cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/my_mouldy_memes/t/310874
THE FUTURE OF FEMINISM
IS ONLY AS POWERFUL
AS THE FUTURE OF ANTI-RACISM
CLEO WADE
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
196 points (92.2% liked)
196
16442 readers
2167 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why?
Because it widely breaks down to the same sort of discrimination. Feminism without anti-racism means that the discrimination we see towards women won't disappear, it'll just be shifted towards people of color. How successful is your movement if all you did was export the bad shit to other people so it's not your problem anymore?
If the response to "Women shouldn't have to do housework" is "Yes! Juanita should do the housework!" Then something failed.
This seems to assume that there's a certain fixed amount of "bad shit" that must be placed on one minority or another. If I eliminated all police brutality (which in the US disproportionately is aimed at black people), does that somehow make things any worse for women?
Do... Do you think Black women don't exist?
Are you just not even making an attempt to understand my point? In this scenario, of course black women would benefit, as they'd experience no police brutality. My point is that this magical elimination of a racial inequality problem would not make a gender related issue (e.g. the wage gap) automatically worse somehow, which seemed to be Leylaa's point if I'm understanding that correctly.
You missed the point.
Intersectionality isn't that there is a fixed amount of bad things or that fixing/working on one of them is a problem. Your example would obviously be a good thing.
Intersectionality is that there are more bad things than one or the other individually. The sum of the parts is less than the whole.
The point is that even if you fixed all of the racism/inequalities faced by each group individually there would still be inequalities left over that the people at the intersection of those two groups face.
I see, thanks for clarifying. Where I was confused by Leylaa's comment was when she said that getting rid of one type of discrimination would merely "shift" it to another group, which does not sound like the same thing you are saying here.
I see, let me add some words.
(Or the difficulties that women of color face that don't affect white women won't be addressed at all, and this the discrimination that is left over is shifted solely to black women).
As an example, feminism of the 30s and 40s was only for the promotion of white women.
Feminism today suffers these same problems. As I have said elsewhere, JK Rowling is a feminist. She is also a terf. Feminism, without the inclusion of trans rights, will result in actions that will exclude the rights of trans women. Without the knowledge that terfs are a thing terfs would 100% silently advocate for the removal of trans women's rights from the feminist movement.
The same thing happened, and is happening, to black women.
We (the royal we) like to say that feminism is for all women... But is it? Is it for women if black women's issues(which are unique to black women) are not included? Is it feminism if black women aren't included?
That's the point.
They said it in a slightly incorrect way. It's not like there's an unaddressable amount of discrimination that gets shifted over. It's that other forms of bigotry can fester in a movement if diverse voices are not part of the conversation. Intersectionality is about praxis: not just theory, but how movements practically function as well.