THE UNTITLED MAG WANTS YOU: What if feminism is a tool of consumerism and the patriarchy?
A prof told me the other day that the title is what her partner thinks, that she is sure that feminism is simply an idea planted by the system to keep actual change from occuring. My prof expanded on it a bit, and I sat down and thought about it too, so heres a mix of our…
Yes but let’s keep in mind these criticisms of feminism have long been theorized by WOC since the 18th century with little regard from mainstream feminists …….. that there are COUNTLESS woc who have devoted their lives to making feminism a more inclusive space. In fact, here’s a crash course explaining how feminist theory in the past has dealt with these issues:
—-FEMINIST THEORY CRASH COURSE—-
Feminism moves in between these branches (not a mutually exclusive list, just listed most prominently recognized theorists by each)in order to directly oppose mainstream feminist discourses loaded with eurocentrism, phallocentrism, orientalism, imperialism, racialized colonialism, capitalism (which goes hand in hand with feminist movements as commodification of a so called revolutionary struggle!), white supremacy, ethocentrism, transphobia, ableism and much much more:
1. post colonial theory-undoes the victimization discourse of western feminists/their metonymic blurring of different forms of oppression through an essentialist explanation
- indigenous feminisms-Andrea Smith
- transnational feminism—Chandra Mohanty
2. global feminism/”third world feminism”- disrupts idea that feminism is an inherently “western” ideology
- African feminism- Ama Ata Aidoo
- Islamic feminism-Huda Shaarawi
3. Women of color feminism-emerged to counter cultural hegemony of white western feminism
- black feminism-Audre Lorde, Combahee River Collective
- Afrocentric feminism-Patricia McFadden
- Chicana feminism-Anzuldua
- womanism (check out Alice Walker and Layli Phillips to find out more why this isn’t a subcolumn or branch of feminism completely)
4. critical race theory-comes from radical POC law professors who acknowledge feminism’s lack of tools in making visible the ways racial supremacy is embedded in the law system. Check Kimberle Crenshaw, Barbara Smith, Patricia Hill Collins, Susan Schechter
5. Black nationalist feminism—opposes anti-blackness in feminist movements
- Africana womanism (different from African feminism and womanism)
6. Feminist hermeneutics-analyzes religious studies as a source of feminist theory7.Feminist Science studies—disrupts biological determinism. Check out Ruth Hubbard’s “Fact Making and Feminism” as an intro to why science needs to be included in discussions of feminist discipline8. Queer theory-holy shit i can’t even start on the ways its disrupted mainstream feminism but HEY:Flower crown feminism is in no way a reflection of the deeply rooted radical work Women of color, transnational, zapatista, chicana, african-american, “third world” (global south), indigenous and native, queer, dis*abled and post-colonial feminisms have carved out.
When Ida B. Wells called out the racism of progressive feminist leaders in 1894 IE suffragist Frances Williard of Christian temperance union who publically represented black women voters as a threat to modern society, Wells was not about that “abandoning feminism” life
When Paula Gunn Allen pointed out that white American feminism ripped off gynocentric Iroquois nations, who held their own feminist rebellions as early and before the 1600’s, she wasn’t about that “abandoning feminism” life
When Linda La Rue, the Combahee River Collective, Barbara Smith Claudia Jones, Audre Lorde and countless others called out the heterosexist, classist racist shitfield that was the women’s liberation movement, they weren’t abt that “abandoning feminism” life
When Beverly Guy Sheftall, Rudolph Byrd, and Johnetta B. Cole anthologize unpublished works of queer poc thinkers in I Am Your Sister, Still Brave, Traps,and Gender Talk, they aren’t about accepting white feminism as the dead-end truth.
WE CAN’T DISREGARD THESE CENTURIES OF WORK SUBVERTING DOMINANT PARADIGMS AND CREATING SPACES FOR CHANGE BECAUSE A WAVE OF PASTEL COLORED “GRRRLS” REEMERGE AS THE PRIVILEGED SUBURBAN GRANDDAUGHTERS OF THE SAME RACIST FEMINIST WHO STORMED THE POLITICAL SCENE LOUDER AND WHITER THAN ALL THE REST, FIRST IN THE 1870’s, 1920’s, 1970’s, AND THEN 1990’s
Instead let’s make this a fight to continue the legacy of these radical visionaries
in reclaiming our spaces,
reaffirming our rights to tell our own stories freely, to live in the security of our own bodies, and to rewrite histories of social movements that replicate hierarchy within.
*swoon*
as I’ve learned from the editors of the vagenda, whenever the project of white feminism is put in doubt, just make recourse to a starving person (who you aren’t) and say ‘THIS PERSON CAN’T EAT YOUR ACADEMIC THEORIES!’ because, for some reason, that person can eat blogs. especially blogs about pop culture from a feminist perspective, starving people are sated each and every day by the brave work of defending the good name of lena dunham.
the flipside of the insistence that feminism only be ‘populist’ or ‘non-academic’ is that it takes all of the political struggle that went into creating and sustaining programs in women’s studies and casts it aside, because nobody told us that studying a topic in a post-secondary setting would mean that subject is difficult! feminism can’t be about intellectual heavy-lifting, we’re only talking about women, after all!
nobody says that about particle physics. who is this physicist who says things about physics that I, a lay person, can’t understand? the nerve of it! you’d almost imagine they had been studying physics for 15 years because it’s a complex field of inquiry…
and this isn’t to say that obscurantism (or just shoddy writing) isn’t a problem in the academy. but I’m tired of these played out caricatures being tossed around whenever a supposedly ‘populist’ white feminist is criticized for being facile and racist. the ‘Populist’ White Woman (mid-20s, dopey haircut, runs a blog) chastises the Academic Feminist (late-20s, chic haircut, wrote a book for an academic press that’s full of jargon and impenetrable analyses of the prostitute in Joyce), for not doing more to help the Starving Woman (resembling Pig-Pen from Peanuts and carrying her young child around with her).
and those are the three options: you’re either an academic feminist or you’re a real feminist or you’re one of the voiceless women that the real feminists are always talking about when they want the ‘academic’ feminists to stop calling them racist.
as always, it never enters the equation that there might be, especially now that it has taken up residence on the internet. a startling failure of imagination structuring white feminism. the white feminist imagination can only ever proclaim (from the Vagenda editors to Hugo Schwyzer and all points along the continuum) that ‘what feminism needs is more voices - a whole chorus of them.’
except no ‘academic,’ ‘esoteric,’ or ‘theoretical’ voices… and no actual poor women’s voices, and no Black women’s voices, and no undocumented voices, and no trans voices, because white feminism is only ever interested in those voices rhetorically. because ‘discussing the nuances of intersectionality isn’t going to have much dice if some of the teenage girls in the audience are pregnant, or hungry, or at risk of abuse.’
and that’s precisely where non-white women are in the white feminist imaginary: the audience. white internet feminism will bloviate about choruses of women’s voices, but they freak out when those voices get put to use because, as members of the audience, those voices aren’t meant to speak at all! they’re supposed to sit down and shut up while the dumb members of the panel chide the smart members of the panel for being too theoretical.
and that speaks to the persecution complex, the narcissism, the elitism, and the racism of the white feminist blogosphere. ‘other’ women can speak just as long as they’re not interrupting a white woman.
You nailed it. There is absolutely nothing populist about white f*eminism, especially one that pretty much exists to regurgitate the same old shit white women have been saying for decades (but in kewler lingo). Like sure, I wasn’t reading materialist feminism when I was a total noob at 18, but seriously? Intersectionality is jargon? Intersectionality is and always has been my basic reality. The fact that these assholes at Vagenda can even call something like “intersectionality” a buzzword or inaccessible just shows how incredibly narrow their scope is. Why bother committing to a few pages of Kimberle Crenshaw when you can keep tuning into the self-congratulatory echo chamber that is the White Girls Club?
(via brujacore)
If you have any more, or alternate links just in case these ever get removed, feel free to add to the list. Pass the resources along!
- Ain’t I a Woman (pdf)
- Art on my Mind (pdf download)
- Beauty Laid Bare: Aesthetics in the Ordinary (google doc)
- Black Women Intellectuals (pdf) (from Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life with Cornel West)
- Cultural Criticism and Transformation (pdf download)
- Cultural Criticism and Transformation (youtube video, part 1)
- Ending Domination: The Struggle Continues (youtube video, full)
- Feminism Is For Everybody (pdf)
- Is Paris Burning? (pdf download)
- Love as the Practice of Freedom (pdf download)
- Outlaw Culture (pdf download)
- Race and Representation (pdf download)
- Remembered Rapture: Dancing With Words (pdf)
- Selling Hot Pussy: Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace. (pdf)
- Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (pdf download)
- The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators. (pdf)
- Understanding Patriarchy (pdf)
- Where We Stand: Class Matters (pdf)
- We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (pdf). Also here.
Edit as of 24 June: list updated and alphabetized. Many thanks to wretchedoftheearth, elainecastillo, grim-dark, erosum and mmmajestic who all helped add links and resources.
Edit 25 June. Thank you andreaisace. (I keep each of these edit-notes so I and people who’ve seen the post know if I’ve added any and which since the last time they saw it. The links go to the post in which each link was given)
bell hooks resources
If you have any more, or alternate links just in case these ever get removed, feel free to add to the list. Pass the resources along!
- Understanding Patriarchy (pdf) (from erosum)
- We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (pdf). Also here.
- Where We Stand: Class Matters (pdf)
- Feminism Is For Everybody (pdf)
- Remembered Rapture: Dancing With Words (pdf)
Black Women Intellectuals (pdf) (from Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life with Cornel West)
(via riotgrrrlberlin)
