Feminism! Equality! (But Not for You)

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  "White feminism is the label given to feminist efforts and actions that uplift white women but exclude or otherwise fail to address issues faced by minority groups, especially women of color and LGBTQ+ women." (white feminism | Gender & Sexuality | Dictionary.com)

• White feminism is what white folks have been practicing since the dawn of feminism. It is representative of white selfishness, shortsightedness, blatant hypocrisy, and biases.

• "White feminism aligns itself to white supremacy by attempting to hide white women's participation and function in white supremacy by seeing them as victims because of their gender but not holding white women accountable for their part in it when women of color are excluded." (“White supremacy in heels”: (white) feminism, white supremacy, and discursive violence: Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies: Vol 17 , No 2)

• Do white feminists know that they're white feminists?

  • Is it a choice made at The Feminism Convention?

  • Or is it a prejudice passed down from our foremothers and perpetuated by our white nationalist society?

...Guess we'll never know.

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Some Historical Background Worth Noting:

• When white women fought for the right to vote, Frederick Douglass and many black suffragists fought with them, but when it came time for those very same white women to stand up for Black Americans, they instead touted racist fucking nonsense and fought against them.

  • "Both Douglass and Stanton had previously attended the Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights in 1848. According to Tetrault, “what’s particularly painful was that Douglass had been the one at Seneca Falls who stood up and defended women’s right to vote. And then when it comes to the 15th Amendment, Stanton refuses to reciprocate.”

    The disagreements at that convention led not only to the dissolution of AERA, but a split in the women’s suffrage movement between those who supported the 15th Amendment and those who did not. Stanton and Anthony joined the faction that did not; and after the amendment passed, many of the suffragists on that side pandered to white southerners by arguing that that if white women could vote, they could drown out the Black male vote.

    Anthony also sought to distance her work from Douglass, who continued to support women’s suffrage for the rest of his life. During an 1890s suffrage meeting in Atlanta, she asked him not to appear onstage with white women because it would seem inappropriate." (How Early Suffragists Left Black Women Out of Their Fight | HISTORY)

    • You can acknowledge the work they did for white women and still say fuck a bitch named Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

• This mindset of I got mine, fuck you can't be boiled down to just one legislative action or over just one time period; it pervades all aspects of our modern-day society.

• Not only do white people influence laws in their favor when it comes to voting to this day, but white legislators have only passed significant gun reform once The Black Panthers started legally open carrying.

"In contrast to the NRA’s rigid opposition to gun control in today’s America, the organization fought alongside the government for stricter gun regulations in the 1960s. This was part of an effort to keep guns out of the hands of African-Americans as racial tensions in the nation grew. The NRA felt especially threatened by the Black Panthers, whose well-photographed carrying of weapons in public spaces was entirely legal in the state of California, where they were based." (The NRA Supported Gun Control When the Black Panthers Had the Weapons | HISTORY)

• White people loved their guns in California, until it started scaring them.

• When white people are threatened, that's when change actually happens. When change does happen, it's usually at the cost of disenfranchising another group of people.

• How many people only started caring about ICE's violence once two white people were murdered on video?

  • Consider all of the vile things that are happening to people of color, off camera.

  • ICE and CBP are not new institutions. Yes, their atrocities are more visible, but they've been terrorizing people of color for over twenty years now.

  • Do you know the name of even one non-white person that was killed this year by ICE? Or just the white ones that the media covered?

• Do you condemn ICE's actions domestically, but ignore the parallels to the IDF's actions in Palestine?

  • You might be a Zionist neoliberal (synonyms: white feminist, loser)

  • If you can look at the pain and suffering of people in Gaza and the West Bank and find any way to justify it, you are a bad person.

Let's play a fucking game: Tell me, IDF or ICE? Occupied Palestine or the United States?

• Is it pro-life or just pro-white?

  • Where are you when Palestinian babies are orphaned and murdered?

  • Where is the outcry when black babies die?

  • When entire families are torn apart and children are left in concentration camps, where are your screams?

  • If it's about life... why is death consistently defended, funded, and celebrated?

• If All Lives Matter, where the fuck are you?

• If someone isn't saying fuck ICE, Free Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, then who fucking cares?

• I don't fuck with any of y'all "hate people, love animals" ass bitches.

  • If you're apathetic to all of human life, you're not as morally superior as you seem to think.

  • The problem isn't people, you ecofascist, none of us asked to be born into this capitalist hellscape.

  • We need to exist with and for nature, not against it.

• Now, I don't know how to fix all of the problems white people have caused throughout history, or stop white feminism from persisting, but I can offer some advice to my fellow white people:

  • Shut the fuck up and listen. Stop talking over experienced voices.

    • I do see the irony of a white person telling white people to shut up while speaking here, but if I can reach even one person without stepping on another's voice, I'll do my best.

  • We need to stop only listening to white stories and history.

  • We need to get our heads out of the clouds and take a look at the harsh reality that we've created and work towards making things equitable for every person in this world.

  • When we work toward collective justice and freedom, we will see our environment, our children, and the future thrive.

  • If your feminism isn't intersectional, take some time to reflect on why that is.