When black feminists started to push for an intersectional analysis in British feminism, the widespread response from feminists who were white was not one of support. Instead, they began to make the case that the word ‘intersectional’ was utter jargon – too difficult for anyone without a degree to understand – and therefore useless.
‘If you haven’t got the same background in or affinity with academia, though, intersectionality is a word that says this is not for you,’ wrote Sarah Ditum on her personal blog in 2012.4
In the New Statesman, Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrote: ‘This means that issues of race, class, religion, sexuality, politics and privilege often end up fracturing feminist dialogue, most regularly causing disagreements between those armed with an MA in Gender Studies and a large vocabulary to match, and those without [. . .] Going into certain state comps and discussing the nuances of intersectionality isn’t going to have much dice if some of the teenage girls in the audience are pregnant, or hungry, or at risk of abuse (what are they going to do? Protect or feed themselves with theory? Women cannot dine on Greer alone). [. . .] It almost seems as though some educated women want to keep feminism for themselves, cloak it in esoteric theory and hide it under their mattresses, safe and warm beneath the duck-down duvet.’5
As the debate intensified on social media, feminists who didn’t comply with this line were routinely monstered in the press. The jabs were kept just about evasive enough so that no particular woman was named, and so there was very little response published from those being criticised. Sadie Smith wrote in the New Statesman: ‘The Online Wimmin Mob takes offence everywhere, but particularly at other women who are not in their little Mean Girls club, which has their own over-stylised and impenetrable language, rules and disciplinary proceedings.’6
The white feminist distaste for intersectionality quickly evolved into a hatred of the idea of white privilege – perhaps because to recognise structural racism would have to mean recognising their own whiteness. They were backed up by their men. Tom Midlane wrote in the New Statesman: ‘While the idea is obviously born out of honourable intentions, I believe the whole discourse around privilege is inherently destructive – at best, a colossal distraction, and at worst a means of turning us all into self-appointed moral guardians out to aggressively police even fellow travellers’ speech and behaviour. Why does this matter, you ask? The answer is simple: it matters because privilege-checking has thoroughly infected progressive thought.’7
You’ll notice a trend here. Between 2012 and 2014, the most spirited takedowns of black women talking about race, racism and intersectionality were always published via the New Statesman, Britain’s foremost centre-left political magazine. Because of the sheer frequency of these takedowns, I began to wonder if there was an editorial line. There were weak efforts by the New Statesman to publish rebuttals by defenders of intersectionality, but it was the harsh criticisms that seemed to set the magazine’s agenda on the topic.
A few years later, the arguments first put forward by white feminists and left-wing bloggers in 2012 and 2013 were being echoed by publishing platforms that were decidedly not left wing. The extreme, hard-right, website Breitbart London defined intersectionality as ‘A debate strategy: when you’re losing an argument about feminism, call your opponent racist or, even more damningly, capitalist’, and defined privilege as ‘What white middle-class feminists have and their victims don’t’.8 In another dictionary-style takedown of progressives, the Spectator wrote: ‘I is for identity politics. Always define yourself by your natural characteristics rather than your character, achievements or beliefs. You are first and foremost male, female, other, straight, gay, black or white and should refer to yourself as such. Martin Luther King should have checked his privilege when he had that nonsense dream of a world where people “will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character”. That’s easy for a middle-class straight man to say, Marty. I is also for intersectionality, the tearaway offspring of identity politics, where you must constantly wonder how your various personal identities intersect with each other (or something).’9 On the same topic, another writer in the same magazine wrote, ‘As theories go, this one isn’t wholly mad. The trouble is, it has become faddish among people who don’t read books or essays but merely tweets and Internet comments, and thus don’t know what they are talking about. So what you end up with is a kind of minority Top Trumps, and a sort of spreading, infectious belief that the more box-tickingly disadvantaged a person is, the wiser, kinder and more all-seeing they must be. And it’s stupid.’10
Based on these responses, it seemed like black women’s interventions in white British feminism were absolutely not welcome. The reaction was identical to the way the most sexist of men treat feminism. In the middle of this heated debate about intersectionality in British feminism, four months after my disastrous conversation with BBC Woman’s Hour, Dr Kimberlé Crenshaw was invited onto the same show to explain why feminism can no longer ignore race. She was asked ‘how helpful is it when . . . black women are asking white and well-off women to check their privilege?’ Quoting some of black feminism’s harshest critics, the interviewer continued, ‘It’s closing down the debate, and it’s diminishing empathy.’
‘That’s always going to be an issue in any kind of movement that makes a claim that everybody in the category is experiencing discrimination in the same way, when in fact, that’s not often the case,’ Dr Crenshaw responded. But the damage was done. The utterance of a meme-ified phrase saw black feminism reduced to nothing more than a disruptive force, upsetting sweet, polite, palatable white feminism. British feminism was characterised as a movement where everything was peaceful until the angry black people turned up. The white feminist’s characterisations of black feminists as disruptive aggressors was not so different from broader stereotyping of black communities by the press. Women of colour were positioned as the immigrants of feminism, unwelcome but tolerated – a reluctantly dealt-with social problem. It’s surprising that no prominent white feminists made it far enough in their hyperbole to give an Enoch Powell-style, impassioned speech – something along the lines of ‘in this country in fifteen or twenty years’ time the black woman will have the whip hand over the white woman’. Considering the verbal violence with which they greeted a race analysis in feminism, this seemed to be the logical conclusion of their arguments.
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 predic
ated 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.
For those who identify as feminist, but have never questioned what it means to be white, it is likely the phrase white feminism applies. Those who perceive every critique of white-dominated politics to be an attack on them as a white person are probably part of the problem. When white feminists are ignorant on race, they don’t initially come from a place of malice – although their opposition can very quickly evolve into a frothing vitriol when challenged on their politics. Instead, I’ve learnt that they come from a place very similar to mine. We all grew up in a white-dominated world. This is the context that white feminists are working within, benefiting from and reproducing a system that they barely notice. However, their critical-analysis skills are pretty good at spotting exclusive systems, such as gender, that they don’t benefit from. They spout impassioned rhetoric against patriarchy with ease, feeling its sharp edge of injustice jutting them in the ribs at work in the form of unequal pay, and socially, hurled at them in the street in the form of catcalling. And they rightly say, ‘I’m sick of living in this world built for the needs of men! I feel like at best, I can fight it, at worst I have to learn to cope in it.’ Yet they’re incredibly defensive when the same analysis of race is levelled at their whiteness. You’d have to laugh, if the whole thing wasn’t so reprehensible.
When they talk about equal rights and representation, white feminists deeply mean it. They can be witty, intelligent, eloquent and insightful on issues like reproductive rights, street harassment, sexual violence, beauty standards, body image, and women’s representation in the media. These are issues that so many women can strongly resonate with and relate to. It tends to be white women who find themselves representing feminism in the press, talking about it on television or the radio, enthusing about it in magazines.
It helps that the white women espousing feminist politics in the public sphere are conventionally attractive with enough of a quirk that renders them relatable to the everyday woman. They have chubby thighs or gappy teeth. They have bodies that are far from the supermodel standard that we’ve come to hold all women in the public eye to. This is refreshing, we shout. These women look like us. These women are real. These women are women’s women. These women are not afraid to say what they think. In an age of Twitter followings and YouTube subscriber counts, it’s also about personal branding and burgeoning careers. So we click, and like, and follow.
Being a feminist with a race analysis means seeing clearly how race and gender are intertwined when it comes to inequalities. Looking at the politics of race in this country, I can see how an entitlement towards white British women’s bodies plays out in what is being said. 2066 is the year white people will supposedly become a minority in Britain. Oxford Professor David Coleman is the man who estimated that date. In 2016, he wrote in a Daily Mail article – framed around the issue of Brexit: ‘women born overseas contributed 27 per cent of all live births in 2014, and 33 per ce
nt of births had at least one immigrant parent – a figure which has more than doubled since the 1990s.’11 The article was titled, ‘RIP This Britain: With academic objectivity, Oxford Professor and population expert David Coleman says white Britons could be in the minority by the 2060s – or sooner’.
I think it’s easy to see how those who espouse white nationalist politics could take these figures and run with them, and insist that the year 2066 will mark Britain’s doomsday. It looks like there is a subtle ethno-nationalism in this discussion, almost worthy of The Handmaid’s Tale. It seems to be a racialised misogyny that is preoccupied with wombs, and urges white British women to fuck for their country while accusing women who aren’t white British of breeding uncontrollably and destabilising the essence of Britain.
Despite this pernicious narrative, there are quarters of British society who maintain that misogyny is somehow the reserve of foreigners. Never in a million years did I think I’d hear former Prime Minister David Cameron call out the ills of a patriarchal society. When, in 2012 and 2013, British women’s groups such as the Fawcett Society and the Women’s Budget Group did the laborious maths to argue that the government’s austerity agenda was hitting women the hardest, David Cameron and his party barely responded. It was interesting, then, that when Mr Cameron finally uttered the words ‘patriarchal society’ almost three years later, it was to lay out government plans of an ultimatum policy that demanded Muslim women who were living in the UK on a spousal visa either learn English, or face deportation.
‘Look, I’m not blaming the people who can’t speak English,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. ‘Some of these people have come to our country [from] quite sort of patriarchal societies, where perhaps the menfolk haven’t wanted them to learn English, haven’t wanted them to integrate.’ He continued, ‘What we’ve found in some of the work we’ve done is . . . [a] school governors’ meeting where the men sit in the meeting and the women have to sit outside, [and] women who aren’t allowed to leave their home without a male relative. This is happening in our country and it’s not acceptable. We should be very proud of our values, our liberalism, our tolerance, our idea that we want to build a genuine opportunity democracy . . . where there is segregation it’s holding people back, it’s not in tune with British values and it needs to go.’12
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race Page 13
