The Philadelphia-based clothing company Feminist Apparel has become the focus of a negative online campaign in recent days.
1.Feminist Apparel is an online clothing store that specializes in Tshirts with pro-feminist slogans. View this image ' Feminist Apparel / Viafeministapparel.com Twenty percent of all proceeds go to helping fund local, women-empowering non-profit organizations.
2. Feminist organizations such asHollaback! have also collaborated with Feminist Apparel on T-shirts, and received all proceeds from the collaborations. feministapparel.com feministapparel.com The website Feministing, which originally had plans to work with Feminist Apparel, cut all ties with the company and did not accept money raised on its behalf.
3. Recently, Twitter users have expressed their disapproval of the brand via the hashtag #NotBuyingFA. Dior Vargas @DiorVargasFollow Don't allow a cis white male to continue making money off of WOC@FeministApparel#NotBuyingFA started. This refusal to respect copyright is a long running problem. Reply Retweet Favorite Patricia Valoy @Besito86Follow I sincerely wish that@FeministApparel does their homework to become a better company. No shortcuts, do the work! Otherwise,linkedin.com The problem is not that the company is owned by a white cis man, but that he does not use his privilege to support the people that his company claims to help, said Valoy. The only part of his
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company where women are able to make decisions, and not entirely as Alan Martofel still has executive power, is by being a board member. He asked me to be on his board, and while I do think its smart of him to include women of color in his company, I didnt agree with his strategy, so I rejected his offer, said Reichard. Having a Latina feminist, a Black feminist, a Muslim feminist, etc. tokenizes women for their marginalized identities and continues to place them on the sideline, as they are neither paid nor empowered to make company decisions, while also perpetuating the myth that one member of a disenfranchised group can speak for the entire, heterogeneous group. Its inaccurate and problematic.
8. Critics also said the companys motto doesnt grapple with intersectional feminism. I think that the issue with Feminist Apparel is that it dove into feminism without actually understanding feminism, especially from an intersectional standpoint, said Fabello. Alans feminism is in its infancy and hasnt developed the complexity necessary to actually practice what hes preaching. Can that be fixed? Sure. Probably. But thats about Alan doing the internal work necessary to make that happen. Alan Martofel told BuzzFeed via email: I didnt know about feminism until 18 months ago and when I got through the common misconceptions that are put out there, I became an impassioned ally and I wanted to create something that could create a dent in the issues we listed in the previous email, as opposed to a one-time donation to the Feminist Majority or whatnot.
9. Alan Martofel said hes working on making changes to his business model, but also feels that criticism is inevitable. feministapparel.com feministapparel.com We clearly dont like hearing that were not being a good representative of feminism and we value everyone who takes the time to formulate an opinion or criticism about our project. We need that criticism. So wed just like to thank everyone for their thoughts. Our team is discussing best practices moving forward. We just launched the website six months ago and were constantly evolving and discuss the best way forward. Being that we are a for-profit company, we do expect criticism going forward by our attempt to merge feminism and capitalism. There will be bumps in the road, and there will be people who are just never happy about that,' he said. correction
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This story has been changed to reflect that Feministing did not receive money from a collaboration with Feminist Apparel. Read more:http://buzzfeed.com/juliapugachevsky/what-happens-when-a-feminist-clothing-companyfaces-backlash What Happens When A Feminist Clothing Company Faces Backlash From Feminists
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