THE FEMINISM QUESTION
Back in October 2012, I sat in a cold university library, furiously typing out a blog post on race and feminism. I was supposed to be revising, but was so irritated I could barely sit still. Lena Dunham’s television programme Girls had premiered that year to critical acclaim. It was widely regarded as an accurate reflection of young women’s lives. The characters were all working low-paid jobs and waiting for their lives to begin. They bickered among themselves, and wrestled with jealousy, pettiness, and body-image troubles. These were all characteristics I recognised among my peers and myself. Most of us were just drudging ahead, balancing unpaid internships alongside bar or retail jobs in the hope that we would reap the same rewards for hard work as the generation before us did. We had been hoping for a nine-to-five job and secure housing. We thought that if we worked hard enough, we would rid ourselves of that panicky feeling that sets in when you don’t quite know where next month’s rent is coming from. The scenarios in Girls were hugely familiar. But the programme, set in New York City, was starkly white. Because of this, it was hard to take commentators seriously when they insisted that it was the most feminist television show in decades.
As a result of the show, one of the most prominent debates in recent years about feminism’s race problem began to brew. Some asserted that it would be nothing but tokenistic for Dunham to write black characters into her TV show just for the sake of it. Others said that it was absurd to set a television show with an all-white cast in one of the most racially diverse cities in America. To me, it was obvious. It also wasn’t really about a TV programme, although the programme was symptomatic of a widespread problem. Finishing up the blog post, I wrote: ‘When feminists can see the problem with all-male panels, but can’t see the problem with all-white television programmes, it’s worth questioning who they’re really fighting for.’
On reflection, the representation and inclusion of black faces wasn’t actually what I was passionate about. This wasn’t about being seen, or about being included. I was used to not seeing positive reflections of black people in popular culture. An all-white television programme was nothing new to me. What I was really upset about was the ease with which white people defended their all-white spaces and spheres. Theirs was an impenetrable bubble, and their feminism sat neatly within it. Not only this, but the feminists who insisted they were agitating for a better world for all women didn’t actually give a shit about black people and, by extension, they didn’t give a shit about women of colour. Gender equality must be addressed, but race could languish in the corner.
The same sort of scenario happened repeatedly over the next couple of years. Just one year later, pop star Lily Allen released her first music video, ‘Hard Out Here’, after a long hiatus from the music industry. The formula of the resulting race row was similar to the furore around Girls. A young and successful white woman had revealed public work that was immediately lauded as raw, relatable and utterly, thoroughly feminist – the definitive anthem for young women everywhere. In this instance though, it wasn’t a lack of black people that sparked upset. The black bodies were present, but Lily Allen’s black back-up dancers were scantily clad, dancing in a parody of misogynistic hip-hop videos as she sang about glass ceilings, objectification, and strongly implied that smart girls didn’t need to strip to be successful.
After a while, it became wise to stop paying attention to anything tagged vaguely feminist in popular media, as it would only end up being disappointing. What I carried on doing was writing.
On New Year’s Eve of 2013, I was invited by a BBC producer to appear on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. It was a fairly innocent request – to discuss the year in feminism alongside Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism Project, and Caroline Criado-Perez, who that year had campaigned to have historical women figures featured on British banknotes. When I took my seat in the studio, I realised I was the only black face in the room. That was the first red flag. I was joined by Laura and the radio presenter. Caroline was phoning in. The segment began. I was nervous. I explained that I didn’t really consider myself a campaigner, but that during the year I had been writing about racism in the feminist movement – my frustrations with a doggedly white-centric perspective from the movement’s ‘leaders’ – and found that lots of women who were not white were feeling exactly the same way. ‘A tide has turned in terms of these issues in feminism,’ I said. ‘They cannot be ignored any more.’1
The burden then fell on me to explain why feminism was so divided, and why feminism needed a race analysis in the first place. I was asked: ‘What lies at the bottom of the divisions, and why has the phrase “check your privilege” become so popular?’ That was the second red flag. This framing suggested that racism wasn’t a concern for my white peers. Having worked with Laura Bates in the past, I knew that this wasn’t the case. Despite my discomfort, I put forward my case for the need for a race analysis in feminism. But my point was quickly picked up on by Caroline Criado-Perez, who said that people had used an anti-racist perspective as a reason to harass and bully her online.
The context of her comment was very disturbing. Earlier in that year, Caroline’s women-on-banknotes campaign had drawn national headlines. The press coverage attracted a misogynist sentiment, and what started out as a win quickly descended into one of the most high-profile British cases of online harassment. When the Bank of England announced plans to put an image of the author Jane Austen on the ten-pound note, the women-on-banknotes campaign claimed this as a success. But because of the harassment that followed as a result of the campaign’s work, Caroline had been sent death threats. She received messages that told her that bombs had been installed outside of her home. She was repeatedly messaged by anonymous ill-wishers who were encouraging her to commit suicide. Eventually, two people pled guilty to sending her some of the more vicious tweets. They were sentenced to twelve and eight weeks in prison respectively, under the Malicious Communications Act.
On that New Year’s Eve Woman’s Hour, Caroline’s comment, aimed at discrediting her online abusers, came across as equating my work and politics with these vicious and abusive messages. I felt implicated in the harassment against her. In the BBC studio, it fell to me to account for Caroline’s horrific experiences, putting me in the position of defending the arguments (that I didn’t share) of people I didn’t even know. I was completely lost for words.
This was the cost of representation. The overwhelming whiteness of feminism – on a radio-show segment that would have been all white if it wasn’t for my presence – was not considered a problem. I had wanted to discuss how feminism wasn’t exempt from white privilege, but instead I found myself on the receiving end of it.