Turquoise Traipsing: Feminists

extrafunsized:

melissikins:

corigami:

melissikins:

corigami:

I have a short fuse today and I am sure I will get flack for this however:

From observing tumblr and real life conversations recently, feminists are disjointed along these lines. 

White feminist issues:

Affordable and safe reproductive health/access. 

Body hair and body policing. 

Deconstructing slut shaming and valuing sex positivity. 

Marriage equality and queerness as part of institutionalization.  

Reclaiming terms/language: bitch, whore, slut, cunt, etc…

Anti-corporatism. 

Allyism. 

People of Color/Mixed feminist issues:

Access to everything, deconstructing white privilege and resulting oppression.

Social justice/Solidarity with other communities—queer, trans, immigrants, etc. 

Having our bodies allowed agency in the conversation of sexuality and sexualization. 

Intersectionality of class, race, gender, ethnicity, ability, age, spirituality, sexuality. 

Maintaining and honoring cultural traditions/values and creating new ones. 

I’m not advocating these lines should exist or there isn’t cross over but this is what appears in my life and on my dash 24/7 and its getting exhausting. Not offering a solution just an observation. It’s hard to feel like a fourth wave is coming when these separations still exist. Thoughts? I will add more to this later when I am not overwhelmed with things on my plate. 

This is absolutely true. Like an social movement, there will always be divergences and separations within feminism. To some extent this is a good thing as dialogue and diversity of experience help us work through issues and have better informed opinions. But this racial divide is really problematic.

The problem, I think, is that a lot of white feminists are aware that there is a disconnect here, and are aware of white privilege, but are not really changing the power structures within the feminist movement. I don’t think a fourth wave is possible until we critique and dismantle power structures within our own activist spaces. I think the fourth wave will be revolutionary instead of reformist and that this is a fundamental piece of moving in that direction.

I think this is an important post and I am glad you wrote it.

Thank you! I was so worried that all I would hear is a universal “stop complaining and be grateful” response back.  What I do think is interesting is the near silence by white feminist in bringing this up…just putting that out there. I do think there is the issue of how we question feminism in the same where we should always question all paradigms and pedagogies, whether or not this division is useful or important, and if we want to bring these sides into dialogue how that is done without making POC/Mixed folks the educators or the essentialized voice. I lean towards the ethnocentric and thing community for and by that community however if we are talking about access we need to have white folks in solidarity with our issues if only to use their privilege until we gain our own ability to institutionalize our needs. Although just looking at the sentence makes me disagree with myself and think this division reflects how little we need white feminists in a POC/Mixed movement of change and feminism. 

Let’s keep this going!

Yeah, the lack of response from white women on your post is disheartening to me, as well. I mean, I am white, but I am really only seeing WOC engaging with you on this. And I have, like, 60 followers so it’s not like I’m able to signal boost this competently. :/

This is part of the problem, yes? I understand that when you are an activist and you are part of a dominant group that you don’t want to overstep boundaries. I certainly do not want to speak for POC or in any way imply that I know what their lived experiences are like. But this leads to a timidity that often reads to me as a justification for ignoring POC within the movement. Like, I’ve heard white women talk about how they don’t want to overstep…which is why they never, ever analyze race or engage with POC. And that is not cool. I mean, this work is out there! POC write, they organize, they advocate for themselves (like you are doing right now!). We are the ones not listening. It’s not your job to drop your work into our privileged laps, its our job to seek your work out.

Feminism needs to be redefined, I think. Right now it’s like blanket term - feminism, which is basically just white feminist issues. POC’s issues and concerns get shoved to the margins and treated like ‘special interests.’ Making these white feminist issues the default just reproduces the existing racialized power dynamics.

I think I envision a fourth wave as a collaborative thing across communities, one where diversity and inclusion is actively sought after and developed instead of just being paid lip service to. I would like to see feminists exploring the wide range of feminisms instead of trying to pin down what ‘real’ feminism is - an exercise, I think, that almost always ends up with privileged members of the community minimizing the experiences of marginalized members of the community.

i agree with all of this - except - i’m a little through with considering body image issues as solely the realm of white feminism. I wish this was an issue more discussed by feminists of color.

(Source: tierracita, via kiddotrue)