Sparked by Cherry’s recent post “the White woman” and by the discussion that ensued (and my über long comments) I decided I’d make a post of my own, or make my comments into a post: I’m very far behind my blogging now and there’s a massive queue of posts waiting to be finished and posted, but when my mind is in posting mode it just takes me forever to finish my post, whereas in comments I just spin off spontaneously. So comments into a post it will be.
Anyway, this is a followup from the intersectionality series. I’m quite glad to see more and more criticism of intersectionality (= the fact of attacking feminists in the guise of anti-isms) springing up lately, as it’s greatly needed. We really don’t have the luxury to keep on with all these forms of backlash within feminism, and it’s been going on for decades, it’s time to stop this shit. Formulationsofoppression is no longer public but she also wrote a couple of insightful posts on this issue too.
We talk a lot about the effects of pseudo-anti-racism on feminism, how it’s male-centred, how it erases female experience of racism and patriarchal oppression in general. How it’s used to destroy all the basic tenets of radical feminist theory and to sabotage the movement from within (by lefty men). But little have I seen feminists talk about what female-centred anti-racism actually means to us.
Yet it’s crucial for feminists to work on this seriously. How do we try our best to make liberation the liberation of all women? What is an anti-racism truly centred on women’s experience of racism and our need to free ourselves from men collectively, that doesn’t target women as straw enemies and isn’t used to divide and conquer women?
I obviously don’t have all the answers, but I’ve been discussing and thinking about this for some time already. This is what I said at Cherry’s, reformulated and edited:
What I’d like to see happen wrt anti-racism in feminist circles, is:
#1. Misogyny to be considered always as seriously as racism, classism, anti-lesbianism (and all other isms) and not LESS as is often the case from those who claim to defend the anti-racist cause (or anti-classist, anti-lesbian, etc.). And especially to consider all other forms of oppression as variations stemming FROM misogyny, and thus as having similar patriarchal mechanisms, intents and effects on women, since they’re all organised and executed by and for men within patriarchy. The central organising principle of all oppressions is men’s oppression of women, all other hierarchies are subordinate to, serve this primary purpose. Therefore within feminism we should treat racism (and other isms) in the same way as we’d treat misogyny in women: through consciousness-raising, with all the conditions it entails for the unravelling of thought to be possible, or self-protection when the woman is too violent to be dealt with.
#2. That as a rule we stop attacking women in feminist circles for any reasons whatsoever, whether it be racism, misogyny, whatever. Assuming that something she said / did was problematic, just try to explain to her how what she said / did was anti-woman/racist, without accusation or guilt-tripping. Most of the time it isn’t a big deal and it’s just a matter of getting it and not repeating the same mistake: like, “putting it this way is actually racist” “Yeah, you’re right, it’s racist. I’ll be careful not to say it again”. If simply laying it out doesn’t work, if she isn’t capable of hearing that right now, just leave it for a time being and maybe take some distance. Depending on what the problem’s about, and generally as all forms of consciousness-raising it might not be integrated overnight. It might need some time, patience, etc. Nothing’s straightforward when we decolonise, and the process might reveal a lot of pain. Changing the way we think and behave and see/relate to the world is a very long process, and the time it takes depends a lot on the material conditions in which we are at a given time, which determines the freedom with which we can actually change (ie whether we’re in a fairly safe situation or not wrt male violence / institutional violence, strong PTSD etc.). As said in the paragraph above, we should protect ourselves and our work from women who are too destructive to be dealt with, and if necessary warn other women about the way they operate in groups so to prevent them from continuing their rampage, but that’s all. Never attack women. Never ever.
#3. I want to see an anti-racism actually focused on the big picture, that is on identifying, naming and challenging the institutions and men responsible for racism, and on researching how racism against women operates specifically in our area (or globally) so that we can actually do something about it collectively. Ie sharing resources, making services accessible to women excluded by them, supporting women who face administrative discrimination, putting pressure on institutions, etc.: this to me is far more effective and productive than having our eyes autistically riveted on ourselves or other individual feminist straw enemies. Bashing women (or ourselves) as an anti-racist strategy is not only destructive and divisive but is of no use whatsoever for improving the condition of women affected by racism. Alone, women don’t have the power to change other women’s situation (ie bring down the racist institutions) precisely because they don’t have this power, because we are all oppressed by the men in charge of racist institutions.
#4. And especially, I’d like to see an anti-racism focused on seeking to reach out to, developing ties, friendships and networks with as many women from different classes as possible, and to integrate this as a constant feminist ethics and effort of liberation. It is only through getting to know women and by working or being with them on a long-term basis that we can support each other, create the kind of actions that can really protect us from certain forms of institutional (racist) persecution or exclusion and create meaningful alternatives for ourselves; it’s also the only way to better understand how women from different social backgrounds or histories of violence are affected by patriarchal oppression. Feminism remains limited in scope and depth when it doesn’t have the potential to adapt to, involve and include as many women as possible (as long as it remains strongly feminist-focused), whether coming from the lower or higher male social hierarchies. Depending on where we come from, it might take a lot of thinking and some effort to figure out how to reach out to groups of women in our area we don’t usually have access to (for social, economic, class, generational, cultural, ethnic and many other reasons). It especially requires a lot of time and patience as certain groups of women can be so far off from our own social world that it can take years to find each other, build trust and start doing things together. On the other hand, it’s really not that difficult, and it really leads to amazing things.
#5. This effort of constantly trying seek outwards for long-term feminist friendships and networks with women rather than staying within one’s own group out of habit is also, I believe, the only thing that can truly eliminate the divide and conquer patriarchal rule between women. Once we become friends or colleagues, the question of how we should “include” such and such women becomes completely obsolete. We’re part of the same network or group, it’s obvious everyone will actively participate from beginning to end, and this in turn will necessarily affect the result and the kind of women who attend. Once we know each other and work together, it reduces the potential for conflict, and women are there to speak for themselves.
[NOTE: This stands in contrast to token inclusion which usually makes up for the fact that the event or service has been made by and for a fairly monolithic group of women. In the case where true feminist partners haven’t been found, whatever the reasons, I’d find it more honest admit that there’s still some effort to be done and not to invite some women in the last minute to serve as tokens, especially if their agenda doesn’t really fit in the context – you can’t invent cooperation. It actually reinforces a sense of separation and resentment between groups and is also an insult to the intelligence of the women invited to speak – it means to some extent that they’re not invited for their work and skills but to represent a social group and be used as a cover-up, and it also reinforces the lie that feminists can only be found within certain social classes. So inviting women mostly for the group they represent also results in forsaking feminist standards in the name of token inclusion, which can lead to awkward situations whereby such women say awful anti-feminist things and the set-up makes it impossible to criticise because it would then appear as racist.]
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Here are the rest of my comments, edited for clarity
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I find pseudo-anti-racism disguised as feminism far, far more damaging to ALL women within feminist circles than the problem of racism per se, because it destroys feminism more than racism itself does, and it’s totally deliberate. This is the pattern I see over and over again. I must say I’ve never seen a feminist collective being destroyed by the sheer level of racism from women against other women within it, such as concerted, organised group efforts to attack women in front of everyone in a racist way, however I’ve seen countless collectives being brought down because of women attacking other women as straw racist enemies: women attacked in the most vicious ways, that literally took the form of a trial, under the guise of purging racism from a group. Sometimes even 50 or 80 women would stand around one woman, who would be the accused, and she’d be denied even the right to defend herself. What it did was to purge feminists from a group.
I’m sure I’ll be burned at the stake for saying this, but the fact is, racism coming from feminists within feminism (as opposed to the racist persecutions conducted by male patriarchal institutions) is actually a minor problem within feminism compared to the ravage of false anti-racism (and the ravages of male-instituted racism), which is ironically what prevents and diverts women from doing substantial anti-racist actions in the first place.
Of course radical feminists still say and do racist things, just as they continue to do and say anti-women things: there’s always room for improvement and some things are outright awful, destructive and unacceptable. I’m not denying this. But once women become radical feminist, most are very aware of the different systems of domination in patriarchy and are very careful to pay attention to different women’s needs, and usually try their best not to reproduce behaviours of domination and subordination. They are well-meaning, most of the time (I’m not talking about infiltrators here). Racism (classism..) being one of the oppressions defined by men and thus defined as real (although not racism as experienced by women), many women are MORE careful not to do or say racist things than they would even with misogyny, because it’s considered a far greater crime than misogyny in patriarchy.
We have to be clear: when we talk of racism WITHIN feminist circles, we’re not talking of women who exploit poor or marginalised women, who are employed in the immigration offices that kick female immigrants out of the country, or employed in patriarchal media corporations or institutions that invade and loot people’s land, who manages the slaves of her husband / owner, etc, etc. We’re not talking about any such level of responsibility in racism (not that any of them have any decision-power to make it stop, other than not participating in it herself). No. We’re talking about things that feminists SAID, as in WORDS. Or minor behaviours such as limiting the scope of her projects or actions to her own network of women which reflect her class belonging, to some extent. Or a woman bought a Nike T-shirt. Or she fails to include this or that issue in her book, film or whatever.
These minor behaviours that can usually be corrected through cooperation will be treated by women in feminism as irredeemable crimes of the highest order worthy of being banned from the ‘movement’ forever. And very often, women will be accused of racism in spectacular ways for no valid reason at all. Well yes there was a reason, each time it was in a context of the accused woman criticising men, men’s sexual violence or aspects of male violence. It was very specifically anti-feminist, and framing it as anti-racism was a way of making the attack unassailable by conferring activist legitimacy to it.
It’s a sad reversal to accuse and attack feminists in this way for barely saying or doing anything when in such contexts the REAL agents directly responsible for racism (men and their institutions – state, corporations, media, etc) are never even named let alone directly attacked, and rarely if ever is anything concrete suggested to understand the big picture or make things easier for women who suffer from institutional racist oppression, which would actually do something about racism.
Besides, in these contexts where women are dramatically accused of racism as if they had massacred 20 women, usually nobody bats an eyelid when anti-women decisions are taken or when something misogynist is said and goes unchecked, etc.
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The attacks are often framed as you, by nature of being white, are inherently guilty of this great (invisible, multiform) crime, and if you don’t feel guilty it’s because you’re in denial of your own guilt. Alternatively, if I’m annoyed by what she said it’s because I’m in denial of my racism.
This creates a climate where anyone and everyone can be guilty of something even without knowing, like there’s something bad and rotten inside you that can spring up any time. We dread being accused of racism like we dread the Last Judgement, as if it would taint our soul for life and we’d be denied our place in feminist heaven. It’s a climate of terror because you’re made to believe you can be bad in spite of yourself and you don’t know when it’s going to happen, so you have to anxiously survey your thoughts and actions all the time out of terror of being accused, as it can cause you to be kicked out of feminism and that can have serious consequences if it’s the only thing your life holds on to at the moment. You can see the difference in atmosphere whenever we talk about racism: all of a sudden it takes a hush-hush quality, you can feel the tension in the room when just before it might have been quite jovial. Women don’t talk so freely anymore, everyone seems to be stepping on eggshells. There’s this invisible thought-police like a sword of Damocles hanging over women’s head. This is an excellent way to censor women and make feminist women fear to speak and even think.
In this context, if you may have observed, the only one(s) looking relaxed and confident will be the accusers themselves, confident of their moral superiority to the other women. Sometimes they may be even very charming and charismatic, which increases the level of mindfuck or the feeling that you can’t question her politics because she was so nice to you, she offered her help, etc. The women who do this accusing and bullying are undoubtedly colonised by lefty male standards or definitions of racism and usually hold a lot of contempt for feminism, so much so that they might feel legitimate in lecturing an entire assembly of women or radical feminists who have decades of political experience with absolute lousy, non woman-centred political analysis, on the grounds that it presents as anti-racism. I’ve seen it time and again. This legitimacy comes from men, which is why from this perspective women’s work and women’s collectives have so little value as it to be acceptable to destroy sometimes decades of community work in one single bout of accusation.
Anyway we can’t underestimate how anti-feminist it is to persuade women that they might dominate others in racist ways even against their own perception (on top of the fact that it reverts patriarchal blame on women). Trying to dominate someone else certainly isn’t something that can be done unconsciously, we’re always aware of when we want to manipulate, take power or assert our authority over someone. It means telling women to suppress their perceptions of reality, and that’s the best way to gaslight and assert power over someone. Once it’s legitimate to attack women in this way, to use the threat of racist accusation in order to obtain submission, it makes us vulnerable to scapegoating and opens the door to all sorts of power abuse: denying the right to speech, taking control over decisions in the name of anti-racism, etc.
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radical wind 
comments are now open!
One time some popular Facebutt feminists made a big group chat and “accidentally” added me to it accusing me of being racist and horrible. It traumatized me for a long time but now I am healed and even get a long with one of the women who was involved but I never forget. I grateful for the women that supported me during that time like you and Lucky. She told me not to apologize for who I am (someone of Euro descent) and it was really profound and stuck with me because no one ever told me that before. We should all honour our foremothers. When you hate yourself just for being white you insult your female ancestors.
When lefty anti-racism sneaks in even to women who have a pretty solid grasp of feminism it makes me anxious and then defensive or dismissive. I don’t let it make me anxious as much anymore though I just recognize that these women are failing to name the agent in this situation and that shows their lack of comprehension of basic feminism, it says nothing about me or my worth as a person and morality. I don’t feel bad for any of the black teens that were shot because they will just go on to be rapists and possibly father girls they abuse. *************** is a big bully in the name of anti-racism on Facebook.
I feel like my radical feminism is really suffering right now due to patriarchal family life I am stuck in, so forgive me for not commenting as much and not being as insightful (was I ever insightful?). Great post as always.
hi, thanks for your comment.
Just as a note, I allowed myself to cut out the name of the person you were mentioning is a bully on facebook, as I doubt her alias is public information. But you’re right to come out as someone who has been attacked in this way. I think many women have in the non-movement.
I think it’s really important to directly discuss the damage of lefty male politics in feminism such as pseudo-anti-racism, beyond repeating again and again that white women (or any women) aren’t the enemy.
To me the issue isn’t just that it lacks basic feminist analysis or it’s plain inaccurate, because that could easily be solved by putting facts straight again. The big problem is that pseudo-anti-racist attacks actually dissolve and destroy emerging collectives, drive feminists out of groups. This is, and has always been the real intent and effect of these tactics from the very beginning.
The fact is, none of these attacks supposedly responding to racism actually attack racism or have any sound anti-racist, feminist/female-centred analysis of racism, or even respond to any substantial behaviour that could be qualified as racist and warrant such a violent retaliation. Adding to the fact that it systematically targets women who denounce male sexual violence or men in general, it’s very obvious that fighting racism isn’t the point of these attacks, but to fight feminism and feminist theory – even though it might not be conscious from part of women, who may believe they’re in their right to act in this way. If fighting racism within feminism or raising awareness about racism within the movement were really the point, the common sense way to address it would be to do it in ways that strengthen bonds and understanding between different groups of women, not destroy them. Feminism, whatever the object of criticism is, should strengthen the movement and unite women, not divide or harm women and weaken and destroy the movement. This should be a very common sense principle.
it does show that the problem here isn’t racism in the movement but misogyny. It’s misogynistic to attack and persecute women within feminism, especially when it’s to accuse them of the crimes only men are responsible for and of having the privileges only men have.
It’s also telling that Cherry felt the need in her post and comments to repeatedly state that she hated writing about this, or to write several disclaimers and even say that some white women are indeed horrible (who cares? this isn’t the point) – and I have written several disclaimers too in my intersectionality series. Why would anyone say that, if it wasn’t for the fear of being accused and attacked? We should stop apologising and feeling bad for calling out poisonous antifeminist backlashing. There’s nothing more legitimate as a feminist to want to write about the kind of things that prevent feminism from growing and spreading.
We know too well the consequences of denouncing these tactics: public shaming and guilt-tripping. And it works all too well on many women who aren’t used to identifying these tactics and especially those most persuaded since birth by years of abuse that we’re bad inside. These accusations rely heavily on misogyny and male inculcated self-hatred.
Well, I must say, writing about the different forms of backlash within feminism has certainly helped me to feel less afraid and ashamed about calling it out. And also less isolated. I’ve discussed it with many women and it helps a great deal to see the patterns much more clearly, understand where it comes from, how it continues etc.
I really hope that there will be a stronger core of radical feminist who don’t fall for these traps and that we’ll learn from past mistakes.
What Black Metal is referring to above, I think, is the Latest Shooting of a Black male by a White police officer in the USA. Or AmeriKKKa as Andrea Dworkin I believe first stated. Anyone who Follows the developments of this Issue on Social Media will be reading things like, White People do not know what is is Like to walk down the street in fear. White People do not know what it is like to be Hated for what they Are. White People do not understand what it means to be Oppressed. All I can think is, that these people are not talking about White Women, and they are not talking about Me. But to Say this or acknowledge it is Completely Taboo. Clearly, these People are talking about white Men and implying by the Language they Choose (using White Men and White People interchangeably) that Men are People and Women are not. This is unabridged Misogyny, but Feminists are not supposed to Name this. MacKinnon noticed this many years ago as Cherry Blossom Life quoted the same Theme from that older work. In this latest, or very Popular Incarnation, we are supposed to Re-Tweet and endorse misogynist statements about an American Police Action that do not Align with Reality. We are also supposed to Care a great deal about what Some Men do to Other Men, even though some Radical Feminists reject this and it is a reasoned and principled position. If we do not Endorse Males and Misogyny in these ways, we are Shunned, and it is a Brutal and Painful shunning, and is but One of Many I am afraid. Women and our work are continuously destroyed by this. It is the same thing Again and Again.
So what you say, Witch Wind, about this being a pattern, and a deliberate and effective ploy to undermine Feminist collectives and even Loosely Patterned collectives such as Internet Alliances, is of course completely correct. And I Hope as you do that a Core of women who Understand this dynamic will develop and be Impervious to this damage. I think this is Happening, and that this Core is forming away from the Mainstream Movement as these Women are consistently Shunned and Shunted out of it for one Reason or Another (some manifestation of Failing to Endorse Males and Misogyny, otherwise known as, not being Liberal Enough). It is a depressing Pattern, but an Obvious one. Women learn this through Experience with the Movement, or the Non-Movement as you call it. This is Stag-Nation.
Hi Tracy, I’m glad you picked up on this particular point because it was a major justification for attacking feminists lately. All this rah rah (whatever his name was), as if defending males was a feminist concern, rather than underpinning the patriarchal mechanisms behind it as you just did. And yes you’re absolutely right that “whiteness” is always defined only from men’s experience of it, and by so doing exclude women of humanity. And it proves our point doesn’t it.
I’ve said all I can say on this topic, and I agree and applaud you for everything you have said. I don’t think I have anything original to add to this discussion.With the exception of some thoughts. It’s very interesting that you would make a post on this topic since I’ve been pondering it lately but didn’t feel it necessary to make another race post, Because honestly us radical feminists get it, while the rest of the world doesn’t.
Racism is not worse than misogyny.I’ve been called nigger, bitch, and cunt by random men and you know neither of those words hurt more than the other. It’s just that misogynist insults are accepted hate speech while racist or anti-Semitic insults are not acceptable because they offend men.
Also when women of color are experiencing actual racism from actual men no one gives a shit or it’s not recognized. When I was in middle school a white male in the class called a black female a nigger across the room. Everyone heard it, including the teachers, and this white male’s black friends who he sat with, but no one did anything. NO ONE CARED.Yet I highly doubt he would have called a black male that, or if he did there would have been a mix.
I used to question whether I am some sort of self hating racist for not giving a shit about Treyvon or Ferguson. African American women who are slaughtered don’t get half the attention that black men do.
It’s not racist to not give a shit about what men do to other men. Being woman-centered is about giving a shit about how it effects women. Women go all out for men and it’s really sickening.
I used to be fairly concerned about race and saw the world as all whites being oppressive to black people, but then I stopped regurgitating leftists males and realized that it was men who oppress women. And I used LOGIC. Some black nationalists believe that black males are superior and from another world. My father is also deeply in to black monotheistic nationalism and raised us that way. He thinks that black people are the worse oppressed people in the world. That Europeans are EVIL, and that black men are not capable of anything that white men have done, and before european male colonization Africa was this peaceful harmonious place where black males ruled. Ironically he married a non-black woman, my mom, and whenever we disagree with him or challenge his ideas he gets very angry and violent.
The idea that Africa is naturally harmonious and that white people are satan is untrue for many reasons like the complete erasure of men torturing women for centuries and the reality of how men of each race tortured and killed their women to degrees way worse than whatever colonizing men did to other men.And for the bare fact that it’s just not true. The african slave trade was a slave trade among thousands that men ran, and the slaves were all women, with the exception of a few poor men. Again slavery is a BIG DEAL, because it was black men being slaves to other men, which they viewed as only reserved for women.
Radical feminism is neither white-centric nor racist, so i don’t see why womanists I used to follow like womanist-musings thinks it’s racist. I realized that most of the women who are attacking other women as “racist’ or “privileged” as if they are men, are usually flawed in their politics or hiding their own misogyny, like maybe they are het radical feminists, or maybe they support transwomen.
But I’m just sick and tired of people hurling “racist” at feminists and women when they clearly don’t understand what racism is. Like Lena Dunham wearing a scarf and calling herself a fundamentalist is not racist because Islam is not a race. I got into a twitter fight with Tariq Nasheed, who thinks that a white woman writing a book about black males harassing black females is racist! A clear example of how power hungry and self-centered lefty males are.
For women, racism has all to do with as how we are valued as commodities. And that’s how I view it. We are discriminated, divided, mistreated, and used by men based on their own racist preferences and views. But race is not everything, as a woman all of my oppression is due to my ovaries not my skin color.
Another thing to say, I find it funny how white male leftists like to exaggerate how much better white women are doing than everyone in these bad statistics. And don’t like to elaborate on white males themselves sometimes prefer to have white women ( as long as they are hot of course) in their office because of their own personal fetishes attributed to race. Or about how much money men still make over women.
Just one last thought, being a white woman does not inherently guarantee privilege or a better life over non-white women. AT ALL.
Okay this is the last thought I promise! As a woman of color I do stop to examine the ways men treat me, and race is only a fraction to do with it, theres so much to take in to consideration, attractiveness, attitude, clothing class. But all I can really say is that the real reason they hate me is because of my ovaries, and the way they shuffle around me and torment me is because of my vagina. And that’s all that really matters to me at this point.
Women are invisible in the conversation because our status is so low.
How can anyone say with a straight face that sexism is taken seriously when there are LAWS being passed based on the premise that women don’t exist– that we literally do not exist as a class, or as people. That’s exactly what the trans laws are all about.
Of course if a group does not exist then it cannot be oppressed and nothing that happens to them is real. Men get to define porn as a fantasy that takes place only in their head because they’re so powerful that they get to decide what’s real and what isn’t and they have declared that what happens to women does not exist.
This is all you need to know to realise how little power women have.
If we had even a minuscule amount of power certain things would not be taking place. How do I know this for sure? Well, because those things are inimical to women’s interests and integrity.
Not many women are able to grasp the extent of the hatred. Shit, I’d rather be in denial myself.
Mary Daly was accused of racism for writing Gyn/Ecology.
The accusation was based on the fact that she mainly wrote about white women and that she should have gone further and into more detail about other groups of women.
But Gyn/Ecology was about all women. Daly did not exclude minority women in her analysis.She quoted minority groups as and when was needed. She also devoted a chapter to Chinese women.
Daly did apologize for offending and she explained that it wasn’t deliberate not to include certain facts and events. The issue was African history and if I remember correctly, about Goddesses and how they had been destroyed.
But we should remember that she only had a certain amount of time. It was already a mammoth of a book, and here’s the other thing: leaving out certain facts and incidences doesn’t mean she was racist. If another woman had written a book including those facts Daly would surely have supported it.
If we’re to believe the accusations were sincere then they must be based on the idea that Daly was omnipotent, and that she had the time to cover every single base possible, and to have researched every single area of women’s oppression. They accused her of choosing to exclude African history because of racist motivations i.e because she didn’t believe it was important. This accusation is unfounded. She had singled out three atrocities: Witch-burning, Gynaecology and Psychiatry and Chinese-foot-binding as the issues she would write about. Perhaps those were the ones that had upset her the most and it just wasn’t possible to cover more.
Another reason I feel the accusations weren’t sincere is because another accusation levied at white women is that they are not really supposed to write the herstory of other women. This should be done, when possible, by the women of those groups themselves and then the WW can support and promote those books, which of course Daly would have done.
Perhaps the issue was that WOC had no platform and that Daly did and therefore she should have included more of their issues in her book but that is still quite strange because it would be better to criticize those people (i.e male-owned publishing houses) who were preventing WOC from writing about their herstory themselves.
At any rate, it seems that accusations of racism is the P’s perfect trump card whenever a woman writes anything of significance.
Hi Skulldrix, one particular thing caught my attention in your comment: it’s not a coincidence that men of colour who are particularly involved in anti-racism or hold strong anti-racist views (or rather coat their aspirations to male supremacy as anti-racist) choose white women for domestic persecution, and especially women who are somewhat class-conscious or are sensitive to leftist stuff around poverty, discrimination, etc.
The reason they do that is because it’s a psychological violence strategy in its own right. A way to subjugate the woman by imposing her self-hatred, hatred and guilt of her skin, of who she is, of her culture, her background and foresisters, and by denying her any right to see herself as oppressed by him. If he keeps talking about white people as evil, the person it specifically targets is your mother. He must have persuaded her directly or indirectly that she’s racist and oppressive, that he’s the oppressed one and the victim always, that she should always shut it up for that reason, that he and his “people” are pure and therefore she’s impure: well this is an extremely deadly recipe for misogyny and for constant mind and thought surveillance and tyranny. Especially if on the top of all this he also uses religion to reinforce these beliefs that she’s impure and she can probably purify her sins and impurity by staying with him, following his doctrine like they’re the words of god, etc.
yes radical feminists do get it, but i do think it’s important to make these criticisms more visible as in the published radical feminist literature this topic has stayed pretty much underground or not very well known. It’s a shame radical feminists weren’t more vocal against it at the time, but I think they themselves were very much intimidated, isolated and feared the consequences if they’d denounce it more openly. Even Mary Daly kept it fairly quiet in her books – there are a few mentions to it – given how harshly she was attacked. There are far more women who know and have read Audre Lorde and her constant accusations of racism against white women than those who’ve read Barbara Burris or Sandra MacNeill or others who’ve criticised identity politics and pseudo-anti racism.
I have also been Reading up on Near Term Extinction activism, and being a Male activism as well, that will have some Parallels to what you are discussing here. And it Certainly does. For one thing, NTE activists are bemoaning the apparent Fact that it is proving difficult for them (the largely male NTE activists) to get their Female Partners on board with the Doomsday scenario, and specifically to get Women to start Resource Hoarding in preparation for it. They cite this as Evidence that these Women are Ignorant, Privileged, and Lazy, and too stuck in their (alleged) middle or upper-middle class Privilege Bubble to care to leave its comforts and to face harsh Realities. Sound familiar? These males are of course largely White and Class Privileged themselves, but let us not dwell on the Hypocritical name calling. In my View, these NTE activist males are likely very Happy about the Opportunity to Resource Hoard even more than they already do, this time in the name of Preparation (where the exact same Hoarding behaviors males have always displayed were just for Kicks I suppose, but now its very Serious and Legitimate, because they say so). This is Male Activism, you see, and it takes on the most Repulsive characteristics of Men and Maleness because they created it, to benefit themselves. Whereas, just off the Top of my Head, I can imagine that the Female partners of these Twits are not looking forward to sitting in a Bunker somewhere eating Canned Pork and Beans with them and being raped by them and everyone in order to Save the Species. Or, that these women Instinctively know that Hoarding resources is going to Invite Conflict and Confrontation later, where they will have to Defend their Hoards with violence, and this is in Fact the only logical outcome of it. That White (or any) Females might have a Unique Perspective on anything, or actual Reasons for resisting Males and Male ideologies is never even considered.
Basically, all activist males are using the Crisis of the Day (always created by themselves) to gaslight and mansplain to Women how Women should come over to a decidedly Male perspective and activism, where the Male perspective and Activism is largely if not totally comprised of Male Resource Hoarding including stealing and using Female resources such as Sexual, Domestic and Reproductive labor to benefit men, and defending and enforcing the same with Violence. This is what Social Justice is to men, and this includes Male Anti-Racist politics, where they “just” want Black males to have the same rights to “succeed” meaning to Rape and Pillage as White men have always granted to themselves. Even though non whites are actually the Global Majority and Globally, all males have always Raped and Pillaged everywhere, long before American Black Slavery was even a Thing. Deconstructing all of this publicly is a good use of our Time, I think, so that we can Document this and not Forget it. And hopefully, so that we can Move On from it, and stop falling into the same Traps.
And I agree with Skulldrix that there is not much to add except thoughts (which are so illuminating always) and to expound on and reiterate/restate certain Points. Most of the content my of comments were already addressed Above, and I was Reiterating. Apologies if it was unduly repetitive.
I think that some white women choose to be in relationships with men of color because they mistakenly believe that they’ll be treated better on account of the fact that these men have experienced oppression themselves. But it doesn’t work like that.
The motivations of the men who marry interracially are different to those of women. By marrying a woman of color, white men want to reassert their status as members of a class who can own any woman they want. Alternatively, by getting with a woman they perceive as belonging to white men, men of color are attempting to access the white man’s class status . I’m generalizing here, but you can see how different men and women are, and how naïve women are about men’s true motivations.
Men of all races regard white women who are partnered with men of color as whores. They also regard women of color partnered with white men as whores. It doesn’t matter if the partnership has been made respectable through marriage. The reason for this, I believe, is that when a woman is partnered with a man who is not from the same racial or ethnic background, men get the feeling that there was no father involved in partnering. And then it follows that if the woman has never been the property of her father then she must have been a whore, and still is. They may respect the woman in public, if she is married, but deep down they believe she’s the classic whore. If something happens to the man she’s partnered with (if he dies) she’ll be targeted for being the whore that she is. If the man is of a low socio-economic status then she’ll be targeted as a whore while he’s still around. Indeed some white women might marry a black man as an attempt to rebel against what she rightly perceives to be her property status as a breeder. But if you’ve never been someone’s property as a potential breeder, then you must automatically have been a whore. Perhaps you had no father. What we can surmise from all of this is that women are in no way seen as people in their own right.
I don’t think men are bothered about the woman “selling out” her race or anything like that. Men know deep down they don’t really own the women of the same race as them. No, it’s that they’re wondering where she’s come from to have managed to override her father’s property rights over her. I think they regard it as an affront. Men seem to automatically choose other men of their own racial class for their daughters.
Men don’t decide this consciously, I think it’s a visceral reaction when they see a woman married to a man who is not of the same race: “Who the hell is that? Where has she come from?” is what they’re thinking.
To be a whore and female is the lowest ranking any human being can be. It’s the most frightening word that a man can snarl at a women. The thought of the “whore” ignites men’s wrath in a very particular way.
@ Witchwind
Hello, and wow you have such great insight because that’s 100% true. I love this quote
“The reason they do that is because it’s a psychological violence strategy in its own right. A way to subjugate the woman by imposing her self-hatred, hatred and guilt of her skin, of who she is, of her culture, her background and foresisters, and by denying her any right to see herself as oppressed by him.”
My mother sees him as constant victim who she was to account for and serve. Even though on occasions he has called her “white” in arguments to make it seem that she is wicked because she possesses the fair skin of the white people she is supposed to hate with him.
As for religion, the only religion he’s truly a believer in are terrible men like Dr. Umar Johnson and Louis Farrakhan. He’s more focused on black male power than God. My mother is still with him largely because of her own christian beliefs, she’s far gone, and the only important thing to her is maintaining god’s family and making it to the next life where she will be free, which is sad.
My mother is not entirely white, I don’t know what her ethnic background is because of troubled childhood, but in the black community black men are obsessed with dating and colonizing lighter skinned women or white women to claim as their own. But then reverse it like the non-black women are these evil seductresses or racist and oppressing them!
I believe my father, based on how they met, married her completely because of her looks. He wanted to further his own black male power interests by marrying her. so he could use her as his punching bag ( literally). What a clever yet demented way of being.
I’m glad we can have an actual discussion on these issues. Something you will never see leftists doing.
Audre Lorde making Gyn/Ecology out to be racist is just wrong. Lorde can be good on some points and wrong others. But remember Lorde was a leftist socialist, which explains that.
I think we can all learn a lot from each other because we have diverse experiences of being female that we can use to strengthen our radical understanding of our oppression, which further unifies. Like I’ve learned so much from TheWiseWomanSpeaks about how one can go from a little girl in a Mormon cult, to a radical feminist with her own land.
I think radical feminists never discussed this topic clearly because of hurt and fear caused by being called racist/oppressive.There is just so much that woman globally face.
Like I had to read this stomach turning article about a 10 year old in India who was raped by the man that her father chose to steal from. The town chief ordered that he could rape his daughter. http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/10-year-old-raped-on-village-headman-s-order-in-jharkhand-556740
and here’s what I learned ( besides of how terribly appalling this crime is, again where is the national outrage and the riots? The ABC headlines, where?),
all men are the same. White men are no more evil than black men, or vice versa. Only men are capable of the above things. There was no white man there ensuring that patriarchal traditions got carried out. These men chose to do this all by themselves. They just are, they just are evil.
@Tracy, more and more I’m beginning to see that NTE-ists are some extreme form of male necrophiliacs and nihilists all too happy to want their dream come true: all life disappear around them. I’m not going to deny that the 6th planetary extinction isn’t already on its way, but I do think it’s male-anthropocentric to believe that if all males die, the planet will die and so will all life on earth. I’m sure life on earth will survive perfectly well without human males. Males, in their egotistical, sociopathic mania, just want to believe that NOTHING will survive them, that all life is dependent on THEM and everything revolves around them, that THEY are the centre of the world. It arouses them sexually I’m sure to announce their much-anticipated doom day to everyone, to see that finally their perverted fantasy of themselves as the all destructive Zeus god has come true.
And also, your point shows how all male activism is inherently anti-female, directed against women and life. This is why whatever they activate for, it’s going to be at women’s expense and will have the same mechanism of dividing women against other women, destroying female solidarity, destroying feminist tenets of naming men as the enemy and seeing our oppression as sex-based.
To respond to Cherry, yes, when men activate it’s about activating for more power over females and over life, it’s never about freedom from oppression per se. Their activism (whether against poverty, exclusion, ecology, racism, classism, tyranny etc.) is extremely deceptive though and so many women continue to be sucked in their fights.
Yes I agree we tend to project our definition of activism onto men, and believe that they want the same things we do: freedom from relationships of domination and subordination, love, peace, respect for life and for other living beings. However their class interests are inherently, biologically antagonistic to ours. So long as society’s interests are defined by men, human society will be oppressive and destructive. Human’s interests should be defined by females alone, never by men. Females are the natural carers of life.
And yes, any woman who hasn’t partnered a man ordained by her owners is a whore! If she rejects her owners, then she’s worthy of being raped by all men, or killed, if the male owners can’t stand the “stain on their reputation” of having a whore-daughter, and failed to ensure the planned transaction from man to man.
@ skulldrix, it’s crazy how men are obsessed with colonising women from “other territories” – each male group has its own imperialist, colonial delusions of grandeur.
I’m not sure I can add anything to your post here – as I agree with it wholeheartedly – but I’d like to add some thoughts vis-a-vis the events here in the States/Ferguson, Missouri.
For the past days I have been following this very closely always looking for the POV of women. It’s been exceedingly rare to hear from a female in the community directly (mostly it’s been reports of what they’ve said and even those are few) but even then it’s their concern for their SONS that is foremost in their minds – never a word about how they and their daughters are impacted even though they take the brunt of the trickle-down effects of racism within their community – the violence in their own homes, the poverty that keeps them there, etc.
Black, white, brown, Asian. It’s the same for all of us and it’s all down to the fact that men are afraid of each other.
Hi Sarsea! it’s not surprising at all that women’s experiences and perspectives of racism get completely sidelined and swiped out. As usual their interests are subsumed into those of men, and never considered as a people in their own right, and they’re expected to join in and support men’s riots which are often destructive to themselves and the community.
It would certainly be interesting to know how women have been experiencing these events plus racism in general in Ferguson, beyond the acceptable responses that women are expected to have, thinking about their sons before themselves and their own daughters.
I wonder how the number of black men and boys killed in the US by white men over the course of, say, a year, compares with the number of women and girls killed in the US by white men in that same amount of time. Somehow I doubt that the numbers are even close.
Another thing that this Missouri murder brought to mind is that I’ve never seen this level of protest or community involvement over the police raping/killing a black woman. I’m sure they must have done this because a close friend who is a white woman was nearly raped by the white police when they came to her house for a routine legal matter. She was sexually assaulted by them and was traumatized by it. You know how much this must happen to black women, but there is no outcry that I can remember. My guess is that when they do this, they just report her as a prostitute who was murdered and never investigate.
As far as I’m concerned, environmental apocalypse is pretty much assured, but I can’t say how soon. It’s all from men’s nuclear toys, trying to get rich, trying to win, competing, etc. Necrophiliac to the core. They murder women and women’s souls. They murder nature and the soul of nature (in animals, plants, etc). I appreciated the point about hoarding as a non-solution. Typically stupid. If men suddenly disappeared, I’d expect women would cooperatively try to find solutions that are down-to-earth, not new tech to make lots of money off the melting icebergs, etc.
Have you ever been in a group of women that was doing well together and suddenly a man barges in and the whole thing falls apart? I don’t even mean a radical feminist group, just a group of friends or family, or co-workers. Men have no idea how to cooperate. As far as I can tell women cooperating would be the logical solution. It really is magic when women get together in certain situations. But the energy of men destroys the only thing that could make a difference.
Great write, and very timely for my personal situation in regards to being abused by an indigenous male radical eco-activist through framing my privileged skin color and colonizer status as eternal justification for demands of servitude on the front lines of the war against civilization. This relationship is far more challenging to free myself from mentally than from an abusive ex partner because I care so deeply about the earth and don’t see enough people taking action, that I felt responsible by default. I just got sick of the lack of reciprocation I received for my efforts (physical, material, financial, emotional, etc.) but felt I would be accused of entitlement for saying so. I found myself in dire straits, completely depleted, unsupported, homeless, pregnant, disabled and alone after giving everything I had to the struggle, like a soldier returning from war who thought they had allies but realized they were disposable all along. I would appreciate more dialogue around indigenous solidarity and eco-activism as the misogynistic danger zones I have found them to be. Having dumped my decolonization “boss” I would also like to find ways to be an accomplice to indigenous women and the earth that allow me to meet my needs for sisterhood, respect and connection so that I feel like I actually have something to live for, and thus something actually personally worth fighting for.
Hi Scarville, that’s awful. Talking about “colonizer status” and “privileged skin” when these supposedly oppressed men have the power to loot us to the bone, rob everything we have even our soul, make us homeless, destitute and pregnant. That is such a privilege! So oppressive to HIM!
The reality is that even the lowliest man can claim absolute and total control over us. Nothing, not even money, can protect us from his colonisation if he takes control over our life. Although if you do manage to leave it does help to have some resources of your own that he hasn’t managed to steal.
There are many variants of the pseudo anti-racist abusers – I’ve also seen quite a few immigrant male abusers who had taken control over women and made them pregnant + using anti-racism as a form of violence just to get legal documents in the country. They had no scruples whatsoever using and enslaving these women just to meet their own ends, and they would even use that as a way to guilt-trip their victim, as in “if you leave I won’t get my documents, it’ll be your fault” blabla.
I don’t know your situation, but if you’re still homeless and struggling with his psychological control over you I’d suggest you try to find some kind of support from women who you think could have the lucidity to understand your situation, take your side and name things appropriately, and be there when in need. Also to make sure you’re materially safe, ie can sustain yourself and have a safe place to stay. However it’s always a great idea to try to connect with women in some way or another. If you already have some contacts it might be worth setting up a discussion group or working group depending on what local needs are and if you feel up to doing something like that. Otherwise one way is to join an existing org and build contacts from there, then leave it when time is rife.
@ wordwoman, that happens all the time doesn’t it, when men disrupt female friendships and groups, for instance a friend just needs to turn up with her boyfriend and that’s the end the complicity between both of us so long as he’s there.
and the environmental apocalypse has already started. The question is how much life will men leave behind them once they leave. Nobody really knows that. I don’t think all life on earth will disappear.
I just saw one of those multi-frame meme things that are popular these days posted by a black man to illustrate ‘white privilege’ to a white man.
The meme is of some white dude explaining how he came to understand his ‘white privilege’ by witnessing an exchange between a ww and a bw wherein the bw asks the ww what she sees in the mirror.
Ww says “A woman”. Bw says “I see a black woman” and goes on to explain this is how the ww is blind to her privilege…
Ack.
It’s not just rape and murder by the police of black women I was talking about, it was murder of women and girls of all races under all circumstances by white men, including domestic violence. These numbers have to far exceed the numbers of black men and boys killed by white men under all circumstances.
@Scarvaille wrote “I would appreciate more dialogue around indigenous solidarity and eco-activism as the misogynistic danger zones I have found them to be. Having dumped my decolonization “boss” I would also like to find ways to be an accomplice to indigenous women and the earth that allow me to meet my needs for sisterhood, respect and connection so that I feel like I actually have something to live for, and thus something actually personally worth fighting for.”
I agree that these kinds of situations are “misogynistic danger zones.” I’ve found this with various lefty causes that involve men, too. Interestingly, I think that when women care passionately about something it is like a beacon of some kind, a bad kind. I don’t mean it’s bad to care about something like the earth, but that the beacon seems to signal something to men. Abusive men want to own that energy and that passion or something. I’ve noticed this a lot over the time I was an activist for various causes. It seems that the men are offering to support the woman in her activism/passion but instead, entitled as all men are, just use that energy for their own toxic purposes. And against the woman. I think this is some kind of principle, that the more women care about something the more men tune into that, and at best, nullify what the woman was trying to do. At worst, we all see the results.
Plus it gives them a pass with the public. People will say that they did bad things to those close to them (hint–females are the ones close to them) but that they fought for a good cause. There was a recent bio of Gandhi and how dreadfully he treated women. Ugh, really weird misogyny.
Yet the only thing, I’m convinced that will save the planet are women using women’s energy cooperatively, without men. But how to get together with indigenous, or nearly any other group of women who won’t bring the men into it is another problem. Radical feminists are one big exception, and I can’t think of any others.
I once belonged to a women’s study group (mildly feminist for lefty causes) and we agreed to meet at a members house. I was surprised when her nigel walked through the room where we were meeting to get to another room in the house. Just knowing he was there changed things. Ugh, ugh.
Be safe and heal. Perhaps ask the earth what to do with other women/indigenous women.
I was attacked misogynistically about the Treyvon Martin thing a while ago because I said I don’t care I only care for his mothers pain because he will just grow up to be a rapist if he wasn’t already. The media loved using this event to spread misogynistic lies about women having power, which is mostly not the case, the whole panel on the Zimmerman dude was female. So this leftie “feminist” was calling them misogynistic slurs but I am just supposed to agree and be uncritical of that kind of language in a “radical feminist” group? Unbelievable. I learned fast who to block, tons of “radical feminists” and I would not fall into that trap again. Now I just talk to cool women who do not attack me.
Leftie males have colonized some women so badly that they think men are worth anything in any struggle for justice and truth, which I can only find pathetic and saddening. Men are the last thing you want in any movement for women! Any virtue, men are barren of it. Their “human rights” lies completely erase the rights of women, they erase us as human beings. A huge insult is them calling castration a human rights abuse. Unless its done with a rusty HIV infected knife it is a boon to them, don’t even get me started on the foreskin warriors. “Male genital mutilation” disgusting, a complete mockery of the very existence of female terrorism like FGM.
For a while I was so hurt from being bullied I was so bitter towards anything to do with anti-racism, especially because I hardly hear anything about the female experience of it but I am now past the pain of being humiliated by leftie colonized feminists and against erasure of racism against women. I do find, as someone interested in history that the Europeans evil vs native people good to be really inaccurate to the point of being pseudo-historic. One example would be native British Loyalists and the Acadians and Mikmaq who were allies and often intermarried. Almost if not all Acadians have Metis ancestry. Yet this is erased. This is really similar to what Skulldrix is saying just wrt native people. Natives also say North America was peaceful before Europeans but that erases that there was war and disease outbreaks and very misogynist groups like the Inuit.
A lot of native women are probably other women of colour feel guilty telling the police they were raped because its “selling out to the white man”. They don’t want to sell out their “brothers”. I was friends with a native girl in high school and she was raped by her cousins, she lived a really rough life but it sucks women feel loyalty to men but it seems extra forced loyalty for women of colour.
(forgive any typos as I am too tired to edit)
Good for you for your analysis of the necrophilia and nihilism of the NTE movement. I don’t think nuclear power will do us in though, its actually a very clean and efficient source of power, the “fumes” coming off the towers is just water vapour. It is bad when the nuclear waste is not disposed of properly but if it is its fine, and there have only been 3 major nuclear disasters and all the time technology gets more efficient. I think if women everywhere had reproductive autonomy there would be no overpopulation but when men try to do any analysis its just disturbing and murderous: http://ritesoftheblackmoon.tripod.com/article12.html
I am Metis but pass for white. I was almost sucked into First Nations earth activism but I found radical feminism first so I am lucky. Similarly anarcho-primativism is dangerous to women, all they want is a civilizationless society where women have no chance of living without men, because in almost all primitive societies women serve men endlessly, at least in this kind of world its possible to live without a man.
hi blackmetal, sorry but even the nuclear industrialists know themselves that nuclear industries are poison to the earth, which is why Germany for instance has decided to get rid of nuclear energy entirely (if I’m correct, I think I read that somewhere). Nuclear waste is indeed the problem: like all machines, they get obsolete after some decades and it becomes more dangerous to keep the plant than stop because of the risk of leakage (which is what happened in Fukushima), except that you can’t just stop it: something has to be done with the nuclear waste, and it’s an extremely risky work and costs billions to unbuild in order to avoid the worst kind of damage, and governments don’t want to invest that money because in order to undo all the plants, it would represent for instance all the money invested in the military, and that’s a lot, probably 80% of gvt budget if we’re talking of the US.
Nuclear waste will stay around for millions of years. The only solution they’ve found so far is to bury it very deep down in the earth, but the consequences of that are obviously unknown. And even when they’re buried, access to the waste has to be kept for constant maintenance, because the pressure of the earth and earth movements can cause the disrupt all the tanks inside.
The problems around nuclear energy are so vast and so destructive it’s impossible to sum it up in a few paragraphs. I’m not an expert myself. In the US, nuclear industrialists have a powerful lobby and the gvt is there to lick its boots. The fact is in the US many plants are built on the same model as Fukushima, are too dangerous to keep on but no-one wants to invest in unbuilding the plants and doing something about the waste, so they pretend everything is fine. They pay a LOT of people to persuade everyone it’s clean and good for the economy. Don’t believe men and male industrialists Blackmetal.
And seriously I don’t want to see on my blogs again that male (nuclear, other) industries are clean.
not to mention that all working plants produce nuclear waste, which is why there are abnormal levels of irradiation around all nuclear plants, and lots of cancer and species dying out. And irradiation never stops locally anyway, as wastes are deposited in the rivers or sea for instance, which they do illegally. Industrialists already admit themselves that when they started nuclear energy they had no idea what they were doing and what the consequences would be exactly, but most surely they did have some idea but just didn’t care. They said it was safe because that’s propaganda to appease the masses. If they said it was unsafe, nobody would have wanted it.
btw the men-in-weakness in germany are now trying to get out of getting out of nuclear energy again, because it would cost too much to close the plants, because the nuclear lobby is threatening to sue the government for financial losses. imagine that.
wrt your post ww, i don’t have much to add but i have definitely felt that “hush hush” feeling you describe in convos with women where suddenly one made the accusation fo racism. and I have felt stupid for not seeing it and afraid of “being rotten inside” and all that you describe so abtly above. it’s bullshit and a dead giveaway that something non-feminist is going on. (it happened every time i posted your intersectionality series on facebook, for example).
thank you for not being intimidated and for writing this post!
This subject has really Sparked so many thoughts in me, I hope this is not Derailing too much. But in the last couple of Days a video has surfaced of some “terrorist” Males beheading a white male Journalist. I would never recommend Women to watch video of these Atrocities as they are very Upsetting, but you cannot even look at the Front Page of CNN without seeing a still from the video. And in that still, you see all you really Need to Know. One man forced to Kneel before another. The man standing Over him is dressed in all Black and looks Menacing. This is what Terrorism looks like in one Frame, it is Dom/Sub at its most Basic. Predictably, as this is the Whole Point of showing them, the Emotions begin to rise, and you think how Unfair and Wrong it is, and Empathize with and Humanize the Victim who you know is about to be deliberately harmed. The Male Victim takes his place in our minds as an Innocent no matter how innocent he may actually be, as it is all Relative (hierarchical) and the Images depict this relativity clearly (the Victim is not about to Behead someone Now, but the Perpetrator is, therefore the Perpetrator is Bad, meaning Worse, and the Victim is Good, but only in comparison). These are comparatives only, but they Feel and Function as absolutes, as if the Male victim is actually Good, as if it is Possible for a male to be truly Good when males Resource Hoard and Impregnate women with abandon, and very nearly all of them do. This has been Alluded to above, where women recognize that male victims of Police Brutality are still men, and therefore dangerous to women in the past, present and/or future.
However, when we Refuse to care about what Some Males do to Other Males the power of these Images is immediately defused. The “gut” reactions to the images changes, and it is a Profound shift in consciousness as well as a shift in the Body. This ill-advised Empathy and Humanization for males who do not deserve it, no longer Takes Up Space in (colonizes) our Psyches, and part of this colonization is Physical. Empathy for males takes up Space in, and therefore alters, women’s Bodies, and you do not Realize this until you stop doing it. Watch one episode of any violent television program where One Group of Males is pitted against Another, with this new Consciousness where you no longer Care about any of the male Characters at all, and see how you Feel. What is Left is only to see and feel Clearly what the Males do to the Females, and how the Females always lose, whether they are Partnered with the (relatively) Bad Guys or the (relatively) Good. I cannot overstate the Profundity of this shift, where the Harms all males routinely visit on All females are continuously minimized, sidelined, and erased. And where We have been Psychically and Physically Filled/Colonized by this wrong-headed Empathy for males this whole time and did not Know it.
It is very true that men of color terrify women of color in to not going to the police, taking any sort of legal action or trying to be financially independent. I remember that a reason my father gave to convince my mother not to divorce him was by saying
” You’d really take this to a white mans court? They don’t give a damn about you!”
So if a woman goes to court to try to legally free herself from a man, in which the legal system is established and run by white males, apparently she’s selling out or a race traitor?
LOL, what a load of garbage that sounded at the time. See, here might be a difference that white women may not have to deal with as opposed to women of color, unless they are in relationship with man of color. The device of selling out to “whiteness” being used against them.
For example, if you do anything that black men have not approved of as being black, in other words that which serves black male power interests, you are automatically acting “white” and therefore you are are a self hating prostitute for white men.
Lesbianism and feminism are considered white things in the black community.So that’s why so many black men have attacked me for being a feminist because they say ” Why are you a feminist? Feminism is for white women, and white women are out for themselves only.”
So then of course I second guessed myself, maybe I was doing all these things to assimilate into whiteness. But that didn’t make sense either. I was a feminist because i knew that females were oppressed by men. Which I learned that black men wanted and needed to maintain in order for them to dominate. Which is what they wanted. If anything it was actually black males who originally wanted to assimilate into whiteness.
Earlier this morning some close relatives told me I was going to marry a white man. I was disgusted by the idea of course, because I fucking hate white guys. But at the same time I always wondered what about me makes me not suitable to black men and a target for white males?
Strangely when I did date men they were either white or biracial, but I just don’t know why I it was never men who looked like me who wanted me. Maybe black men were turned off by how smart I was and my strangeness and I guess white guys who had a thing for black women just saw me as the black girl. And then men of other races, just like my looks I guess.
I’m trailing, but your comment is making me think a lot about my experiences.
@ alexis, thanks for your comment! And for reacting to the bit about what happens and feels like in the climate of accusations. It’s crazy that discussions like these have been shut down for so long, although that tells something about the extent of attacks and their violence if there has been so little open criticism about it available in the past years. I think also a lot of women know what’s happening and know it’s bullshit but don’t dare talk about it more openly. At the hub for instance I think it was a rule not to talk about oppression olympics / intersectionality to avoid the project from being attacked by all the intersectional fundamentalists. It definitely worked, and so this wasn’t what brought down the hub 😛
on the other hand it meant that it wasn’t criticised either. But I guess the women who were part of the project weren’t prepared to do it then. It took me several years to get a grip on myself and post something about it, it was hanging around unfinished in the bottom of my files for a very long time.
The first time someone tried to attack me in this way in a “feminist” (pseudo) space was in mid-2011, as I was talking about an action some women and I were preparing, and her verbal attack literally gave me a headache – she kept repeating again and again that what we were going to do was racist, and didn’t give any clear reason as to why, I just had to believe her, submit to her and showed I was guilty and bad. And when I asked what she’d suggest to make the event not racist, she sort of evaded the question. Yeah right. She also had two or three minions she’d subordinated to her (by psychological abuse) who added to the effect of drama by looking completely outraged whenever I said something. Luckily I had a strong enough vision of oppression and power structures at the time (I knew oppression had to have a structural, material basis, it isn’t something invisible and structureless), and also I never fell for vacuous, unfounded statements so there was no way she could fool me with it, but it was quite a surprise as I’d never been confronted in that way before. It took me a couple of weeks of serious thinking to break the attack down bit by bit though, and to be able to formulate exactly how her statements (attacks) were wrong.
I soon realised that these kind of attacks ruled in many, if not most self-identified feminist spaces I went to.
@Tracy –
Excellent observation of the (false) hierarchy of Good Man, Bad man in this image.
And yes, I look at that still image and think: So what’s new and different?
It’s men and their fear of each other manifested in violence that caused this ‘execution’ with the expectation of creating even more fear (thus violence) in other men.
About Germany possibly get out of getting out of nuclear, well that’s telling isn’t it, about how men deal with the destruction they’ve caused. Men are too corruptible to be trusted with that kind of stuff. In the “it would cost too much to close the plants”, it all depends how we define costs. The thing is men never count life on earth as a cost. Which has no price at all.
I agree with wordwoman that only women can save the earth, by cooperating with one another without men interfering. Men should step down from everything they’re doing right now.
yes, the good man bad man trope, to be found in every single mainstream patriarchal media. however once it’s destined only to a male public, the good men disappear for some reason. You only have bad men raping women, and you only have ALL men united against women to rape them.
The degree to which a subject is denied a hearing seems to be inversely proportional to the importance of addressing it. And inversely proportional to the degree of suppression/oppression it represents. The collective power of women of many races, backgrounds, classes must be awesome. The men of these groups clearly don’t want that power released.
They want women’s power, Gynergy, to be thwarted and directed toward men only. That’s why the accusation of “lesbian” is leveled at any woman whose first allegiance is to women. This is then treated as a sexual phenomenon by them. Downgraded to something they understand. They try to convince women of this in order to drain our power. Try to make us fear other women. The power doesn’t lie in sex, but in the bonding of women. Sex may or many not be part of it, but it’s a patriarchal ploy to make it all about that.
@ skulldrix said “Lesbianism and feminism are considered white things in the black community. So that’s why so many black men have attacked me for being a feminist because they say ‘ Why are you a feminist? Feminism is for white women, and white women are out for themselves only.’ ”
If you are talking about the patriarchal-influenced fun fem movement known as “feminism” this is observably true. It’s all about choicey choices and individualist constructivism. A similar thing thing may be said of many leftist groups, and many male groups, too. Men are out for themselves only. Is this a reversal? Is it possible that only women can understand how to truly cooperate? It seems to me that it is and it is a different order of thing altogether.
The last thing men want is for women to get together across these male-defined boundaries of race and class. Although male and female are distinct biological classes, the same cannot be said for any other category I can think of. Are these categories defined and controlled to serve male agendas?
Thank you for this series, Witchwind.
Correction: Is true of leftist groups and male groups.
@wordwoman “If you are talking about the patriarchal-influenced fun fem movement known as “feminism” this is observably true. It’s all about choicey choices and individualist constructivism. A similar thing thing may be said of many leftist groups, and many male groups, too. Men are out for themselves only. Is this a reversal? Is it possible that only women can understand how to truly cooperate? It seems to me that it is and it is a different order of thing altogether. ”
I’m quoting myself because part of this comment disappeared. I wanted to add about radical feminism not being frivolous and self-centered, not co-incidentally a frequent characterization of white women, by men of all races. Radical feminism is serious. It is about freeing all women from oppression.
@ skulldrix, it’s interesting to see how explicit men are about this. Indeed I’ve only ever seen this said in leftist places, probably there’s a similar kind of resentment (misogyny) of working-class men or lefty men for women who leave their designated owners, either to go for feminism or in other, more white-male groups. I guess they’re more desperate about the little female property they can access, their ego and whole identity is more dependent on the few women they have ownership rights over I guess, compared to wealthier men for whom women are far more interchangeable. But this is true for all men who have more limited access to women because of class / other reasons.
it also reminds me that pretty much all fundamentalist resurgences in post-colonial countries were specifically targeted against women as a male liberation strategy, to vengefully reassert their male power by dominating women after having been downtrodden by other males, after being “emasculated” (deprived from their “right” to “own” women and the land – i know lots of scare quotes here). Many of the liberationists were muslim males (or muslim groups managed to take control over the liberation movements) and so they’d guilt-trip women into it by presenting themselves the only possible liberation camp, so if you were anti-islam you’d be considered a traitor to the liberation and to the country. The context is very different from country to country obviously, and there’s also a very big colonialist component to it as terrorist groups being set up and funded by Western countries to warrant military intervention and then take over the country etc for resources – but the mechanism is the same, whether there’s a religious component to it or not.
In many ex-colonised countries, whether in Africa or elsewhere (less so in Latin America it seems), they’ve managed to make it a very big taboo for women to call themselves feminist because it’s associated to the UN colonialists who impose all their gender policies on the state, and more generally to the colonialists who sold their invasion as “saving the women from the barbarians”. Which of course has nothing to do with real feminism (radical feminism) nor women. But women are made to feel treacherous to the autonomy of their country and accused of siding with the enemy and white colonialists if they call themselves feminists. They might even be accused of being manipulated and corrupted from the West.
So women have to get around this by calling themselves anything or everything but feminist, such as “feminine groups”, women’s rights”, gender this or that etc
so for the UN to constantly present part of its imperialist interventions as feminist (or what they now call “gender and development policy”) is actually a very effective anti-feminist strategy as it immediately associates feminism to the invaders, and there’s a very good reason to resent that invasion.
coming to think of it, it’s exactly the same mechanism of state-funded, state approved and state-instituted feminism such as the fun-feminism you describe wordwoman, and that is found in every single western country, and has completely dulled out and un-defined feminism to the point of meaninglessness (now it’s all about equality, if there’s anything that substantial these days at all – mostly it’s about defending trans rights now). In Western states the co-opting and colonisation of the women’s movement is less obvious because it comes from the state itself, whereas in developing countries, the institutions come from outside of the state and the imposition and invasion is much more obvious.
However from within Western states you do see the exact same divide of funf-feminism being white-male defined, completely retrieved from women’s reality, and (falsely) representing only a tiny proportion of women who belong to white men so to pit women against each other.
Skull your comments about your female-centric experience of racism are really valuable to me. It sucks when I try to find women’s experiences of racism but a lot of it is so clouded by maleness whether it be claiming transgender male people of colour are more oppressed than real women of colour or empowerment through PIV. When I read something with a strong liberal bias I just lose interest bc we’ve heard it all before haven’t we?
blackmetalvalkyrie, could you clarify something for me? When you say “transgender male people of color”, are you referring to assigned female at birth trans-men, or assigned male at birth trans-women?
weird comment. Why comment out of the blue to ask this?
But what’s even more interesting is that many lefty and liberal males have a knee-jerk reaction to word feminism regardless of if they even know the movement clearly. A white male anarchist communist i know argued with me that I didn’t know what feminism was and that feminism is wrong because it’s exclusionary.
I didn’t tell him I was a radical feminist, but I think that either he saw feminism as the psuedo-liberal mainstream feminism, or maybe he was referring to what real radical feminism was. Otherwise I think men just HATE women having any movement for themselves.
It’s hard to tell sometimes, which ones actually mean “real radical feminism” or “liberal feminism” when they talk about feminism being exclusionary, white, or wrong.
But when black male leftists used to tell me feminism was racist, I assumed it was all of feminism, including radical feminism.
The thing is when men say anything about feminism in general it is destructive and not beneficial to women. Lefties saying that feminism is racist might be true to a small fraction of the movement ( mainstream feminists), but then again it’s harmful because men are only doing it to get those women who would otherwise be feminists to be caterers to their causes. And also they are using malespeak and framing feminism through male definition.
Most radical feminists don’t even consider mainstream feminism to be feminism, because it’s not, and that’s a female-centered view. A male centered view defines woman’s rights, liberalism, and choice as feminism in order to distract women from real female defined radical feminism.
While identified feminists definitely have our divisions and disagreements, mainly on the fact that most women of the third wave who identify as feminists are not feminists but handmaidens, men have no business in trying to meddling in with this situation and dominating ideas around it. Because when men interfere they just cause hatred between women, reversals, and we loose women.
While third wave feminists on one side of the coin are favored handmaidens of the patriarchy and lefties, on the other side they are constantly bullied, terrorized, and hated by the same men if they even go so far as to identify as feminist or when men want to insert their opinions.
But they will never face as much hate and erasure as real radical female-centered feminists, who are a direct threat to men, because third wave feminists will turn in hatred on us in a minute to protect leftist men. And since third wave feminists are handmaidens, men see them as safe literal blow up dolls they can fuck when they want to and hug when they want to lure more women.
Thanks!
When I was an identified ” black feminist womanist” I was mainly part of a group of woman of color who felt ostracized by mainstream faux-feminism. I was totally consumed by intersectionality and male framing of oppression. For example, womanist-musings, Kola Boof, Bell Hooks etc.
I liked the black female centeredness but at the same time it was so damn self centered it felt like the fun feminism reversed to cater black women. It was very colonized by men and blackness framed through a male identified experience.Also I was shocked at how womanists would criticizewhite women so easily ( at times I thought it was misogynistic and not true/realistic) as racist and “privileged therefore oppressive” but then glorify sex with men, interracial dating with men, pornography, BDSM, stripping, queerness and transwoman as somehow good things and not suitable of criticism and backlash.
I would never endorse Julian Real, a white male pro feminist blogger/liar, but when he posted a post from one of my old blogs which was about black feminism, I did. I couldn’t see that he was a snake in the grass who used feminism to gain public appeal and was secretly a misogynist who liked to spark feuds between white women and women of color. That was the start of my delay from feminism, with the help of a white male. I clearly couldn’t see how terribly this white male treated the white radical feminists who were clearly female-centered , but how he played wolf in a sheep’s coat to women of color who were trying to understand their own experiences of being the majority women ( I don’t like to use the term minority because it’s a learned racist white-male description of the world. Also it’s just incorrect because the majority of women on this earth are non-white, white women are the minority.)
Luckily the words of women like Andrea Dworkin and especially blogs like this just hit my heart like bricks, because it was the most truthful nourishing, loving, caring, and truly life affirming words I had ever read. It didn’t regurgitate the patriarchal bullshit that I sought from other blogs and writers posing as radical, that just reaffirmed that I had to accept piv, misogyny, having sons, racism and men.
But yeah, this is what I had to contend with when I wanted to research and get involved with women of color experiencing racism. It’s just a never-ending cycle of intersectional chaos and irrationality.
Thanks for posting about this Skulldrix. It’s such a clear example of how misogynists try to suppress real feminism and prevent women from being effective in their efforts to organize.
The term “majority women” is a great anodyne for the view that has been foisted on us by patriarchy.
Yes! The majority of females on earth are NOT ‘white’. Thank you, skulldrix.
it’s a very good point that men criticise, attack and destroy feminism regardless of what it’s about, they do hate whenever women have their own movement, when women aren’t their property and especially when women leave and cease to do all the work for them. And it’s probably true that most don’t even understand the difference very much, or only to the extent that they know exactly who they’ve already got control over (ie women’s caucuses within their own groups, or funfems to a certain extent, depending on which males we’re talking about) and they know perfectly well which groups they have less control over.
Yes I agree and it’s very obvious that whatever men have to say about feminism, feminism isn’t in their interest, their opinions on feminism and class interests are antagonistic to ours so no matter how they interfere in feminism, it’ll always be destructive. Their class interest is to see feminism destroyed because it threatens the very source of their privileges and power-over, and so their perspectives on feminism and experience of it is determined by this class interest.
it’s interesting to say that the intersectionality groups feel exactly like the funfem in reverse. Well it’s modeled on funfeminism / liberalism isn’t? Liberalism is all about catering to individual identities and individual choice and agency as if it were separate from patriarchal structures of oppression by men.
Liberal feminism gives a false sense of inclusion of “diversity” with its male left caucus culture. So libfeminism is typically composed of loads of small caucuses based on everyone’s identities, which can unfold to infinity: WOC, lesbian, old, young, disabled, incest survivors, prostitution survivors, butch, femme, fat, anorexic, etc etc. And it gives the impression to cater to everyone’s individual needs and choices. However by failing to address oppressive structures (male supremacy) and pitting the oppressed against each other in small groups as if they had opposite interests (women) and making it impossible to for us to communicate with one another, well it’s just a male tool for destroying our movement. you’ll notice that all lib-fem events will always have workshops and groups segmented, fragmented according to all the different identities and often you won’t be able to go from one to another, they’re reserved to a particular set of women. Which I think deprives our community of women from the knowledge, experience and exchanges we need to better understand each other etc.
and yes it’s very obvious white women are the minority in the world!
Transgender male people of color=men in dresses, self proclaimed “transwomen”. No one can change their sex so I refer to them as such. Good point about black womanism being fun feminism made to cater to black women. I have never considered that about the term minority but always felt instinctively wary of the term. Many so called “minorities” actually are the majority as you mention most women in the world are women of colour, and there is more women than men in the world, as someone who suffers from CFS I find it is made to seem like a small problem when its actually common, especially among women.
I would have to correct one thing there witch. While they do certainly love to focus on the subgroups of women, libfems say its insulting to prostituted women to call them victims and that is infantilizes them. They are trying to steal women’s right to see themselves as victims of sex based oppression and bio-terrorism with regards to prostitution.
@ Wordwoman and Witchwind
No problem. It benefits all of us if we are open and honest about these topics. The majority of women are non-white, so that’s when you realize how deeply racist America is when you hear these deceiving words thrown around academia as if they were fact. When clearly they are hand-picked, incorrect, and offensive terms that white males favor to separate themselves from the rest of humanity.
@ Black Metal Valkyrie
Paris Lees is now a leader of black feminism and womanism. What the fuck. Bell Hooks teamed up with him to give a talk about black women and the media, in which she called Beyonce a terrorist.
Paris Lees thinks he’s better than all women, and he is a sick autogynophile who actually wants to harm and dominate women, he possibly wishes harm on women more than your average homosexual or heterosexual man.
Bell Hooks not being able to see that is really discouraging, and I think she is a clear of example of identified radical feminists who aren’t actually radical feminists, such as Gloria Steinem. But who are third-wave, liberal, post-modern feminists who seek individual empowerment as feminism and negotiating with patriarchy as an effective tool to end “domination” ( which they don’t define as men oppressing women, but a bunch of intersectionalist nonsense, where every group needs to have the same amount of power as the white males) . Which is obviously easier than just rejecting men, like I do.
I’ve known women with CFS and it is a serious problem that I hope doesn’t end your life. It is more common amongst women than people think, thats certainly true.