It’s important to see the white feminist pushback against intersectionality not in isolation, but rather in the historical context of establishment clampdowns on the black struggle. All the signs were there: a closing of ranks, paired with a campaign of misinformation, lies and discrediting. When Louise Mensch wrote her aggressive tweets about me, the women she felt she was supporting were doyennes of the left – regular writers for left-leaning publications like the Guardian and the New Statesman. They were supported by white, well-known writers and figures of a host of different political persuasions. But at that point, their minor political differences didn’t matter. The white consensus in feminism required defending, and they needed to club together to do it. My speaking up about racism in feminism, to them, was akin to a violent attack on their very idea of themselves.
This is how racism perpetuates itself in all spaces, feminist or otherwise. My situation was very public. But back then I had a feeling that similar scenarios were playing out across the country – in workplaces, in social circles, in families; and the result everywhere was a person of colour with no support network, doubting themselves.
In British feminism, questioning whether a woman could have feminist politics and do traditionally feminine things was a sentiment that intrigued women’s magazines in the 1990s and early 2000s. Can you be a feminist and wear high heels, the magazines asked. Can you be a feminist and wear make-up? Can you be a feminist and get your nails done? These were the most facile of questions, giving rise to the most facile of magazine features. The ‘can you be a feminist and’ questions were all predicated on tired stereotypes of feminist activism from the 1970s patriarchal press, depicting feminists as dungaree-wearing angry women who sought to crush men under their Dr Marten-clad feet. In this stereotype of the scary imaginary feminist that no woman would ever want to be, her appearance was the antithesis of all beauty standards.
It was complete rubbish, of course. If the last five years have taught us anything, it’s that feminism is a broad church that has less to do with the upkeep of your appearance, and more to do with the upkeep of your politics. Instead of asking about high heels and lipstick, the pressing questions we have always needed to ask are: Can you be a feminist and be anti-choice? Can you be a feminist and be wilfully ignorant on racism?
Feminist themes seem to be ever-present in television and film at the moment. This is a marked improvement from the media that went before it. Feminism is thriving in journalism and music, and it is all over social media with no signs of subsiding. The people who are calling themselves feminists are getting younger and younger, due in part to their favourite pop stars and actresses demystifying the word. Each time a celebrity stakes her claim on feminism, a little bit of the stigma surrounding the word is shattered.
With countrywide political landmarks like the legalisation of same-sex marriage, everyone is keen to look like they approve of progress. But among feminists, there are a few ideological standpoints – race, reproductive rights, conservatism – that continue to cause immovable fault lines in the movement. Too often, a white feminist’s ideological standpoint does not see racism as a problem, let alone a priority. The backlash against intersectionality was white feminism in action.
When the phrase ‘white feminism’, used as a derogatory term, picked up circulation in the feminist lexicon, its popularity made some feminists who are white somewhat agitated. But this knee-jerk backlash against the phrase – to what is more often than not a rigorous critique of the consequences of structural racism – was undoubtedly born from an entitled need to defend whiteness rather than any yearning to reflect on the meaning of the phrase ‘white feminism’. What does it mean for your feminist politics to be strangled, stoppered, and hindered by whiteness?
If feminism can understand the patriarchy, it’s important to question why so many feminists struggle to understand whiteness as a political structure in the very same way. Similar to the fact that they are man-heavy, our most recognised political structures are white-dominated. In that space of overwhelming whiteness, there is always a wide range of opinions to be found. So much of politics is just middle-aged white men passing the ball to one another. Every so often, a white middle-aged woman is brought on board in an effort to diversify. The one thing that unites these differing political perspectives is their flat-out refusal to challenge a white consensus.
White feminism is a politics that engages itself with myths such as ‘I don’t see race’. It is a politics which insists that talking about race fuels racism – thereby denying people of colour the words to articulate our existence. It’s a politics that expects people of colour to quietly assimilate into institutionally racist structures without kicking up a fuss. It’s a politics where people of colour are never setting the agenda. Instead, they are relegated to constantly reacting to things and frantically playing catch-up. A white-dominated feminist political consensus allows people of colour a place at the table if we’re willing to settle for tokenism, but it clamps down if they attempt to create accountability for said consensus – let alone any structural change.
Whiteness positions itself as the norm. It refuses to recognise itself for what it is. Its so-called ‘objectivity’ and ‘reason’ is its most potent and insidious tool for maintaining power. White feminism can be conceptualised as the feminist wing of said political consensus. It’s a set of white-centred feminist values and beliefs that some women like to buy into. Other factors, like class indicators, play a huge part in it.
White feminism in itself isn’t particularly threatening. It becomes a problem when its ideas dominate – presented as the universal, to be applied to all women. It is a problem, because we consider humanity through the prism of whiteness. It is inevitable that feminism wouldn’t be immune from this. Consequently, white feminism enforces its position when those who challenge it are considered troublemakers. When I write about white feminism, I’m not reducing white women to the colour of their skin. Whiteness is a political position, and challenging it in feminist spaces is not a tit-for-tat disagreement because prejudice needs power to be effective.
The politics of whiteness transcends the colour of anyone’s skin. It is an occupying force in the mind. It is a political ideology that is concerned with maintaining power through domination and exclusion. Anyone can buy into it, just like anyone can choose to challenge it. White women seem to take the phrase ‘white feminism’ very personally, but it is at once everything and nothing to do with them. It’s not about women, who are feminists, who are white. It’s about women espousing feminist politics as they buy into the politics of whiteness, which at its core are exclusionary, discriminatory and structurally racist.