Speaking of “attachments to the self”
We get to read Alison Phipps’s “don’t hit me, hit those other white women” paper.
The actual title, lest we forget, is “White tears, white rage: Victimhood and (as) violence in mainstream feminism.” It’s a white woman sneering at white women, specifically for talking thinking campaigning as feminists.
Speaking out can attract political dividends: in earlier work (Phipps, 2016, 2020) I have theorised experience, especially of the traumatic kind, as a form of investment capital in what Ahmed (2012 [2004]: 45) calls the ‘affective economies’ of testimonial culture. Trauma can be disclosed or ventriloquised to generate further capital in the form of feeling, creating political gain.
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Most of the key figures in the viral iteration of #MeToo were Western, white and middle or upper-class (Tambe, 2018), reflecting the makeup of mainstream feminism and especially its media iterations…
In her 1995 book States of Injury, Wendy Brown argued that progressive movements tended to coalesce around ‘wounded identities’ that demanded recognition and protection, whether from hate speech, harassment or violence…
As I have argued elsewhere (Phipps, 2019), the ‘wounded attachments’ Brown attributed to feminism are likely to be those of middle-class whiteness, given the domination of both first and second waves of mainstream feminism by bourgeois white women (such as myself).
Such as herself, but she’s damn well going to sneer anyway, because that’s where the action is – piling up the reasons to hate Karen.
By ‘mainstream feminism’, I largely mean Anglo-American public feminism. This includes media feminism (and some forms of social media feminism), institutional feminism, corporate feminism and policy feminism. This is not a cohesive and unified movement, but it has clear directions and effects. Building on HoSang (2010), I call the modus operandi of this feminism ‘political whiteness’. This goes beyond the implicitly or explicitly ‘whites first’ orientation of most politics dominated by white people: it has a complex affective landscape involving attachments to the self (often the wounded self) and to power (often in the form of the state). These attachments produce a number of dynamics: narcissism, alertness to threat (which in white women’s case is often sexualised), and an accompanying need for control.
How dare women be alert to threat? How dare women feel a need to control threats?
But also…every single item in her extended sneer applies double or triple to those geniuses of non-white non-bourgeois feminism, [drum roll] trans women. Trans women are immune to Phipps’s sneers because they and they alone are True Victims who have Every Right to be alert to threats and flaunt their wounded identities and demand recognition and protection. The trans bit cancels the white bit, you see.
More later.
The analogy to the transgender is striking. I’m surprised that she apparently hasn’t addressed it in order to refute it.
If she’s trying to tie the gender critical stance to “whiteness “ and Western, middle/upper class status, she’ll fail on an ideological basis alone. A sex-based feminism would explain sex-based oppressions like rape, FGM, child marriage, forced birth, and similar problems suffered by non-western, non-white, poor and working class women. A gender-based feminism only addresses problems like “misgendering” and not being able to use the bathroom that “validates” you as a woman, which I don’t see as particular concerns of that non-privileged demographic.
And, of course, it is okay to harass and abuse and rape those women, because the bitches deserve it, right?
Which, of course, it does. Most of the feminists I know are concerned with these issues, and working to do something about them. The only feminists I know that don’t at least try to address those issues are the young wokefems, who talk about it all the time, but don’t actually give a damn. They’re just a tool to beat on “cis” women and “Karen”. In fact, one could say they are “weaponizing” the plight of those women who are not white, western, middle class women.
As someone who is, admittedly, white and middle class, this burns me. I wasn’t always middle class; I grew up poor, in squalor and filth. It was because of feminism that I was able to lift myself into the middle class. Most feminists I know (at least the older, less woke ones) wish the same for women everywhere – the right to enjoy reproductive freedom, freedom from assault, freedom from poverty, the right to own property and work and vote and drive…and to not have acid thrown in their faces, FGM, or any of the other nasties that Phipps can toss around casually without understanding or working to end.
I would rather throw my lot in with the GCF, the “old, white, middle-class” feminists, than with the likes of her. In fact, I have thrown my lot in with them, decades ago when I…and the rest of us “old, white, middle-class” feminists were the younger generation, and envisioned a future that was brighter for everyone – and were not about to let men take over our spaces once we won them through hard work and perseverance.
Not exactly the definition she should be reaching for, as many of these “feminisms” have been subject to capture by trans ideology. For example, social media seems to police gender critical feminism much more strictly than it does trans activism. If removing misogyny from public discourse was given a tenth of the attention that cries of “TRANSPHOBIA!!!” recieve, it would be progress. In academic institutions, gender ideology is comfortably ensconced in tenured positions, trying to silence gender critical voices. How many UK corporations and public institutions have signed on to be Stonewall Diversity Champions? The trans position might be a minority one, but it is not the underdog Phipps purports it to be.
…Is she claiming that #metoo was about political gain?? Someone tell me I can’t be right in this, please!
Holms, while I’m a bit confused on her use of ‘ventriloquised’, assuming that she meant letting others speak on behalf of themselves, and given that #metoo was speaking on behalf of all victims then yes, she was doing exactly that. She probably thinks that #metoo was all about white women actors raising their profiles and getting better roles.
Yes she is, while also putting up a thin veil in case anyone takes exception to her revolting hit-them-not-me claims. She said can, she didn’t say does.
Overlapped with AoS, sorry.
Great minds and all that.
Most of the key figures in the viral iteration of #MeToo were Western, white and middle or upper-class
So? Ever think that they were not the only ones concerned, but perhaps better placed than many other women to speak out with a bit less risk to themselves? Not that Western, white, middle- and upper-class women were the only ones benefited; women of other cultures, colors, and classes are subjected to sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and male sexual predation too. It’s laughable to think otherwise.
@ iknklast #2:
I refuse to accept that the feminism I grew up with in th ’60’s and ’70’s was “merely” “Western, white” feminism. That’s not the history I remember. I think the issues addressed in Second Wave feminism are common to women all around the world. Women and girls are physically, culturally, economically oppressed almost everywhere, and have been oppressed systematically for almost all of human history. It’s not imperialism or colonialism to work for freedoms that benefit all women, wherever they can be implemented. Those with a bit more liberty of action worked to benefit all women, including (and especially) women who had little or no freedom to act on their own behalf.