"The reason racism is a feminist issue is easily explained by the inherent definition of feminism. Feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women –as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement." --Reblogged from SisterOutsider
Monday, August 15, 2011
Statements like this give me hope
that I might someday be able to adopt a feminist identity [for now, my ideology and the dominant cultural ideology of feminists overlap in many ways, but there are aspects to the movement I cannot in good faith align myself with]. But change may be on the horizon:
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In the most theoretical sense, I do have a problem with identifying as feminist, because I know feminism has a troubled history and even now does not at all live up to that definition above.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't think there's another term for a white woman to adopt to describe that general set of beliefs. I suppose for now, "feminist" is also a convenient shorthand to describe my beliefs to people who are not familiar with social justice and thus wouldn't understand if I got into more complex terms. I'm pretty radical actually; I've been meaning to do more reading of radical shit.
The troubled past/present in terms of recognizing other varieties of womanhood is one of the big reasons I have trouble calling myself a feminist, but another one is that I just...struggle to be sympathetic towards a lot of issues feminists fight for, particularly around motherhood because I can't stand children and don't understand why anyone would want to be a mother. I recognize that I am part of the devaluing motherhood problem, but...[yeah I don't have anything to go after that but]. I don't like that I don't care about these things. But when I tried to take a SOC of Gender class to learn more and thus hopefully care more, it rapidly turned into me vs. everyone else in my seminar with me playing the role of 'the unenlightened one' every week. Being ganged up on=unhelpful towards changing my mind.
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