Madame Thursday

Jul. 8, 2012 at 10:51am with 655 notes

Reblogged from so-treu

Solidarity in Feminism Or How White Feminists Fail Intersectionality….Again

So I’m sure I’m being divisive now or something, but with all this talk of solidarity from white feminists where exactly are the marches & letter campaigns backing up women who are indigenous & facing higher rates of sexual assault? Where are the big well funded campaigns against abuses of documented & undocumented migrant workers? I hear a lot about misogyny in hip hop, but nothing about racialized misogyny in rock, metal, or country. Well except for the stuff I’m writing & other WOC are writing, but we’re not white. Where’s the outpouring of support for WOC who were forcibly sterilized and are now seeking compensation in North Carolina or the 31 other states with eugenics programs?

Where are the calls for better access to resources for poor WOC & their children? Or the calls to respect the bodily autonomy & boundaries of WOC? I can find 747375375 articles about choice feminism, but I spent this week arguing with people who wanted to tell me to appreciate the “beauty” of a picture of an enslaved black woman breastfeeding her future owner. White women are declaring they want Afros, but they aren’t fighting for the right of black women to wear their hair the way it grows out of their heads in the workplace. Or listening when we say that touching our hair is unacceptable behavior. No one’s talking about supporting young mothers of color so that they can feed & raise their children as they see fit. Instead the choice conversation is increasingly about abortion as though that is the only choice that needs support.

Where is the media push supporting the right of trans women of color to exist & defend themselves? When we talk about body acceptance movements, where’s the acceptance for different skin colors? Different hair types? With all the discussion of topless activism is there a point where we talk about the depiction of the bodies of WOC in the media & how we’re sluts from birth no matter what we’re wearing? Do we get a discussion going in these feminist think tanks about the value of the work done by WOC & how their labor (physical & intellectual) is co-opted & commodified for the benefit of others? When we talk about sex positive feminism do we talk about the fetishization of bodies of color by white feminists & how problematic that is? Where’s the conversation about racism in feminism?

Oh right, these conversations are happening all the time. Just not between white feminists unless it can feather someone’s pockets. In fact these discussions are apparently valueless as long as WOC are having them with each other. But then, according to some people all women are white & the rest of us aren’t even real women. We’re supposed to show up for Slut Walks, support Felicia Day, & yet no one’s out here stomping for Rekia Boyd, Aisha Tyler, hell we can’t even get a good conversation going about sexual assault statistics for WOC under 18. So, tell me again how WOC should think of you as sisters in the struggle?