there's a Ranger at the park (and a spry 94 yo) who worked a clerical position within one of the unions. Sadly even the unionized work force was segregated but this woman nonetheless secured a clerical position within the union and got a position that wasn't a domestic one but one on the way to white collar work. She doesn't identify as a 'Rosie' but she acknowledges that the war opened doors to employment that weren't previously open to white women much less WOC. Betty Reid Soskin
eta - all i know about WOC and the Rosie/WWII experience is what i picked up from talks given by Ms. Soskin, interviews with Ms. Soskin and the museum exhibits at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Homefront NP. she gets a TON of press bc she IS a WOC who's the oldest park ranger in the country and she has a wealth of knowledge about most of the major events of the 20th century through the lens of a WOC. she'll tell you what the history books skipped entirely.
She's one black woman though. This is like saying that racism is over because Obama is president.
The experience of one singular (lucky and wonderful to be sure) black woman doesn't mean that in general the Rosie experience opened doors for black women.
but all it takes is one to get the ball rolling to have others follow behind her ..... someone has to go first to blaze the trail. the Rosie experience didn't open floodgates for WOC but imo it certainly opened a door.
in my own family, the Rosie experience was a non issue- 2 of my great-grandmothers (single moms) and even my own grandmothers (one was a hairdresser, the other a schoolteacher) worked out of necessity prior to the war not bc of it.
I'm just now getting to where I've read/skimmed through this thread and can respond (some of you know there has been some PR hoopla I've been involved in this week...).
Do I identify as a feminist? No, not if you define it as being my #1 driving issue in all things. I push for change in several areas to empower women in my own circles, but I don't donate to anything nor do I consider myself an activist.
I will also say wrt feminism, intersectional feminism, and racism, that it seems to me that if we had to tackle things and spend all of our energy on these topics in a certain order, racism is an easy first pick. I feel disingenuous being all "yay, women need to fight the power" when it's plainly obvious we can't all fight the power together. Not when regulars on this board are treated differently as women than I am treated based on their race. How am I supposed to realistically enlist them to fight for women's power when the women in question are not on equal footing in this country?
I care about women's rights. I care about our pay, our uterus ownership and power, being objectified by men, being trafficked by men, etc. But I will say that the threads on this board have made me start to evaluate my perceptions with the racism radar up first, feminism thereafter. And I'm OK with that, because goddammit we need to fucking stop putting that shit on the backburner. If I have to keep earning 63 cents to a white man's dollar until we can at least make sure my fellow WOC is also making the same 63 cents and the MOC is also making the dollar, that's alllllll good by me.
I don't think it's fair to say all white women were willing and eager participants. It certainly was never slavery, but their power was limited to change it and so they started where they could.
I can't agree with this.
most white women were traded as property though. Uneducated, couldn't own property, didn't have access to money. Their power was often limited. That doesn't change the fact though that they often treated slaves poorly or when their fathers or husbands died they didn't become the next owner of slaves.
I think people forget how far women have come, and that journey had definitely been easier for white women. My mother and her friends couldn't buy property in the 70s when they came back cashed up from working in Europe and Vietnam, now the bank lends me as much as my male counterparts
most white women were traded as property though. Uneducated, couldn't own property, didn't have access to money. Their power was often limited. That doesn't change the fact though that they often treated slaves poorly or when their fathers or husbands died they didn't become the next owner of slaves.
I think people forget how far women have come, and that journey had definitely been easier for white women. My mother and her friends couldn't buy property in the 70s when they came back cashed up from working in Europe and Vietnam, now the bank lends me as much as my male counterparts
I find it difficult to believe that in the 1970s women of all colors in America were not allowed to own property. In fact, I find that to be false.
If you're talking about discrimination in lending, that was barred in the early 1970s under federal law.
I ain't touching the rest of the post with a 10 foot pole. White women have no doubt experienced gender-based discrimination of many kinds in horrific ways. But to reduce the role of white women in slavery to "not being nice to the slaves" is laughable.
most white women were traded as property though. Uneducated, couldn't own property, didn't have access to money. Their power was often limited. That doesn't change the fact though that they often treated slaves poorly or when their fathers or husbands died they didn't become the next owner of slaves.
I think people forget how far women have come, and that journey had definitely been easier for white women. My mother and her friends couldn't buy property in the 70s when they came back cashed up from working in Europe and Vietnam, now the bank lends me as much as my male counterparts
I find it difficult to believe that in the 1970s women of all colors in America were not allowed to own property. In fact, I find that to be false.
If you're talking about discrimination in lending, that was barred in the early 1970s under federal law.
I ain't touching the rest of the post with a 10 foot pole. White women have no doubt experienced gender-based discrimination of many kinds in horrific ways. But to reduce the role of white women in slavery to "not being nice to the slaves" is laughable.
Okay, maybe I touched it with a 5 foot pole.
Maybe it depends on the country but I know women who could not get loans without a mans gaurentee in the 70s and at no point did I say it was equivalent
I find it difficult to believe that in the 1970s women of all colors in America were not allowed to own property. In fact, I find that to be false.
If you're talking about discrimination in lending, that was barred in the early 1970s under federal law.
I ain't touching the rest of the post with a 10 foot pole. White women have no doubt experienced gender-based discrimination of many kinds in horrific ways. But to reduce the role of white women in slavery to "not being nice to the slaves" is laughable.
Okay, maybe I touched it with a 5 foot pole.
Maybe it depends on the country but I know women who could not get loans without a mans gaurentee in the 70s and at no point did I say it was equivalent
That is not the same as not being able to own property. Which your post implied. What with the my mom couldn't buy property.
Eta: And, as I said, discriminatory lending practices (like forcing women to have men cosign loans) was barred by federal law in the 1970s. Requiring a male guarantor or cosigner is not the same thing as prohibing property ownership, although it is deplorable and infantalizing and all of the things that make me, a white woman, never ever ever want to time travel to a bygone era.
Post by imobviouslystaying on Oct 17, 2015 23:29:26 GMT -5
I'm going to plant a whole garden of nopes in this thread and I need @koko and NitaX to come in here and blow it up.
Again, it is straight up delusion that women have not been as equally responsible for injustice in this world. And it's downright laughable to dismiss them from the problems of racism in the past.
The only person in the shop the day that Emmett Till and his friends were in hanging out chilling was the white women who accused him of whistling at her. She told her husband. Her husband and I think either his brother or her brother kidnapped Emmett and murdered him. And without a damned doubt that woman knew what would happen.
Women may not have owned property but they headed up their households just fine. Many slave stories that have been handed down tell these tales. Women sent their husband to purchase household slaves. They sold away slaves who they thought were too uppity. They sold off the children of slaves if they felt the children were too distracted. Many a slave mother sat in the big house rocking the babies of white women to sleep while their own children lay ill on a mattress made of corncobs in a rickety ass shack. Many slave children died because their mothers were made to give their milk to white babies over their own children.
A slave could look at a woman wrong and she'd order him whipped. I've read accounts by former slaves of wives who demanded their husband hire a tougher overseer because she feared an uprising.
And this is just from slave generations. There are plenty more stories to be told in all eras of American history. Dorothy Dandridge once dipped her toe in a hotel pool, a white hotel pool. The hotel staff ordered it drained and scrubbed because patrons complained. Anyone who has spent a lot of time in a hotel pool can tell you that it's mostly women and families. So who do you think was responsible that day? Men?
Saying women can't possibly have been active in oppression is such an unbelievable insult. I cannot imagine how anyone can think this through and come to that conclusion. Power or no, women are not innocent. You can be oppressed and still oppress others. It happens all of the time.
Women and men raise children and while women may not have purchased the property or voted in all of these eras, but they were just as responsible if not moreso for investing certain values in their children, including values of racism.
There were women in the Ku Klux Klan, I'm sure they still are, and they weren't all there before men made them.
This right here is an excellent example of why black women and other POC have a love/hate/indifferent relationship with feminism.
The work white people put into completely denying their role in the subjugation, oppression, and marginalization of people of color is astounding.
To hear women talk, you would think they had virtually no role in the slavery, in Jim Crow, in all of the things that have oppressed black folks since they were first dragged here either in chains or by deception.
But it's something of an ongoing narrative from white women, that because they had less power than men than of course racism isn't their fault, slavery not their responsibility. And that's a load of bullshit. Perhaps if more women would see their role in these injustices, POC wouldn't feel some alienated by feminism.
Maybe that would destroy the narrative, I don't know. But women are equally responsible for the ills of this world as men are. They may not have equal power to men, may have had less power compared to men in previous generations but they were willing and eager participants in those systems that shackle us even to this day.
I don't think it's fair to say all white women were willing and eager participants. It certainly was never slavery, but their power was limited to change it and so they started where they could.
Looking back, however, and owning the missed opportunities in our history is valuable and necessary in moving forward. We have to embrace our flaws to learn and grow.
I feel like this is a fight between siblings...racial vs womens equality. We all want the same thing...equality.
No. Because White Feminists don't speak for me. It's like when folks were all mad because Michelle didn't keep working or some ish when she became First Lady. Black Women have always done some form of work. I can't blame Michelle for wanting to put her stuff on hold and focus on her kids. She could use bit of a breather.
For me it's more than equality. First, I need people to stop viewing my 12 yr old daughter as a potential baby-making drain on welfare. I need my nephews not to be seen as thugs and shot on sight. I need to be viewed as HUMAN and fallible all at once. Because, I'm not allowed mistakes. My kids aren't allowed mistakes.
You can't tell me we can't squabble because we all want the same things. You first have to be open to hearing why we disagree on various points and issues. You aren't doing that when you push our concerns to the side.
most white women were traded as property though. Uneducated, couldn't own property, didn't have access to money. Their power was often limited. That doesn't change the fact though that they often treated slaves poorly or when their fathers or husbands died they didn't become the next owner of slaves.
I think people forget how far women have come, and that journey had definitely been easier for white women. My mother and her friends couldn't buy property in the 70s when they came back cashed up from working in Europe and Vietnam, now the bank lends me as much as my male counterparts
This is inaccurate.
There were definitely uneducated women. But the assumption that the wives of slaveowners must have been uneducated is inaccurate. Also, they very much could and did own property. Women have been permitted to own property in this country for a long ass time. Getting a loan is not the same as owning property. One could inherit and one could even purchase outright. I cannot recall though if a woman could homestead, that would be something I'd need to look up but Nicole Kidman was trying to stake her claim on some property while riding a horse in Far and Away so I believe they could but couldn't claim as large a portion as a man. But I digress.
Women could even inherit and own property in England. We tend to think they couldn't because of Pride and Prejudice but that's because women could not inherit the peerage and property was often entailed meaning it belonged to the next person to inherit the title or the estate. A man could pass on money to his daughters and even property but not any property or livings that was tied to the entail. (Think Downton Abbey. Mary can inherit Gratham's extra cash on her own but not Downton in her own right.) That being said there were/are actually a few peerages in England, Scotland, and Ireland that could be inherited by a woman in her own right, depends on how the letters patent that created the title or the living were written.
I don't think it's fair to say all white women were willing and eager participants. It certainly was never slavery, but their power was limited to change it and so they started where they could.
Looking back, however, and owning the missed opportunities in our history is valuable and necessary in moving forward. We have to embrace our flaws to learn and grow.
I feel like this is a fight between siblings...racial vs womens equality. We all want the same thing...equality.
No. Because White Feminists don't speak for me. It's like when folks were all mad because Michelle didn't keep working or some ish when she became First Lady. Black Women have always done some form of work. I can't blame Michelle for wanting to put her stuff on hold and focus on her kids. She could use bit of a breather.
For me it's more than equality. First, I need people to stop viewing my 12 yr old daughter as a potential baby-making drain on welfare. I need my nephews not to be seen as thugs and shot on sight. I need to be viewed as HUMAN and fallible all at once. Because, I'm not allowed mistakes. My kids aren't allowed mistakes.
You can't tell me we can't squabble because we all want the same things. You first have to be open to hearing why we disagree on various points and issues. You aren't doing that when you push our concerns to the side.
For the record, NitaX has expressed these facts over and over again on this board. So yeah, maybe we do need to have one of these threads pinned.
but all it takes is one to get the ball rolling to have others follow behind her ..... someone has to go first to blaze the trail. the Rosie experience didn't open floodgates for WOC but imo it certainly opened a door.
in my own family, the Rosie experience was a non issue- 2 of my great-grandmothers (single moms) and even my own grandmothers (one was a hairdresser, the other a schoolteacher) worked out of necessity prior to the war not bc of it.
Again, you're proving the point here. This door didn't need to be opened for black women. They were already doing these things. I read somewhere that the majority of white women stayed at home in the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc but the majority of black women worked somehow. Many of them took domestic positions or took in work like laundry to their own homes. But many of them worked in factories or as telephone operators, nurses, teachers, etc.
White women did too but a higher percentage of them stopped working after they married.
but all it takes is one to get the ball rolling to have others follow behind her ..... someone has to go first to blaze the trail. the Rosie experience didn't open floodgates for WOC but imo it certainly opened a door.
in my own family, the Rosie experience was a non issue- 2 of my great-grandmothers (single moms) and even my own grandmothers (one was a hairdresser, the other a schoolteacher) worked out of necessity prior to the war not bc of it.
Again, you're proving the point here. This door didn't need to be opened for black women. They were already doing these things. I read somewhere that the majority of white women stayed at home in the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc but the majority of black women worked somehow. Many of them took domestic positions or took in work like laundry to their own homes. But many of them worked in factories or as telephone operators, nurses, teachers, etc.
White women did too but a higher percentage of them stopped working after they married.
My great-grandmother kept other folks' kids. My grandmother worked as a domestic. My mother told me that she decided to become a nurse because she couldn't stand going to the house my grandmother worked at. She hated scrubbing floors alongside her mother.
It never occurs to me to NOT work. I can't fathom that life. Not that I'm knocking any SAHM. But, I don't know anything other than to get up and work because all the women in my family worked.
I'm going to plant a whole garden of nopes in this thread and I need @koko and NitaX to come in here and blow it up.
Again, it is straight up delusion that women have not been as equally responsible for injustice in this world. And it's downright laughable to dismiss them from the problems of racism in the past.
The only person in the shop the day that Emmett Till and his friends were in hanging out chilling was the white women who accused him of whistling at her. She told her husband. Her husband and I think either his brother or her brother kidnapped Emmett and murdered him. And without a damned doubt that woman knew what would happen.
Women may not have owned property but they headed up their households just fine. Many slave stories that have been handed down tell these tales. Women sent their husband to purchase household slaves. They sold away slaves who they thought were too uppity. They sold off the children of slaves if they felt the children were too distracted. Many a slave mother sat in the big house rocking the babies of white women to sleep while their own children lay ill on a mattress made of corncobs in a rickety ass shack. Many slave children died because their mothers were made to give their milk to white babies over their own children.
A slave could look at a woman wrong and she'd order him whipped. I've read accounts by former slaves of wives who demanded their husband hire a tougher overseer because she feared an uprising.
And this is just from slave generations. There are plenty more stories to be told in all eras of American history. Dorothy Dandridge once dipped her toe in a hotel pool, a white hotel pool. The hotel staff ordered it drained and scrubbed because patrons complained. Anyone who has spent a lot of time in a hotel pool can tell you that it's mostly women and families. So who do you think was responsible that day? Men?
Saying women can't possibly have been active in oppression is such an unbelievable insult. I cannot imagine how anyone can think this through and come to that conclusion. Power or no, women are not innocent. You can be oppressed and still oppress others. It happens all of the time.
Women and men raise children and while women may not have purchased the property or voted in all of these eras, but they were just as responsible if not moreso for investing certain values in their children, including values of racism.
There were women in the Ku Klux Klan, I'm sure they still are, and they weren't all there before men made them.
Thank you for taking the time on this. All I could write was "I can't agree" because I didn't have the energy to write all of this out, but this is basically where I'm at. White women did not have the same social standing or power as White men, clearly but they had waaaaay more than Black people of both genders for a long time and they often used it against us. They watched and sometimes instigated the selling of our children and like I said, then made that woman whose baby was sold off suckle her own. Oh my God, I would have died or killed someone. And when I see old Civil Rights movement footage of lunch counters and school integrations, White women are all up in there pulling folks hair and shouting "n****r, go home!" Yes, definitely some were around, fighting the good fight for us, just like some White men were, but a lot of them weren't thinking about us as human and equal at all. You can't frame the movement around the White female experience and then sideeye WOC for not coming to the rally.
And I wasn't there so I can't say, but when the feminist movement was starting, I can't imagine the rights of Black women were high up on the priority list. And I get that. Of course, you look out for you and yours. But that's why some Black women here can't put but a foot on board that train.
It's why I got eeeeextra salty at Patricia Arquette. WE need to do something for YOU? Excuse me?
Thank you for this thread. I've been slowly reading and coming back to it, and I feel like more than a few light bulbs have gone off for me.
Rosie, however, was not one of them. I come from very poor white people: they worked for a long time before Rosie became a symbol of economic independence for middle class women.
That said, I have no delusions that my great-great-whatever relatives felt a kinship with POC. My guess is, they were racist as fuck because they were competing for some of the same jobs (domestics, childcare, etc) and were probably pissed about POC, "taking their jobs" (does that sound familiar?!).
Just because poor white women and WOC had some (small) similarities did not make them allies.
Today on the way to church I mentioned this thread and the intersectional one to DH. I started with "the black ladies on the board don't necessarily identify as feminists", and before I said anything else, he was all like "of course not, they have to worry about being black before they worry about being a woman, they don't have that privilege". I just kind of looked at him and was like, how come I didn't get that right away??? Anyways, we talked about it the rest of the way there, just to say that the threads I read here do make me think about these things, and DH and I spend a lot of time talking about it. Apparently I need to learning more than he does, lol!
Again, you're proving the point here. This door didn't need to be opened for black women. They were already doing these things. I read somewhere that the majority of white women stayed at home in the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc but the majority of black women worked somehow. Many of them took domestic positions or took in work like laundry to their own homes. But many of them worked in factories or as telephone operators, nurses, teachers, etc.
White women did too but a higher percentage of them stopped working after they married.
She's not saying that black women didn't work she's saying that Rosie opened doors to jobs that were not previously open to WOC. The proof is one black woman ranger.
To which I'm saying nope.
I actually found an article referencing this park ranger and she mentions quite often the racism she faced and how she was very rare indeed and dealt with a ton of discrimination, both in her position and in the area in which she lived.
I also found at least two articles and two buzzfeed articles filled with picks of black women working in factories during the war, as nurses, etc. I don't think Rosie opened this door though. I think black women who were already working simply found more places to work.
For black women, the image of Rosie didn't inspire black women who had never considered working outside of the home to do so, it merely gave them just a wee bit more options.
As a side note, I was at the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum a few months ago and they have an entire section of it dedicated to black aviatrixes. To be honest, I nearly cried I was so overwhelmed by it. I felt pride for all they were able to accomplish. Many of them were the first to do various things in their aircraft. But I was saddened by the fact that at 34 this was the first I'd heard of any of them. I didn't realize what a great place in history these amazing black women held. And I was angry because when I got to the display detailing the programs the government and military instituted for women pilots, there wasn't a black face among them. The placard stated that black women were not permitted. So these fine ladies who were kicking ass and taking names at the forefront of a budding industry were pushed to the side because of the color of their skin.
And now I'm sitting here listening to other white women insist that they opened doors for these WOC who were already there and deny their part in these oppressions.
Today on the way to church I mentioned this thread and the intersectional one to DH. I started with "the black ladies on the board don't necessarily identify as feminists", and before I said anything else, he was all like "of course not, they have to worry about being black before they worry about being a woman, they don't have that privilege". I just kind of looked at him and was like, how come I didn't get that right away??? Anyways, we talked about it the rest of the way there, just to say that the threads I read here do make me think about these things, and DH and I spend a lot of time talking about it. Apparently I need to learning more than he does, lol!
My H said basically the same thing as yours.
I keep forgetting to post in this thread, so my apologies. I've identified with the feminist movement before. However, the more that I read about the struggles of WOC and how the feminist movement has left WOC behind, the less I want to be involved with the movement as it stands today. We've been there for white women, advocating and fighting. It's time to shift the focus. WOC are blatantly disenfranchised, discriminated against, brutalized by the police and just people in general. We hardly hear a peep about it.
I recently read this article - Rising from Silence: Struggles of Being a Muslim Feminist - and it made me feel ashamed. I've been that person before - the person who thinks that head coverings are a sign of oppression, without even giving a second thought to how those women actually feel about it. It made me realize how often WOC are dismissed.
There are so many women out there who feel left behind and forgotten by the feminism movement. Who can't even identify with it because they have to worry about their safety first and foremost. There are many testimonies to that in just this thread alone.
We've got a long way to go. The only way that we can make progress is by realizing our reality and our privilege and actually starting to fight for the rights of WOC.
I hope this made sense and didn't make me come off as an asshole.
My great-grandmother kept other folks' kids. My grandmother worked as a domestic. My mother told me that she decided to become a nurse because she couldn't stand going to the house my grandmother worked at. She hated scrubbing floors alongside her mother.
It never occurs to me to NOT work. I can't fathom that life. Not that I'm knocking any SAHM. But, I don't know anything other than to get up and work because all the women in my family worked.
This is another thing. Being SAHM was never a goal of mine for the reasons outlined above. I do not feel the mom guilt or feel torn the way my friends up here do because that was never an ideal of mine or my culture for motherhood.
This is interesting to me because when I was a SAHM, I sometimes lurked on a SAHM board (demographics similar to GBCN, so majority white) and it was always crazy to me how many of the posters were SAH even though their husbands weren't making much money. So many times, the MMer in me wanted to post, "Go back to work, you can't afford this," but I wouldn't have and besides, it seemed like they were going to do it at any cost, even the cost of potential career regression. I didn't much consider the cultural aspect--but it's true that the black women I know have only SAH when they've been very comfortably able to afford doing so. I guess there is a feeling that otherwise, we aren't supposed to/entitled to, perhaps? My mother always worked but one of my grandmothers and a couple of my aunts SAH. For whatever reason, it was at least something I always viewed as a possibility (in addition to my career, however, not in lieu of it).
Post by foundmylazybum on Oct 18, 2015 10:27:42 GMT -5
Yes I identify as a feminist and if "I" was in charge of movements or activism after reading these posts I'd work hard to try to involve WOC in my movement. I think it's a damn shame that some WOC don't want to be involved. Their ideas and thoughts are enlightening, amazing and challenging. Women are missing out not having more of those perspectives in the mix.
Instead of leaving feminism because of the past, I guess I would wonder and ask, "How do we move forward to invite WOC in?" And that doesn't mean WOC answer that question. It's how does "Feminism" make itself more welcoming. It needs to fix the problems.
EDIT. I named people that I knew. I ammended to just be more global.
Yes I identify as a feminist and if "I" was in charge of movements or activism after reading these posts I'd work hard to try to involve WOC in my movement. I think it's a damn shame that some WOC don't want to be involved. Their ideas and thoughts are enlightening, amazing and challenging. Women are missing out not having more of those perspectives in the mix.
Instead of leaving feminism because of the past, I guess I would wonder and ask, "How do we move forward to invite WOC in?" And that doesn't mean WOC answer that question. It's how does "Feminism" make itself more welcoming. It needs to fix the problems.
EDIT. I named people that I knew. I ammended to just be more global.
Part of it is the way many white feminists talk about it. "Oh it's a shame you don't want to be involved, if only you understood how we're trying to help."
It's trickle down feminism and we're not here for it. But even those of us who don't call ourselves feminists or aren't invested in the feminist movement are involved in furthering the cause of feminist. I think that's an important point to take note of. You don't have to call yourself a feminism to raise children to believe the genders are equal and behave accordingly. So perhaps the goal of white feminists shouldn't be to convince us to call ourselves feminists. Every effort to do so is only more paternalistic (ironically enough) than the last.
The goal should be to acknowledge the work that WOC of color have done and continue to do to further feminism regardless of what we call it.
Also, I meant to address this earlier but I disagree with those who say all of us are feminists whether we call ourselves such or not. For one, it's the height of assumption and paternalism to insist people are under a label they do not wish for themselves. It's insulting and dismissive of the experiences many of us have had. You're dismissing them as meaningless and deciding your worldview is the one we should ascribe to even if we don't feel that kinship. It would be like telling someone who is multiracial what race they are even if they feel closer to a different race or culture.
Secondly, I don't believe merely making choices makes one a feminist. How are you living your life? And I don't mean are you a SAHM or a working mother. I mean do you support policies that help equalize women? How are you raising your children? If you have sons and daughters, what messages do you convey to them regarding gender? If your boys mow the lawn and take out the trash while your daughters cook and clean, you may not be a feminist. If you encourage your sons to pursue whatever course they like but suggest your daughters become nurses, teachers, or other primarily female professions regardless of their interests, you likely aren't a feminist. If you assume your sons will go to the college but your daughters will get married and have babies, you aren't a feminist.
And even if you have children of just one gender, you still need to look at your expectations, how to raise those children to deal with the people around them. Do they know that women can be police officers, mechanics, and pilots? Do they know that men can be nurses, childcare providers, office managers, teachers? Are you teaching your sons to cook, to clean, to manage a household for themselves?
Sometimes I think the domestic front is where we need to make the most progress. We keep expecting the professional world to treat men and women equally but then once we step over the threshold of our own households, it's still the 50s.
How can we expect genders to view themselves equally when in the places that form them, the places where they spend the most time, relax, and are most open, we continue to support and cultivate distinct gender roles?
Feminism is more than believing the genders are equal. It's treating them equally both actively and passively.
Yes I identify as a feminist and if "I" was in charge of movements or activism after reading these posts I'd work hard to try to involve WOC in my movement. I think it's a damn shame that some WOC don't want to be involved. Their ideas and thoughts are enlightening, amazing and challenging. Women are missing out not having more of those perspectives in the mix.
Instead of leaving feminism because of the past, I guess I would wonder and ask, "How do we move forward to invite WOC in?" And that doesn't mean WOC answer that question. It's how does "Feminism" make itself more welcoming. It needs to fix the problems.
EDIT. I named people that I knew. I ammended to just be more global.
Part of it is the way many white feminists talk about it. "Oh it's a shame you don't want to be involved, if only you understood how we're trying to help."
It's trickle down feminism and we're not here for it. But even those of us who don't call ourselves feminists or aren't invested in the feminist movement are involved in furthering the cause of feminist. I think that's an important point to take note of. You don't have to call yourself a feminism to raise children to believe the genders are equal and behave accordingly. So perhaps the goal of white feminists shouldn't be to convince us to call ourselves feminists. Every effort to do so is only more paternalistic (ironically enough) than the last.
Sure. I don't think my post was trying to convince anyone to say they were a feminist, but if it came off that way, that's not what I meant, sorry.
The goal should be to acknowledge the work that WOC of color have done and continue to do to further feminism regardless of what we call it.
I absolutely agree.
Also, I meant to address this earlier but I disagree with those who say all of us are feminists whether we call ourselves such or not. For one, it's the height of assumption and paternalism to insist people are under a label they do not wish for themselves. It's insulting and dismissive of the experiences many of us have had. You're dismissing them as meaningless and deciding your worldview is the one we should ascribe to even if we don't feel that kinship. It would be like telling someone who is multiracial what race they are even if they feel closer to a different race or culture.
Again I agree. I feel like all I was trying to say was--actually the above bolded. I'd like to acknowledge what WOC have done--I think it's awesome and do more of that work.
When I’m invited to speak at universities, one of the questions I’m asked the most by young women of color and young white women alike is some variation of “how can white women include women of color in feminism?” My answer is always the same: that’s not the right question to be asking.
While I think it’s important to talk about the ways that mainstream feminism erases and devalues women of color, I also believe the language that we use to talk about it can contribute to that erasure and devaluing.
White women don’t need to “include” women of color in feminism. Here’s why:
1. Women of color have been doing feminism since forever.
Asking how white women can include women of color in feminism suggests that feminism is the domain of white women, and that they are the ones who get to decide who’s included. This is the narrative of mainstream feminism, and it’s wrong.
The fact is that women of color have been creating feminist movements (under whatever names we’ve called them), both formally and informally, since before “feminism” was even a word. Throughout history, women of color have fought for their rights, in ways both large and small, both documented and undocumented, and their fighting has impacted not only their lives and the lives of the women in their communities, but every feminist issue that has come after them. Women of color have always been here doing this work.
From Sojourner Truth to Ida B. Wells, from Gloria Anzaldúa to Yuri Kochiyama, from Leslie Marmon to Rajini Thiranagama, from Shirley Chisholm to Wilma Mankiller, from Coretta Scott King to Cherrie Moraga, women of color have shaped women’s movements in this country (and everywhere).
When we talk about feminism and “inclusion” we need to remember that feminism doesn’t belong to white women by default. There is no feminism without women of color.
2. The focus should be on centering, not on inclusion.
Women of color feminisms are inherently more complex than white feminisms because women of color experience oppression at more intersections. Adding a racialized experience, and all of the things that come with one, to an experience of womanhood, necessarily complicates and deepens any feminist analysis.
There are oppressions that women of color experience that are unique to us as a group, and oppressions that we face in our different racial groupings that make our experiences further unique. A black woman’s experiences of oppression are very different from an Asian woman’s experiences of oppression. Add trans and queer womanhood and/or disability and the realities of those particular experiences, and even more levels of nuance and insight become possible. Because of this, women of color, and especially trans and/or queer and/or disabled women of color, etc., are the most necessary and valuable voices in any feminist conversation.
Our voices, our analyses, push feminist conversation forward to places where it would never be equipped to go without us. Our experiences, and our ability to articulate those experiences in ways that only we can, makes those conversations exponentially more valuable and useful to feminism and its goals of equality and equity for all women. To be able to fully benefit from these analyses, they must be centered, not simply “included”. “Including” them, as an afterthought of a much less robust mainstream, white feminism, misses the entire point.
A next-level feminism, a game-changing feminism, is a feminism that centers women of color.
3. It’s really white women who need to figure out how to be worthy of inclusion in feminism.
Women of color feminisms being inherently more complex, and therefore more useful to feminist goals, means that when women of color fight patriarchy, in all the ways that we do, white women also benefit. White supremacy puts white women higher up on the ladder of privilege. So, whatever rights women of color get, white women get times a hundred.
Abortion rights are one example. Access to abortion is being challenged all over the country, for women across racial lines. However, black women, Native women and Latinas, who are disproportionately poor, are the most in danger of not having access to safe abortions. When we fight for women of color to have access, everyone who is above us on the ladder of privilege also benefits. (It doesn’t work the other way around. Women of color do not automatically benefit from access that white women achieve. See: what I just said about abortion.)
Because white women benefit from the work that women of color do in pursuit of freedom and equality, they really ought to do a better job of being worthy of women of color and the work we do for women. When someone else’s struggles benefit you, it behooves you to make those struggles easier, not more difficult.
Still, white feminists continue to make themselves less and less worthy of women of color feminisms every day. From erasure of our unique experiences as women to the constant questioning of whether Beyoncé (and really any black woman who isn’t Bell Hooks or Audre Lorde) is really a feminist, white women are still reaching new heights of WTF ? in 2015.
So, instead if asking “how can white women include women of color in feminism” we ought to be asking “when will white women make themselves worthy of the benefits they reap from the work of feminists of color?”
It’s essential that we change the way we talk about “inclusion” and feminism. Women of color are the necessary center of feminist movements.
Part of it is the way many white feminists talk about it. "Oh it's a shame you don't want to be involved, if only you understood how we're trying to help."
It's trickle down feminism and we're not here for it. But even those of us who don't call ourselves feminists or aren't invested in the feminist movement are involved in furthering the cause of feminist. I think that's an important point to take note of.
I needed to draw this out for emphasis. It has happened in this thread and others, and will likely happen again. If I'm living each day by showing my kids and peers that equal treatment is a necessity and expectation, I don't give a flying fuck what you (general) think I should call myself. My results are what count.
Yes I identify as a feminist and if "I" was in charge of movements or activism after reading these posts I'd work hard to try to involve WOC in my movement. I think it's a damn shame that some WOC don't want to be involved. Their ideas and thoughts are enlightening, amazing and challenging. Women are missing out not having more of those perspectives in the mix.
Instead of leaving feminism because of the past, I guess I would wonder and ask, "How do we move forward to invite WOC in?" And that doesn't mean WOC answer that question. It's how does "Feminism" make itself more welcoming. It needs to fix the problems.
EDIT. I named people that I knew. I ammended to just be more global.
Sometimes I think the domestic front is where we need to make the most progress. We keep expecting the professional world to treat men and women equally but then once we step over the threshold of our own households, it's still the 50s.
How can we expect genders to view themselves equally when in the places that form them, the places where they spend the most time, relax, and are most open, we continue to support and cultivate distinct gender roles?
Feminism is more than believing the genders are equal. It's treating them equally both actively and passively.
I want to put a pin in this because it's the thing that bothers me sometimes on the board. We spend an inordinate amount of time fighting pink tools, pink dresses, pink XYZ, but no one seems to tell their lazy ass husbands that they too can fold the clothes in the basket and put them away.
Everyone is too coy to stand up and say "PLAYA. I worked 40 hours this week too and shuttled kids to and fro and I deserve the ability to sit on the couch as much as you do." I often scratch my head and wonder why folks allow this to stand - yet everyone wants to Lean In at work. Lean yo ass in at home too. Stand up for equal in your house. Teach your sons how to cook and clean, because he may run up on the next surgeon who can't kowtow to his "needs" and keep a spotless house.
Lord knows I vocally push back on young black men I've come across with these antiquated notions of submissive wives and what not. No. It's not my job to wait on your ass hand and foot because it's very likely we'll both work. Which means - we BOTH have equal household responsibilities. And EQUAL child-rearing responsibilities. Bath time is handled by the parent not working late in my world. I would burn shit down if I got home and my H pawned kids off on me with some of the stuff I read on these boards.
Stand up for yourselves at home. Maybe if you pushed back there, these cavemen wouldn't force these notions on us at work.
Sometimes I think the domestic front is where we need to make the most progress. We keep expecting the professional world to treat men and women equally but then once we step over the threshold of our own households, it's still the 50s.
How can we expect genders to view themselves equally when in the places that form them, the places where they spend the most time, relax, and are most open, we continue to support and cultivate distinct gender roles?
Feminism is more than believing the genders are equal. It's treating them equally both actively and passively.
I want to put a pin in this because it's the thing that bothers me sometimes on the board. We spend an inordinate amount of time fighting pink tools, pink dresses, pink XYZ, but no one seems to tell their lazy ass husbands that they too can fold the clothes in the basket and put them away.
Everyone is too coy to stand up and say "PLAYA. I worked 40 hours this week too and shuttled kids to and fro and I deserve the ability to sit on the couch as much as you do." I often scratch my head and wonder why folks allow this to stand - yet everyone wants to Lean In at work. Lean yo ass in at home too. Stand up for equal in your house. Teach your sons how to cook and clean, because he may run up on the next surgeon who can't kowtow to his "needs" and keep a spotless house.
Lord knows I vocally push back on young black men I've come across with these antiquated notions of submissive wives and what not. No. It's not my job to wait on your ass hand and foot because it's very likely we'll both work. Which means - we BOTH have equal household responsibilities. And EQUAL child-rearing responsibilities. Bath time is handled by the parent not working late in my world. I would burn shit down if I got home and my H pawned kids off on me with some of the stuff I read on these boards.
Stand up for yourselves at home. Maybe if you pushed back there, these cavemen wouldn't force these notions on us at work.
"lean in at home" I love that!
well, that's one thing I'm doing right!
we don't subscribe to traditional roles - never have, never will.
I think I posted earlier in the thread about my ideas of feminism and that it's a grey, non-singular idea.
As I've read and caught up, one thing that has struck me - in this thread, the date paying thread - is that there is a stubborn insistence to constantly tell people they are wrong.
Not everyone does it, and I'm not saying all of you do. I see it here. I see it in real life.
Why is it so hard to stand back and listen, and simply acknowledge that someone else may have a different viewpoint? Is that really so bad?
Sometimes I think the domestic front is where we need to make the most progress. We keep expecting the professional world to treat men and women equally but then once we step over the threshold of our own households, it's still the 50s.
How can we expect genders to view themselves equally when in the places that form them, the places where they spend the most time, relax, and are most open, we continue to support and cultivate distinct gender roles?
Feminism is more than believing the genders are equal. It's treating them equally both actively and passively.
I want to put a pin in this because it's the thing that bothers me sometimes on the board. We spend an inordinate amount of time fighting pink tools, pink dresses, pink XYZ, but no one seems to tell their lazy ass husbands that they too can fold the clothes in the basket and put them away.
Everyone is too coy to stand up and say "PLAYA. I worked 40 hours this week too and shuttled kids to and fro and I deserve the ability to sit on the couch as much as you do." I often scratch my head and wonder why folks allow this to stand - yet everyone wants to Lean In at work. Lean yo ass in at home too. Stand up for equal in your house. Teach your sons how to cook and clean, because he may run up on the next surgeon who can't kowtow to his "needs" and keep a spotless house.
Lord knows I vocally push back on young black men I've come across with these antiquated notions of submissive wives and what not. No. It's not my job to wait on your ass hand and foot because it's very likely we'll both work. Which means - we BOTH have equal household responsibilities. And EQUAL child-rearing responsibilities. Bath time is handled by the parent not working late in my world. I would burn shit down if I got home and my H pawned kids off on me with some of the stuff I read on these boards.
Stand up for yourselves at home. Maybe if you pushed back there, these cavemen wouldn't force these notions on us at work.
I want to stand up and clap for like 30 minutes. This SAHM doesn't handle the whole house. And my DH would not expect me to.
I want to stand up and clap for like 30 minutes. This SAHM doesn't handle the whole house. And my DH would not expect me to.
Yup! Same here word for word.
Same, and I'm even a "submissive" wife. And I don't say that to derail, but when I push for equality at work, I for damn sure push for the same in my house.
I'm on the app so I can't see who initially posted it but summer quoted someone who said, among other things, that you can be oppressed and still oppress others.
I think that's where white women lose the connection. "We" acknowledge slavery as an evil, and we know that we lacked full power in that era. So we sort of just excuse it in our minds by saying that we were oppressed too so what could we do?
But of course you can be oppressed and still oppress others. Of course you can lack power and control and still make it worse for others. And I think white women now forget that fact. We think that bc we lacked power we are not responsible for what happened over centuries. And you can obviously debate how much power we lacked, how much we had, where the line was, and so on.
It's the epitome of white privilege in many ways. It's ignoring our role in history. We were active participants to a very large extent.
I would imagine it makes some people even more likely to oppress than others. People like to have people they feel above or better than, it can be a powerful motivator.