Pretty wild indeed
So naturally I had to look it up.
Oh yeah?
(Let me guess. They’re all Karens. Do I win?)
Subtitle: A Counterhistory of Feminism with Kyla Schuller; author journalist Anne Helen Petersen.
I spent the first two decades of my conscious life figuring out how to confidently declare my feminism. I’ve spent the next (nearly) two decades of my life trying to figure out how to leave white feminism behind. That doesn’t mean that I’m trying not to be white and trying not to be a feminist: it means that I’m trying to leave behind the priorities of “white feminism” as a posture, an ideology, a way of thinking of what we should be fighting for and who should be leading the fight.
But why do you call it white feminism? Why do you put scare quotes on it if you take it seriously? Why do you take it seriously?
Some feminist women are, of course, more privileged than other feminist women. There are all kinds of ways people can be more privileged, and they overlap each other, so calling it “white feminism” is at the very least simplistic and unhelpful. Class, money, education, looks, height, weight, age, occupation, intelligence, talent, strength, skills – all those and more confer or withhold privilege. It doesn’t all boil down to “white,” and by the way why is it white feminism specifically? What about white Men’s Rights Activism? What about white Trumpism? Why is it feminism that’s singled out for the disdainful “white” label?
Which is why I find Kyla Schuller’s new book, The Trouble with White Women, so valuable. She’s highlighting the fundamental brokenness of white feminism, in part by showing just how long feminists of color have been doing this work…
What work? The work of blaming Karens for everything?
Just in case you were wondering (I was) – Kyla Schuller:
So what is the trouble with the karens?
I landed on the title The Trouble with White Women (after some hesitation, tbh) because I like its double register. There’s the trouble white women pose, but also the trouble white women face. The trouble they pose is in creating a feminism that understands gender to be the primary, sometimes even the singular, power hierarchy they contest. The idea that feminism is about gender equality may initially seem a no-brainer… until you start to wonder about what happens to other systemic injustices. Where do structural racism, wild wealth disparity, and climate collapse fit within this framing?
Good question! Also where does pastry fit within the framing of coal mining? Where does weather fit within the framework of Eine Kleine Nacthmusik? Where does plankton fit within the framework of Instagram?
Yes, feminism is about women. What the fuck else would it be about? Women are allowed to be a whole entire subject all on their own just like everyone else. Is Schuller asking these stupid questions of BLM or Stonewall? Of course not, but women aren’t allowed to have their own movement for equality, women have to share everything, even womanhood.
Meanwhile, well-off white women are lured by the rights and opportunities their brothers, fathers, and perhaps boyfriends or husbands possess. The men of their social world set their standard, and they confuse attaining those privileges as true equality.
But that’s about money, not specifically whiteness. The two are of course linked because of the long history of racism aka white supremacy, but linked is not identical.
This seems to be all there is to her, frankly. She mashes together “white” with all the other kinds of privilege and then adds “women” so that she can join the chorus of people yelling at “Karens.” It’s crude and stupid and intensely anti-feminist.
And then we get to the “blame TERFs” part.
In your chapter on transfeminism, you write that “double essentialisms characterize the TERF position: biological essentialism and experience essentialism. The former assumes that women have a common embodiment and the latter that women’s experiences of those bodies are likewise shared. Both positions are two sides of the same white feminist coin.” Can you unpack that more? And, if you’re up for it, what can the history of TERFism tell us about why it’s gained such a foothold in the UK in particular right now?
To put it bluntly, TERFs, or trans-exclusionary radical feminists, are a type of white feminist. It’s not immediately obvious, because the TERF position that “sex is real” and that trans people violate the basic laws of nature, seems at first to have nothing to do with race or racism.
That’s not the TERF position, but anyway.
It seems to be straightforward biological essentialism —that is, the idea that biology is destiny. And TERFs are biological essentialists! But that position is saturated by the history of racism and race science. Going back to my academic work, their belief that sex is real refuses the extent to which the absolute male/female binary itself was invented by race science over the decades. But bodies and lives belie the binary. This, by the way, will likely be the topic of my next general audience book — Sex is Not Real: The Racist History of the Male/Female Binary.
So there was no male/female binary (“absolute” or otherwise) before 19th century race science? Then how were people? Who made them? How did they do it?
TERF thinking contains another essentialism, too. Experience essentialism, which is probably a term I’m making up, identifies the fantasy that there is a universal Woman. This fantasy says Woman has the same girlhood, a similar sexuality, a common experience of menstruation, and illness, and partnerships, and family. Trans women, TERFs say, can’t be women because they weren’t raised with this universal experience of Woman. But Woman is a white fantasy!
No that’s not what we say, and no women are not a white fantasy.
It’s embarrassing to read this kind of thing.
Oh, surely someone has posted a picture of plankton on Instagram! If not, I must get on there, make an account, and do it immediately. Plankton is important, and deserves to be noticed.
As for the book, the article, the conversation – sheer bullshit. There is no evidence that other cultures prior to white Enlightenment racists had no concept of sex. They have words for the sexes; many of them have gendered languages. They were not stupid, and they knew the difference between men and women. And many cultures used that to oppress women, to keep them “in their place”, to maintain male control of and access to female bodies.
And poor women have benefited immensely from feminism. I know; I was one. It was like a breath of fresh air washing over me as I hid behind my bed to read, surrounded by a house filled with squalor and filth and vibrating with hate. I saw the way out. They made it possible, the “white” feminists. Also all other feminists. A vibrant group of women who worked hard for ALL women (except, of course, those that are men).
And, of course, the head tilt.
No, if you’re going to bring in transgender issues you don’t get to conflate “sex” and “gender” like that. Feminism is about sex equality because it starts out with women being oppressed by men on the basis of their sex. Resources like reproduction, inheritance, intercourse, and labor are exploited and controlled by the physically stronger sex.
It’s a coherent story in which “gender” means the socially created limitations imposed on women. It’s also apparently what you’re calling “white women feminism.” It involves such “privileged” concerns as rape, child marriage, FGM, abortion, domestic violence, prostitution, and menstrual taboos. As far as I can tell, the non-white non-sex based feminism is good for bringing in concerns like misgendering, pride for feminist choices like sex work, and that internal knowing of whether you’re a man or woman based on how comfortable you feel with what society is telling you about yourself. No privilege there.
I understand that sometimes “gender” means “sex.” But separating them in order to replace “sex” with “gender” later on is cheating.
Isn’t the head tilt a Karen head tilt? Uh oh.
Even ignoring the copious evidence that women of colour are and always have been an integral part of feminist movements, the terminally online should be well aware that Lipstick Alley (a forum site for Black women) is the ‘terfiest’ place on the public internet.
Is there sexual and asexual digestion? Or sexual and asexual breathing? Or do those terms only refer to reproduction? And therefore sex exists and exists for a specific purpose and that many important things arise from out of that.
… and it only just now occurred to me (I’m sure others have pointed it out) that the many flavors of sexual attraction listed by the “woke” crowd include “asexual”, meaning something totally unrelated to “asexual reproduction”.
Women who are assigned color at birth may espouse white feminist ideas, but doing so is choosing to stop being women of color. White women like Kyla Schuller get to say so.
It’s like how people who were assigned poor at birth may espouse bourgeois values, and thus become anti-proletarian.
/s
Sarcasm aside, I see a parallel between the observation that white women have taken the fore in feminism and the observation that men took (once upon a time, perhaps; I’m not sure this is true any longer) the fore in class struggle.
As the fashionable say, we all exist at the intersection of a range of identities and allegiances. We may be more privileged in one way and less privileged in another. A white woman may be less privileged than a man because she’s a woman, and more privileged than a Black woman because she’s white. A poor man may be more privileged than a poor woman because he’s a man, and less privileged than a rich man because he’s poor. This relative power makes it entirely predictable that white women would be more able to take a leading role in feminism, and men would be more able to take a leading role in class struggle. I don’t find that necessarily makes the their contribution suspect.
Does this make a push towards greater equality of opportunity and social welfare “male class struggle” if it is expressed by a man?
I expect it does, for some. Bernie Bros must be like the Karens of the class struggle.
I guess the equivalent to the trans-woman telling actual women they’re doing feminism wrong would be the young trotskyist trust fund baby telling the union organizers how corrupt they are from the safety of his lifetime stipend.
In reference to the author asserting that male/female is a product of “race science”, K*tie H*erzog quoted that part and pointed out that unknown volume of the recent past, the Book of Genesis.
This kind of thing was raised against the Suffragettes right from the beginning: a “class problem” of wealthy white women doing things – *any* things, it doesn’t matter what – and being a “problem” somehow because of Who They Were. Not sticking to approved “Charidee!” work, my dears? Oh no! Women running wild!
This ignores the very reason that wealthy white women were doing most of that work; because working class women were busy *working*. A 12-hour shift at the factory, plus all the work when they got home, does not leave much time for organising. Nor does the life of a maid-of-all-work. Some of those women did it anyway; many lost jobs and families. They were dismissed as “not knowing their place”. Sound familiar?
Those “Ladies of Leisure” were the only ones who had the time, and often the connections, to make a real difference; a difference which then began to benefit *all* women, over time, no matter what work they were doing. They also worked together with working class women, helping them with things they couldn’t access due to class background and circumstances – legal issues, things that required a high level of literacy. etc., while the working class lassies told them how the world works for women like them. It wasn’t perfect, there was a fair bit of racism alongside, but it was a path to a better world.
These women were working together to benefit every woman; yes, even the ones they didn’t understand or like. Even those who were actively working against them.
[Yes, this is a massive simplification, and in a British, as opposed to American, context, but the argument remains valid]
All those old insults, slights, and belittlements are being recycled yet again. How dare any white woman thing she can do things?! How dare she think she can make any kind of difference?! She should be working on literally *anything* else! What if all women, of whatever background, really get hold of the idea that they aren’t just accessories for doodz?!
There are still issues of clueless middle-class women not understanding issues which primarily affect those of other heritages and backgrounds – each community has issues and solutions which are hard for outsiders to understand – but how much of this attack on the dreaded “Karen” is simply a rehash of all the old bitterness and cruelty towards women focusing on *anything other than men*?
How much of this demand to be the Eternal Mother and Nursey for the whole world is the same old bullshit? It just seems that this time, there are even more things to beat women with; why haven’t you solved Climate Change by yourself?! Why haven’t you coddled every single Failed Male to prevent his violence? That’s all womens’ fault! How dare you think you matter?!
Sure, there are still issues with racism in places – although I might note that the doodz aren’t doing too well on that front really – but the main problem seems to be the same old bullshit that our Great-Grandmothers were fighting; the very idea that women matter at all.
How dare we notice that women share experiences across backgrounds?
How dare we say that even a gilded cage is still a cage?
How dare we refuse to be the mirrors reflecting back the image of men at twice their natural size?
How dare we clearly note that males are not female?
How dare we draw boundaries, to say “NO!” to men?
How dare we recognise that women are fully human, not just an idea rattling around in some dood’s otherwise-empty head? Not a costume for a fetish, not a porn accessory, not smiling angels or dancing devils to coddle men or lead them astray, not an “Identitay” to be claimed.
Just people.
That cannot be allowed. Women cannot be permitted to be fully human. We are not permitted to reject the roles that men have forced upon us over the centuries, that designation of less-then-man because of our biology – that thing we cannot identify out of, however much we might like to do so.
And so we keep fighting, over and over again, for the recognition of our basic humanity
For the basic humanity of ALL WOMEN to be recognised – even the women we don’t like, even the women actively working against us.
[…] a comment by cluecat on Pretty wild […]
That was brilliant, cluecat. Thank you!
Perhaps it’s only in the New American Revised Standard Version that it’s translated as “and male and female Created He them.” No? I think we need some help here trying to find out how pre-Enlightenment feminine people were referred to. What noun described their sex? I’m at a loss.
I think we also need to alert Schuller to this particular racist screed:
https://www.news-medical.net/life-sciences/Sex-Specific-Protein-Expression.aspx
Virtual applause for cluecat.