Sorry for the long, long intermission. I know it's been nearly 2 years since I posted. I want to resurrect this tiny little blog, though. So please, read on. And if you are one of the lucky 1 or 2 readers, please comment!
Here's what I came to say:
I am a feminist. It's an important part of my identity, one that I don't take lightly. For those of you who are misinformed about feminism (and there are many of you out there!), feminism is not simply concerned with the trials of women. Women's studies programs spend entire semesters discussing such issues as racial oppression, economic oppression, heterosexism, xenophobia, and environmental justice issues. These things are intrinsically related and really inseperable from sexism. They operate together and modern feminists explore them together, as interconnected.
Here's the rub. As an educated white heterosexual woman I don't really belong to any groups other than the dominant group. So when I am surrounded with like-minded feminists and the stories of their struggles not simply with sexism but racism, poverty, and ethnic identity and the beauty ideals that inevitably tag along, I sometimes feel superfluous. As though I have nothing to contribute to the conversation. This feeling, of course, goes against everything I pay lip service to when I insist that everyone's experience is valid as their own true experience, and we can all learn from each other's stories. Somehow my stories just don't pack the same emotional punch. I can never truly know what's it like to be black, Asian-American, lesbian, intersexed, or anything other than what I am. So does that make my experience somehow less useful in the feminist discourse? Am I still "qualified" to talk about oppression as though I know of what I speak?
Also, many of my friends and all of my family do not identify as feminist, and actually think feminism is an evil in the world. So I feel like I'm just all wrong. I'm always either defending feminism to non-feminists or feeling left out of the feminist community.
Is anybody out there with similar struggles of in-group/out-group inclusion issues? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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1 comments:
I dunno, I do see where you're coming from, and for whatever reason, women's studies departments often seem to attract the most... mmm... vocal of the radical. But I don't think anyone's experience is less valid or valuable.
Sure, you can't talk about being a lesbian, but you can talk about being heterosexual and married and the conflicts and assumptions that come up because of that, how you balance feminism and marriage (since there are certainly some camps that don't see this possible), and so forth.
It's sort of funny you mention this, actually, as it always comes up when I mention I write for a bioethics blog focusing on women's issues - but I see it every day, in medicine and the related fields. The fact that research is only done on male animal models, that most researchers are male, the imported assumptions about gender - it's amazing. And as I'm sure your husband will mention when he sees you (given it left him kind of speechless), we have politicians comparing rape to being force-fed chocolate cake - these are issues that demand a feminist response.
Yes, if you want to look at it as a hierarchy of power and dominance, then white women often end up at the top, "near" men. But there's more to it, I think, than the colour of your skin or your sexual preference. Narrowing in on that seems like a valid tactic for GLBT studies or race relations, but I'd question any women's studies class doing that kind of narrowing, only because you are a woman, and you do experience societal stresses/biases because of it.
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