This made me very sad: "WHY I’M LEAVING FEMINISM"

[Catherina]

It made me sad because, well you all know just as well why.


WHY I’M LEAVING FEMINISM

8 March, 2011 – 10:08 am
By s.e. smith
Posted in social justice, Tagged ableism, classism, oppression, racism, social justice, transphobia


I spent a long time refusing to identify as a feminist. I repeated the arguments I’d absorbed from the culture around me about what feminism was, a movement gone ‘too far’ led by a crew of hysterical hairy-legged harridans. But I still believed that women didn’t have equality, that we needed to fight for the rights of all members of society to have an equal and fair chance, and I started finding out what feminists thought feminism was all about and I started calling myself one too. After all, who wouldn’t want to be part of a movement that thinks, on a fundamental level, that women are people?

As I entered the feminist movement, I started finding out more about what the mainstream elements of feminism were really about. A movement led by people from a very specific demographic, primarily concerned with the interests of that demographic. A movement that can and would do anything to advance itself, even over the backs of other women. A movement that does so routinely, casually, and evidently without any regrets. An academic industrial complex, as Jessica Yee puts it.

One of the rotating taglines on this site used to read ‘(everything) is a feminist issue’ because I used to believe that, and I thought other feminists did too. ‘This is not our fight,’ they tell me, when I try to integrate class, race, gender, disability, religion, national origins, environmental degradation, into the feminist movement. ‘Your issues,’ they tell me, ‘are not important right now but we will get to them eventually.’ The feminists who want to work in solidarity with us are too few in number, are unable to push back against the tide.

The feminist movement does not believe I am a human being. It dehumanises me. It uses my body and my lived experiences for its own ends and throws me away when it’s done. I am something disposable; I am the sacrificial planking on the hull of the feminist movement. It took me a long time to learn that I was being left out for the sea worms to eat, not actually playing an integral role in the movement, to learn that, fundamentally, many people believed that ‘my issues’ were not feminist.

My ‘issues’ being things like the rape of people in institutions, the fact that the average transgender person can expect to live for 23 years, forcible institutionalisation of people whom society doesn’t want to look at, ridiculously high domestic violence and sexual assault rates for transgender people and people with disabilities. The widening pay gap between white women and women of colour, the fact that the median net worth for Black women is $5. The fact that fat patients die without treatment due to fat hatred in the medical community. The fact that industrial pollution disproportionately impacts communities of colour, that class mobility is at an all time low, that the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer, that protections for worker safety are steadily being eroded, that unions are under attack in the United States.

...

http://meloukhia.net/2011/03/why_im_leaving_feminism.html



A little bit about the author

My focus as an essayist, journalist, and activist is on social issues, with credits in publications like The Guardian, Bitch Magazine, AlterNet, Jezebel, Longshot Magazine, Global Comment, xoJane, Truthout, and Reproductive Health Reality Check. A cofounder of FWD/Forward: Feminists with disabilities for a way forward, I continue to contribute to feminist discussion at Tiger Beatdown and am a member of the Guardian Comment Network. Additionally, I maintain a personal website, this ain’t livin’, with regular posts on a spectrum of topics from Chinese-American history to environmental justice.

I'd really like to invite her here. What do you think?

Her website is my new favorite. It's rich and profound.

[LadyHawkAZ]

1. Wow

That's a powerful read, and one I think everyone can relate to. Even those of us who prefer to keep the label in spite of the problems.

[Catherina]

2. I felt a chill when I read it shortly before posting

Check this one out. Another chill. Read it all if you have time and not just my excerpt.



INTERSECTIONALITY IS NOT OPTIONAL

Flavia Dzodan, one of my favourite ladies ever, wrote an excellent piece a few months ago about the role of intersectionality in feminism, the critical importance of acknowledging that oppression rarely occurs upon a single axis. Many of the points she raised in that piece resonated with why I left feminism, because it felt like a movement that was no longer safe and productive for me, but intersectionality is not just something feminism needs, which is why it is something I still care about, even though I don’t identify with the movement. Intersectionality should be a part of all anti-oppression work, because it is core to discussing, and combating, oppression.

These systems are all connected. There are connections between racism and ableism, for example. These things interact with and play off each other. Identities cannot be neatly segmented into little pieces that can be individually addressed, because they interlock with each other. People, living beings, cannot be chopped apart for a movement. And movements that refuse to acknowledge their own complicity with oppression will continue the same acts of oppression, will repeat the same crimes committed by those who went before.

Some of the roots of feminism lie, deeply, in ableism, classism, and racism. Access to birth control, a major cause for the early feminist movement, a cause women fought very, very hard for, was closely tied with eugenics. You cannot talk about the history of the reproductive rights movement without addressing eugenics, without acknowledging the role that racist and ableist rhetoric played in early conversations about reproductive rights. Arguments for birth control included the firm conviction that it would rid the world of poor people, people of colour, and cripples, that it would reduce reproduction by ‘animals’ and the ‘feebleminded.’ These arguments laid the groundwork for experiments on these communities, like women in Puerto Rico who suffered for the sake of the Pill, and disabled women who were sterilised in institutions.

This is history. It’s fact. This information is readily available. And it plays directly into ongoing issues in conversations about reproductive rights, like the idea of the ‘justified abortion’ for a ‘severely disabled’ fetus, like the fact that many conversations about the growing global population include ‘population control’ as a buzzword, a buzzword with serious racial implications, like the fact that numerous states still run programs that sponsor sterilisation for low income women. This isn’t history; these are things that are happening right now.

...

http://meloukhia.net/2011/12/intersectionality_is_not_optional.html

[Neoma]

3. She will be very welcome to our group.

Please invite her.

[Catherina]

4. Yes ma'am!

I'll wait a few days until things have settled down a little and our direction is clearly defined if we collapse the two forums, that way i can include the final link and our SOP in the invitation so she can see for herself that we're very committed to the same principles.

You did a great thing sister

[SunSeeker]

5. The author's experience with feminism is very different from mine.

No feminist I ever met would tell ANYONE that they are not a human being. Yes, feminists tend to be more educated and more upper class, but that's because educating a women tends to make her a feminist. The feminist movement needs to pick its battles. We are already spread too thin. There are other groups that advocate for more narrow causes. But you do not need to leave feminism to also advocate for those other causes or be part of those other advocacy groups. We are all part of the same progressive family, each group doing its part in the struggle for essentially the same thing, social justice.

I'm a feminist, a Democrat and an environmentalist, to name just a few. When I go to a Heal the Bay meeting, I don't expect them to take up my concerns about the de-funding of Planned Parenthood. Nor do I expect my NOW chapter to discuss the need for stricter air pollution standards. Nor do I expect Act Up to address teen pregnancy. Each of these groups have developed specialized knowledge and contacts on their particular issue, making them best at doing that particular thing. I respect that.

I think the headline "Why I'm Leaving Feminism" and the article itself is very inflammatory and is just the sort of thing the right looks for to justify its attack on feminism.

None of us are perfect. Yes, there are some racist feminists. And there are some sexist leftists..like some of the DUers posting on this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=716909

That's no reason to give up on a whole movement or make sweeping (and incorrect) indictments of everyone in the movement.

[ismnotwasm]

11. That is my experience as well

Reams of articles have been written on standpoint theory, the failed idea that all women share alike experiences by virtue of being female. The proponents of this idea were white, educated middle class women who mistakenly thought theirs was the same experience, say,of a Latina lesbian from the poorest quarters of Mexico city.

One of the greatest mistakes of feminism.

To me, feminism is a anti-racist, pro human rights movement that rests on the (simplified)concept that women won't be free until all women are free.
Hand in hand with this idea is the rejection of heterosexism and support of the human rights of Gays and any marginalized, objectified or oppressed people. We may not have the same experiences, educated middleclass white women cannot speak for everyone, but we can find a wealth of commonality of purpose. And we are. Woman not only don't get enough credit for their activism, but we didn't give ourselves enough credit.

[gleannfia]

6. What truly saddens me

is that the younger women take so much for granted what the older women fought for. I am 51, and it grieves me how nonchalant the 20 and 30-somethings are.

[Catherina]

8. Which younger women exactly?

Are you pained by the nonchalance of younger Feminists or younger women in general?

I don't think we can expect any more from younger women in general than previous generations did. Every generation makes that comment about the next generation, especially when it comes to sexual matters. The first wave made them about the second wave too.

If you're talking about younger Feminists, the word on the street is that the women who preceded us were bad-assed heroines. The nonchalance depends on where you look. Women like me wouldn't be here trying to build on your successes if there was any nonchalance about them.

These women are heroes to me. I don't consciously take anything they did for granted. Some of my favorite Feminists at DU are in their 60s through 70s and I'm looking forward to learning from them and growing with them. I could be mistaken but I think we had a private exchange once on race and feminism. Despite some of the testiness, I appreciated everything you shared and am glad you showed up in this thread. I hope you share a lot more sister.

[TeeYiYi]

9. I love these pictures, sis...

...and all of your posts.

Thanks Cat!

TYY

[He loved Big Brother]

13. I hate to say it but

I am only an early 30-something but I think the answer is that it's become disturbingly easier in Western culture for people to go about in pity for themselves without any perspective, so self-centeredness and apathy are more the norm than they were compared to just ten years ago. Even white men have started to think they have it shitty. To quote, "It's like fuck, white men, if you're losing, who the hell is winning?" It's both too much and too little free time on our hands, if that makes sense.

Activism feels more isolating than it did whenI first began doing it in 1999. But it would be worse to be unable to fight, and the worst would be lack of desire to keep fighting. Nothing worth dying for ever comes easy.

[TalkingDog]

7. I used to call myself a feminist until I came to a very similar realization.

Working poor women get lip service, but not much else. Feminism seems geared to serve the college educated in a sort of self-inculcating feedback loop.

Go to college, learn about gender inequality, get a job among other college educated feminists, or stay home, raise kids and associate with other college educated feminists and in some cases go on to teach college kids about feminism.

[He loved Big Brother]

12. I am blue collar, and I feel the same.

There are certain factions of feminism that I am just not feeling welcome to participate in. I prefer to stay in the dirt with the radicals and socialists and the elites can do their own thing. I am not terribly educated (some college), but I know enough to know I won't ever give up on being feminist just because it isn't solving every single problem in our culture. However, I am going to do feminism my way, which will be more second-wave than third. As a Gen-Xer, I guess that's to be expected. I see a lot of marginalized (and not so-marginalized) groups piling the expectation upon feminism to be concerned enough to do their activist work FOR them, and worse, reacting with hostility when we ask "why?" I am glad I came up in a time that taught me the value of and ability to differentiate between blogging and actual boots-on-the-ground activism.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. wow. I have been thinking along these same lines...especially this one

"The feminist movement does not believe I am a human being. It dehumanises me."

I am more than the sum total of my parts. I am an individual.

Thanks for this.

Bookmarked.