Stale as last century’s bread
Katie Edwards in the Independent:
Over 30 years ago now, Judith Butler wrote the gender studies classic Gender Trouble. Today, Butler expounded on those ideas in an interview with The Guardian.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her progressive approach over the decades, Butler suggested that we should rethink the category of “woman”.
Progressive? What’s progressive about her “approach”? What’s progressive about suggesting that we should rethink the category of “woman”? Especially when what she means by that is “to include men”?
Butler advocates for trans women and their inclusion in the sisterhood.
Which is ridiculous at best, because trans women are men.
Although the “sisterhood” seems to have become something of an exclusive members’ club. Feminism, or more accurately, white feminism, has gone a bit Mean Girls – in the worst possible way.
More accurately how? Does she think it’s only white feminists who understand that only women are women? Because that would be awfully racist. And as for who is being mean…
White feminism already has a bad rep for being exclusive, divisive, and for deflecting attention away from its more insidious attitudes by targeting vulnerable groups for criticism.
She says, repeating and amplifying the stupid epithet, doing her bit to solidify the “bad rep” that is such a handy stick for misogynists to beat feminism with.
Whenever I write something critical of whiteness, I receive derisive responses from other white women, accusing me of self-flagellation.
No, I don’t think she’s flagellating herself, I think she’s flagellating other feminist women because misogyny has never gone out of style and she wants to be one of the popular kids. Talking about Karens and white feminists and terfs is the way to suck up to the bullies.
We’re all guilty of it – even if we’re trying really, really hard, and we’ve had horrible things happen to us in our lives, so we’re victims too, and we definitely think of ourselves as allies, and we’re actually very nice people and terribly misunderstood, so please don’t call us Terfs or racists or Karens because you’re hurting our fragile little white-woman feelings. Yup. We’ve heard it all before. Ad nauseam.
I’ve read this column before ad nauseam.
Oof, that’s a lot of self-hatred there. Why has hating women and white people become so commonplace? And what good is it doing anybody?
My son’s professor told him Friday that the ideas of “white fragility” and “white privilege” have no place in his classroom. My son was cheered, because he was ready for his seminar class to be another semester of being berated for accidents of birth. The professor even pronounced DeBois’ name correctly (it’s de boys, not duh bwah).
It almost makes me think we could start to see a slow turnaround of the ship of public discourse. Some people actually want to get things done instead of having flagellation parades.
Using the term “White Feminism” to mean that of excluding males is a pretty good propaganda trick. It implies a sort of “bake sale feminism” that is out of touch with equality, as exemplified by Meryl Streep replying we’re all from Africa to the question of why there weren’t any black characters in the movie Suffragettes. It signifies a clueless, selfish feminism that is centered on wine-soaked study groups. No, not for me, she says. My feminism will be intersectional, not only for women of color but all women, even the male ones. Or it will be bullshit. Ms. Edwards can’t be shamed into self-crit, she’s already passed the finish line on that one. She’s made her vow to DO BETTER. And she knows that because of it, the threats against white terfs and karens don’t apply for her so she can afford to tell them to man up. Because she supports that man=woman.
Is it automatically progressive to rethink any other words? Cat, house, beauty, fast? No, it isn’t. How about man? No, somehow, that one too is under no pressure to be rethought.
Weird, just woman.
If any form of feminism qualifies as “white” (privileged, self-absorbed, Euro-centric) it would be the form which replaces sex with gender. Women’s sexual oppression involves everything related to childbearing, child rearing, menstruation, coitus, and being physically weaker than men. This would include aborting female fetuses, female infanticide, child marriage, female genital mutilation, menstruation huts, rape, restricting abortion, and all the laws and customs related to controlling the above sex-linked resources.
The forms of oppression specifically related only to gender — having an internal sense that you’re a woman — consist of misgendering, and not being able to access sex-exclusive women’s spaces.
The less-privileged, less-self-absorbed, less-Euro-centric, less -white category is that first one.
No. Don’t call us that because it’s inaccurate and/or contradicts the values of feminism.
Looks at picture of Katie Edwards, looks at picture of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie…
White feminism, riiight.
Sastra, your points, though they would just bounce off the TRAs, are sound. I might go a step further and say that trans women are men colonializing womanhood. Not only that, they are appropriating gay culture to do it.
This sort of reversal seems like standard operating procedure for the critical social justice movement as a whole. They adopt the role of opposing [bad thing] while actually embodying/engaging in [bad thing], which they justify by redefining terms such that “[bad thing]” doesn’t refer to the what they do. This redefinition “[bad thing]” is portrayed as virtuous per se, rather than a sneaky persuasive definition, and rejecting it is taken as evidence that one is [bad thing].
Can’t compete against women, because that’s obviously unfair? Can’t win awards or occupy positions or access services reserved for women? The solution is simple! Just change the meanings of words, and they’ll mean something different. Now it’s women who are oppressive bigots, and keeping you from doing all those things is oppressive bigotry.
Just dumb virtue signaling to tell the reader that they’re one of the “good ones” or “don’t hit me I said the right words”.
It could be…but I suspect it is also a huge hatred of other white women. I imagine Katie subscribes to the idea of “multiracial whiteness” so that she is not white (therefore not Karen) while Adichie, though not white, is white in her behaviors, and therefore white. Or maybe she’s jealous that Adicihie is a better writer?
I suspect any self-hatred they feel (and I think they do, but I think they revel in it because it reflects their superiority to recognize they are white and hate themselves for it) is stirred in with a heavy helping of narcissism. She needs to be noticed, and noticed in the ‘right’ way by the ‘right’ people.
It’s the same kind of self-hate in Christianity’s most fundamentalist incarnations. The believer hates himself for being a sinful mortal unworthy of God’s grace, and yet it is that self-loathing which is represents contrition, repentance, and salvation. To recognize oneself as deserving of eternal punishment but spared by the mercy of the Almighty is the ultimate apotheosis of self-effacing narcissism, for how special does it mark one that God’s love brings infinite respite?
In recognizing herself as white and therefore culpably complicit in incalculable cruelty, Katie transcends her whiteness to become one of the elect. She is redeemed, washed in the Blood of the Lamb, elevated above the great unwashed masses of whites who remain tapped in benighted bigotry.
*sigh*
Sometimes, I wish it weren’t so obviously a (quasi)religious phenomenon. Then I’d be more optimistic about changing people’s minds.