I also noticed that most mainstream feminist accounts on social media sites like Instagram never or very seldom (and when they do, it’s in the most performative way possible) address intersectional matters. They seem to be far more concerned with forms of misogyny that more often tend to be of the highest importance to wealthy, cishet, white women specifically.
They also won’t do shit when it comes to talking about women in the global south, especially in Palestine, Sudan, and DR Congo. I’ve seen accounts run by women of color who constantly call out this shit, and they get so little positive feedback from white feminists. I also feel like I don’t see any white feminists address how their fellow white feminists need to do better and be more intersectional.
Every time a feminist talks about how the movement needs more intersectionality, it usually is a woman of color, actually. I think white feminists may have this scary feeling that, if they acknowledge the need for feminism to be more intersectional, they’ll feel too complicit in oppression. This is something they’d rather not do because many of them really just want to “co-oppress” with white men and would find it painful to acknowledge their white privilege. Their main issue with patriarchy is that it personally inconveniences them.
I have literally seen women of color get “#notallwhitewomen” kind of complaints from white feminists alongside white women pulling “All Lives Matter” shit. For example, when a Black woman discusses her experience with misogynoir specifically, some white women will respond, “It’s not just Black women who get this! White women go through this too!” Ay, ay, ay…
On top of all of this, mainstream feminists fail to put out takes that come from having studied and analyzed patriarchal and gender dynamics critically and carefully. I think a lot of them fall into this kind of thinking because men can be shitty and oppressive, so people react cathartically due to living through the horrors of patriarchy, but they never really stop to ask and wonder, “Why are things this way?” That’s how you get things like essentialism in the mainstream feminist movement.
I also noticed that most mainstream feminist accounts on social media sites like Instagram never or very seldom (and when they do, it’s in the most performative way possible) address intersectional matters. They seem to be far more concerned with forms of misogyny that more often tend to be of the highest importance to wealthy, cishet, white women specifically.
They also won’t do shit when it comes to talking about women in the global south, especially in Palestine, Sudan, and DR Congo. I’ve seen accounts run by women of color who constantly call out this shit, and they get so little positive feedback from white feminists. I also feel like I don’t see any white feminists address how their fellow white feminists need to do better and be more intersectional.
Every time a feminist talks about how the movement needs more intersectionality, it usually is a woman of color, actually. I think white feminists may have this scary feeling that, if they acknowledge the need for feminism to be more intersectional, they’ll feel too complicit in oppression. This is something they’d rather not do because many of them really just want to “co-oppress” with white men and would find it painful to acknowledge their white privilege. Their main issue with patriarchy is that it personally inconveniences them.
I have literally seen women of color get “#notallwhitewomen” kind of complaints from white feminists alongside white women pulling “All Lives Matter” shit. For example, when a Black woman discusses her experience with misogynoir specifically, some white women will respond, “It’s not just Black women who get this! White women go through this too!” Ay, ay, ay…
On top of all of this, mainstream feminists fail to put out takes that come from having studied and analyzed patriarchal and gender dynamics critically and carefully. I think a lot of them fall into this kind of thinking because men can be shitty and oppressive, so people react cathartically due to living through the horrors of patriarchy, but they never really stop to ask and wonder, “Why are things this way?” That’s how you get things like essentialism in the mainstream feminist movement.