tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post8076985274980296431..comments2024-03-13T11:14:26.768-04:00Comments on A Radical Profeminist: More on Radical ProfeminismUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-57573956889688615292009-03-10T16:04:00.000-04:002009-03-10T16:04:00.000-04:00Hi Flores.I better be able to, or else I'd be an i...Hi Flores.<BR/><BR/>I better be able to, or else I'd be an idiot to post such a thing. (And, when you're done reading what follows, please let me know if I'm an idiot.)<BR/><BR/>Here's my quote, from which your question comes:<BR/><BR/><I>When white profeminist men show or tell what we've read that educated us about feminism (often in these men's own writings), I see the passing along of stunningly racist herstories of "Radical [unnamed race almost always meaning "white"] feminism".</I><BR/><BR/>I will own, first of all, that I have been part of that stunningly racist herstory telling, but am (I hope) less so now than I was twenty years ago. Whether directly stated or not, I have done many of the racist things that follow.<BR/><BR/>When the only people some white men (from various political locations) consider to be exemplars of "radical feminism" are white women, I feel compelled to speak out and call that out as racist-misogynist CRAP. This is to say that the 'herstories' I'm speaking of here are often ones told by men to other men.<BR/><BR/>One example is on two white men's blogs, and on one white man's MySpace page, where it is very clear the agenda they have set for themselves, as self-identified pro-radical feminists, is an agenda that is one that leaves out the struggles of women of color that whites don't experience directly because of white privilege and position.<BR/><BR/>Another example is a conversation I had with an older, "wiser" profeminist man, who was telling me about feminism and pornography. When I brought up Audre Lorde's essay <I>The Uses of The Erotic</I> as one of the most significant writings on the topic of pornography and power, he looked confused. I realised he'd never read it. I was stunned because he was someone I considered to be "well-read" in feminist literature, especially non-fiction work.<BR/><BR/>"Pro-radical feminist" men's racism, our white supremacy, shows up in a variety of ways.<BR/><BR/>Only quoting, citing, or celebrating white women when discussing feminist issues, feminist theory, and feminist herstory.<BR/><BR/>Praising all the work of Andrea Dworkin without noting her work exposing various forms of white male supremacy and racist-misogyny (not only male supremacy and misogyny). And forgetting that in the introduction of her very first book, published in 1974, that, as a white woman, Dworkin wrote that Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman were her sheroes, exemplars of women's strength and stamina, and that unless white women deal with their racism and classism, the movement cannot be radically effective, which is also to say, "radical". (I'm paraphrasing.)<BR/><BR/>Holding Andrea Dworkin or Mary Daly up as "the" example of what a radical feminist looks like. (Many women of color and white women know I've done that with Andrea Dworkin.)<BR/><BR/>Only quoting women of color when talking about racism or when discussing the relationship of whites to people of color.<BR/><BR/>Never discussing how whiteness impacts any white person's ability to see reality in ways not distorted by white privilege, power, and position. This is partly to say that if a white person suggests "let's challenge racism" the conversation is rarely focused on those people's whiteness and its oppressive manifestations, and instead focus on other white folks and "their" racism.<BR/><BR/>Not really, carefully, "in a posture of listening" as Pearl Cleage writes, hearing women of color, or, when listening, responding patronisingly, condescendingly, or without the kind of regard and respect shown to white women. I have seen this on the blog of one white man who takes great pride in his anti-racism.<BR/><BR/>Considering "the women's movement" to have been created by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or to consider it to have begun with Simone de Beauvoir or Betty Friedan, or to believe it started primarily due to the writings of Kate Millett, Robin Morgan, and Mary Daly, when Florynce Kennedy, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker were right there too, among many other women of color and white women, whose names fall out of the mind due to the tendency to collapse history or herstory into the stories of a few great individuals.<BR/><BR/>When "pro-radical feminist" white men deeply value Catharine MacKinnon's work, including on sexual harassment law, we don't realise how central women of color were to the creation of that law.<BR/><BR/>The "radical feminist anti-pornography movement" (and other anti-male violence movements) is often written up as being started by and continued only by white women. From the stories I have heard about who the activists were and are, women of color have always been part of that and other "radical feminist" movements and campaigns, but are often invisibilised because they didn't publish a book or twelve. Sometimes they're invisilbised even when they have published many books on these subjects.<BR/><BR/>When radical white feminists and profeminists don't consider the collective works of bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Patricia Williams, and Pearl Cleage (to name only four of many contemporary radical feminist women), to be "critical radical feminist reading".<BR/><BR/>Seeing gay white men only refer to white lesbian feminists as the lesbians who inspired them.<BR/><BR/>Seeing that self-identified white anti-racist feminists have described texts that constitute a good education in radical feminism as consisting of texts written only by white women.<BR/><BR/>When "radical feminism" is defined by whites, or when whites insist on a definition that, by its parameters, leave out many radical feminist women of color's work; and those women may or many not identify themselves as such precisely because there is a dominant cultural assumption that "radical feminist" = white woman. (Catharine A. MacKinnon once wrote something that reminded me that most women who fight male supremacy do not identify as feminists, let alone as radical feminists; this doesn't mean that their efforts are not radically feminist.)<BR/><BR/>The lack of knowledge, including within myself, of the central role Indigenous North American women had in the creation of the period of feminism attributed primarily (or entirely) to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.<BR/><BR/>When women like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, and Fannie Lou Hamer, to name but four African American women, have not been counted as U.S. radical feminists, when the story of U.S. radical feminism is told.<BR/><BR/>I have been stunned by my own inability to come up with many names of Asian and Asian American feminists and other activists of color, as some of the women instrumental in the formation and maintenance of radical feminism.<BR/><BR/>When white feminist and profeminist blogs do not acknowledge the work of Yanar Mohammed.<BR/><BR/>I am stunned that women of color who, daily, are risking their lives to fight for women's safety and justice on a community or national level, are not even acknowledged as contemporary sheroes and won't be considered by some whites to be "radically feminist" because they haven't taken a stand on pornography, in part because pornography is not one of the main things threatening their and their sisters' lives.<BR/><BR/>I have been stunned that the visions laid out, among profeminists and white feminists, all of whom consider themselves radical, do not seem to notice that Indigenous women exist, or know what their many priorities for activism are, and that the unchecked promotion of Western Civilisation is the promotion of Indigenous women's deaths, globally.<BR/><BR/>When white feminists and profeminists take credit for work done by women of color.<BR/><BR/>And perhaps I am an idiot to be stunned at all. But I continue to be stunned my own behavior which radical feminist women bring to my attention as "misogynistic" and/or "racist". And it is brought to my attention most often by women of color.Julian Realhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02933612851144914687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-22761585164193187482009-03-10T10:28:00.000-04:002009-03-10T10:28:00.000-04:00Could give me some examples of the stunning racist...Could give me some examples of the stunning racist herstories of radical feminism?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com