So I’ve been thinking — hasn’t everybody this week? — about the intersection of race and sex and the broader feminist movement. As I mentioned on Monday, a debate over the merits of Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism has metastasized into a painful and often bewildering discussion about the ways in which white feminists unintentionally marginalize the voices of women of color. I’ve linked to some of the posts on the subject; from more recent posts, here’s Brownfemipower’s, and here’s Sylvia’s.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the intersection of race, class, and gender in American history and contemporary society. Though it doesn’t always show, I’ve read a book or three on the subject and sat through, gosh, dozens of seminars and symposia. I’m old enough to have read the first edition of This Bridge Called my Back not long after it initially appeared.
But I’ll admit that for most of my life as a pro-feminist man, I’ve worried that too great a focus on the Great Crime of racial oppression in this country meant a marginalization of what I grew up believing was the Even Greater Crime of the exploitation of women. My mother was a huge Shirley Chisholm fan, and supported the first black congresswoman’s famous 1972 campaign for the Democratic nomination. Chisholm, who died in 2005, was often asked whether she considered her sex or her race to be the greater obstacle to her success. She was unequivocal in her response, quoted from the New York Times obit:
“I’ve always met more discrimination being a woman than being black,” she told The Associated Press in December 1982, shortly before she left Washington to teach at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. “When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.”
Bold emphasis mine. I remember reading the original quote from Chisholm in the early 1980s; I think my mother may have brought it to my attention. I can’t tell you how formative Chisholm’s frank discussion of the race/sex dynamic was for me. Though I ought to have known better than to allow one remarkable black woman’s words to form my entire world view on which “ism” constituted the greater oppression, I have to say that for the last quarter century, whenever the discussion of the racism/sexism dynamic comes up, I immediately quote the lines above.
Anecdotally, I will say that most of my female students of color nod their heads vigorously when I share — as I almost always do — the Shirley Chisholm story. Most of my students today were born more than a decade after Shirley ran for president, and yet their experience of both racism and sexism has left many of them convinced that while both have tremendous power to hurt, the latter has served as the far greater impediment to their full acceptance as human beings. Those who think Shirley Chisholm is describing a different era than our own (an era where Stokely Carmichael could say that the “proper position for a woman in the movement is prone”) ought to come and listen to the stories told by the young women of color I have in my classes.
I recognize that to be doubly or even triply-oppressed is difficult. On campus, all of our student groups meet at the same time each week: Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon. An aspiring white feminist will have less trouble choosing how to spend that hour; since her sex is the only source of her marginalization, she’s fairly likely to choose a women’s group. A young woman of color may experience more conflict: what to do when the Black Students Association or MEChA meets at exactly the same time as a feminist forum? The sense I’ve gotten is that many of my young women of color feel at times that they are being forced to choose between two parts of themselves, and that hurts. Their “brown brothers” are oppressed for their brownness, not their maleness; their “white sisters” are held back for their sex, not their whiteness. When you’ve got one single hour per week to spend with one single group, when you’ve got just one dollar to give to your club of choice, choosing between brothers and sisters is hard.
And yes, I know that well-meaning white feminists can be unconsciously racist. I can’t tell you how often I’ve had a young white woman in my classes make disparaging remarks about Latino machismo, for example. My Latina students frequently squirm; they recognize much truth in what their white classmate is saying, but they feel protective and defensive about their brothers, their fathers, their heritage. Too often, white feminists overtly or obliquely ask women of color to turn their backs on what white feminists assume is a culture so steeped in misogyny that it cannot possibly be redeemed.
What I’ve realized from the whole kerfuffle over Jessica’s book is that I continue to let my views on the race/sex/class intersection be formed almost entirely by the “Shirley Chisholm analysis.” I think Chisholm was telling the truth about her own experience, and I think that her experience is still that of the majority of young women of color in contemporary American society. 1972 and 2007 are far less different than some folks would have you believe. But where I’ve gone off track is in my insistence that we keep the focus of our justice work more narrowly focused on gender oppression, assuming that in the end, all women regardless of race or class or sexual identity or physical ability are marginalized and mistreated in more or less the same way. After more than twenty years of reading (and teaching) Anzaldua and Lorde and hooks and Moraga, I ought to know better.
Note: Comments that are either overtly racist or overtly anti-feminist will be deleted.
I don’t really know how to deal with the intersection of race and gender. For instance, as an extreme example, take FGM. Now, I say that is a sexist practice, and I couldn’t find a lot of people to disagree with me. BUT, I could get a lot of minimization or marginalization of that statement. A possible MRA argument is that male circumscion is the same (minimization), but someone else, possibly liberal, could say that that is a racist statement because I’m degenerating that culture. Now, I’ve heard plenty of people from various cultures that practice FGM that say, “No, that is not inheirant to the culture”, and ergo is perfectly acceptable to be condemned without degenerating that culture. But, who am I to believe? That it ISN’T connected to the culture, and acceptable under multi-culturalism to condemn, or that it IS, and then I should except the inheirant sexism?
I don’t wish to marginalize people because of race, and I try to do my damnest to be aware of my own priveleges. BUT, I also don’t feel like giving another person a pass because it’s “their culture”. Is there anyway to pick and choose? What if it is, in fact inheirant to the culture? Should I condemn the culture?
I mean, doesn’t it make me a hypocrite if I condemn my own culture for stuff but give other cultures a pass? I know there is some merit to the whole “fix your own house” first logic, but if all you have is wood rot in your house, and you’re neighbor’s house is burning, shouldn’t you help them first?
Could someone help me out with this?
but someone else, possibly liberal, could say that that is a racist statement because I’m degenerating that culture. Now, I’ve heard plenty of people from various cultures that practice FGM that say, “No, that is not inheirant to the culture”, and ergo is perfectly acceptable to be condemned without degenerating that culture. But, who am I to believe?
Uh, seriously? You should believe the feminist from the culture under discussion over the self-appointed expertise of the white liberal from your own culture. You know, listen to the person who knows what she’s talking about. Even if she’s not white!
Also, it doesn’t make any fucking difference if a practice is inherent to a culture IF the women in that culture or the feminists in that culture OR a small minority of feminists in that culture OR ONE SINGLE WOMAN in that culture does not want it inflicted on her. If you wanted to argue otherwise, you would have to argue there is society and culture on the one hand, and women on the other: i.e. that women are not human. I don’t think you want to argue that.
Here, I’m with sophonisba. Ultimately, where I get flak from both my multiculti and conservative friends is that I do believe (rooted in my faith) that the right of the individual to exercise his or her own agency trumps the right of the community to enforce complance with that community’s social norms. Of course, this kind of individualism gets criticised as a product of the Western Enlightenment, but the pain and horror young girls who undergo FGM endure is not a fiction of a white racist’s imagination. It’s real, it’s visceral, and to engage in such a practice — for whatever reason — is indefensible. A lot of cruelty gets covered up by “tradition” and the “but it’s our culture” defense.
Still, most of what we’re talking about isn’t as extreme as FGM. It’s more nuanced, more complex; what one outsider sees as oppressive (such as the hijab) may be experienced as genuinely liberating. No girl could enjoy a clitoridectomy and infibulation; women can and do enjoy ritual self-covering. We have to make some tough distinctions…
Hugo, I think this is a very gracious post. You have caught a lot of flak in your time from all corners of the blogosphere, and I just wanted to say that I think you are doing a good job of forcing your mind to be an ever-opening one.
THis whole thing this week about FFF still has me thinking, and I am not going to comment until I have read it (it’s COMING in the MAIL). There are Oh-so-many parallels between the way males are treated int he Feminist blogs, and whites are treated in the POC blogs; there is a lot to learn from that. I would like to see this all raise the consciousness of EVERYONE! YES, we need to listen to our sisters. YES we need to stop frustrating one another. YES, we should avoid blanket statements, even the ones that start “Men”. (THat idea isn’t going to make me popular, but I think it is true.)
oh dear. i started reading this post, and was like, “no, hugo, don’t do it! don’t participate in the Oppression Olympics!!” because really, we can talk until we’re blue in the face about which group faces The Worst Opression Ever, but it’s useless because in a fundamental way they’re all the same. they manifest themselves in vastly different ways, but they’re inextricable from one another. racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism, ableism: all threads in the same nasty blanket.
so i *hate* how we get sidetracked by the “but really, when you get right down to it, oppression X hurts more than oppression Y” arguments. you’re right to point out at the end of your post that to narrowly focus on any one oppression in one’s teaching and activism is at best reductive and at worst divisive and unproductive. i’d take it a step further and say that staking any claims as far as the scale of severity and impact of oppression is a mistake too.
to narrowly focus on any one oppression in one’s teaching and activism is at best reductive and at worst divisive and unproductive.
ok, i just said that, but i realize when put that way it sounds fairly impractical. of course we have to focus on certain things at certain times - it would be impossible and immobilizing not to! but i just meant that the broader, connectedness context needs to be considered a lot more often than it is. i think much more headway could be made if we more often considered the ways that different kinds of oppression work together and reinforce one another.
I do believe that the right of the individual to exercise his or her own agency trumps the right of the community to enforce complance with that community’s social norms.
And this is probably one of the places where you and I disagree; I think it depends critically on what you mean by “enforce.” I think that saying, “You have to do this to be part of our comunity” is entirely legitimate. I think that even though I know in my bones that being outcast is bad beyond belief. (There’s nothing like having someone who’s always been a good friend refuse even to have you park in his driveway while you talk to make the point that you are an outcast.)
Sam, I agree with you more than I disagree. Those of us whose views on certain issues are at odds with the mainstream of cour community have to be willing to leave sometimes. I walked away from the Mennonites over exactly this issue.
Kate, this post is less a defense of comparative oppressions than it is a mea culpa for the way in which my commitment to feminism sometimes trumps my other justice commitments.
I wrote about the suffering Olympics the same week I wrote about Shirley Chisholm. Here’s that post:
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2005/01/05/musing-on-men-the-suffering-olympics-and-accountability/
I like this, Hugo. I’d never read that quote by Shirley Chisholm before.
kate.d:
I think we wouldn’t get “sidetracked” (and I’m not trying to be rude here, but keep in mind, it’s only “getting sidetracked” from your point of view) if we’d quit using the pie model for this stuff. You know–there’s only one Pie of Rights, it only has so many slices, and we must stay vigilant to make make sure no one’s hogging it. Now Hugo has good examples of times the pie model applies, i.e. which workshop do you attend if the feminist one and the Latin@ students one are scheduled at the same time? Down at that level, it’s true: Sometimes you have to prioritize one aspect over another.
At the macro level, however, I don’t think that’s true. And even if it is, I think the harm comes when white feminists have too much say in setting the agenda. I’m probably not putting this well, but some issues are just qualitatively different for women of color, and note that (hey, I really didn’t put this well!) “different” implies “different from,” that is, “different from the norm, the usual, the default–which is white feminists.” This is an increasingly silly view in a country like the U.S. and it’s a really myopic view to apply to the rest of the world.
The “oppression olympics,” isn’t. It isn’t an issue of which oppression is worse or which one’s “winning.” To me it’s an issue of whether we want to advance the rights of women, all women, or just the white ones. If we mean all women, we need to start acting like it. That means in practice that when a woman of color says, “Hey, I’m trying to solve this problem; can you help?” we don’t say, “Sorry, can’t afford to get sidetracked right now.”
Speaking as always through the lens of my own experience, the challenge of working across boundaries and across forms of oppression is complicated and neverending, partly, as kate points, because oppression is systemic - sexism is mixed up with heterosexism is mixed up with racism is mixed up with classism is mixed up with . . . but each of us experiences a different aspect of oppression. We tend to see the form from which we suffer most as most pressing. In my community, gay men argue that heterosexism is most in need of immediate work - many lesbian women argue that working on sexism is most needed.
Right now, the Utah Pride center is staffed almost entirely by women - focusing on women’s issues. Gay men are becoming increasingly scarce. A few years ago, the staff was almost entirely male and women were few and far between. Most women seem to experience far more oppression as women than whatever else they may be - in the case of the lesbian women I know, they experience far more oppression as women than as lesbians; focusing on that oppression these women find it difficult to find common cause with gay men who are focused on issues of sexual orientation.
As I read the Shirley Chisholm quote I nodded in recognition. Men do not easily or willingly surrender male privilege, even when the male who holds it gay or black or poor. Until we begin to see the connections between the various forms of oppression it’s difficult to cross the boundaries.
Once I grasped the connection between sexism and heterosexism it was easy for me to work on both issues. I believe at core, they’re about maintaining gender roles (a real man is never penetrated, only women are penetrated).
part two - I saw something shiny and got distracted. Sorry
Sexism asserts that men are better than women. Racism is about white being better than black. Ageism is about young being better than old - and so forth.
All forms of oppression are about setting dualisms in which one group is preferred and another group is non-preferred. The systemic outcome of various forms of oppression is keeping various groups divided from one another. If we’re arguing about being a woman is more oppressive than being black than being gay then we don’t formulate a central critique of the system of oppression which ultimately denies the full humanity of non-preferred (or targeted) groups. Thus, I become my sexual orientation while my straight brother does not; my african-american friend must constantly fight to prove she’s more than her skin color. Women must prove they are more than their gender. A person’s full humanity is denied and he/she is defined solely by a single characteristic.
A member of an targeted group must prove they are “good” beyond their identifying characteristic; there’s a reason so many gay men try to pass as straight. There’s a reason African-Americans talk about the value of being lighter skinned. If you can hide your identifying trait, you are defined by it. Attacks on same sex marriage usually include pot shots at gay men’s supposed lack of monogamy - notice that no one denies heterosexuals the right to marry based on a past history of non-monogamy.
The dance is one of proving that you are “better” than the preferred group to earn the same treatment as a member of the preferred group. It’s part of the psychological dynamic of oppression.
The overarching critique we need to make is the critique which rejects oppression’s basic premise - that some characteristic or trait makes you less than fully human.
In a lot of ways I relate a lot better with radical women of colour activists like BFP than most people on the feminist blogosphere because as an anarchist who’s been in “black bloc” at a few protests, I’ve dealt with a lot of the stuff that WoC bloggers talk about - police surveillance, fellow activists trying to devalue me, being physically threatened by police officers and right-wingers. My experience is certainly quite different from theirs, but it still seems a lot easier to relate to those sorts of activists than with the ones whose first reaction to a violent situation would be to call the cops, not run from them.
And as much as I don’t like the “rating oppressions” kind of stuff, either, frankly, some people are objectively worse off than others and I think it’s worthwhile to try to help those people out, if not for moral reasons than for practical reasons as a movement. If a fellow activist isn’t struggling with 3 jobs and stress about how they’re going to feed their kids, they’re a lot more likely to have time and energy to put into their own activism, which makes us stronger as a group. I’m not really interested in which identifiable group is worst off, but I am interested in which individuals are, and how to empower them.
As activists, we all have a limited “pie” of time and energy we can put into working on issues, and we have to figure out how to split it up. As a society, we don’t, but as individuals, we do need to figure out where our priorities are (and that process is one that should be ongoing, and include some examination of our own privilege).
WRT FGM - I think it’s there’s a big difference between saying “FGM is a bad thing” and “FGM is something that should be approached with international pressure”. Both are fairly wildly held in feminist circles, and I agree with the first but not the second. Trying to use western nation states to end FGM strengthens colonialism. Far better to work at ending the international causes of poverty in the regions where FGM happens, and in doing so enable women in those places to speak for themselves.
FGM was an example: it was just Action A that is commonly done by Culture not-mine, that is sexist.
I think it’s not just the one-or-the-other issue, so much as it’s the way that race can really put a wrench in feminist narratives. For instance, the idea that birth control is liberatory makes a lot of sense to white women, who are generally encouraged to breed frequently. But it makes less sense to women of color, who have to contend with a long and ongoing history of being punished for having children and having birth control forced on them against their will. Ideally, we would push for a comprehensive view of reproductive rights, but in practice, it doesn’t often work that way.
My issue was that Jessica didn’t actually, you know, ignore this complexity.
“Feminist” in that sentence referring to whom again?
Antigone, I think the dilemmas of the cultural imperialism/relativism issue is orthogonal to the issue of racism.
Anyone who sees merit in the relativist critique of feminist critiques of FGM should aquaint themselves with the history of footbinding in China, and how it ended. A thousand year old practice was virtually eradicated in one generation, once a) women (and men) were educated on the actual medical facts, rather than cultural myths, surrounding footbinding, and b) the practice of footbinding was successfully divorced from the marriagibility of women. In places where those two things have occured with FGM, the practice is abandoned at a very high rate and very quickly.
I criticise my own culture, and I respect it. Indeed, I criticize it in part because I respect it. To suggest that the conservative traditions of other cultures are beyond criticism becuase those criticisms smack of Western ideals in some way is to suggest that internal FGM critics are unable to process western critiques and evaluate them for themselves; it denies them agency. Moreover, as Sophonisba’s comment makes clear, to “respect the tradition of other cultures” ofthen means “to respect the conservative patriarchal elements’ claims about what the tradition of those cultures are.” No thanks.
Ilyka caught that, did you Hugo? Replace ‘feminist’ with ‘white women’s’ in that sentence and it still works the way that Amanda meant it. Feminist is default white, WOC are an afterthought. We are included in so far as they remember we are there and talk about us amongst themselves. We’ve been trying to explain this to Amanda, Jessica, and others in the feminist blogosphere until we are blue in the face. It’s no wonder we blow sometimes because they never get it. I hope when you use FFF in your class you have the students examine whether it ‘includes’ WOC as in talks about them; or ‘integrates’ them, speaks as if they are in the author’s audience and an integral part of the movement.
Exactly. And the problem I have with that is, it implies white women defined the feminist narrative. Well, we apparently like to think so, but:
So what Donna said: Big, crucial difference between “include” and “integrate.” “Inclusion” has too many of the same problems as “tolerance” for me not to object to it in any case.
I know I am referring to an upthread comment, BUT: I don’t think anyone, during the past week, has been trying to “win” a “suffering Olympics”. I have read every single blog post I can find about the FFF blow-out, because many of the comments and posts referred to events that happened in the Past, and I was confused.
I think the MAIN POINT many of the WOC bloggers were trying to get across is something like this:
“Feminists, you KNOW what it feels like to be marginalized and simultaneously told to lend your strength to progressive causes, even though said causes aren’t going to champion your specific concerns, at least not immediately. (and maybe Never).
You KNOW what it feels like.
Don’t turn around and do it to US. Because of your own experiences with the larger “lefty” blogosphere, you SHOULD KNOW BETTER.”
It has never been about who is throwing the bigger pity party….at least it didn’t read like that to me. It seemed to me to be more about, “I didn’t EXPECT this from you!”
(I could be wrong of course. I am still not certain of the history of various events)
The thing is, racism is now and has been far more problematic than sexism; for all practical purposes, the is no discrimination against women in our society, let alone “exploitation” or even more so, “oppression.” People who are truly exploited and oppressed (e.g., sub-Saharan Africans) are often amazed and exasperated at the machinations of American feminists. Therefore it is entirely appropriate for WOC to criticize white feminists about their obsession with what is essentially a non-issue for them. I believe that white feminists exploit the concept of “oppression” and “exploitation” of women for purely political and social advantage, and think that WOC (and men of color) see through it too. Thus, I think that most minorities probably feel that since most feminists in the U.S. are white women, feminists are simply exploiting minorities for their own personal gain. And frankly, I believe that there’s a lot of truth to this. I believe that feminists of color don’t come out and say this in such candid terms due to loyalty among feminists, who like to keep their internal bickering out of the public eye, but we hear a lot of this kind of criticism in the MRA movement from our non-white brothers.
KMTBerry, you got it right. I rolled my eyes when I read this entry and thought, here we go again. I think the gender trumps race/race trumps gender argument is a distraction and about as useful as most arguments between MRA’s vs feminists– are the men suffering as much or more than women? GAH!
Although Chisholme’s experience has been that sexism was the bigger obstacle to her goals, doesn’t mean she discounts racism in her own life, nor that she thinks that her experience is the same for all WOC. I doubt if she would have agreed with people saying that race doesn’t matter and only sexism is important. You can’t assume that if sexism is eradicated that racism will magically disappear.
serious non-snarky question;
how could one (shirly chisolm) determine if they are being discriminated against because of race or gender in any given instance? Much less which is more?
how could one (shirly chisolm) determine if they are being discriminated against because of race or gender in any given instance? Much less which is more?
It’s not that hard: you just compare and contrast with your black male friends and your white female friends. It’s not perfect, but striking patterns emerge in certain contexts.
Not that this is an exact correlation, but as a lesbian I have faced more discrination as a woman, but worse discrimination as a lesbian.
curiousgyrl:
how could one (shirly chisolm) determine if they are being discriminated against because of race or gender in any given instance? Much less which is more?
While this particular saying of hers seems to apply to her political career, I imagine that at various points in her life she was told by black men and women that she couldn’t do this, wouldn’t be hired, wouldn’t be funded, shouldn’t read this other thing, must act like this and not like that, isn’t worth much in society, so on.. .”because you are a girl”. At the same time she would likely be told the same things by white men and women, except that it would be “because you are black AND you are a girl”.
So, double the sexism, but not replacing the racism - just adding an extra brick to the pile.
I agree with M, sometimes you can tell, other times it’s not so easy and could be a combination of both. If the discrimination is coming from a woman it is likely racism, if it’s from a MOC, likely sexism. A white male, much harder to tell, unless you know alot about him. If he is sympathetic towards feminism and feminists, could be racism. And then, it could be that the person doesn’t like you for other reasons which have nothing to do with sexism or racism. I’d say that experience tells you what’s what though.
I was telling a story about something that happened with hiring a white guy to come to my house to do some work, every time they treat me like I have no money to pay them. Sometimes it’s just a funny look they give me when I hand them the check, you just know they are thinking, “is this going to bounce?”, this last time though, the guy straight up asked me if I was going to pay him that day. Well, damn, I don’t go around hiring people who I don’t intend to pay or ask for credit without arranging it at the same time as I am calling for services, you know, like white people. I know it’s racism when this happens because it happens often enough that I am used to it. I can predict it.
Folks, there may be a gap between my intent and my impact. I quoted Shirley Chisholm, a childhood hero of mine (and coincidentally, considering how poorly BlackAmazon has been treated in these debates, also of Guyanese ancestry) not to bolster a “sexism is worse than racism” argument but to explain why it is that I, as a white male pro-feminist teaching women’s studies have been quick to push for more attention to sex discrimination than race issues.
If you read the various sections I have in boldface, it ought to be clear that I’m rejecting the model that says that sexism is always and everywhere worse. But I do think Chisholm’s point goes beyond her own personal experience.
It’s also worth pointing out that when a WOC fights against racism, she’s more likely to experience support and solidarity from MOC than if she speaks out against sexism. That means more institutional and familial support for those who make race their chief priority.
OT again, but WHY exactly is Mr Bad posting here?
I didn’t phrase that correctly. What I MEAN is, WHY, Hugo, haven’t you banned Mr. Bad, when he clearly believes that Feminism is a sham and a ruse by which those wicked soulless females plan to strip him of his god-given birthrights?
Sheesh.
My banning policy is not directed at persons, but at comments. I read Mr. Bad’s comments carefully, and periodically delete the ones I think are beyond the Pale. You don’t get to see those.
KMTBerry, that’s not a fair characterization of me or my views and IMO a cheap shot.
If you would like to discuss such things with me please come visit the Stand Your Ground forums, sign up and start a thread. Hugo doesn’t appreciate thread drift and I for one do my best to avoid causing it, either directly or indirectly.
Hugo, sorry to be OT but even though I correctly entered the link to SYG in the code for my message above, your page translator garbled it. Would you please be so kind as to fix it? Thanks!
Thanks for bringing up Shirley Chisholm. She was never brought up in one history class I had: high school or college. A woman ran for president, and it was skipped right over. I did not find out about her until well after my college years. I think she would have been in the history books if she were a black man.
Mr. B, link fixed. Please, all those who wish to engage a discussion of feminism/MRA issues, visit the linked forums. Not here.
Thanks Hugo.
I also log on to SYG once in while—if anyone is interested in contacting me there for a conversation about issues not pertinent to a thread here, just go to the intro section and ask. I’d be more than happy to continue if I have the time and means.
SR
Interesting.
I’ve noticed a similar kind of situation in the context of religion as well. Of course that’s tied up with race and culture too and religious oppression is an entirely different kind of thing again, but it seems like you sometimes get a similar kind of implication from secular feminists. There can be a pretty strong implication that certain religions (or all of them depending who you talk to) are irredeemably misogynist and should be abandoned or dismantled for our own good.