“Ladies who lunch”
So this is what “White Feminism” is – a guaranteed win in the Oppression Olympics. It’s a piece from last summer by Paris Lees, politely titled Ban Sex Work? Fuck Off, White Feminism.
The title seemed stupid to me, as well as abusive, since Paris Lees is white. But she explains that.
I feel duty bound to break my self-imposed silence – I’m on holiday, fuckers – to speak out on a subject that, like so many important issues in the media, has been discussed almost exclusively by a privileged few who are neither affected by nor particularly informed about their current excuse to grandstand.
That’s a remarkably disgusting thing to say. What are the implications? That people should never seek to reform or end an exploitative institution if they’re not directly “affected” by it? That people should be even more ruthlessly selfish and coldly indifferent than we already are? And how does Paris Lees know that opposition to prostitution is nothing more than an excuse to grandstand?
The loudest voices I have seen in the latest sex work debate bring zero first-hand experience to the table. Yeah, I see you, White Feminists.
I am both white and a feminist. But I am not what you would call a White Feminist, capital letters, for I am also trans.
Oh. Oh is that how it works. She’s white, but she’s not White, because she’s trans. So being trans is her ticket to the right to be verbally abusive to feminist women she dislikes, because being trans makes her not White even though she is white.
What an ugly mind.
White Feminism is a special club but membership doesn’t rest solely on race. White Feminism is about privilege. Ladies who lunch and feel hard done by because a man held the door open for them on their way in to the Four Seasons. White Feminism is many things but it is not inclusive, or, in fancy feminist lingo, “intersectional”. The voices of the “wrong sort” of women – black women, trans women, sex workers and so on – get drowned out, just as “bad” women have been silenced and shamed by privileged women, men and society in general since time immemorial. White Feminists have the biggest media platforms and are able to do this. They can launch patronising campaigns to save “fallen women” who cannot possibly be expected to make choices for themselves or, if they do, to understand the implications of those choices like the clever, educated ladies of White Feminism do. White Feminism always knows best. It is paternal and judgmental and, in many cases, indistinguishable from the partriarchal dictatorship it ostensibly seeks to dismantle. I am just saying.
That is an ugly, ugly mind – and a misogynist mind. Talk about excuses to grandstand – this is clearly her excuse to pour venom on feminist women as “ladies who lunch” – the old “princess” taunt dressed up to look vaguely progressive.
An ugly, ugly mind.
Clearly demonstrating that White Feminism is a straw man created by misogynists, to the surprise of absolutely no one. The most effective anti pornstitution activists are exited women. This is why there is such urgency to discredit them among traffickers and pornsick weasels.
“Ladies who lunch”. I am white. I am a feminist. I am also (cough,cough) over 40, which this author managed not to mention, but underlies much of this conversation – “old” feminists, women who are no longer needing abortion, women who might actually be established in a career and have a lot more time to think about other women.
I am not a “lady who lunches”. I am a woman who more often than not works through my lunch, forgets to lunch, skips, lunch, or gulps my lunch to get back to my desk before the avalanche starts. I am, nonetheless, perceived as a woman of privilege because I have finally, after three decades of struggling to make it in the adult world, gotten a job that pays enough that I don’t have to worry if I’m going to be living in my car next week. It allows me a bit to travel and learn about things first hand by seeing and talking to people, and therefore guarantees that I am ignorant and uninformed, because I am a “white feminist lady who lunches privileged cis-hetero-normative” something. If I listen to the voices of those oppressed, I must be careful not to listen to the “wrong” voices, which means the voices that intersectional feminism doesn’t recognize as legitimate, because they don’t toe the line of what trans people, or sex workers, or people of color are “supposed” to think. Listen to the voice of the (fill in your favorite team in the Oppression Olympics here); but only listen to this cluster standing over here shouting. That other group over there? Nope, they have sold out, because they don’t agree with the current zeitgeist.
This is the last straw. I will not be called a “lady who lunches”. Damn, if I ever had time for a leisure lunch, I wouldn’t know what to do with it!
That last quoted paragraph is such an incredible caricature. Where are these mythical lunching White Feminists?
MrFancyPants – I think they are riding unicorns to these lunches. Because that’s where they live. In mythology.
I am white like all* trans-“feminists” but I’m somehow not white because I’m trans…
Lovely…
She talks of “White feminism” in a way extremely reminiscent of MRA talk of feminism in general. Not a coincidence, imo: the same political realities undergird both. She is basically denying that women who are privileged on some axes (say, class and race) have any claim to being oppressed at all, which means she is effectively denying that feminism, as resistance against the oppression of women, has any broad relevance at all. If feminism only has relevance to those who are oppressed on other axes in conjunction with being women, it’s hard to see why the status of being a woman needs to be invoked at all.
Also, why is talk of “White feminism” so common now, but talk of “Male antiracism” basically non-existent? Is feminism as movement really so much more problematic than antiracism as a movement? Or has the notion of intersectionality been hijacked by anti-feminists as a convenient tool for flaying feminism?
Quoted for emphasis.
Yep, conveniently laid out in direct language: ‘White Feminist’ is all about whether you tick the right demographics boxes. Trans activists obviously see theirs as the trump card that enables them to pontificate not only on behalf of all trans people, but also to dominate all discussions of feminism in general. Railroad all the conversations to be about trans!
It seems the only way to talk to this person is to be a feminist with more qualifiers, and the more exotic the better. Quick, someone find a
blackFirst Nationsgaypansexual polysexual aromantic kinky transwomanJupitergender feminist that disagrees with her! That’ll settle this once and for all.“Or has the notion of intersectionality been hijacked by anti-feminists as a convenient tool for flaying feminism?”
Would you prefer the cigar,t he coconut, or the kewpie doll?
How could someone born male and raised a male really understand what it is to be a women? The only thing Paris really knows anything about is that of being a transsexual. She knows nothing of periods and menstrual cramps, and she’s never had to face many of the uphill struggles, having being born and raised a man, that girls encounter as they grow up.
If you grow up in Germany, speaking only German, and decide to move to The States at age 35, you’ll eventually know what it is to be an American.
But as American as you may eventually become, you’ll still never know what it’s like to have GROWN UP in America, and you’ll always retain a rather muscular German accent.
One that will give away the game every time
When I hear “intersectionality”, I reach for my Browning.
I’ll giver a point for knowing something by Sondheim.
Emily Vicendese #6
And with that one sentence you have pretty much summed up all of intersectionalism.
I have often wondered about this myself. There seems to be a default assumption that concerns about racial or ethnic discrimination (+ every other type of discrimination you can possibly think of if you’re an intersectionalist) always trump concerns about sexism. So, for instance, if there’s a conflict between the rights of non-Western men to practice their culture, no matter how patriarchal, on the one hand and women’s rights on the other, the former takes precedence by default. Never mind that a culture is just a set of ides/practices whereas women are actual people, and never mind that – shock of all shocks – people in non-Western societies may not all agree with the most reactionary male voices in their own societies.
Also, as I like to point out whenever white people attack other white people as “white feminists”, the actual claim being made here is: “The non-whites all agree with me” (Because obviously every last person of color on the planet is pro pimps and johns, believes in male vs. female minds etc.). If this is not appropriation, then nothing is.
Lees is a vapid, self-promoting twit. Read one of her articles and take a shot every time you find a first person singular. You’ll be wankered by the third paragraph.
The ‘privileged/opwessed’ game tokens taken to their logical conclusion.
And activism around ‘sex work’ and exploitation is STILL stuck on the dueling anecdote level: ‘I’ll raise you two psych grad-student adventurers and a Cis-privilege card, so your Thai farm-girl trafficked into slavery doesn’t count. So there!’
Bjarte:
Not all of intersectionalism. It’s what I call “village intersectionalism”: basically Internet intersectionalism, or public discourse intersectionalism. Academic intersectionalism is much better. For example Kimberle Crenshaw’s analysis of racist responses to rap group’s misogyny is reflective and insightful.
You know, maybe we could call the idea that wearing hijab is antiracist “male antiracism”.
It makes me very angry that one moment she insists that she is as much a woman as any cis woman and then when she wants to argue with some other women she denounces them as “White Feminists” and says it’s OK for her to abuse them like this because she’s trans. Did she seriously intend to say that she launch insults at women she disagrees with because she used to be a man, so that’s absolutely fine.
Also, she says that she has fucked my Dad. I shall have to have words with him about this.
I agree with the basic principle that feminism should not only be about the interests of white middle class women but when “White Feminist” is a term of abuse, that is not solidarity of any kind. I see articles that claim that a white feminist and a “White Feminist” are two different things but this seems like saying that “that’s so gay” isn’t homophobic. Articles that explain why this isn’t so often blur terms within a few paragraphs. If anyone objects they are told that they don’t get to tell people how to handle their oppression. This is absolute poison. It’s also damned if you do and damned if you don’t because you can either stick to what you know and experience and be a “White Feminist” or you can get involved in, for example, issues that relate to ethnic minorities and then when someone doesn’t like what you say on any one thing you can be denounced as a “White Feminist” trying to tell non-white women what’s good for them when you cannot possibly understand it.