Saving Becky: On Criticism of White Feminism & White Feminists
Yes, white women are the enemy.
White feminists, patriarchy, and solidarity: the dangling carrot by Heather Jo Flores caught my attention right off the bat, only half because of the hilarious stock photo. It admittedly didn’t take the direction I expected, but got me thinking nonetheless. I’m nonbinary, black and Puerto Rican, and I grew up in a small town with a big dog complex smack in the middle of mostly old and white central Florida.
This is the kind of place where you can divide the rich and the poor by neighborhood — where the sheriff is indicted for perjury on a police brutality case and gets to resign with a hefty retirement check. Designated female at birth, I immediately related to Heather’s tale of the white-pants girls (though at my school, we just called them preps).
Only, it wasn’t the white pants that came to mind when I looked at white girls. It was sweatpants. Sweatpants with a messy bun piled on top of the head — that was their every day wear of choice, and they looked as comfortable and confident wearing them as they did dresses and strappy sandals.
That wasn’t what made me judge them. It was the fact that they were the only girls that could wear them, and they knew it. A black girl shows up in the same outfit, and you know what they’re all thinking before you hear them laugh and whisper — she’s ratchet. She’s so ghetto. Even moreso if she has any protests about getting dress code while Kelly from the softball team goes on her merry way.
White supremacy and misogyny in schools reinforce idea that white girls are the ideal girls, and have reason to look down on women of color for being less desirable in the eyes of the white patriarchy. This manifests as the racial microaggressions almost universally recognized by women of color who have coexisted on a school campus with a white girl. Should that girl grow up and become a feminist, do we cut her some slack if she’s not so great at the whole intersectional thing, and might still be a teeny bit racist? I mean, she is white.
The article’s tone changed. It became about the ill will women of color might harbor toward their white counterparts. Bitterness, envy and vindication seeded in childhood and digging its way into the social climate of leftist resistance, resulting in the scapegoat of the white woman wherever social commentary could be found. It made a lot of interesting points.
The thing is, white women don’t need to be rescued from criticism in feminist movements. Heather’s article asks us to consider the plight of the white woman; perhaps the rest of us forget that they also experience sexism and misogyny, and that oppression has some bearing on their behavior. By the time I finished reading, I couldn’t help but feel I’d just heard a rallying call to…protect white innocence?
White women are no less white for being women as they are less women for being white. The reality is that white privilege doesn’t end at getting violin lessons and manicures in high school. White supremacy is a system of oppression in which white women have a place: below men, but above people of color.
Failing to conform to patriarchal standards of womanhood bears consequences to be sure. It does not, however, nullify whiteness; to frame white women’s role in the oppression of people of color as a mere byproduct of victimization at the hands of men denies them their agency.
When we talk about 'White Feminism’, this is not a blanket term for feminists who happen to be white. White Feminism is exactly what it sounds like — a pseudo-feminism that serves, centers and prioritizes white women — and excludes women of color. It goes as far back as the Women’s Suffrage Movement and is as modern as the Women’s March on Washington DC. White women have historically used their privilege to erase women of color from feminist spaces, movement and discussion.
It is part of the white patriarchal schema to view white women through a lens of naivete and powerlessness, so swaddled by their privilege that to even demand (god forbid with any righteous indignation) that they remain cognizant of their place in the social power structure is shifting the blame from men to women (white women, that is). The problem with this premise is that it asks us not to hold white women accountable.
Yes, even standing in the front lines of an anti-racism counter-protest (or, out of fear of criticism, opting not to voice solidarity at all) are exercises of that privilege. A white woman making a statement will face consequences because she is a woman. A black woman will face consequences because she is a woman, and because she is black. White women can choose to ally themselves with women of color or distance themselves at their convienence, allowing them more manueverability in political spaces.
Fighting the patriarchy does not mean silencing criticism against white women. White women are not only complicit in but active agents of white supremacy. To minimize that in the name of creating a more 'unified' movement against misogyny is to exclude women of color - to deny their oppression by white women, and deny white women the opportunity to examine how their own privilege and exploitation function in a white patriarchal system of oppression. Without this awareness, white women cannot be effective allies to women of color.
Critical analysis and discourse are fundamental to leftist movements. Resistance is complicated and challenging, not because of the tired narrative that the left is 'eating itself' but because that is the nature of the beast. Emily Pothast puts it succintly in We Actually Don’t Need Status Quo Warriors:
“Out here on the left, we love to complain about how the left eats itself. Here’s how it happens: Because of how both white supremacy and patriarchy survive by constantly centering themselves as the status quo, challenges to white supremacy and patriarchy are constantly met with resistance.”
Patriarchal mainstream media exploits this to portray leftism as arbitrary, self-destructive and unsure of itself, and there’s a reason for this - their goal is to maintain the status quo, and there is no better way to accomplish that than to convince people that criticism is counterproductive.
It is not the responsibility of women of color to make intersectional feminism a more comfortable experience for white women, nor should their valid criticisms of whiteness in feminist circles be silenced in the name of 'unity’. Ideally, intersectional feminism is a delicate, weighty, and devastating alliance against the patriarchy. If the anxiety of doing feminism ‘wrong’ or the need to consolidate their role as both the oppressed and the oppressor is enough for someone to throw up their hands and tap out, maybe they were on the wrong team to begin with. 🤷🏾♂️
