A Right to Speak Pt. 2: Feminism and Privilege: Looking Beyond the Shiny White Bubble / Trinette Taylor
When my husband and I were looking for a home in Auckland to rent, we came across a house that we both loved, on a street we wanted to be a part of.
At the viewing, I noticed that we were the only white people among those walking through the home.
I searched through the faces, and then I searched through my own understanding of how the world works.
I knew that we were the most likely, out of all the candidates looking at this house, to be given the opportunity to live there.
Not because we were any better than anyone else, but because as a white, straight, middle-class couple we would be trusted more.
In our western society, the colour of our skin and the bias associated with it gives us more opportunities to advance. This house would be no different.
We were accepted as tenants, and I found that I felt annoyed, ashamed, and guilty. I realised that I had just experienced white privilege in action.
I am a feminist.
I want to be a woman who links hands with other women who are struggling under the harsh gaze of the patriarchy.
I also want to keep learning that our world does not only stigmatise and ostracise women as a whole, but offers additional and varying degrees of oppression to women in minority groups.
Feminism, at its core, is a demand for inclusion, respect, and dignity for women.
It is not an effort to degrade men, but it is a neon sign pointing to the fact that under the patriarchy women are not perceived as having the same inherent value as men.
Feminism is a political and social movement for the rights and respect for women in her home, in her workplace, and in her society.
Feminism fights for oppression to be abolished.
With this definition, it is difficult tounderstand why feminism is being critiqued.
Surely all women want to be acknowledged as humans that hold equal value to men? Isn’t it obvious that misogyny should be heading out the door, taking his coat of oppression with him?
Intersectionality argues that feminism has typically failed to encapsulate how diverse living as a woman can be.
The intersectionality model demonstrates how women of multiple diversities (think a non-white, disabled, non-cis, lower-class, elderly woman) often experience more disadvantages than a white, able-bodied, straight, wealthy, young man.
Deborah Francis-White, a feminist activist, comments on the need for feminists to expand their understanding of the experiences of women in minority groups: “it’s easy for human beings to think that everyone else has the same needs as they do [, but the] more [minority identities] you share, the more likely you are to be marginalised, demoralised, and/or criminalised by the power base”.
Feminism struggles to acknowledge that the playing field is not even for all women.
White feminists can often be introverted and ignorant to the needs of women who are not like them.
White feminists struggle to recognise that although businesses are now more willing to employ females, the chances of a white woman getting a position is higher than that of a woman from an ethnic minority.
The chances of employment are even less for a woman from an ethnic minority with a disability.
And even fewer chances exist for a woman from an ethnic minority with a disability who displays visible signs of not fitting a heterosexual mould.
Feminism has taken massive strides to make our society aware of rape culture, body shame, and equal pay, all of which are desperately important.
But what feminism has not done well is think about the needs of those living on the margins, those who are living outside of the desirable and advantageous status of being white, straight, young, middle-class, and employed.
Intersectionality is important. It calls us to be inclusive. Now is time to become aware of the privileges we have and the complexities of existence that live outside our own limited experiences.
I believe it is a white, straight, young, middle-class, employed woman’s obligation to fight for the issues that do not directly concern them. White feminists need to stand as allies, to listen as friends, to fight as comrades, and to be silent when the voices of those more oppressed need to take the stage.
White feminists need to ask the question to those with interlocking diversities “what do you need from me?” and “what would you like me to do?”. As much as feminism cries out that men should give women love, respect, voice, and value, feminists must walk in the same affirming shoes that give love, respect, voice, and value to the women who dwell in different societal systems of oppression.
The sooner feminists acknowledge and honour the needs of those with multiple diversities, the sooner the word ‘feminism’ can be reclaimed, its rightful gravitas restored: the demand for all women to respected, included, treated with dignity, and accepted and honoured wholeheartedly for all the diversities that a woman dwells within.
Susan Wokoma, a British Nigerian actress interviewed in Deborah Francis-White’s book The Guilty Feminist: From Our Noble Goals to Our Worst Hypocrisies, finishes her discussion with her view on intersectionality.
I will end here with her words: “Get to know people out of your own experience. Too many well-meaning white feminists only know other well-meaning white feminists. Travel outside yourself. Just like I fully allied up during the Woman’s March and countless other White Feminism™ events and talks — ally the **** up too. This creates understanding, empathy, and the fact that you will miss us if we are not invited into your rooms. Intersectionality is understanding that there are different kinds of women. And it’s integral because we make a bigger noise, together.”
Trinette Taylor
This is Part Two, in our series A Right to Speak: Women Discuss Gender, Feminism and a Hope for Progress.
Read Part One, Feminism, Genders Roles and a Woman's Place here