minority branches of oppressed people. In fact, at least with the first two there, they make up half, if not far more, of the human race as well. I think Jill is right to make a post that states the oppression of women is not the foundation of all other oppressions, though it indeed is a very significant part of patriarchy as it’s defined by this blog.

I’m not sure if I articulated that well. But what I mean is I don’t think there is any grounds for fear that women’s oppression will be sidelined or handwaved if the above framework is accepted- at least, never on a blog written and maintained by Jill/Twisty.

Exactly cin17.

That light at the end of the tunnel is the patriarchial express train charging towards us.

Tl;dr version of the above, which is tedious even to look at, is that efforts to “civilize” and conquer abroad are preceded by internal colonization which is at its most effective when a social and class hierarchy can be established. Civilization and hierarchy are twin concepts, emanate from the same dank and foul philosophy.

Patriarchy and domination come from natural world and big animals preying on smaller ones. The Savage Death Island culture is the only civilized culture I recognize. Everything else is a little too primitive for me.

Calling this patriarchal world order a civilization is absurd. How civilized can a culture based on death and domination be?

Luce Irigaray argues that Domination and singularity and unity and hierarchies are inherently phallogocentric symbolic systems. If she’s correct, that doesn’t mean that oppression of women is all that matters, it just means that intersecting oppressions are even more closely interrelated. It’s great to have a radical feminist space in which racism, classism, and other isms can be blamed along with sexism. Thanks, Twisty.

[that blockquote function hates me]

Besides, “I blame the megatheocorporatocratic ideology of domination, referred here as the patriarchy” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Of all the classes and their subclasses to be found, only one consists entirely of women and that class is WOMEN and that is why all other classes are eventually accepted in the great fellowship of MEN. The fact that women in these classes are never qui-i-ite equal to the men in them only demonstrates the specific application of the general rule that men are the only ones who really count.

“Intersectionality” just appears to be the latest gotcha distraction, succeeding multiple “feminisms,” which multiply, subdivide, and eventually splinter categories and set them squabbling over priorities to the point where activism is rendered impossible. Good going, guys, you got ’em to do it to themselves again!

(Now where did I file that early riff on this phenomenon by NOW’s Georgina Whatsername titled “Real Lesbians”?)

Delurking after years of reading because I’m a geneticist.

The idea that men must compete to spread their genes and women don’t is evo-psych bunk. Women are guaranteed reproductive fitness only if they mate and their offspring are reproductively successful. A woman who produces extremely unhealthy or non-fertile offspring is not reproductively successful. Yes, if she can carry a child to term she gets a newborn. That child has to live to reproduce, and the more offspring they produce the better in evolutionary terms. Her choice of mate determines at least some of her reproductive success.

Patriarchy where women are owned and “children get the name of their mother’s master” is not at all the only way a male could increase his reproductive success. It’s actually a resource intensive and still not guaranteed way of trying to ensure a particular woman’s children have his genes too. There are many other frequently observed ways for a male to have reproductive success. A common one is to help his sisters and their children, who are guaranteed to be related to him, whereas children of a woman he once mated with just have a chance of being related to him.

So I’ll make an evo-psych just-so story of my own: considering reproductive fitness, it seems really plausible that men should naturally be women’s helpers, primary child raisers, and sex objects.

Regarding my reference to an essay titled “Real Lesbians,” I hasten to caution that it was in no way related to what Google brings up under that phrase today.

Was it Julie Bindel who said that whenever men like a feminism, it’s a sure sign that it isn’t working.

I had the pleasure (by which I mean agonizing pain) to see Crenshaw – the coiner of the term “intersectionality” – at Hahvard less than a year ago, and oh boi do the Big Boys LOVE her (by which of course I mean, respectfully – as much as boys can – tolerate her) and keep bringing her around to talk about this intersectionality thing. They were especially squirming with pleasure when she pointed out that rich white men also fit on the intersectionality thingamajing. Look, just opposite from the poor Black women. EQUAL SIGN. [From my limited observation, they are also blocking her from talking about anything else.] Intersectionality Pony Show! All invited! All at Intersections!

(TwissB, link to that essay, please?)

AGGGHHHH. Texas is burning up, and here in VA, it’s pouring so loudly I can’t sleep (I have a membrane roof, vaulted ceilings, and no attic). Rain is expected here through next Monday, at least.

Wishing I could send the rain to the drought-stricken areas.

‘Which came first, oppressed women or entire races/classes?’ (BlindHorse)
Women. All you need is for the dudebros of the tribe to form some kind of mystic brotherhood that justifies dominating the women with some BS about ancestral spirits or whatever.
For classes, races etc. you need rather more civilization.

Is that 69F? Please say it isn’t so.

Oh, I hope you haven’t emerged from heat-induced stupor only to be faced with wildfires.

Fingers crossed that you and the critters will be safe and not have to evacuate. It is a fucking nightmare. Not one to wish upon anyone.

“I don’t think there is any grounds for fear that women’s oppression will be sidelined or handwaved if the above framework is accepted-”

Probably not here on this blog, but women have a long history of being erased, sidelined, rendered invisible. We’ve done the work for many revolutions, men’s revolutions, thinking they somehow include us, but in the end they never do.

I do fear that women’s oppression will be sidelined because historically it always has been. Before you know it you’re working 24 hours a day for liberal men’s rights, gay men’s rights, black men’s rights, and my personal favorite, poor men’s rights.

h ttp://ticc.tamu.edu/Response/FireActivity/default.aspx

This is the fire activity map for Texas.

Keeping you and your critters in my thoughts, Jill. May the nightmare end both well and soon.

AlienNumber said:
I had the pleasure (by which I mean agonizing pain) to see Crenshaw – the coiner of the term “intersectionality” – at Hahvard less than a year ago, and oh boi do the Big Boys LOVE her (by which of course I mean, respectfully – as much as boys can – tolerate her) and keep bringing her around to talk about this intersectionality thing. They were especially squirming with pleasure when she pointed out that rich white men also fit on the intersectionality thingamajing. Look, just opposite from the poor Black women. EQUAL SIGN.

I completely reject the idea that intersectionality is some devious plot to separate feminists into subgroups (or a “gotcha distraction” as TwissB said.) Feminists were already separated into subgroups before anyone used the term “intersectionality”. Upper class white feminists deliberately made themselves a group, leaving out others, and the term “intersectionality” allows us to discuss this phenomenon. As for the black women equally white men comment, if anyone truly said something that stupid, then they don’t understand intersectionality at all. The only way a rich white man can be “oppressed” is if he is gay or disabled. These are real disabilities. Anyone who knows anything about intersectionality knows that a black women has more oppressions weighing against her than even a gay white man. This is what we call white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc.

In conclusion: feminists have always been divided into groups because of their different lived experiences and different oppressions: intersectionality did not create this phenomenon. Also, intersectionality actually proves that the black women is more oppressed that the white man, not the other way around.

“Feminists have always been divided into groups because of” THE PATRIARCHY, which makes lots of women self-identify with their oppressor, which makes them not put women first.

[Anyway, time to take a break before my head explodes. Will be back in a few weeks.]
Best of luck to the Spinster Aunt! (You and your horses are always welcome to Boston, you know that, right?).

Good luck indeed. Take care now.

If you need safe pasture for your horses due to wildfires in Texas, call Mr. Matt Daniel at 832-769-1879 . He can has pasture to shelter 60 horses and has trucks and trailers ready to go. He Can move 10 horses at a time.

Jill, I’d offer you a place to crash but I’m afraid it’s too close to the fire out at Hamilton Pool. We might have to evacuate ourselves. We have a truck and trailer packed too, ready to go. To be honest, I’m surprised that it took this long for fires to start in central Texas. It was 112 degrees last week, after all.

My friend’s family has 2 dogs, 2 cats, and 4 chickens, all of which are living in their truck after the mandatory evacuation while the humans camp out at the high school. It’s sad but they have no other choice at this point in time. I’m not sure how they’re keeping the dogs and cats off the chickens. All of the people I know with horses have friends far enough away to take them in.

Good luck to you and your animals.

There’s a fella in Houston offering sanctuary for animals as well:

message from Houston: An ABC13 viewer called to say if there is anyone in need for a place to keep their animals, he has 45 acres fenced for cows, horses, etc. off Nichols Sawmill Road in Magnolia and is willing to help for no charge. Call Bob at 713-857-6772.

@Bushfire (great nom de plume for the times) said “I completely reject the idea that intersectionality is some devious plot to separate feminists into subgroups (or a “gotcha distraction” as TwissB said.)”

In contrast to that overstatement, I think that I indicated the intersectionality fad was merely the latest in a very long line of “let’s you and her fight” distractions that have exacerbated natural divisions among women reflecting differences in their life experiences. As a number of contributers to this thread have reminded us, keep your eye on the beneficiaries and enforcers of dominance. alien number’s observation on Crenshaw’s function in a male dominated academic environment rings true.

megatheocorporatocratic

Spelling would be an issue, I think. For me, anyway.

As GMM said, it’s possible to talk about how WOC, for example, have been alienated by white feminists’ racism without fighting among ourselves. And it’s an important conversation.

Seems like the wind has died down and the fire fighters might be able to get a handle on things today. Hope things turn around for you – and for you too Owly.

Geez if we could just get a break already from all these disasters. At a minimum it would make my coworkers stop speculating on the impending end-times 800 times a day.

I’m also pretty cheesed off at how idiots on various news site comment areas are using the Texas fires as a platform for bipartisan bickering. As if that has any relevence at all to the fact that people are losing their homes. IBTP.

TwissB said:
In contrast to that overstatement, I think that I indicated the intersectionality fad was merely the latest in a very long line of “let’s you and her fight” distractions that have exacerbated natural divisions among women reflecting differences in their life experiences.

This sounds to me like a repetition of what you said before. I do not buy into the intersectionality as ‘fad’ idea. It’s not a fad, it’s the truth. People, in fact, ARE oppressed by a variety of factors, and those factors have been around long before the term ‘intersectionality’.

We agree that the people at the top of the hierarchy are the rich white hetero males, but it’s not an either/or scenario. A rich, able-bodied hetero white woman is not very oppressed. She has plenty of resources she can use to run her own life, control her own body, escape abuse, etc. She is still oppressed by a woman-hating society, but the poor women, disabled women, lesbians, etc, are more oppressed. This is not a trick to divide people-it’s just the truth.

I’m a low-income lesbian, and I don’t need my own group of low-income lesbians to hang out with- I’m happy here, with a variety of women, to talk about issues affecting all women. Within that group, we all experience different oppressions, but that doesn’t prevent us from coming together.

No, rich, white women don’t have to get murdured to enjoy their privilege. They have the privilege to live in gated communities where they are safe walking around outside. They have the resources to leave a husband if he is abusive. They have the resources to get therapy if they are depressed. They will have an easy time getting hired for jobs. They have the resources to stay healthy (good food, gym memberships, health care, etc). They are more likely to be believed in a sexual assault case than poor women, prostituted women, etc. They have more money for lawyers.

Yttik, I never said, and I would never say, that there are women who are not oppressed. Even rich women live in a patriarchal society. However, there are others who experience multiple layers of oppression.

I’m not trying to play oppression olympics with you. I’m only trying to express the fact that intersectionality is a reality, not a fad.

Bushfire I have to disagree.

I work in a sector that helps those who are disadvantged regardless of what background they come from (though we don’t help those who are in businesses). Of those who ring even women who are earning way more than the partner (always male), are robbed of their money; tricked into signing their houses into co ownership for example; paying the weekly food bill on a constant basis: even then they will always, always say that he bought the odd food shop, they drop that in to somehow mitgate the situation.

Women who are in a relationship where the male earns way more than them, and have stayed at home, often at his bequest, to look after the family, are equally vulnerable because he will want to keep his money; he’ll have his cake and eat it. This is most distressing because she is up against a legal system that favours those with money. They are very distressed when they call. These women have put themselves wholeheartedly into the patriarchial system only to be cast aside as chattel no longer functioning. I feel for them and their offspring; they are often treated as a package. I often thought I’d smile inwardly at their hardship but this is not the case. Every woman who is shafted needs our support.

It’s not you, Bushfire, it’s the nature of the argument. You just can’t take down the master’s house with the master’s tools. When we start talking about intersectionality it always comes framed as a hierarchy, with these divisions that ultimately separate women and prevent us from empathizing with each other as a collective group. Your description of wealthy white women for instance, fails to take into consideration that no, they can’t just leave their abusive husbands, because much of the time they have no access to the money at all. And those gated communities might keep them safe from the stranger in the bushes but not safe from their fathers, brothers, uncles, neighbors. To much of a focus on intersectionality also fails to take individual circumstances into account. A couple of lesbians running their own business may have more autonomy then a wealthy white women whose name is not even on the bank account, who has no job experience, who is actually more likely to be murdered in her own home by someone who allegedly loves her.

Of course women experience multiple layers of oppression, but always when we start talking about intersectionality, we start talking about divisions, about what separates us as women, about how much better somebody else has it. In the end we actually wind up reinforcing that hierarchy, promoting these patriarchal myths about each other. At that point we’re not focusing on our commonality as women, we’re not trying to build solidarity, we’re actually right back where we were, viewing other women as the enemy, envious of each other, denying each other’s reality.

Who benefits from all this focus on white women and their privilege? It’s not WOC. It’s not white women either. It’s the patriarchy. WOC don’t want to build solidarity with white women who they perceive as racist and those white women are terrified to leave their abusive husbands and the safety of their gated communities because they fear being treated as WOC! Mission accomplished.

A rich, able-bodied hetero white woman is not very oppressed.

Tell that to Yeardley Love’s family and friends. Perhaps we’re not supposed to feel compassion for an able-bodied hetero white woman (and rich and blonde to boot, the nerve!) when her able-bodied rich white hetero boyfriend beats her to death, but I’m a soft touch and the case intrigues me precisely because it illustrates the fact that no woman gets a pass. We’re all chattel, some women simply have nicer cages. It will be very interesting to see whether the boyfriend is eventually convicted of murder and/or does any real prison time. (He was indicted on first degree murder this past April and his trial is scheduled to begin in February 2012.)

To take a tangent, as a crime junkie, I’ve noticed that intra-racial crimes, especially rapes and domestic violence, are often viewed as more acceptable by society. White women belong to white men and black women belong to black men, brown women belong to brown men, and as long as the men keep the abuse within race then our social equilibrium is maintained. But once the crime becomes inter-racial, then the proverbial shit hits the fan.

I think that’s why intersectionality falls short for me: it compartmentalizes in a similar way. It puts people into little boxes and then proceeds to look at the box structure and not the person(s) stuck inside it. And perhaps, as an ethnically ambiguous person, I’m just annoyed that folks are forever tossing me into the wrong box.

“that it’s misogynistic/self-hating to focus on minor differences and on the Evil White Hetero Woman, from all people.”

Not if you’re under the boot heel of a racist. I don’t think anyone would, as they were being lynched, exclaim ” well at least I’m being hung by a woman!”

Sadly, I’ve read some mighty racist comments from radical feminists on this very blog. Not all were straight, not all were able bodied but they all were, in fact, white.

And in this country at least, white and male go hand in hand on the Domination ladder. White male is the tippy top, but all those top rungs include white for a good ways.

You can ignore that, but I can’t.

Jesus fucking Christ. Yes, Kali, I frequent this blog and sing Twisty’s praises all the time because I think that sexism and misogyny are not very oppressive.

I need a margarita.

A relevant quote from Catherine MacKinnon:

Unlike other women, the white woman who is not poor or working class or lesbian or Jewish or disabled or old or young does not share her oppression with any man. That does not make her condition any more definitive of the meaning of “women” than the condition of any other woman is. But trivializing her oppression, because it is not even potentially racist or class-biased or heterosexist or anti-Semitic, does define the meaning of being “anti-woman” with a special clarity. How the white woman is imagined and constructed and treated becomes a particularly sensitive indicator of the degree to which women, as such, are despised.

Bushfire, I’ll drink a margarita with you. I’ve lurked for years and posted exactly once before. It’s no accident that black feminist and womanist scholars are the ones with the most to say about the nuances this thread is trying to talk about re the intersection of gender, race, class, etc. I get what your sayin’. I guess its hard to cop to even the obvious differences between women, without everyone having to defend their turf. No one on this thread seems to be trying to diminish the experiences of the composite rich, white, hetero, gated-community-but-with-no-access-to the checkbook woman. But, how can anyone work towards smashing the patriarchy if we can’t even acknowledge the distinctly different, unpleasant taste of patriarchy as experienced say, by a woman of color? Intersectionality is just one way of applying some academic rigor to trying to describe these myriad experiences, rather than the token, off-the-cuff “and we know different women are also victims of misogyny”, and then moving right along. You can understand, that sometimes, sometimes, the lack of real analysis of this can be quite frustrating.

Cimmaron, I think it is a good idea to look at how sex-based oppression works against women of different backgrounds (races, classes, etc.). The keyword here is “sex-based”. However, whenever I have been in a discussion about intersectionality, 99 times out of 100, it has a distinct flavor of “what’s that white privileged bitch complaining about?”. And behind that attitude is the thinking that sex-based oppression is not as bad as race-based, class-based etc. oppression.

“So I’m not Queen of the Lesbians, but you are?”

No. Jill is.

I know self-pity can feel great, but there are some advantages to being a lesbian and some big disadvantages to being a straight woman and viceversa. It’s not a simple hetero female > lesbian equation, as tempting as it may be to think so.
Also, straight women also get harassed on the job, all the time. Take off the blinders, please. Straight women are not the enemy.

“But trivializing her oppression, because it is not even potentially racist or class-biased or heterosexist ”

Ah…so when WOC speak up about their own oppression and don’t feel quite as bad for wealthy, white women (who engage in oppressing too) then we’re trivializing white women’s oppression.

As opposed to, yanno, having heard it because it’s dominated the damn discussion since oh…suffrage.

I know what white women feel, think, like, dislike and how they get treated, who treats them that way, where it happens, what they were doing when it happened, how the felt when it happened, who they told or didn’t tell when it happened and I know all this because there are a million blogs on the subject, feminism is dominated by white women, most public feminists are white, most feminist authors are white and the white perspective is not unfamiliar to any POC on the face of the planet. I even know what white feminists think WOC motives are, because that white feminist perspective gets quoted every other damn post.

So yes, how white women are treated is the indicator of how all women are despised because god knows the white woman is the center of the Universe. The default. The standard by which all other women should measure themselves. And so long as we do not DARE point out that we might get a bigger slice o shit pie, it’s all good. Because then we’d be playing the oppression olympics (because it’s a fucking game right? and race is the trump card we are soooo unfairly advantaged to have) and white women would feel trivialized.

*head desk*

The problem is that the grass is always greener on the other side of the septic tank. Somebody’s always going to be worse off than you and somebody is always going to have it better. Comparing ourselves to other people always leads to misery.

Within just a few comments we’ve already set up an oppression hierarchy which serves to dismiss real women’s actual experiences. We’re already accusing each other of being “Queen of the lesbians” or accusing each other of whitesplaining. That’s what always happens, that’s how it works, that’s the problem with the way we frame intersectionality. It’s framed as a hierarchy, a dominant/submissive paradigm, that will always lead to the inevitable accusations of somebody being uppity or somebody being dismissive. Separate, divide, control, works every time.

For a break from all this heavy stuff, I had a good laugh watching Billy the Exterminator learn how to humanely get rid of geese from the NC Goosebusters. Not sure if the Goosebusters are a lesbian couple, but the rainbow colored umbrellas they handed out for goose self defense seemed like a good clue. I have no idea where those two women fall on the oppression scale, but I sure hope they’re having as good a time as they appeared to be. I enjoyed watching them in action.

“It’s the time to step back, shutup and listen.”

Hello! Woman of color here being told to sit down, shut up and listen, while the ways of the world are explained to her. Now people will proceed to remind me of my place in this hierarchy and to make sure I never forget it.

Peace people. Other women are not the enemy.

yttik, just to let you know because I left it out- I’m not accusing you of feeling threatened or trivialized.

I am, however, pointing out that what you described is exactly what privilege looks like when it’s called out. Suddenly, it’s being divisive, or turning it into a hierarchy.

But ignoring it doesn’t?

It reminds me of so called progressive men saying ” I’m a humanist, and bringing up women’s oppression is just divisive, can’t we just focus on human oppression?”.

The implication is that women aren’t human and don’t have different oppressions, unique to them.

When I read ” we should all focus on women and their oppression, racism is just a branch of sexism” I hear the same thing. WOC aren’t WOC, they’re just Of Color and that doesn’t mean as much as the Woman part. It’s almost the Color Blind argument.

It’s not divisive to include the Of Color part, or even demand it not get left out for later. It’s a desire to be included, and have ALL of the WOC included. Not just the W.

I hope that makes more sense.

(Jill, in the cold and sober light of day, I fear I was tone-trolling you there. My previous comment was terse and snippy. Actually, it was super-long, self-righteous, not particularly clever or kind, confusing, and snippy. You’re correct that you didn’t imply inferior cultures and ways-o’livin’ that don’t resemble our own, but I suppose I got unnecessarily riled by the post-nomadic riff, which I object to on grounds previously discussed. My apologies. I didn’t mean to characterize you as being pro-American. Lard and dog fucking forbid.)

The patriarchy, by default, devises a caste system to group people into hierarchies. Race, sexual orientation, income, class, country of origin, and so many more factors determine where the patriarchy “ranks” you. Part of the fight against the patriarchy MUST include fighting its unspoken but painfully obvious caste system.

Events like tonight’s GOP debate really illustrate this wonderfully for me, because all of the nutjobs flock like flies to honey to comment on the newswire stories, and the various media outlets with their stupid biased commentary come out with battle axes a-swinging. People will call Michelle Bachmann a “bitch” tonight, and will certainly comment on her appearance while ignoring what her male rivals look like, but she’s excused from the more vicious comments levied at Michelle Obama, likening her to wild animals and so on because of her skin color.

Why is it 2011 and we can recoil in horror at the way the media and the America people treat (white) female Presidential candidates, but we can’t acknowledge what’s being said about Michelle (and Barack) Obama? Or, when we do, we’re accused of playing “the race card” even when the cruelty stares us right in the face? That speaks volumes to me.

It should not have to be divisive to acknowledge that women’s fates are not interchangeable. All women don’t suffer identical oppressions; some are targeted by more oppressions than sexism, and that is no footnote. Especially if they are being sidelined even within the supposedly safe feminist spaces.

How is it Olympics to acknowledge the hugeness of racism? No one is saying that white women have nothing to complain about. They are saying white privilege is real.

Denying the uniqueness of other oppressions than sexism is disrespectful to the blamers who live those oppressions every day and cannot just parenthesise them or put them aside. This is why, when we insist on focussing only on what we all have in common, it never brings us closer together. Instead it makes life harder still for those who are already feeling and being marginalised.

We need sister solidarity, and working to abolish racism is part of creating that solidarity between feminists of colour and white feminists.

There’s plenty of righteous rage to go around. Why not get mad about all the injustices that our sisters suffer.

I also hope you’re safe, Jill.

cin17, sorry to be a little late to respond, but that was an educational and depressing answer about the patriarchy being a means to control reproduction. Sorry for jumping to the defensive. I have heard so many arguments about how women are supposedly exempt from evolution; that men’s competition is what matters and voila, if you rationalize backwards from the system we have, then isn’t it obvious that patriarchy is just natural and somehow passed on genetically?

There are so many systems that do work in nature. Males being helpers to their female relatives is one of them – his sisters’ genes are his genes too, so helping her and her children out is even in his self-interest. Nothing else in nature has this elaborate system of cruelty and control and rationalization of it. It didn’t just evolve, people are putting a lot of energy into making it work. It just never makes sense to me why. Maybe I should have studied anthropology instead of genetics.

I bet we could make a fuckton if we invented an oppression calculator. Just put in your qualifications and it’ll generate a score! The one with the highest score is the WINNER!

The prize is still a shit sandwich.

“Not if you’re under the boot heel of a racist. I don’t think anyone would, as they were being lynched, exclaim ‘well at least I’m being hung by a woman!'”

Well, of course not, but I’ll venture to say that it’s because there were no and are no female executioners (or female hangmen, to use dated language).

[But I guess the sex is irrelevant to you, pheenobarbidoll, as long as it’s somebody white doing the lynching. Except the moment that the sex of the perpetrator becomes invisible that’s when we have a huge feminist, or lack thereof, problem.]

Yes, yttik, I got a kick outta the NC Goosebusters too. Flocks of them roam our campus at will, terrorizing pedestrians during gosling season. Not that I blame them. And seeing traffic halted for a parade of goose parents and offspring warms my cockles.

But piles of goosepoop decorate the sidewalks. I could write a paper on the viscosity of gooseshit, having wiped out in it a couple of times.

Intersectionality (or whatever you want to call it) gets in the way of female solidarity. It sets up divisions and competition and mistrust and jealousy among women (white against black, poor against rich, straight against lesbian, young against old). We need female solidarity to fight the patriarchy and these kinds of discussions get in the way of that by pitting women against each other. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look at and fight against racism, classism, homophobia, etc. But when we feminize these issues, that’s when we drive a wedge between women. Some people seem to believe that feminizing the issues of racism, classism and all the other “isms” is a feminist thing to do. In my experience, it is very anti-feminist.

” We need female solidarity to fight the patriarchy and these kinds of discussions get in the way of that by pitting women against each other.”

These kinds of discussions only arise when privileged defend their privilege.

It’s hard to have female solidarity when you also have to worry that the woman standing next to you will throw you under the race bus.

The reverse racism implication is cute though. Thanks.

No, I was actually accusing you of sexism.

Jill said

“Is that where the defensiveness comes from? From the shame of hypocrisy? Or is it that, with your accustomed privilege, you feel entitled to all the oppression-generated righteous indignation?”

I think it’s more that white privilege is something we can’t get rid of. Shame that we have it. Fear that we’ll lose it. Something that sets us apart from our sisters of color that we can’t cast off and we’re guilty about it. It gives us advantages we can’t convey to our sisters, no matter how much we want to. It’s confusing and difficult to deal with. Many push back hard when privilege is pointed out because they know it but they don’t know how to change it. They don’t know that the only thing you CAN do is use your privilege to help others who don’t have it, any way you can. It’s hard. Especially when the patriarchy is content, even happy, to have us at each other’s throats.

Kali, are you suggesting that we ignore the fact that women are affected by racism, classism, and other -isms? We should ignore that women tend to be affected by racism, classism, ableism, etc. differently than men are, and that white middle-class women tend to experience misogyny in different ways than WOC, poor women, disabled women?

“Are you accusing me, a WOC, of defending my white privilege?”

No, I’m accusing the privileged (and you’ll notice the post I was responding to listed off numerous privileges) of defending their privilege.

Simple, innit?

Two comments in two days! Posting on this blog is like the sweet, creamy crack. Pheeno, I second every last one of your comments. Shopstewardess, the “term which shall not be named” is not a solution in and of itself, I agree. But,to make it a little more real world, try this. Say you’re a well-meaning local official and you’re designing, oh, I don’t know, a domestic violence program or a child-care program, or an emergency evacuation program. Using the term that rhymes with schminterschmectionality to be certain you understand how your well-intentioned actions will impact your intended beneficiaries can be the difference between success, failure, or a damaging clusterfuck. If there is some other framework, then by all means, use that instead. But ignoring it or just relying on our own experience means that we’re all left at the mercy of our own hidden biases.

What pheeno is saying is totally true and it is bullshit. How do we purge our ranks of people who are willfully ignorant of racism and classism as matters of equal urgency? If we don’t condemn the behavior then we are giving approval through silence. We can speak out about it but it doesn’t seem like it deters anyone in a real sense because WOC are so under-represented, so there are few real consequences for acting shitty. We need to get as angry about having racist people on our spaces as we do about having dudes show up.

Maybe it’s cute to you, but it’s really not cute to state as fact that white WOMEN murdered your people when it was in fact white MEN. Small details I guess.

AlienNumber, I didn’t want to go here but in light of your above comment, I have to. Please read more history. Specifically about the lynchings that occurred in the South up through 1960. You might want to start with a book called “Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching”.

Here is an excerpt: “White women allegedly raped by black men were often allowed to choose their attackers’ punishments and frequently helped mutilate, burn, and shoot the newly hung bodies. Instead of being called unwomanly for their public role in the bloodshed, female lynchers were praised as exemplary protectors of the race. As late as 1934, white women and children still attended lynchings as enthralled spectators (this is documented in numerous photographs of the era). White women’s groups didn’t formally acknowledge that most lynchings had nothing to do with rape until after women won the vote, for which they had long felt in competition with black men.”

“If you want to know how a black lesbian feminist experiences the world, you should ask her”

Can’t speak for her, but I get tired of answering the same question over and over and over. From the same people. On the same blog.

Yttik, I don’t think white is the ideal, by any means, but in this world that we actually live in and seek to change, being white confers privilege. My hope is someday that will no longer be the case, but until it is, white women (and men) need to use their privilege to help those who don’t have it. It may be pollyannaish of me to hope that this change can be facilitated from within.

Ok I just had an idea. Bear with me:

I am fortunate to have a white Lesbian Feminist woman as a very close friend. She and I often discuss our experiences, and there’s no tension or misunderstandings because we trust each other. She trusts me even though I have straight privilege out the ass. I trust her even though she has white privilege out the ass.

What if a board was started that paired people off as Mentor Friends, where everyone found a friend of the opposite privilege so to speak? Or simply acted as a large social group of women with different backgrounds, cultures and life experiences where the sole purpose of the board was to serve as an exchange of experiences? Questions could be asked and answered, and the format would be ” this is where you can ask sincere questions that you were hesitant (for whatever reason) to ask”.

Would anyone be interested in that?

I like your Mentor Friends idea, pheeno.

I’m still new to the concepts here, but yttik, AlienNumber, and Kali:

I thought the whole point of radfem thought was that it dispensed with liberal individualism and focused on institutions and political systems. So, in the same way that “But not MY Nigel!” is no defense against criticism of heteronormative activity, “But I’M a WOC!” is no defense against criticism of racially biased activity. If there are institutional patterns of oppression, any particular counter example (e.g. lesbian business owners vs straight housewife) is an anecdote, not an argument.

I like the Mentor/Friends idea, Pheeno. That’s kind of the model I hope to see on blogs like this one. The internet in some ways has opened up new possibilities because rather than seeing someone in person and jumping to preconceived notions about them, we’re invisible, anonymous behind a keyboard. Stereotypes don’t instantly apply (unless you start typing from the Dude’s Dummie Manual and out yourself.)

Stereotypes really bother me. In real life last night I got out of my car and a woman said, “oh, is this your car?” Nice woman, but as she looked me up and down she was clicking off stereotypes, crappy car, poverty, WOC, must mean lack of education..who knows what other quick judgements she was making but I was already diminished in her eyes and I hadn’t even got out of the f-ing car yet. She knows all about white privilege and racism and is oh so aware, but to tell the truth, I think I’d prefer to just encounter and out and out racist.

“…white women (and men) need to use their privilege to help those who don’t have it..’

This scares me, Buttercup. It conjurs up images of do-gooders, of pity, of having somebody of privilege decide what’s best for me. White people have a long history of delivering some atrocious forms of “help.” Not everyone will agree with me, but I’d prefer white women just focus on their own oppression rather than on their privilege.

It wasn’t a ” I have a Lesbian friend so I am an authority on all things Lesbian” which is what the ” I have a X friend” IS, you fucking moron.

Fascinating.

“I thought the whole point of radfem thought was that it dispensed with liberal individualism and focused on institutions and political systems. So, in the same way that “But not MY Nigel!” is no defense against criticism of heteronormative activity, “But I’M a WOC!” is no defense against criticism of racially biased activity. If there are institutional patterns of oppression, any particular counter example (e.g. lesbian business owners vs straight housewife) is an anecdote, not an argument.”

Saying that all women as a class are situated under all men as a class is political analysis. You personally don’t seem to like that (because maybe intersectionality turns you on more), but don’t pretend it wasn’t said.

pheenobarbidoll, it is true that Native Americans and Alaska Natives were almost wiped out from genocide attempts and have been incredibly oppressed. However, I am a rural Alaskan and I have never heard that Palin took away Alaska Natives’ subsistence rights or starved them. Believe me, fish and moose are hugely political here and rural subsistence hunting/fishing is untouchable. There were issues in 08-09 when some Interior villages had a lack of supplies because the river iced over unseasonably early and they couldn’t receive their normal barge shipments. Life in rural AK is already ridiculously, RIDICULOUSLY expensive, and flying freight to places like Emmonak is prohibitively expensive. I heard that Emmonak’s gas was normally $9 per gallon but it went up to like $50/gallon during the crisis because it had to be airlifted in. You cannot afford to take 2 snowmachines to the next village for supplies with those kind of fuel prices. The government stepped in and did emergency airlifts of food and fuel to the villages. They did not starve.

roseh-

State of Alaska v. Norton

She filed a lawsuit intended to invalidate all the subsistence fishing regulations the federal government issued to protect Native fishing. She also opposed subsistence fishing protections on Alaska Native federal allotments that were deeded to individuals purposely to foster Native subsistence activities.

She did the same with subsistence hunting.

Roseh- Fortunately, the federal court rejected it.

(forgot to add that)

“But I’M a WOC!” is no defense against criticism of racially biased activity.

My argument is simple and straightforward – I am saying that dismissing my criticism of intersectionality as “defending white privilege” is kind of silly, since I don’t have any white privilege to defend. You need to twist that simple argument out of shape, and falsely label it as “defense against criticism of racially biased activity” in order to accuse a WOC of defending white privilege.

Here, this behavior is frequently labeled ” Tool of the Patriarchy”.

“one does not need to have the privilege to defend it”

That leaves only two options: Either I’m a tool of the racists, or I am not defending white privilege. In the latter case, you still need to grapple with my criticism of intersectionality, instead of dismissing it as defending white privilege.

Oh and in an attempt to meet you in the middle with the ” why not just ask the individual” I was then accused of assuming all white women were the same, no one had any diversity and again, of being sexist.

I was perfectly willing to set up a place where women could, in fact, safely ask sincere questions, form friendships with others who had different experiences, share those experiences under the banner of friendship and not turn intersectionality into an academic distraction.

I was slapped in the face for it, and won’t be making that mistake again.

Your offered solution was just to ask

You’re confusing me with someone else.

“You’re confusing me with someone else.”

You’re right, I did. I’m sorry.

I’m down with the Mentor board. I throw my card on the table: indo-canadian het-seeming woman raised in a “multicultural” society in an upper-middle class. First-world university-educated privilege coming out of my ears.

@fede, “white privilege does exist and so of course it also matters in this space, between us.”

It’s not really the focus of this blog, though.

“women’s oppression is not the armature upon which all other oppression is hung. However, because sexism has been so comprehensively assimilated across the board, the elimination of racism, classism, ableism, homophobia et al cannot obtain without the simultaneous liberation of women from patriarchal tyranny.

2. This blog focuses primarily on the gruesome effects of patriarchy on the sex class because it particularly pleases me that it should. This focus should not be construed as an endorsement of the view that white feminists know what’s best for everybody or some shit.”

According to Jill’s post, this space focuses on one (major) aspect of the borg, aka the “megatheocorporatocratic ideology of domination”, aka the Patriarchy from which all oppression emanates, and that is the Global Accords Regarding the Fair Use of Women, aka the sex class.

The focus here, according to the blog owner above, is on sexism/misogyny et al, not any of the other zillions of oppressions that Patriarchy has brought to bear on all humans.

I don’t think the mentor thing is going to help much. It’s nice for helping individual women build friendships with other individual women. But that is not the major problem for women, in general. Women have always had close friendships with each other. The idea of solidarity is different. It comes from a feeling of “we’re all in it together”. It comes from having a team spirit. It is this team spirit that gets broken by intersectionality debates (as opposed to general discussions about racism, classism). Then there is no “team women”.

I have a comment in moderation where I give the example of my friend who has a lot of class and race-based resentment, directed specifically at women. Her best friend is a white woman. She explains away the seeming contradiction by calling her friend “not really white white”.

I may be an idiot, but as a non Humanities person I find lengthy discussions of specific terminology to be a little patriarchally academic. Surely the point of Intersectionality is just to remind people, who often need reminding, to hold the complexity of the world in mind at all times.

Whatever we call it, doesn’t “the i-word” simply boil down to this: All women do not experience sexism, misogyny, and oppression in the same way. Furthermore, WOC do not experience racism the same way MOC do. WOC get an extra shit-helping of sexism AND racism.

To deny that is to miss the point entirely, I think.

pheeno, I’ve “known” you for years on this blog and the other twisty message board of yore, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you. Even though we’ve exchanged angry words on more than one occasion!

As a white, het, privileged, well-off, middle-aged fat woman, I hope you WILL call me on my white privilege when I display it. Because I freaking deserve it.

What is white-white? Until now, I’ve only heard open white supremacists use it. When is someone not really white?

There are still people insisting that talking about intersectionality is dividing us. It is so infuriating that no matter how many times it’s explained that WE WERE ALREADY DIVIDED BEFORE WE STARTED TO TALK ABOUT THE DIVISION people just don’t see it.

Women were always divided into subgroups. If we stop talking about it, it doesn’t go away, for goddess’ sake!

As for this idea that we can’t be all be one unit if we talk about intersectionality- why the fuck not? We will never all agree with each other about anything- we each have our own brains. But tell me this- even if we bicker amongst ourselves, don’t we always come back for more, and agree with each other on the large, important issues? If we all met in person, wouldn’t we exchange margaritas and have a great time together? That’s a solid group. A solid group doesn’t mean a group that always agrees on everything all the time and never acknowleges a difference.

A group that never acknowleges the differences among its members is a group that’s not talking.

Is anyone else troubled by the use of the word “cute” to describe another’s opinion, or am I just feeling oversensitive today?

Whatever we call it, doesn’t “the i-word” simply boil down to this: All women do not experience sexism, misogyny, and oppression in the same way. Furthermore, WOC do not experience racism the same way MOC do. WOC get an extra shit-helping of sexism AND racism.

In theory, maybe. In practice, my experience has been that these debates mostly boil down to how women oppress each other.

How is there a contradiction in resenting your own oppression, accurately identifying your oppressors and the folk what benefit from your oppression, while also resisting the (perfectly reasonable) impulse towards a blind, generalized contempt, fear, and loathing for all members of said group by cultivating a healthy, fulfilling relationship with one of their cohorts?

It is giving in to a blind, generalized contempt, fear and loathing for a class of people, while trying to reconcile that generalized loathing with a liking for individual members of the class, who do not meet the negative stereotype of the nameless and faceless members of that class.

I am no good with that blockquote thing, but I would like to respond to this comment.

“Bushfire
September 8, 2011 at 7:23 pm

We will never all agree with each other about anything- we each have our own brains. But tell me this- even if we bicker amongst ourselves, don’t we always come back for more, and agree with each other on the large, important issues? If we all met in person, wouldn’t we exchange margaritas and have a great time together?”

Bushfire, I am not sure I could agree. I wish I could, but I can’t.

I was writing a journal entry just this morning about the last few days and how unfortunate it is that the people whose ideology I largely share are also the same kind of people I wouldn’t want in my house. People around me, whose views on most everything couldn’t be more backward if they tried, have treated me with far more respect and kindness than fellow radical feminists have.

It is a bitter irony that a blog like this, which exists to oppose the culture of dominance, follows the dominance playbook so closely. At least in the comments section.
There transpires the same shit that happens on so many other blogs: endless sucking-up to the leader (Queen of the Lesbians? Really?), “veteran blamers” who bully other commenters and get away with it because they’ve sucked up to the blog owner long enough, commenters tearing each other down to build up their own status, commenters blaming each other for the lack of revolution, and so on. There’s gold in them thar comments, sometimes, but it takes a lot of wading through shit to get to it. I don’t know if all radical feminists are like this in person, but if they are, I don’t want to meet them. Yeah, I know I’m going to get shit on again for saying so, and for not greasing my post with enough flattery. But I have to say it. It’s not because I disagree with the principles of radical feminism at all. It’s because I literally don’t have the energy to deal with this shit.

The whole reason I became a radical feminist is because I hate domination. I hate it online. I hate it in person. I hate it when people who are supposed to be on the same side seem perfectly happy with the idea of domination as long as THEY are the ones who get to do it. It is soul-killing, and I don’t want to be around it.

Like Global Thermonuclear War, the only way to win the dominance game is not to play.

Regarding yourself as white creates a mindset of privilege that exerts an invisible influence over your attitudes toward people of color, just as insisting that you are heterosexual creates an attitude of disbelief and privilege toward those who have realized that their sexual preferences can be fluid.

The concept of whiteness is a patriarchal construction that makes no sense to me whatever, unless you choose it as an identity to hold yourself above most of the planet’s inhabitants. Having light skin means that the oppressed people you meet in real life will know instantly that you enjoy this artificial privilege, but if you reject that privilege completely, your actions will soften somewhat the feelings of oppression they feel toward you, but never completely heal the scars.

If you hear someone calling you on your assumption of white privilege, the best thing to do is acknowledge the privilege while seeking to distance yourself from the idiotic idea that you are somehow white. It’s easier to avoid unconscious privilege if you stop identifying yourself as one of the white folks!

You are not white. There is no such thing, except in the minds of the oppressed and those who enjoy oppressing others. Nobody on Savage Death Island desires their whiteness, so reject it with vehemence and out of love for yourself and others.

“You know what was Really Charming though? ”

When you called me sexist, implied reverse racism and assumed (constantly) that I’m putting men first and women last because I refuse to be subjected to racism by anyone. And then proceeded to tell me who did what to my own people, what my life experiences are and how I should be responding to them.

And it’s wonderful that Black women and White women got to vote. It truly is. Meanwhile, Indian women weren’t even citizens of the US until 1924 and it was even longer before we could vote. So how did that get US ahead? It didn’t. We were still left behind.

Did you even know that? Do you even care that when you talk about how white women putting women first allowed Black women to vote you are utterly and completely disappearing Indian women in that scenario?

Yes, of course I care, pheeno. As a lesbian immigrant, I can attest to the fact that gaining citizenship in this country is a complete nightmare (and I know it’s not the same thing – being an immigrant and being an Indian American – but gaining citizenship is a pain. Making something that should be a right almost impossible is perfectly aligned with the Patriarchy’s general philosophy though. As is stealing land from people through genocide and other means.)
I’ll have to do some research into what the suffragists had to say about Indian women’s voting rights because I have no idea about it, to be honest. Thanks for sharing that by the way.

(and if you are not too exasperated with me by now, what’s your analysis about the whole Blacks kicked out of OK Indian nations? I know you pointed to Stacey Leeds above, but I won’t assume your views are perfectly aligned with hers yet).

It enrages me, frankly. And embarrasses me. There are, I am sad to say, 2 members of my own family who I no longer speak to over it. I can see where some are terrified of losing what Native Indian is, because there’s a long history of “white” Indians taking benefits without having to prove their Indian status, but for fuck’s sake. Freedmen
aren’t trying to steal benefits, they’re simply demanding the right to be who they are. Which is something Indians, of all people, should damn well understand. I also know many who voted to kick them out simply because the Federal government threatened to take away sovereign status as a punishment for discriminating. So it was, for lack of a better word, petty spite.

You won’t find much mention of it, but the Suffragettes owe a lot to Indians. They saw that Seneca women (and only women at that) voted and were actively involved in Indian government.In 1893, when Matilda Joslyn Gage was arrested for trying to vote in a school board election, the Iroquois supported her. She was adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation.

“This fight don’t make no sense.”

It does when you realize that all we’re really doing is taking the master’s tools out of the master’s shed and using them to smack other women upside the head with.

A smart woman recently said that what we need to do is simply create a solidarity of interest, come together, and work towards a common goal. Instead we tend to devote 90% of our time and energy into creating and pursing identities. Women have been so colonized, that we have no identity of our own except that which is spoon fed us by the hierarchy. Then we try to fight the power by dragging all those identities out, validating them, reinforcing them, and whacking each other around with them.

“In practice, my experience has been that these debates mostly boil down to how women oppress each other.”

We do. And we have to stop oppressing each other or else we will never get anywhere.

No disagreement there. The problem comes when we get so focused on women oppressing each other that we forget that the vast majority of the oppression comes from men. Losing this perspective, we use this focus on women oppressing each other as justification for supporting “our” men over women in general. That may not happen on this blog, but it happens a lot in other places. In practice, the sentiments behind intersectionality give support to things like the 2008 Democratic primary, the “bros before hos” attitude, the complaints about feminists pursuing greater prosecution for rape while the justice system is still biased against black men, poor men, the “who are you calling your sister, I’m not your sister” animosity between women.

I personally find it jarring to see these “see how women oppress each other” discussions on feminist sites. I would not have any problem with discussions of white-on-black oppression (including discussion of white women on black women oppression) on racial justice sites, or discussion of straight-women-on-lesbian oppression on GBLT rights sites. Otherwise, it is like walking into a 9/11 memorial service and hearing a discussion on how the mostly rich, white men who died were oppressors and privilege holders. I come to feminist sites with a mindset of women as victims of the patriarchy, not women as oppressors.
There’s the whole remaining world for that, very happy to oblige.

Humanbein, I can deny my whiteness all I want, in my own head, and on totally rational and philosophical grounds. But everybody around me sees me as White, and the attendant privilege follows it. I can reject white privilege when the opportunity arises, but in reality, my white privilege infiltrates every interaction I have with another human being, whether zie and I recognize it or not. No, I’m not “white,” but I am, in US culture, White. It’s easy to ask me to reject the label, but in rejecting it, I would be denying the lifetime of privilege I have been afforded due to an accident of birth. And denying privilege is not exactly on my list of feminist things to do today, or in this lifetime.

Also, whoever said this blog “was not about WP” and implied there’s no place here for this conversation, go back to Feminism 101, review the definitions of Patriarchy, write an essay on How To Be a Decent Human Being, and then hopefully you will realize that conversations about WP are entirely appropriate on any blog, in any discourse, any time the WP rears its ugly head.

humanbein, before one publicly rejects whiteness though, one has to accept that there is such a thing as white culture and that they may be “acting white.”

I agree completely. Oppression doesn’t end just because you reject it personally. Privilege doesn’t stop just because you don’t want it anymore.

It’s just a way to avoid assuming your own privilege yourself. After many years of practice, you’ll find it a lot harder to assume white privilege if you refuse to associate yourself in your own mind with the white fictional construction. My family is not white, my daughter is not white, attack white people all you want, and you aren’t attacking me, though you might think you are. The whitest white people are people who think they are white, just like the most misogynistic men are the men who think they are masculine.

You can’t have absolution, but you can change yourself slightly.

Twiss B, that is an interesting example, and sadly, visible in a bunch of places. But, I would say that’s a the misuse of intersectionality in the same way that Sarah Palin taking up the mantle of feminism is. You can use a hammer to build something useful, or to bludgeon someone over the head.

Jill, if what you got out of this discussion is that we (those who don’t like intersectionality) don’t want to talk about racism or classism or how they impact women, then you’re not really listening.

If you’re talking about how racism or classism affect the way women experience misogyny, you’re talking about intersectionality, regardless of what you choose to call it. If you’re trying to talk about how those other oppressions affect women without talking about how they intersect with misogyny, then your discussion is incomplete and sort of pointless. Those things do intersect in very real ways that affect a lot of women in their everyday lives.

If you’re talking about how racism or classism affect the way women experience misogyny, you’re talking about intersectionality

In theory, not in practice. In practice, most of the intersectionality debates I’ve experienced can be summed up as “bros before hos”.

Kali, what are you saying? That we should talk about intersectionality but not call it that? Or that the actual issues shouldn’t be discussed?

I suppose sexually, youth is privileged,

Young women and girls are not sexually privileged at all. Sexually most exploited, sexually most abused, yes.

Sorry, to be clear, I meant legal adults, i.e. over 18, being privileged in terms of attraction, desire, etc., and I was chiefly describing males, which I omitted in haste. I mucked it up because I started by contrasting under-18s with over-18s and finished by contrasting 18-25s with over-25s. It would help if I were specific and clear though, eh?

My writing’s been quite mucky today, though, and I’ve reached my posting limit for this blog, so I’ll bow out.

@Cimarron: “But, I would say that’s a the misuse of intersectionality in the same way that Sarah Palin taking up the mantle of feminism is.”

So I can understand your comment, did you by any chance misread the word intrasectionality in my post as intersectionality?

“Please tell me where racism occured.”

I’m not going to scroll up and find the WP splattered posts for you, nor am I going to search the whole blog for the many, many examples that exist.

“Are you saying I’m being racist because I’m against intersectionality as it is practiced?”

No.

And just to clear up ANY further attempt by you to purposely misunderstand and think I’m calling you a racist

I do not believe POC in this country can be racist. Ever.

Racism = power + prejudice is the equation I believe.

POC do not have power in this country, anymore than women have power in this country.

Natalia, for this comment: “I came here for the lesbian royalty. I stayed for the dung” (Hilarious!) I have a feeling that maybe we can be friends after all.

ex-Soviet Bloc pride all the way.

Twiss B-Whoops! Apologies, yes, I did misread ‘intra’ as ‘inter’. So, I’m not familiar with the term intrasectionality. A quick google told me nothing useful. Got a definition handy?

It seems that you insist that we value some object called “woman” and ignore every other possible characteristic, hurt, etc. caused by PATRIARCHY and not due to the object being “woman” and somehow because of that, patriarchy will fall?

Not speaking for yttik but my take on this is that we all have multiple identities (gender, race, nationality, class, religion, sexual orientation, and others). In life there will invariably be times when these identities are in conflict and we will have to choose which one to prioritize. In general, my observation has been that the gender identity is quite high on the priority list for men but near the bottom for women. That is one reason why the patriarchy is so hard to fight. I think women need to push gender identity higher on the priority list in order to effectively fight the patriarchy. Whenever women have done this we have made progress.

Cimarron – I just coined it to fit the situation which you fully understood.

I think there’s a difference between saying, “As a white woman, I have experienced misogyny in this way (example)” and “As a Native American, I have experienced it differently (example)” and “As a black woman, I have experienced it thusly (example)”

and

“I am (insert race/sexuality/gender) first and woman second.” Because I’m just not sure things can be separated that neatly.

The designation of Queen of the Lesbians aside, Former Blamer does have a point in that “trashing” (http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm)) happens in this here space too much.

For those commenters explaining intersectionality and white privilege for the 2,989,384th time with what can only be described as saintly patience: thank you. It shouldn’t have to be done, but I’m certain that some people (often, the quiet ones who are listening instead of fighting with you) are hearing you.

I remember that, Cimarron, and I also remember that “nappy-headed” received much more shocked and horrified response than did “hos.” I don’t recall anywhere but feminist blogs remarking on the misogyny of the comment.

To me, it was one HUGE example of rexism/sacism. Those young women got it with both barrels. Yet their experience of racism AND sexism (different kind of sexism than white women experience) was wiped out, and sexists decided for them which insult was the more important one. I’d hazard they were both bad, if one was on the receiving end – which included all African American women and girls, frankly.

Kali, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I think what Catherine MacKinnon said here is relevant, and it speaks to how white women are specifically denigrated:

This creature [white woman] is not poor, not battered, not raped (not really), not molested as a child, not pregnant as a teenager, not prostituted, not coerced into pornography, not a welfare mother, and not economically exploited. She doesn’t work. She is either the white man’s image of her–effete, pampered, privileged, protected, flighty, and self-indulgent–or the Black man’s image of her–all that, plus the “pretty white girl” (meaning ugly as sin but regarded as the ultimate in beauty because she is white). She is Miss Anne of the kitchen, she puts Frederick Douglass to the lash, she cries rape when Emmet Till looks at her sideways, she manipulates white men’s very real power with the lifting of her very well-manicured little finger. She makes an appearance in Baraka’s “rape the white girl,”(14) as Cleaver’s real thing after target practice on Black women (15), as Helmut Newton’s glossy upscale hard-edged, distanced vamp (1976), and as the Central Park Jogger, the classy white madonna who got herself raped and beaten nearly to death. She flings her hair, feels beautiful all the time, complains about the colored help, tips badly, can’t do anything, doesn’t do anything, doesn’t know anything, and alternates fantasizing about fucking Black men with accusing them of raping her. As Ntozake Shange points out, all Western civilization depends on her (1981, p. 48). On top of all this, out of impudence, imitativeness, pique, and a simple lack of anything meaningful to do, she thinks she needs to be liberated. Her feminist incarnation is all of the above, and guilty about every single bit of it, having by dint of repetition refined saying “I’m sorry” to a high form of art . . . this “woman, modified,” this woman discounted by white, meaning she would be oppressed but for her privilege.”

http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/from%20practice%20to%20theory.htm

Pheeno – I’m interested in your take on the recent news story on the Oklahoma Cherokee band denouncing its slave descendants.

http://news.yahoo.com/cherokees-expel-descendants-slaves-tribe-221550348.html

re: the mentor board

Maybe select conversations could be posted on a blog/site with the author’s permission? Many people could learn from watching who may be too nervous to participate, and it seems likely that the same issues are going to come up over and over again otherwise.

It is just a suggestion, I am sure pheeno and the rest of the volunteers will do an awesome job.

Anecdote: got into an argument with a WOC (soon to be ex-) friend of mine who prioritizes race over sex (and you know me, I prioritize sex over race). She was stressed and she started taking this stress out on me, not white, but not Black either: “white people this white people that,” yells a little, vents some more. I think she’s completely missing the point (because the white “people” who are making her life miserable, according to her story, are all Dudes). I was being patient. Then at some point she starts talking about this dude of color she worked under last summer who was just “the smartest person in the office.”

I was feeling a little annoyed with the whole dumping of toxic waste on me and I told her that it’s very typical sexist speech to always have some dude assigned as “the smartest person in the room” (the office where she worked only had WOCs and some dudes, including a few white dudes). She retorted with saying that the smartest person in the room was a dude and that’s a fact. And that I should be more sensitive, and happy for him, because he’s a dude of color who hadn’t even finished high-school. I retorted asking if they had any women in the office who hadn’t finished high-school, because if you’re a woman, especially a woman of color who hasn’t finished high school, lard help you, because no one else will. Answer: no. (Bonus point: all the women in that office have at least a BA degree, quite a few have MAs too). But that still didn’t stop her from blowing a lobe, she yelled some more, this time at me, and then I made my exit. I’m still feeling slightly traumatized after the incident.

In MY experience, much like white women, WOCs also refuse to look at sexism straight-on and spend their time fellating dudes as much as they can, thinking of themselves extra-sanctimonious if they fellate the dudes of color (because, oh, the dudes of color, how they suffer!).

Basically, I’m listening to WOCs about their concerns, but a lot – if not most – of the time it sounds just like the usual sexist drivel, with an added heap of hatred/envy directed towards (white) women, I mean witches.

Filed under: Heart Broken.

AN-

Insisting upon telling POC that what they care about most doesn’t matter compared to what matters most to you is a pretty shit job of listening. You can hear without listening. Have you ever had a dude tell you that class is the *real* issue? You are doing the same thing to WOC and it isn’t cool. They can decide for themselves what they want to prioritize. The whole story you told never ended in your friend saying that sexism didn’t matter or didn’t happen, but that she had different priorities than you. Maybe racism has caused her more problems in her day to day life, and guess what? YOU don’t get to judge what caused her the most trouble in her life, because you don’t live it. There are people who mainly do their activism in other countries, and could tell all of us how stupid we are for focusing on issues that affect women in western countries. I have never actually heard that from activists who operate internationally; most can recognize that their reasons for focusing on their issue of choice are personal and that all activism towards justice is important. Expecting everyone to share your specific priorities is egotistical in the extreme and alienates WOC who may want to join feminists. Perhaps a lot of WOC are prioritizing racial injustice BECAUSE of the way that feminists like you insist that they ignore it; that is certainly what I have heard around the internet when I talk to informed WOC who do not consider themselves feminists. When you try to tell someone their own business you display a huge lack of respect for them. It is really fucked up to insultingly say that women who focus on race are “fellating dudes” as a result- that was really fucked up. Stop it.

Women of all races have certainly invested a great deal of time and energy into lifting men up, on fellating dudes, as some people put it.

If we took half that energy and put it into lifting women up, we’d probably have our revolution by now.

Bushfire, are you saying that only white women suck up to men? I don’t think that’s true at all. Of course women of color comply with patriarchy by allying with men. Certainly it’s one thing all races and colors of women have in common.

Bushfire, are you saying that only white women suck up to men?

No.

If for some reason you’re not sure why “WOC just like to fellate men” is offensive, read Nails.

“Yes. However, focusing on race does not automatically do this.”

The thing is, just like “women” seems to equal “white women” in many people’s minds, “race” often really just means men. Neither of these things is true, but that’s what happens in this hierarchy we live in. “Women” simply get erased.

When women make themselves a priority, and invest in themselves, they can lift up their entire race, their whole community. We see it all over the world.

Or we can leave things the way they are in my neck of the woods, where the men pretty much drink and beat women and the women who suffer spend all their time trying to fix these men. My never ending mantra is, save yourselves first. Nothing is ever going to change until you learn to put yourself first.

Okay NoSugarcoating, but while women passionately and intelligently debate the merits of intersectionality, I think a comment from that article pretty much sums up the patriarchal view on the whole matter,

“I’ve dated light skinned, and dark skinned, women,it’s all the same,that complexion sh*t is all in the mind. You’re going to get the samething with one that you get with other one,your rocks off.”

Oh, btw, since I assume the title is up for grabs, I am claiming “Queen of the Heteros”. This is only fair.

Sorry to say yttik, but women are not going to lift Native Indians out of anything, even if we all smashed the P to pieces.

Women cannot un-colonize us. The end of the P won’t un-colonize us.

https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/understanding-colonizer-status/

“In the context of the United States, everyone is part of this colonial society. By definition, however, Indigenous Peoples are the only people identifiable as colonized. Because every bit of land and every natural resource claimed by the United States was taken at Indigenous expense, anyone who occupies that land and benefits from our resources is experiencing colonial privilege. Every non-Indigenous person in the country continues to benefit from Indigenous loss.”

My entire race, my whole community will not ever lose that colonized status.

I get AlienNumber’s point about prioritizing race over sex in cases such as rape trials, but that seems to happen mostly with women who aren’t feminist/womanist minded in the first place.

I don’t understand this comment. Do you mean that only women who are not feminist/womanist are treated unfairly in rape trials? Huh? That if a feminist or womanist were raped, and the case went to trial, her name and “reputation” and sexual history and lifestyle would be treated with respect, somehow?

Yeah, ok, eb. Point well taken.

This intersectionality stuff is third wave feminism. Women have only lost rights since third wave came around – oh, except we can feel proud to be prostitutes and pole dancers. Intersectionality only divides us, and keeps us from gaining women’s rights.

Women are ALL women. All women should be fighting for laws which benefit ALL women.

Can you tell me, what gay male groups are fighting for women’s rights? What environmental groups are fighting for women’s rights? What black groups are fighting for women’s rights? What hispanic groups are fighting for women’s rights? What religious groups are fighting for women’s rights?

But the movement for women’s rights has to (since 3rd wave) solve every ism in the world, EXCEPT for the advancement of ALL women?

Sure, worship third wave intersectionality, and keep talking talking talking about the other isms. Meanwhile, women’s rights are getting nowhere, are even going backwards.

No wonder they stole Hillary’s primary win, because electing a black MAN (all presidents have been men, only 5% of the population are black men) would be HISTORIC. But electing a woman (representing 52% of the population – yes, she stands for ALL women, she has worked for ALL women) – nah, that wouldn’t be HISTORIC. You know how many third wave women were obama bots???? A LOT. Go feminism! /s

Women need to start focusing again on our similarities, and stop being distracted by our differences. If we fight for ALL WOMEN to get rights – guess what, ALL women get rights! We’re not accomplishing the passing of any laws with all this diversion.

Yes, what Fictional Queen said.

It can be undone, but those who enjoy the privilege of living in a colonized land won’t do what it would take. The only options are trade places with those living on Reservations or leave altogether. Those 2 options are the only 2 that will end the colonization of the Indigenous peoples here. Ending oppression would help those living on Reservations, but they’re still on Reservations. And ending oppression won’t return what we’ve lost.

This is why I find the ” let’s put women first” idea a bit offensive. It ignores our colonization and ignores the fact that it will not end our colonization. I can be an unoppressed woman, but I will never be an uncolonized woman.

Colonialism could be undone in a generation by colonizers not having children.

The oppression is divisive, not the reactions to oppression.

Hear, hear.

Analyzing how various oppression affect women is an important step in consciousness-raising. And thus, an important step towards the revolution.

I don’t want to be part of any revolution that says, “X oppression doesn’t matter because dudes experience that oppression too.”

@Citizen Tacqueau, I don’t see where ANYONE equated pheeno’s rage with merely sucking up to men! I think that’s a leap.

And that said: None of us, not one woman ANYWHERE, has ever been able to avoid “sucking up” to men. Our survival depends upon our sucking up to men, and we can only hope the whim of patriarchy, on any given day, deems said sucking up to be sufficient in the given moment.

pheeno’s anger at the egregious genocide of native people in the Americas does not diminish my oppression at the hands of men, nor our neighbor’s oppression, nor Kali’s oppression. There are so many bitter flavors of oppression to choose from, that we will never run out.

I wonder if some of this anguish I hear from my fellow blamers comes from our collective lifetimes of just not fucking being heard. It is so exhausting.

I hear you, my sisters. I hear you. You are real to me and your pain is real and your experiences are real. I honor them, and you, from the place of experiencing much of the same kinds of trauma myself.

I can be an unoppressed woman.

When did rape and domestic violence get eradicated? When did we get equal representation in the government, in business, academia, media? When did we stop getting pornified? Nobody can be an unoppressed woman until this, and more, is a reality across the globe.

I’m from a country still barely recovering from the devastating effects of colonisation, the starvation and poverty of millions of people. I hate the colonialists for what they did to India. However, I believe that what men have done to women over millenia is even worse and more difficult to overcome. I cannot put equal energy (including emotional energy) into every cause. I put more energy into anti-sexism than into anti-colonialism. If there is a conflict between the two, I will go with women. (For example: Many Indians were very offended that an Italian-born Sonia Gandhi won the election and was going to become the Prime Minister. There was also a somewhat sexist undertone to the criticism. Someone who was very offended about her being Italian-born may not even notice the sexist undertone, or may deny it. It was much more subtle than what happened to Hillary Clinton and Palin. I was happy that a woman won the election, and I did notice the sexist undertone. These are the kinds of things I am talking about.) Some other women may put more energy into anti-racism than into anti-sexism, and choose the former in case of a conflict. That is fine, but don’t call this prioritization of anti-racism *over* (not “along with”) anti-sexism feminism.

Gosh, I must have hallucinated the part about “fellating dudes.”

*If* the P is smashed and sexism and woman hating ALL END, I can be an unoppressed woman.

In that particular comment, it was not clear that you were talking about a hypothetical unoppressed woman. Also, I don’t see the point of comparing a hypothetical for A with the reality for B. I could just as easily argue that if the white people all leave North America or die off, you can be an uncolonized woman, but you can never be an unoppressed woman as long as there are men oppressing women.

tinfoil hattie, you’re much better at getting consensus and mutual understanding than I am. So, we could give each other lessons!

TwissB, a belated thank you for coining “intrasectionality.” So damn much of the P’s misogyny and sexism is cultivated, nurtured, and enforced via racial, ethnic, and religious communities.

Throw a rock and you’ll hit some mansplaining dude who will tell you that we have to be culturally sensitive to (the misogynistic religion of your choice) because we can’t impose our cultural ethics on others. This attitude comes from the basic P tenet: Women are not human, therefore human rights do not need to encompass women’s rights. Never mind that our mansplainers can, loud and proud, condemn cultures that are racially, ethnically, or religiously oppressive. But when it comes to how those cultures treat women? Oh no! That’s off topic. That’s untouchable. What goes on between those men and their women is not up for debate. And, besides, the women like it (and here the mansplainer will include a list of the “benefits” of said oppression). Who are we to tell (the misogynistic religion of your choice) how to indoctrinate/subjugate/oppress their women? Intersectionality we can move to the top of the discussion list. But intrasectionality? Shut your mouth and mind your place, women; and stay in your boxes and don’t even think about getting out. (Oh, and by the way, that woman over there has a nicer box than you.)

It’s divide and conquer, baby. That’s one of the essential engines that make the P go ’round (and ’round and ’round and ’round and ’round).

Actually, in all the Americas. Not just the U.S.

“because we can’t impose our cultural ethics on others.”

Your cultural ethics all but destroyed mine. You can keep them.

pheeno, the “cultural” ethics I specifically referred to is that women’s rights are human rights. You are free to rebuke this ethical viewpoint and/or defend the P tenet that women are not human. And I am free to disagree with you.

“Cultural” is in scare quotes because there isn’t really any P culture that embodies this ethic. For that reason it is a personal, not cultural, viewpoint. But I am often told, mostly by men but sometimes women, that I can’t “impose” this idea on anyone.

For one, the Fed. government needs to get the hell out of Tribal Law so Native Women can report a rapist and actually have him arrested and tried. As it stands, if we are raped by a non Native, we can’t arrest or prosecute. Tribal police cannot charge non-Indians with a crime on tribal land. The US Attorney’s Office is supposed to do that. But they don’t. When a non Native commits a crime on Native land, Tribal police must let him go and forward a report. A rapist can be standing in front of the police and they cannot arrest him. And all men, every last one, that live near Reservations know this. They also know that a Native woman raped off Indian land can’t report it to her Tribal authorities and local authorities do not care.

We’re an occupied country, just like Iraq. The only difference is the length of time our occupiers have been here.

@ Kali’s question above. I may be wrong (pheeno, correct me if I am) but I think it goes back over a hundred years to the “Major Crimes Act.” And, yes, murder, theft, and assault are treated the same way.

pheeno’s right. The federal government needs to get the hell out. The only thing the feds should be doing is helping Tribal authorities enforce Tribal Law (e.g., extraditing non-Indian perpetrators who flee Indian land).

“what will happen if the Native Americans take matters in their own hands and deal with the non Native criminal themselves ”

We get arrested, imprisoned and if it’s a death penalty state, killed.

We also lose federal monies.

In short, we are punished swiftly and harshly.

“. If you call the police in a domestic violence case for example, you will get half a dozen branches of law enforcement, sometimes even including border patrol, fish and game, and Homeland security. They will spend most of their time arguing about who has jurisdiction. ”

I’ve read about that happening in the victims front yard while her rapist was still hiding in her closet.

Tribal Police are only allowed to detain *if* they have the cooperation with the local police. In Oklahoma (the most concentrated number of us are) a sheriff is on record telling the Tribal Police that even if the Indian deputies are dying on the side of the road, don’t call them for help. And our land is so chopped up that you have US fed streets running through Indian land, and you can have a building parking lot that’s US land, in the middle of Indian land. So a non Native can literally cross the road, rape a Native woman and cross back across the road to remain untouched.

“, but women focusing on helping each other, right here, right now, can bring immediate results.”

For? It doesn’t matter how many policies or laws are on the books. If you can’t get anyone to prosecute them, they might as well not exist. And that system being worked with, around or what have you is still a system that was brought over by colonizers, and working around it is still working within a colonized country, with colonized people.

“more sovereignty, more tribal authority would go a long way towards solving the problem”

I don’t want more, I want total. Complete. All of it.

Honestly, Kali, what do YOU think?

Just curious: do you think that if you had total and complete sovereignty, there will be no more rape of Native women? No more white men rapists and no more Native men rapists of Native women?

(Also, I have a post in moderation, because of a link to something.)

“Just curious: do you think that if you had total and complete sovereignty, there will be no more rape of Native women? ”

Nope. But we can arrest and prosecute them. And we’d have the power to close our borders to colonizers. And access to the resources the US still steals from us. And the ability to enact laws, even if the Fed. government didn’t like it. And the option to collect on debt, maybe the government would kiss our asses like they do China since the US owes so much money to China.

The Tribal Law Act is meh. Until we have the funds for enforcement it’s just more words on paper. And since millions of dollars supposed to be allotted to Native Indians “disappear” before we ever see a dime, I don’t expect to see much by way of funding. There are around 3,000 officers who have to patrol roughly 50 million acres of Indian Land.

And very important-

“In many tribal oral traditions, there are some interesting stories and
dialogues describing the strength of women, the autonomy of women, and the right of women to sexual choice. These stories and traditions can be incorporated into contemporary tribal court systems. In fact, some tribal courts have requested elders to come in and testify as to traditional beliefs.
Therefore, even if the tribe does not have a codified rape law, it may be possible to address illegal behavior through the introduction of these traditional laws.
Many of these traditional laws contain beliefs about individual autonomyand describe sexuality as being something very prized and very respected.
Historically, many Europeans were horrified that the Native people actually allowed women to make autonomous sexual choices. Reviewing some historical letters and documents reveals that many tribal cultures allowed women to be leaders, to have multiple sex partners if they so chose and their sexuality was respected. If women did report a rape, they were believed.
Moreover, there were significant punishments for rape and sexual assault including banishment and death”

“That’s why I advocate that women align with each other, focus on their needs, and work outside of the system.”

I don’t advocate women NOT doing this. What I have a problem with is historically, it still leaves Native women forgotten.

“Rape survivors can come together to heal, but also to name rapists, to alert other women. ”

Beware of the white guy in a truck. Yeah, I think Native women know this.

““Women” does not mean white.”

No, but in the stark reality, it means uncolonized. Our conditions haven’t improved much in 500 years. That isn’t true for white women here, nor most uncolonized women. We didn’t get to vote because white women and black women were allowed. We as Nations had to fight to become citizens first and recognized as both citizens of our Nation AND this country first.

The VAWA hasn’t come to our aid like it has uncolonized women. No one knows who’s jurisdiction it falls under. If you can’t prosecute someone for violence against a woman, having extra time added to the sentence doesn’t amount to squat.

“Because where I live women are so fragmented and alienated from each other, they’ll marry that guy in the white truck.”

Where my family lives, women run from him.

““Women” does not mean white.”

No, but in the stark reality, it means uncolonized.

That’s hilarious. And patently untrue. Only to sexists “woman” means “uncolonized.” We are colonized. By men. Hello!

Well, and you keep denying white women’s oppression.

There are no words for women’s oppression, don’t you see? It’s always someone going to deny that, because *more important* things are at stake.

Okay, so the descendants of Black slaves are your colonizers too. Even though, really, they didn’t *choose* to come here. Kind of like the wives of the Founding Fathers. OOOh, evil colonizers that they were, except they were also chattel, who also has no legal rights to speak of.

You know, in the United States, only 1% of all property is owned by women (female humans).
Do you care about what that means? About what that does to your theories?

What about your shut your piehole, Bushfire? You general state of being (on this blog) oppresses me.

“Okay, so the descendants of Black slaves are your colonizers too. ”

Yes.

Indigenous people’s are the colonized. Everything, good and bad, that exists in this country only exists because Indians were slaughtered. Indian women and children were being sold off as slaves for about 80 years prior to those Puritans ever stepping a toe onto a ship.

Slave owners only had those plantations that they forced slaves to work because Indians were killed.

The government that freed those slaves only existed because Indians were killed.

You Are Here Because We Were Killed.

“About what that does to your theories?”

Nothing. Rented, owned it’s still stolen.

Like it or not, women were only able to fight to vote because they were on stolen land. That government they fought to gain voting rights only exists because Indians were killed. Those women themselves were born in this country ONLY BECAUSE INDIANS WERE KILLED.

Do you know the percentage of land owned by Indian women (female humans) before colonizers came?

One essay that really spoke to me: Andrea Dworkin’s “Israel: Whose Country Is It Anyway?”

Especially the way it ends.
[spoiler alert!]

“In Israel, there are the occupied and the occupied: Palestinians and women. In the Israel I saw, Palestinians will be freer sooner.”

Also, the case Martinez v. Santa Clara Pueblo, in which the Native woman, once again, was caught between a rock and a hard place. She lost the case.

And this is why I put women first.
But apparently this is the wrong blog to come to with that kind of message (except for Kali, TwissB, yttik, cin17 and a few others, in no particular order. I think the few of us could start something really big actually. tbc).

The fact that so many “Blamers” are out to get the white women for some crimes these white women obviously didn’t commit, really reminds me of the Witch Trials of the Dark Ages.

Can’t prove they did it, can’t prove they didn’t do it, but if they float they’re witches, and if they drown, they aren’t! The best kind of white woman is a dead one, apparently, even Here.

Absolutely none of this is true. Pointing out white privilege or white supremacy or colonization or what have you, is not oppressive, it’s talking about oppression. What you’re doing is whitesplaining.

By the way, my general state of being does not oppress you. What a load of horseshit. I’m going to have to amend my statement from days ago- I’d like to meet most blamers in real life, but not you, AlienNumber. You’re not even against oppression, unless its oppression of the exact group you’re in. Some of us are against ALL OPPRESSION, including Twisty.

“The fact that so many “Blamers” are out to get the white women for some crimes these white women obviously didn’t commit, really reminds me of the Witch Trials of the Dark Ages. ”

No we weren’t there, but we still benefit from it. Do you deny the truth of that?

“I think it is odd to call people who had no agency in the matter colonizers, i.e blacks who were enslaved, women who were chattel.”

The term does not simply apply to the past. The Indigenous here are not extinct, colonization is still ongoing, and everyone who is not Indigenous is a colonizer. It’s still happening, it’s still in process, it’s still colonization today, this hour, this very second.

And everyone but the colonized benefit from it, present day.

Just like people today still benefit from slavery of the past.

If slavery was still legal today, would you find it odd to say people today were reaping it’s benefits? Even other POC who are not enslaved? If only those in the Black community were slaves, would those in the Latino community not be benefiting? If their clothes were made from cotton that used slave labor, if their food was grown by slaves and harvested with slave labor would you say they did not benefit from slavery?

The term colonizer doesn’t mean “person to blame”.

Message now in Moderation Limbo with links, but anybody interested can probably find the best ones on Google:
Random information. “Movie Night” at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library alerted me to the PBS documentary “PLAYING FOR THE WORLD” about the 1904 Fort Shaw Indian School (yes I know…) champion girls’ basketball team. For more about this team, see (link) and for more about Rezball see (link) Hoopedia.

Redpeachmoon: Yes, we do, and thus it has been from the beginning our our trek out of Africa as a species. Apparently we used to share the planet with Neanderthal individuals. We moved into their territory, mated with them, and then wiped them off the face of the earth. We, the descendants of those early humans, benefitted quite thoroughly from that case of colonization.
It didn’t start with white Europeans taking over North America and killing the inhabitants. It stretches way back. We are a species of colonizers, and NONE of us can historically claim exemption. It’s just that some groups have suffered it more recently. My guess is that we, all of us humans, will be colonized in the near future by very virulent viruses who will make our lives miserable and kill most of us. It’s the way of life. Doesn’t make it good though.

I have immense privilege from being white — a privilege that obtains with every breath I take. Through this, I get not only material benefits, but the perks of membership in the dominant culture– — and these benefits are the direct result of the robbery and genocide my people perpetrated on the Native peoples who originally owned this land.

Exactly. Because I’m white there are things I don’t have to think about that my sisters of color do. There are worries I don’t have, experiences of oppression I don’t have, and other such benefits from being white. Even though I’m never intentionally racist, I benefit from my skin color all the time, in ways that are usually invisible to me.

And thank you to everyone else who gets it

TwissB, you’re in Cambridge, Mass? I’d really love to meet you, in real life, if possible, can we arrange that? By Radcliffe or something.

And to everybody else, read some Andrea Dworkin books, goddamit! She explains this “put women first” business so eloquently, so beautifully, so powerfully.

Bushfire, I don’t trust you for a second, so don’t even worry about lunch.
And Twisty, any way you look at it really is a lesbian(+horse) separatist, which you know, is kind of a putting women first, whether you like it or not (or more likely, intellectually-get-it or not).

Then why is it so hard to get women in general (WIG?) to get the simple fact that sexism is a comprehensive system that privileges all men and that MIG don’t have to think about or, much less, acknowledge their privilege?

Stupidity, willful ignorance, fear, arrogance, their Nigels (and or male progeny), and the P, in no particular order.

(pheeno! not pheno. Sorry. Also “that” are otherwise… etc.) Comment escaped. Bastard comment.

From CPP several thousand posts up: “My understanding is that privilege is not something one “assumes” nor does it have anything to do with what occurs in one’s mind, but rather is something that is conferred upon one by social systems due to perceived membership in a particular category of people. Privilege occurs whether the recipient desires it or not, and it is nearly impossible to reject privilege’s appurtenances.”

Certainly it is something that is conferred on one by social systems due to perceived membership in a particular category of people. No argument. As to whether one can reject privilege’s appurtenances? Sometimes one can – though certainly if one is unaware that one has the privilege to begin with, one won’t.

But it also has *everything* to do with what occurs in one’s mind in that one’s thoughts and behaviors are thoroughly colored by what one believes one has the right to do, to say, where one has the right to go, etc. Yes, one can be barred from entry, for example (whether a building or a professional field, or whatever else), but more probably one knows (or less frequently, decides) whether one has the right to even try it to begin with. And let’s say one thinks – “ok, probably shouldn’t be here, am likely to be unwelcome here, but I’m going to try it anyway.” One enters. And then looks around very, very carefully once in to find out if one is going to be tossed out on one’s ass. Or attacked, or shunned, or insulted, or humiliated. At the very least, that is one shitload of emotional energy being burned.

Women know that this is true of male privilege. Pheeno and others are reminding some of us that this is true of white privilege. Others have mentioned class privilege. All of these things shape what we think we have the right to do and to be. I saw so much of this as a teacher (what student thought s/he had the right to “x” or “y” – which ones would demand it and which wouldn’t dream of asking for it) that I started playing with it myself (which in itself a result of race and class privilege). It’s shaped my understanding of the world and, weirdly, has become part of what I do for a living.

Say, has anyone heard from our dear Spinster Aunt? It’s been some days and those fires are still burning.

““The best kind of white woman is a dead one, apparently, even Here.” Really? Who the hell said this?”

Injuns. Of course. We’re all savage heathens out to scalp poor white folks, and we especially love to kidnap white women.

“The best kind of white woman is a dead one, apparently, even Here.”

WOW! That is some EGREGIOUS FUCKING SHIT, AlienNumber, PARTICULARLY in the current conversation. Your invoking General Sheridan’s words – words he uttered as he was actually in the process of carrying out US genocidal policy, I’ll add – is absofuckenlutely reprehensible.

pheenobarbidoll, I’m so goddam sorry. I can’t even frame a sentence that is adequate to the situation. I’ve been following your posts with keen interest and appreciate that you’ve stayed in the conversation. I can’t even imagine the cost to you.

“I have no idea who General Sheridan is, nor do I have any interest to catch up on more man-history. ”

Nice that you have the privilege to remain ignorant on General Sherman and the quote you used so horrifically. Pheeno and others do not.

I pointed out a racist asshole ACTION that was a pointed piece of verbal violence against First Nation /American indigenous peoples generally, and another woman in particular. Nothing more, and nothing less.

What’s really nice is that your rejoinder is to conflate “what you did” with “who you are” (I don’t know you; I have no idea who you are), and make it perfectly clear that you have no interest in educating yourself or apologizing. Oh, and to question whether we are all True Scotswomen. Swell.

tell a bunch of non-white women -i.e. Kali – about how horrible racism is and what horrible racists they are? ”

They aren’t calling Kali a racist. They’re calling YOU a racist.

“Of which you are, wittingly it seems, a tool. ”

Of course. We Injuns stick together, and we need white people like you to save us from our own stupidity (after all, that IS what you called women, isn’t it? Stupid, ignorant yadda yadda. If that’s your Pro Woman, you can keep it)

I’m talking about colonizers oppression of the colonized, and you are so desperate to pretend you are NOT a colonizer that you keep bringing men up. Not me. You.

I’m discussing the rape of Native Women (by men) and YOU keep accusing me of defending men. All because you’re a damned racist who won’t admit that yes, even white women can be and are racists. And WOC should over look your racism.

Not gonna happen. Being a woman does not give you a free pass to be a racist asshole.

And the quote you’re so sure you didn’t use is ” The only good Indian is a dead Indian” and it doesn’t take “catching up on man history” to know this.

It just takes dropping that racist WP you have and being aware of what was done to several millions of people here. Women got the worst of it, but you’re so wrapped up in your hatred of Native Americans and ignorance of our culture that you can’t be bothered to fucking learn.

“I’m not buying for a second that the males of your culture are not as woman-hating as any other males around.”

Given your utter lack of knowledge on MY culture or the other 500 different Native cultures that exist in this country, I don’t give a rats ass what you buy or not.

Do you care about my culture, pheeno? Why should I care about yours? Because you say so? Fuck culture.

And fuck sexism, especially sexism in the interest of “protecting culture.”

“I don’t think it’s fair that the victim of it should have to shoulder the burden of defending hirself from it all alone, so I spoke up.”

Thank you for that.

‘I’m not buying for a second that the males of your culture are not as woman-hating as any other males around. But I guess, believe what you need to believe to get yourself through another day.’ (Alien Number)
The minute males of pheenobarbidoll’s culture have the kind of power over her that white American men already have, you’ll have a point.

White Privilege Bingo

h ttp://blackfolk.livejournal.com/2290819.html

h ttp://www.racialicious.com/2010/04/22/some-basic-racist-ideas-and-some-rebuttals-why-we-exist/

The bottom line is, if you are white, you benefit from white privilege, and if you live on native land, you benefit from the native genocide.

Here’s what’s confusing me Pheeno. You keep talking about the things your culture allowed women to do, but how is it your culture? It is undoubtedly the culture of your ancestors, just like the culture of my ancestors is a form of Judaism that does not exist anymore, but which modern orthodoxy is a direct descendant. But that does not mean that i ever lived in the culture of my ancestors or would take ownership over it. I might feel a kinship with them, like feeling more personally connected to the atrocities of the holocaust, but I myself am privileged to not be living during the holocaust which has ended and is no longer occurring. The effects of it continue, and some people benefited from it while the Jewish population definitely suffered. But I don’t claim the exact identity of a Jew in a concentration camp because I’m not one.

All the blather above is really just to explain my thought process, rather than provide a counterargument to you. I’m hoping you can understand my confusion and help me understand your point of view. I don’t see how you can classify what is going on right now as colonization when it is compared to actual colonization in the past. It seems like an appropriation of you ancestors suffering.

Wow, I go away for a while and suddenly it’s turned into a free-for-all, let’s-hassle-Pheeno smackdown. What the hell, y’all? Seriously, take a deep breath and then cut it out. I learned a while back to shut up and listen when Pheeno, or any other woman of color who has something to say about culture, race, and privilege, talks. It’s hard sometimes, but when I manage to do it, I usually learn something.

“We don’t even have our own names.”

You might not. WE do. Stop projecting your shit onto us.

But even if you do end up focusing on gender (which perhaps you will, at some point. I can only hope, it’s a feminist space after all), a gender-focused analysis is feminist only when its analyst is consciously oppositional, when the analyst seeks to change the impact of gender categories either to improve the position of women or to liberate both sexes from gender constraints.

This was a paraphrase of this legal scholar named Mary Frug. She was on to something, that one.

Twisty? New post please? I keep coming here hoping that this vituperative thread will have been closed by a new post. My ears hurt from all this shouting.

“If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‘our’ country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex Instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share. For, the outsider will say, in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
-Virginia Wolf

“It is undoubtedly the culture of your ancestors”

TotallyDorkin, this isn’t some one time event that happened decades or centuries ago, Native Americans still have to deal with horrible treatment from the U.S. Government in the here and now.

Sorry, Forgot link:

http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/women_poverty_economics/facts_figures.php

You are not privileged pheenobarbidoll, your voice, disembodied, has been privileged by white women here in this thread.

Other women of color’s voices have stood solo, unsupported.

AN claims she is unaware of the “dead Indian” parallel and did not intend an offensive connection.

If only 1% of land on this earth is owned by women then you, as a woman, most likely are on someone else’s land. Most likely some husband/father man’s, or some man-government’s if you are living on a reservation. If you happen to own outright the land you live on, as a woman you are very very privileged. On half the continents on earth women produce > 90% of the food and own less than 1% of the land or assets.

Welcome to the privilege club if you, a woman, own land. Blame the patriarchy if you don’t.

“Welcome to the privilege club if you, a woman, own land. Blame the patriarchy if you don’t.”

I do blame the P.

I also blame colonizers.

Much of this land was once owned by women. Then it was stolen and everyone else now claims it and excuses it with ” everyone is on someone else’s land”. Even the 1% of women here who own land own stolen land.

Merciful Minerva! I will apologize if it can be shown how pointing out that something was racist with a genocidal history = privileging one person.

Reading that “No good woman/ dead woman” thing made *me* feel slapped, and I don’t have to live that shit. As a nice white lady, my complicity (silence) has far different implications from a WOC in the same situation. Not part of the solution, part of the problem and all that. Frankly I find the “can’t we all just get along” flavored comments appalling for the same reason. Also, failing to do the right thing for X because I failed to do it for Y is some piss-poor reasoning.

Nothing that pheenobarbidoll has said about how non-indigenous peoples are beneficiaries of USian colonialism & genocidal policies is inaccurate – not even for those of us who are simultaneously in the sex class. The fact that there’s more pushback against her for that and her stated feelings of national and cultural unity than there was against the stuff she outlined @6:01 is really really disappointing.

I’ve been told her by many that MY people’s issues are secondary to feminist and woman solidarity

Hey, that sounds familiar. What could it possibly remind me of? Oh, I know. It’s what liberal dudes say whenever women point out that we’d like to be treated like humans.

“AN claims she is unaware of the “dead Indian” parallel and did not intend an offensive connection. ”

Ah so long as she didn’t MEAN to be offensive! That makes my offense at it unreasonable. How dare I be offended at a racially loaded parallel! She didn’t know! Why would she? It’s not like Native peoples still exist or anything or are worthy of doing any homework on. We don’t matter and our feelings certainly don’t. So now I’ll just be a good WOC and hold her hand through why it’s offensive. That’s my fucking duty isn’t it.

“I’m not buying for a second that the males of your culture are not as woman-hating as any other males around. But I guess, believe what you need to believe to get yourself through another day.”

Is this because you’ve actually looked into it, or because you don’t want to believe what pheeno has to say? Why don’t you want to listen to what she has to say or go read up on things when she alerts you of them? If you don’t have the decency to listen, really listen, then at least attack her arguments on their merit rather than her personally. I don’t understand what your personal opinion of her has to do with anything. Why do you think it is relevant?

The discussion about *what could be done to improve rape laws for NA women* was really interesting before all this shit, but I don’t know how that conversation could reasonably take place right now. Oh, how I yearn for the not too distant past.

Buttercup, I’ve been wondering the same thing for some days now. I wouldn’t really be concerned, except FIRE. And many animals.

From what I’ve last heard on the news, the fire is 80% contained.

I don’t know much about first nations communities in the U.S., but here in Canada native women get no justice whatsoever from police or the courts. It is as if they exist for the random abuse of anyone who cares to use them, including murder. Besides, or perhaps foundational to that, sexual assault within aboriginal communities is beyond rampant. A young woman of high school age (who has managed to make it through school without having to leave for trauma or to care for needy family members) who has not been assaulted by members of her community or even her own family may as well be riding a unicorn, she is so rare.

Colonization, as Linda says, is an ongoing process and it is alive and thriving here in Canaduh. But don’t tell anyone, as we don’t really like to talk about such unpleasantness. (that last line is sarcastic in case anyone is unsure)

I don’t just blame the P, I am consumed with loathing for it.

Statistics for assault of Native American and First Nations women are hard to come by – because in the U.S., assault by non-native men is not prosecuted (one thing that’s similar for other U.S. women, though not for the same reasons). Assault on “tribal lands” (aka “crappy reservations”) isn’t kept track of officially.

So, yeah – Native/First Nations women: not just the sex class, but the garbage class, the dirt class, the forgotten class.

The is misogyny here, in the Blametariat. I as a woman am saying this. Thanks for (not) listening. And yes, while I know more American history than a lot of Americans I’ve met here, I’m a little shaky on some of the details and some of the names and believe it or not, I don’t memorize quotes by dead white men Generals. Shoot me! Or even better, deport me!
I will not apologize for something I did not do (but perhaps I will be destroyed for it).

It sounds like there’s a lot of uncritical hatred of white females here (and some white women who enjoy wallowing in guilt and telling us about it. Well, aren’t you a wonderful white “person,” with all your white guilt? Gah!).

Also, pheeno, I’m glad you’re just as anti-immigrant as any other (dumb and hateful) American. Maybe you didn’t *mean* to, but sure as hell it sounds like you condone mass-deportation. Obviously you’re too busy being angry about your own people to even notice that immigrants, especially immigrants of color, are the new Scapegoats. Definitely, thanks for the love.

Ashley, as I’ve said before, what about You work with the men on the feminist issues and I continue to work with women? Strikes me as a fair deal and we get to stay out of each other’s way. And Bushfire, you can regurgitate what Twisty says until the cows come home, but I, personally, from you, am going to need a little more evidence of actual comprehension.

At this point I’m very upset at myself for wasting so much time arguing with Feminists less sensitive to sex-based discrimination issues than I had expected from being on this blog.

There’s a tiny tribe perched on the edge of the world, living in a tsunami zone that has been trying for something like 40+ years to get permission to move inland so they don’t get swept out to sea. Recently there’s been this really interesting convergence of female energy, these unlikely allies, that have all come together. First and foremost is all the female leadership the tribe now has, along with an odd Mormon woman who wrote the Twilight series, and a couple of white women who are US senators. It’s an odd and unintentional collaboration, but for the first time in half a century, there is a real possibility that the tribe will finally get their land. Women have real power when they come together, even when they come together unintentionally, which is something we haven’t even begun to understand. I see this over and over again, half a century of banging your head on a brick wall, but bring women into the picture and within a few short years, the whole dynamic changes.

When you’re trying to talk feminism with WOC, with native women, it’s a tough sell because basically you are asking women to collaborate with their colonizers. Many women also don’t want to be incorporated into the dominant culture, absorbed, erased, and it’s a legit concern, there is a huge precedent, lots of evidence that validates that fear. Huge. I hear that loud and clear. But for me feminism is not a white women’s political group, it’s about balance, it’s about restoring the natural order of things.

If that tribe does get their land, I’m almost certain some man will take credit for it, he’ll be celebrated. No doubt a white man. But I’ve been watching and the real story is something quite different and much more interesting.

Just re-reading that, I’m ending on such a bummer. That’s not how I really feel, and that’s not how I make it through the day.

Things DO change. Things ARE changing. The inquiry (however many problems that there are with it) is long overdue, but at least it’s happening. Vancouver printed media regularly report on missing women cases, and will even mention past cases in order to suggest or imply a continuum of abuse. The younger urban generation is increasingly aware of issues of colour and gender, and will perform activism to demonstrate their awareness. It may not happen in my lifetime, but things will change.

It sounds like there’s a lot of uncritical hatred of white females here (and some white women who enjoy wallowing in guilt and telling us about it. Well, aren’t you a wonderful white “person,” with all your white guilt? Gah!).

No, there is not. You do not understand white privilege 101. You are wallowing in privilege, and it’s really upsetting to listen to.

And Bushfire, you can regurgitate what Twisty says until the cows come home, but I, personally, from you, am going to need a little more evidence of actual comprehension.

I understand it well, thanks, and I will keep ‘regurgitating’ it until YOU understand it.

Yeah, awhirl,

I-me-mine — arrgh!

Sorry ’bout that.

I’ve often found discussions on whether to ban or not ban the burqa/niqab* in Western countries full of bizarre, topsy-turvy clashes of oppressions.

Moves to ban the burqa in Europe – which I understand has majority support in most European countries – is viewed by many as being all about oppressing women by telling them what they can or can’t wear. In other words, using one patriarchal oppression to fight another patriarchal oppression.

So, by that same logic, defending a woman’s right to wear the burqa/niqab slots into some weird liberation-of-women category. (Similar to arguments that defend pornography.)

Ditto … arguments that link the buraq/niqab topic to racism/islamphobia/freedom of expression. According to these arguments, a woman’s right to choose to wear a garment in public – a garment that strips her of her identity and severely restricts her movement and social mobility – is an expression of her personality, her religious beliefs and democratic freedoms. Bizarre.

* I’m not referring here to the hijab (headscarf) and full-length Muslim pinafore – which, in my view, is reasonable attire by anyone’s standards. I’m only referring to the garments that require full facial covering.

“When you’re trying to talk feminism with WOC, with native women, it’s a tough sell because basically you are asking women to collaborate with their colonizers. Many women also don’t want to be incorporated into the dominant culture, absorbed, erased, and it’s a legit concern, there is a huge precedent, lots of evidence that validates that fear. Huge. I hear that loud and clear. But for me feminism is not a white women’s political group, it’s about balance, it’s about restoring the natural order of things. ”

Feminism wasn’t a white women’s political group for me until many white feminists made it clear that WOC perspectives and issues were not welcome and any introduction would be viewed as divisive.

I didn’t used to have that fear, but I’m being shown almost daily that I’ve been foolish for not fearing it.

All women are people under occupation. Denying that is denying women’s oppression.

Thanks to all blamers who are demonstrating that feminism does not have to mean denial of all oppression beyond sex-based oppression.

Katherine MacKinnon says: It has recently come to my attention that the white woman is the issue here, so I decided I better find out what one is. This creature is not poor, not battered, not raped (not really), not molested as a child, not pregnant as a teenager, not prostituted, not coerced into pornography, not a welfare mother, and not economically exploited. She doesn’t work. She is either the white man’s image of her–effete, pampered, privileged, protected, flighty, and self-indulgent–or the Black man’s image of her–all that, plus the “pretty white girl” (meaning ugly as sin but regarded as the ultimate in beauty because she is white). She is Miss Anne of the kitchen, she puts Frederick Douglass to the lash, she cries rape when Emmet Till looks at her sideways, she manipulates white men’s very real power with the lifting of her very well-manicured little finger. She makes an appearance in Baraka’s “rape the white girl,”(14) as Cleaver’s real thing after target practice on Black women (15), as Helmut Newton’s glossy upscale hard-edged, distanced vamp (1976), and as the Central Park Jogger, the classy white madonna who got herself raped and beaten nearly to death. She flings her hair, feels beautiful all the time, complains about the colored help, tips badly, can’t do anything, doesn’t do anything, doesn’t know anything, and alternates fantasizing about fucking Black men with accusing them of raping her. As Ntozake Shange points out, all Western civilization depends on her (1981, p. 48). On top of all this, out of impudence, imitativeness, pique, and a simple lack of anything meaningful to do, she thinks she needs to be liberated. Her feminist incarnation is all of the above, and guilty about every single bit of it, having by dint of repetition refined saying “I’m sorry” to a high form of art. She can’t even make up her own songs.

There is, of course, much to much of this, this “woman, modified,” this woman discounted by white, meaning she would be oppressed but for her privilege. But this image seldom comes face to face with the rest of her reality: the fact that the majority of the poor are white women and their children (at least half of whom are female); that white women are systematically battered in their homes, murdered by intimates and serial killers alike, molested as children, actually raped (mostly by white men), and that even Black men, on average, make more than they do. (16) If one did not know this, one could be taken in by white men’s image of white women: that the pedestal is real, rather than a cage in which to confine and trivialize them and segregate them from the rest of life, a vehicle for sexualized infantilization, a virginal set-up for rape by men who enjoy violating the pure, and a myth with which to try to control Black women. (See, if you would lie down and be quiet and not move, we would revere you, too.) One would think that the white men’s myth that they protect white women was real, rather than a racist cover to guarantee their exclusive and unimpeded sexual access–meaning they can rape her at will, and do, a posture made good in the marital rape exclusion and the largely useless rape law generally. One would think that the only white women in brothels in the South during the Civil War were in Gone with the Wind. (17) This is not to say that there is no such thing as skin privilege, but rather that it has never insulated white women from the brutality and misogyny of men, mostly but not exclusively white men, or from its effective legalization. In other words, the “white girls” of this theory miss quite a lot of the reality of white women in the practice of male supremacy.

Beneath the trivialization of the white woman’s subordination implicit in the dismissive sneer “straight white economically privileged women” (a phrase which has become one word, the accuracy of some of its terms being rarely documented even in law journals) lies the notion that there is no such thing as the oppression of women as such. If white women’s oppression is an illusion of privilege and a rip-off and reduction of the civil rights movement, we are being told that there is no such thing as a woman, that our practice produces no theory, and that there is no such thing as discrimination on the basis of sex. What I am saying is, to argue that oppression “as a woman” negates rather than encompasses recognition of the oppression of women on other bases, is to say that there is no such thing as the practice of sex inequality.

‘According to these arguments, a woman’s right to choose to wear a garment in public – a garment that strips her of her identity and severely restricts her movement and social mobility – is an expression of her personality, her religious beliefs and democratic freedoms. Bizarre.’ (iorarua)
In the 50’s the British colonial regime took time off from suppressing Kenyan resistance to its rule to outlaw female genital mutilation. In response, a non-negligible number of young Kenyan women mutilated themselves. (Or tried to. Medical records suggest their attempts were not up to the standards of professional mutilators.)
Maybe the state should just fuck off and leave these issues to women?

@ Pheeno,

You may well have saved some lives on that highway. The racism is so profound in our so-called law enforcement that the real numbers of disappeared women is difficult to determine. There is an enquiry into police misconduct regarding the missing (almost exclusively native) women, but it is pretty much sewn up before it starts. Aboriginal and women’s groups are allowed to make legal presentations, but cannot access any funding to hire legal representation, cause, ya know, the government is already paying out “enough” to cover the enquiry – i.e. taxpayers pay to continue the coverup of police racism and sexism and classism. I know this from a friend who is working as an advocate on the case. You’ll never hear it though the media.

Sorry to be the delivery system for yet more unbearable outrage, but it just makes me want to give up altogether or go postal or something.

This is a very American-centric Blametariat. Maybe that’s why we’re butting heads so much.

White guilt is useless without actual Reparations, actual movement of resources from-to. Otherwise, it’s just a big waste of time, a “with all deliberate speed” type of fiasco, from my extensive experience with the Topic/Thing/Practice, dear Linda. Furthermore, there is no social justice without a focus on the liberation of women, which is unfortunately and historically always at the bottom of any social justice-y group list of priorities.

I do apologize for verging on feminist trolldom with my misguided and deeply offensive obsession with putting the liberation of women first and foremost.

Said to Alien, “Your concern about the way WoC choose to fight racism (and choose to discuss racism) is noted, and is found wholly irrelevant.”

Uh, no. I don’t find her points irrelevant at all.

@yttik-

You wrote

““When you’re trying to talk feminism with WOC, with native women, it’s a tough sell because basically you are asking women to collaborate with their colonizers. Many women also don’t want to be incorporated into the dominant culture, absorbed, erased, and it’s a legit concern, there is a huge precedent, lots of evidence that validates that fear.”

And I agree. So far, I’ve yet to see AN address any of those fears with anything but dismissal. So while you see the legitimacy of those concerns, and I see them, she’s rendered them invalid every time she responds to me.

So why should I buy what she’s selling? She’s made it clear that I should run like hell if I don’t want all those concerns coming to pass.

“What points? We’re all just fellating MOC if we don’t do feminism her way?”

Yes, I did agree with her because I do think women of all races have wasted entirely too much time fallating men. I also agree with her about “putting the liberation of women first and foremost.”

I’m not trying to dismiss Pheeno’s many valid points, I just hate it when half a dozen white women point fingers at somebody else, declare her a racist, and then proceed to speak for ALL WOC, including me. Talk about erasing WOC. I’m starting to get the impression that all WOC are expected to act, think, and believe a certain way.

I’d like to hear more about Pheeno’s experiences, as well as some of the other WOC from all over the world, but it seems like most of the (white) blamatariat is more interested in trying to find out who the racist is and throwing stones at her. Wouldn’t it be better to actually listen to what all the different WOC are posting, perhaps learn something?

Besides wasting too much time fellating men, I also believe women waste too much time trying to call each other out, trying to make sure every single women is held accountable for every damn thing they say and do.

“I just hate it when half a dozen white women point fingers at somebody else, declare her a racist, and then proceed to speak for ALL WOC”

Actually, what they’ve been doing is speaking up so I don’t have to fight AN’s racism (directed at me) by myself.

Which I appreciate, because I’m damn sick of doing it by myself.

*I’M* calling her a racist. I have, in fact, experienced her shit as racism. No ifs ands or buts. Not sorta kinda. Full on hateful racism directed at me.

And her points have been peppered with racism, so no, I’m not going to agree until she can cut it the hell out. You can ignore the racism all you want, but I can’t and I sure can’t when it’s directed at me. I really hope you’re not expecting me to ignore it and I really hope you see that the white women here are not just sitting silently by as it happens, letting me bear the brunt of it alone.

“I also believe women waste too much time trying to call each other out, trying to make sure every single women is held accountable for every damn thing they say and do.”

If we can’t manage to stop being oppressive to each other, how the hell can we get the P and men to stop? We can’t even walk our own walk for fuck’s sake. Not when there are WOC being alienated from the entire Women First concept. Even 1 is too many. And honestly, if the other white feminists hadn’t called out AN, I’d be pretty damn convinced the feminist movement wasn’t worth it and I’d also be among the WOC who left.

^^That (last paragraph) is a really good counterpoint to the “it’s divide and conquer!” type of comments that come up during internal conflicts. It is totally true- we should expect people to try, if nothing else. This defending willful ignorance shit isn’t okay.

I just, I’m really, really tired of it. On a personal level, tired of it. No matter where I go, ignorance and racism against Native Indians, it’s left me drained. The past few days here truly had me questioning and coming up short. If I don’t exist, how can I be part of your movement? If I don’t exist, how I can be a woman in your woman first liberation? If I don’t count, why should I help? If I’m simply going to be assimilated into *your* culture, why shouldn’t I resist as much as I resist being assimilated into any other Dominant culture? As much as some would like to deny, womanhood holds it’s own hierarchy. And some women are on the bottom rung of *that* too. I feel like AN kicked me down to that rung, and a few women here held their hands out and pulled me back up.

Amos, you make good points, but it bothers me to have the “racism” card thrown at the French government, if by that you mean the act of denying women the privilege (sic) of wearing a burqa. If all offenses against women and girls are allowed (on grounds of “religious sensitivity”) because France is a former colonizer of that part of the world, then, once again, the door is opened to all kinds of trouble. I feel that if France, or Denmark, or whomever, allows these practices to take place, they are essentially a pawn of the vicious practices of misogyny masquerading as religious cultural traditions. (I know my view is not popular, by the way, and I keep getting challenged for it by intelligent and well educated women. But nonetheless I keep coming back to it. I was very influenced on this topic by the Ms Hirsi Ali, the author of Infidel. She completely convinced me, and I haven’t been able to shake her arguments.)

I’m not trying to dismiss Pheeno’s many valid points, I just hate it when half a dozen white women point fingers at somebody else, declare her a racist, and then proceed to speak for ALL WOC, including me. Talk about erasing WOC. I’m starting to get the impression that all WOC are expected to act, think, and believe a certain way.

No one’s said or implied any of that. Frankly, there are too few women of color on this board, and in general there is a disquieting absence of discussion about intersectionality and womanism beneath the post. And if the white women who are normally quite chatty were to remain conspicuously quiet when somebody goes on a racist tirade, then they might appear, in their silence, to be lending credence to that bigotry while simultaneously allowing a comrade — pheeno — to shoulder the burden of defending her very existence. And that shit is wrong. And it was equally wrong the last time this happened, when a few very loud, angry, ignorant, and bellicose transphobes tried to hijack IBTP comment threads and bully transfolk and their allies and go on a pants-inspecting raid, surmising that anyone who disagreed was secretly a man.

The folk who are defending pheeno’s right to conceptualize the oppression of native American people in the prevailing context of colonialism — while correctly pointing out the historical failings of feminism to do just that — have not argued that Alien Number, also a woman of color, is obligated to join pheeno’s club, that she must conform to pheeno’s particular viewpoint, otherwise she is being a racist. What has been suggested is that Alien Number educate herself before trying to contradict pheeno about pheeno’s lived fucking experiences, that she refrain from shitting all over pheeno when she’s feeling frustrated, and that she stops dismissing racism as an important, sometimes primary, concern in the complicated pursuit towards universal social justice.

So, while your suggestion that white commenters shaddup and listen to WoC discuss issues specific to WoC, I truly fail to see how silently standing by while Alien Number plays no true Scotswoman-of-color (namely, “I’m a WoC and I don’t care, so pheeno and others shouldn’t either”) at all embiggens any discourse or gets us anyfeckinwhere.

Apart from that, Alien Number has revealed that she cares about issues of race when it suits her argument. Thus, she can swiftly shift from claiming that the fight to eradicate race-based oppressions sabotages the women’s movement to (laughable, if it wasn’t so offensive) accuse pheeno of discrimination because Alien Number herself is an immigrant.

“Actually Pheeno, calling each other names and making the entire debate personal is how we oppress each other as women. ”

You mean like saying they want all white women dead? Because I’ve been saying (repeatedly)

“You’re oppressing me AN, and other white women have oppressed me (and my race) too”

Her only response to that has been

“You only think you’re oppressed because you hate women, want all white women dead and are stupid so you collaborate with men”

yttik- she said I want all white women dead.

Did you miss that? Because it certainly seems like it.

Again, she claims I hate white women and think they’re only good DEAD.

Do you have *any* response to that specifically?

We are born racist (yes, a sad fact: check out infant studies) and we must learn to see past race. We, most of us, struggle to do so, struggle to see people as humans rather than as members of a race, and we should all acknowledge that it can be difficult. It’s so common to hear “I am above that, I am enlightened, I am innocent, I am blameless, I am a superior evolved human, and YOU ARE NOT.” Suspicion of the “other” is so freaking built into us as a species for goodness sakes, we are fools to think otherwise. Let’s all acknowledge the complexity of the issues, the issues of racial and historical insensitivity, the issues of collective racial guilt, and stop throwing insults around so easily as if ANY of us are above these things. If we look into our own hearts and acknowledge the demon in our psyche, see how it colors our views, try to rise above its pernicious presence, perhaps we can forgive others for it more easily also. Sorry to be so Pollyanna, but for gob’s sake, the discourse does not seem elevated or progressed by this back and forth litany of jabs.

This thread has been amazing to me, as someone who feels too inarticulate to speak up to racist remarks, likely fulfilling the stereotype of the hand-wringing white woman, though I am learning. Saurs has done a great job summarizing what has been going on here, and I’m grateful to pheeno for not throwing up her hands and walking away. I’m grateful to her for sharing her experience and perspective in the midst of being attacked by another blamer.

And, if anyone missed it upthread, pheeno also shared an extremely helpful link about the difference between oppression and colonization: https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/understanding-colonizer-status/

Which leads me to a line from Louise Erdrich’s The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. A woman posing as a priest is trying to convert Ojibwe people on a reservation in ND: “Why do the chimookomanag want us?” she growled. “They take all that makes us Anishinaabeg. Everything about us. First our land, then our trees. Now husbands, our wives, our children, our souls. Why do they want to capture every bit?” Father Damien, whose task it was to steal even the intangible about the woman beside him, had no answer.

This scene was set in the early 20th century, but I see now that it could just as easily be happening today. This complete theft has never stopped, and any comfort I feel today on this land is a result of that.

Last thing, I still like the idea of a mentor forum. I disagree with some who say women so easily make friends with other women. I’ve rarely found that to be true, and I would really appreciate a place where personal stories are shared in relative safety.

Following the unsettlingamerica link provided by pheeno has been (and will be) giving me much thought provoking reading. The Sept 8 post “Indigenous feminism without apology” by Andrea Smith speaks to some of the issues that blamers are wrangling with currently; specifically the fact that the feminist movement has placed white women’s experience at center. What would feminism look like if were “re-centered”? The work of Navajo feminist scholar Jennifer Denetdale looks particularly interesting.

“If you shout me out as a racist for not being as sensitive about certain racial issues which I may be ignorant of, you teach me nothing”

It’s not a person of colors JOB to teach you anything. It’s your job to learn why you were insensitive. Pointing out you’ve said something racist or are ignorant about a racial issue also isn’t calling you a racist or calling you out as a racist.

“Is there another term less dirty than “racist” which can be used in these circumstances?”

Please tell me you are not expecting POC to come up with a word to describe their experience that makes YOU feel more comfortable.

I don’t think that either AN or Pheeno have INTENDED to be racist, sexist, separatist, etc. This argument (and that’s what I’ve experienced) has become personal, and divisive and is causing Blamer’s to take sides, one of which seems more ‘PC’ (Pheeno’s). Feels like High School. I’m with Josquin. Feelings and passions are running high. In the last 2 days, I’ve learned alot more about Pheeno’s world. I hope AN has too, and will come back and retract some of her angry words.
We are all fragile and sensitive people experiencing our unique oppressions in unique ways.

I get that it’s not pheeno’s, or any WOC’s, job to teach me about racism. There’s this thing called the internet, and one can use a fancy search engine to look up “racism,” “sexism,” “racial division in feminism,” “white privilege,” or any other concept about which one is not knowledgeable.

As for a term less ugly and divisive than racism: it is what it is. That a person of privilege did not intend to be racist does not make the action non-racist. It also does not make said person of privilege “bad.” One hopes said privileged being would acknowledge being called out, apologize where necessary, and then do some research.

I’m thankful to pheeno for this long and exhausting “lesson.” I am also gratified that she was able to vent her anger here. There’s not a lot of room for women’s anger. I know we’re all fighting the good fight and we all have our triggers and we’re all exhausted. But racism is ugly and exhausting, sexism is ugly and exhausting, poverty is ugly and exhausting. Women’s lives are one long ugly and exhausting fight, it seems.

Thank you, Pheeno. I now feel angry and would love to slap you with spiteful (and incorrect)assumptions about your reality as you have done to me. (Harvard, McMansions…that’s a good one)
As I said, let the fun begin.

If you’d have set that defensive WP aside, you’d have noticed that several privileges were listed as examples. Those were listed because those are the most common excuses. Whenever a POC brings up racial oppression, inevitably, WP conflates it with class (ie I didn’t go to Harvard, I’m not rich, I don’t have a McMansion so it’s the SAME as RACIAL oppression!!) They weren’t assumptions about YOU, they were real world examples of shit people say to deny they have privilege over others (most often, over people of color).

And instead of listening, what did you do? You read what you wanted and formed a defense for something that *wasn’t even said*.

In other words, you did exactly what the author of that predicted you (as an owner of WP) would.

Continue reading the link above that quote, and see if you can pick out what you just did.

Another pertinent quote

“Having privilege is not making you into a bad person. What makes it bad is when your reaction to learning something you don’t like hearing is to cry in your e-pillow and act like it’s all about you and your hurt feelings.

So what do you do because it’s just so goddamn hard to hear something you don’t like? What do you do when you’re privileged? You sit down and you shut the hell up for once in your life and learn yourself. You listen–and by listen I don’t mean think about your defense while someone’s talking to you and how you’re going to bicker with them. You go pick up a book somewhere and read some shit. You look for resources that aren’t me or those like me. There are books. There are websites. There are entire sociological discussions around privilege and if you pick up your fingers and start working you’ll find answers without having to get them handed to you in little tasty bite sides morsels of thinkystuff from people who are tired of being the go-to person for your education when they didn’t ask to be.

You stop talking about how much you are hurt by this and how you can’t handle this and going on and on about your upsetness one time that didn’t affect you but you saw it and but boy you got mad where’s my merit badge for racism 101 and pity-partying over on your journal and getting hugs and wanting to build a little bitty circle of feel good “I’m a good person hug me wahhhhh” BULLSHIT because you want people to babystep your ass through the ‘isms so you can have it all on a platter to learn about. You don’t white guilt and poor me I’m so burdened I try and I just feel so bad mess. You don’t make it about you. You don’t White Woman Syndrome everywhere and cry about what you did that was so noble like you should get a fucking cookie for not lynching me or bashing me or telling a sexist joke. And you damn well don’t ask us to hold your hands or you’ll never learn and that if we don’t you won’t learn. It is not the burden of the oppressed to lift your foot off our necks–it’s your job to pick up your goddamn feet.”

Quoth Pheeno:

“You sit down and you shut the hell up for once in your life and learn yourself…”

As women, we’ve all been expected to do just that from the moment we were born.

Far more to say about this, but really I’m very confused. There surely must be a way for feminists to engage and participate and converse and change the world without a single one of us having to sit down and shut up and be silenced. IBTP.

“Shut up and *listen*” is not synonymous with silencing. It’s not a permanent condition. It is an injunction for $_Privileged Person to stop centering THEIR OWN feelings / experiences /opinions when the topic at hand is a (differently) $_Marginalized Person and hir experiences IN THAT MOMENT.

Does “shut up and listen” leave you feeling too butthurt to process the message? How about a reframe? Try “replace judgment with curiosity”. But asking $_Marginalized Person to soothe your butthurtness is insult to injury.

IBTP for instilling the idea that being wrong = losing in a zero-sum game.

(Twisty, I do hope everything is ok!)

No one is asking anyone to be silenced, we are asking them to stop promulgating racism. I cannot subscribe to the theory that women get a pass on “stfu and learn” about racism just because they are women. Asking pheeno to back off is asking for the silence of a woman speaking out for herself, and at the same time is privileging racist speech because of the gender of the speaker.

Just an aside, the term ‘butthurt’ as a way to dismiss someone who is upset by suggesting their angst is illegitimate seems to play upon the dismissal of rape victims who were sodomized. I am sure no one at IBTP means it that way, but the connotations are disturbing to this blamer.

“Let’s save inflammatory language for monsters who really do hate.”

Josquin – No, you’re not getting it either. The kind of racism that’s going on here helps maintains a white culture that is tolerant of ALL forms of racism everywhere. You’ve been quietly trying to shut down this discussion for a couple of days now, presumably because it’s making you uncomfortable. Now you suggest that the racism and white privilege being demonstrated here doesn’t really matter because there is worse to be seen elsewhere? Then you’re taking personal offence. Doesn’t this sound like a male concern troll shutting down women’s discussions of sexism?

“White guilt is useless without actual Reparations, actual movement of resources from-to. Otherwise, it’s just a big waste of time, a “with all deliberate speed” type of fiasco, from my extensive experience with the Topic/Thing/Practice, dear Linda. Furthermore, there is no social justice without a focus on the liberation of women, which is unfortunately and historically always at the bottom of any social justice-y group list of priorities.”

AN- I had pointed out to you that the accusation of “white guilt” originated with right wing males in order to shut up those whiny human rights activists. The purpose of the comment was to highlight the inappropriateness of using it in this context. Like the other quote that you claim not to understand. For someone who claims not to be aware of the things whites guys say you really are using their quotes with a degree of accuracy.

“there is no social justice without a focus on the liberation of women”

You think WOC and Black women somehow aren’t women?

This has been a powerful and uncomfortable thread for me to follow, and I am moved and disturbed by just how little I consider my WP. Thank you to ALL the WOC, especially pheeno, who have patiently and at great personal/emotional risk described their experience of racism, an experience that I will never be able to completely understand.

Reading back upthread, it seems that josquin is busy defending her non-racism (not that anyone initially suggested that she was), when she should be explaining why she uses a damned evo-psych bagatelle to introduce her argument. But there it is, that knee-jerk reflex is so sensitive, that anything can set it off.

Butthurt: I just thought it meant getting spanked. As in, “being called out spanked her so badly that she was butthurt about it.”

Living with privilege is hard. (OH WOE IS ME.) No really – living with privilege is really hard. You have to remind yourself all the time to be sensitive to other people’s status or needs; you have to strive to make choices for the betterment of all, rather than yourself; you feel guilt for things you might like to do or eat or whatever. For instance, what about when I buy organic oatmeal at Whole Foods, come prancing outside and there’s a homeless guy on the sidewalk begging for food? Holy guilt trip. But I get over myself, acknowledge my privilege, and I make some different choices – I shop in locally-owned food markets that carry a local distributor’s organic oatmeal, I put an extra can of tomato sauce in the shopping cart to put in the food bank box, I donate our old clothes and household items rather than selling them on craigslist, I just try to be a more caring or inclusive person. I’m not going to “give up” the privilege of being well-housed, -clothed, and -fed, but I’m going to do my best to mitigate my priviledge-guilt by helping others.

Having privilege also means having to say sorry a hell of a lot. Maybe that’s the worst part of it – saying sorry. It’s hard to say, “I’m sorry, I’m being an ass, I said things I shouldn’t have said, and I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about. I will try to do better next time.” It’s embarrassing, and it makes you feel at a disadvantage, and it’s totally natural to want to defend oneself. But sometimes it’s the only thing you can say, and it’s the only thing others want to hear. Sorry doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

I’m writing this not to admonish any particular person, or to suggest to any particular blamer that they should do this or that… I’m sort of philosophising about the thread as a whole.