3 minute read
Confessions of a White Feminist
By Trish Mugford, CASJ Status of Women Action Group and Vancouver Secondary teacher
“You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order for us to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.
“—Audre Lorde
Why do women support the very patriarchal systems that oppress them? This is a question I started asking myself years ago. It became particularly compelling during the 2016 United States presidential election and the subsequent 2017 Hollywood #MeToo movement launched by Alyssa Milano in the wake of the first Harvey Weinstein allegations. A shallow historical dive revealed that it was actually Tarana Burke, a Black civil rights activist from the Bronx, who, in 2006, started the Me Too “movement, not a moment” on social media. This fact may have gone unnoticed by the majority of Canadian and American women. It seems that it took the power of celebrity culture and a large dose of whiteness to give this campaign traction 11 years after its incarnation.
So, back to my question: Why do so many women support an oppressive patriarchy? I am ashamed—and liberated—to admit that the oh-so-obvious answer is staring at me every time I look in a mirror and see a white feminist. Racism is a white problem. It was constructed and created by white people. The responsibility lies with white people—and white women who have helped reinforce it—to stop looking at systemic racism as someone else’s problem. Unwitting or intentional, white feminism is a dangerous, insidious, and effective weapon that benefits— that’s right—white women!
Feminist history can be divided into three waves. The first wave, in the late 19th and early 20th century, was mainly concerned with women’s right to vote. The second wave, in the 1960s and 1970s, included the fight for equal legal and social rights. The third wave, in the early 1990s, responded to the failure of the second wave to address the concerns of marginalized communities. Race, ethnicity, nationality, class, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity were virtually ignored in a feminist movement that focused primarily on the experiences of upper middle-class white women. For me, this brief history lesson became a starting point on my path to becoming an intersectional feminist— one that, I’m discovering, will be a lifelong journey.
I confess that in 2016, when I first heard the term “intersectional feminism” coined by civil rights advocate and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, I did not fully understand how it stood in opposition to white feminism. It took me a while to grasp that the counterweight to white feminism is intersectional feminism, which calls for total inclusion of different types of women within the feminist movement.
White women who haven’t examined their white privilege, or don’t want to, might say things such as: • White feminism? What’s that? Is that a thing? • I don’t see colour; I treat everyone equally! • Not all white people have benefited from systemic racism. • I’ve had to struggle just as much, or more, as any woman of colour. • I’ve worked really hard to get to where I am. Why can’t they? • I’m not racist. One of my best friends is black.
At first glance, some of these comments may not scream “Racist!” but they do show a blindness to the privilege that we, as white women, unarguably possess. Yes, it is a challenge to see the water we swim in, but we are not goldfish. We have the capacity to think outside our bowl if we make the effort. It is important to confront two
