"Feminism, Activism, Politics: The Trouble with White Feminism"
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Jessie Daniels, PhD gave a talk titled "Feminism, Politics & Activism: The Trouble with White Feminism" where she made three key points: 1) Historically, white women have often been complicit in and benefited from systems of racism and white supremacy, from slavery to lynchings. Only a small minority of white women resisted and advocated for racial justice. 2) In the 1960s civil rights era, most white women supported segregationist policies while black feminists challenged racism within feminist and anti-war movements. 3) In recent years, high-profile white feminist campaigns and organizations like Lean In and SlutWalk have been criticized for ignoring issues of
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"Feminism, Activism, Politics: The Trouble with White Feminism"
- 1. Jessie Daniels, PhD Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY FemSem YWCANYC - Columbia University - July 14, 2016 “Feminism, Politics & Activism: The Trouble with White Feminism”
- 3. introduction
- 5. 5
- 7. 7
- 8. 8
- 10. situating myself
- 11. epistemology of lived experience
- 14. 14
- 18. 2009
- 20. “Without an explicit challenge to racism, white feminism is easily grafted onto white supremacy and useful for arguing for equality for white women and possibly for white gays and lesbians within a white supremacist context."
- 24. how have white women
- 26. been connected to racism
- 27. historically?
- 29. active participants in & beneficiaries of slavery
- 30. 30
- 31. a tiny handful of white women
- 32. resistors & advocates for social justice
- 35. early suffragists split from abolitionists
- 36. Susan B. Anthony “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”
- 38. “You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!” ~ Anna Howard Shaw
- 41. More Reading on This • Louise Michelle Newman, White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the US (Oxford UP, 1999). http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ebooks-public/pdfs/0 • Ware, Vron. Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History, 2nd Ed., (Verso Books, 2015). • Wilson, Midge & Kathy Russell, One of Divided Sisters: Bridging the Gap Between Black and White Women (Anchor, 1996)
- 42. 20th century
- 43. white womanhood & white feminism
- 44. Or, what happened after suffrage?
- 45. ‘flapper’ girls & consumerism as feminism 45
- 46. 46
- 47. “lynching central to American culture”
- 48. white women active participants in lynchings 48
- 49. “defense” of white womanhood used to justify lynchings
- 52. millions of white women organized
- 54. 54
- 55. a tiny handful of white women resisted
- 56. Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL)
- 57. Read More About This • Blee, Kathleen. Women of the Klan. (University of California Press, 1991). • Giddens, Paula. Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Harper Paperbacks, 2009). • Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. Revolt Against Chivalry. (Columbia UP, 1993).
- 59. 59
- 60. World War II
- 61. 61
- 63. 63
- 64. 64
- 65. Read More About This • Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: The American Family and the Nostalgia Trap. (Basic Books, 1992). • Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns. (Vintage, 2010).
- 67. 67
- 68. millions of white women
- 70. a tiny handful resisted
- 71. 3 Evils: Militarism, Racism & Economic Exploitation
- 72. Gender Trouble in Anti-War & Black Power Movements
- 73. Read More About This • Nelson, Alondra. Body & Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). • Wu, Judy Tzu-Chuh. Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era. (Cornell University Press, 2013).
- 75. “the problem with no name” 75
- 78. 78
- 79. white women & ERA
- 80. Read More About This • Marshall, Susan E. "Ladies against women: Mobilization dilemmas of antifeminist movements." Social Problems (1985): 348-362. • Roth, Benita. Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
- 84. Read More About This • Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd Ed. (Routledge, 2002). • hooks, bell. Feminist theory: From Margin to Center. (Pluto Press, 2000). • Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. (Random House LLC, 2007).
- 85. 2016
- 86. 3 Case Studies
- 88. Case Study: Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In
- 92. the critique
- 93. “Sandberg uses feminist rhetoric as a front to cover her commitment to western cultural imperialism, to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” ~ bell hooks
- 94. Case Study: “Slut Walk”
- 98. “It’s painful and embarrassing for white feminists to be called out around race and racism, but the obligation to learn how to deal with those emotions productively is a cost of privilege.” ~ Jaclyn Friedman
- 99. Case Study 3: Carceral Feminism
- 100. White Women & ‘Central Park 5’
- 102. Prosecutor
- 103. District Attorney
- 104. Politicians
- 106. Carceral feminism + white womanhood
- 107. Read More About This • Bernstein, Elizabeth. "Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal circuits of crime, sex, and rights." Theory and Society 41, no. 3 (2012): 233-259. • Davis, Angela Y. The meaning of freedom: And other difficult dialogues. City Lights Books, 2013.
- 108. how are WOC resisting &
- 109. reshaping &
- 111. Restorative Justice
- 114. #BlackLivesMatter
- 115. a movement, not a moment 115
- 117. “As antiracist feminists of every color, we refute the patriarchal, racist practices that endanger Black people across the nation.” ~ Kimberle Crenshaw
- 119. “black feminism does not exist”
- 125. 125
- 127. Twitter: @JessieNYC Thank you! If you’d like to continue the conversation:
Editor's Notes
- First, special thanks to the organizers…especially, Alondra Nelson…Darcy Morales, Merle McGee – and honored to be in a lineup of ….and thanks to all of you, amazing young women!
- Please join the conversation here...
- say something to set expectations: new, first time, exploring ideas. As with last time I spoke here, what I try to do is interdisciplinary - memoir, data, critique, digitally engaged. 1. Intro2. Current context - sexism still exists 3. women are blogging (+ sexism in recognition by tech)4. Situating myself5. Feminist blogger study( end with point about AmAirlines & racial marketing)6. #femfuture7. race & critiques of #femfuture8. #femhack (better hashtag?) - more hacking9. end w/ some theory + more questions
- Meryl Streep + co-stars of the film “Suffragette” Source: http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/10/sister_suffragette_slave_t_shirts_highlight_white_feminism_s_race_problem/
- Lana Del Rey, Shailene Woodley + Taylor Swift Source: http://www.thedressdown.com/celebrities-continue-misunderstanding-feminism-goddammit/
- Source: http://battymamzelle.blogspot.com/2014/01/This-Is-What-I-Mean-When-I-Say-White-Feminism.html#.V4Z8oJMrKL8
- Positionality matters, in other words, who you are in relation to the research matters. Here is a little of who I am, in relation to this research.
- There is no denying that my answer to this is a resounding “yes” ~ and that I have feminism to thank for this.
- This photo taken in about 1962 is four generations of women in my family - my mother, her mother and her mother (my great grandmother), holding me. None of these women, my ancestors, ever graduated from high school, most never made it out of elementary school. My mother, there in the very cool shades, made it to 10th grade, then was forced in various ways by her mother to quit school so that she could marry at 15. I was the first woman in my family to graduate high school, college, a master’s degree, a PhD, but that’s not why I became a feminist. I was radicalized by my mother’s suicide in March, 1983. In a moment, it seemed, I knew that her life & death had been shaped by being a woman in this society in profound and deep ways that I could not yet articulate. What I did know and could articulate was that in the same moment I lost my faith and left my husband (later came to put this in a feminist psycho-analytic framework a la Nancy Chodorow).
- The edited volume “Feminist Frontiers” (Richardson & Taylor) was my consciousness raising group. I read it in my first women’s studies class - (I believe it was called ‘Sex Roles’ then) - changed my life because it gave me a new language, and a new set of a concepts and theories through which to understand my life and the lives of the women in my family. In this class in the summer of 1983, I read - for the first time - Marilyn Frye, Audre Lorde, Paula Gunn Allen, Sojourner Truth, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Adrienne Rich and Carol P. Christ whose short article charting the ways that men had purposefully and diligently worked to exclude women’s writing from the biblical canon forever changed how I viewed ‘texts’ as the realization that I’d been lied to sunk deep within me. I went on to graduate school at UT Austin where + had the further radicalizing privilege to read people like Hester Eisenstein, Barbara Katz Rothman + Natalie Sokoloff... - who’s book “A Marxist Feminist Reader” - i had open on my desk at my job as a bookeeper at River City Wire Rope & Sling - and the bright yellow cover with the word “Marxist” on it prompted by cowboy-hatted boss to call me a “pinko” as he stomped out the door.
- This is my father ... and me (circa 1969-70). My father who identified as “Native American” - and encouraged me to do so on college applications - was the same father who was an ardently anti-Jewish and anti-black racist (routinely said things like: “I don’t hate black people, I think everyone should own one.”) And, this same father that when Cisneros v. Corpus Christi ISD decision meant court-ordered busing, he moved us our family away from our neighbors the Perez family (and my first crush Elda Jo Perez) to an all-white suburb of Houston.
- Working on this book, changed me. I came to graduate school as a ‘white liberal,’ I typed and typed people’s stories of discrimination - had to *really listen* - and I left as someone who was fundamentally, deeply rooted in knowing that racism is real, current, corrosive, and that I wanted to do what I could to change it.
- Writing this book, changed me. Writing the preface ended my relationship with my father. Looking back I am almost as shocked at my own naïveté in sending this piece to my father and expecting that he would be proud of me as I am in his reaction to it. In this preface, situating myself to that work, I came out (in print) as a lesbian, revealed that while working on a dissertation about white supremacy I discovered my grandfather (his father) had been a member of the KKK in the 1920s, and connected that to my experience of that grandfather as a child molester (all of which my father knew, but it was the move to putting this in print to which he objected). I changed my given name, --- a name that seemed irredeemably tainted by a legacy of inherited and unwanted white supremacy - to Jessie Daniels, in honor of Jessie Daniel Ames (a white woman from TX who started the Assoc. of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, - a campaign that historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall refers to in her book “Revolt Against Chivalry.” ) “Using the past to know “ourselves,” to truly understand where white power and privilege has come from, is a powerful motivation for the scholarship you will find (here).” from Re-Orienting Whiteness, p.11
- Today, I share all of these intersections of biography and history with you ... to situate myself in the current work, and as a way of sharing how deeply personal race and feminism intersect for me. It is from within this field of personal-political connections, that I come to this work. This is also to say that I’m fundamentally not interested in a feminism that isn’t deeply engaged with and rooted in a racial critique. So, 2009....
- 2009, the year I published Cyber Racism... also about the time I started this work on feminist bloggers. My previous work… may seem far afield at first glance. Often say that ‘cyber racism’ examined the use of the internet for evil, now more interested in uses of internet for good… (i.e., feminism) or at least, more in line with my own political values. This shorthand is too simplistic, too binary. In fact, there is a chapter on gender & feminism within the white supremacist movement in this book.
- In Chapter 5, “Gender, White Supremacy & the Internet,” I deal with issues of gender and feminism within a large, globally networked portal for white supremacist content known as Stormfront. In that research, I found that the women who are hanging out online at Stormfront are using the Internet discussion boards to resist a more male-dominated form of white supremacy (such as what I documented in White Lies), and in so doing, embrace many of the basic ideas of feminism - work outside the home, equal pay, and frequently equal rights for gays and lesbians, and more contentious, abortion rights. And they do so in ways that were completely consistent with mainstream, feminist ideology ( + organization policy positions). This led me to conclude that: "The women at Stormfront illustrate that white feminism is not incompatible with key features of white supremacy. By resisting a more male-dominated version of white supremacy and articulating a form of white supremacy that is more inclusive and egalitarian along lines of gender, and even allowing for the possibility of a version of equal rights within white supremacy for gays and lesbians, the women of Stormfront illustrate another way in which white supremacy is inherent in white identity. This suggests something troubling about liberal feminism. To the extent that liberal feminism articulates a limited vision of gender equality without challenging racial inequality, white feminism is not inconsistent with white supremacy. Without an explicit challenge to racism, white feminism is easily grafted onto white supremacy and useful for arguing for equality for white women and possibly for white gays and lesbians within a white supremacist context." (p.85)
- Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1217156/taylor-swift-hailed-as-a-nazi-and-aryan-goddess-by-white-supremacists-amid-bizarre-claims-she-is-secretly-turning-america-fascist/
- Source: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/cant-shake-it-off-how-taylor-swift-became-a-nazi-idol
- Fast forwarding through lots of history….
- How have white women…
- And white feminists…
- Been connected to racism…
- Historically?
- White women were part of the slaveholding class and reaped the benefits of slavery. Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Woman-slave.jpg More info: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2014/02/04/white-women-and-slavery/
- Source: 12 Years a Slave http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--mRERYSIv--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/194b43nk54hi5jpg.jpg
- The appeal of slavery echoes through today, particularly for white women who seem enamored of Plantations as themeparks – tourist attractions – “retreats” – wedding venues. Source: http://www.marlsgate.com/galleries/weddings/1.html
- At the same time, there are a few white women who were resistors and advocates for social justice
- At the same time, there are a few white women who were resistors and advocates for social justice – this will be a theme throughout my remarks today, this tiny handful of resistors set against the larger social trend.
- The Grimke sisters – Sarah and Angelina – were resistors. Source: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51-5E8maYeL._SX306_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
- White women like the Grimke sisters joined with other abolitionists and advocates for equal rights for women… like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass….but this proved to be a fragile coalition.
- In 1840, the World Anti-Slavery Convention was held in London. Abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott attended the Convention but were refused seats on the floor by male abolitionists because they were women. As a result, Stanton and Mott decided to hold a convention on women’s rights – the landmark Seneca Falls Convention held eight years later (1848).
- Susan B. Anthony
- Source: http://the-toast.net/2014/04/21/suffragettes-sucked-white-supremacy-womens-rights/
- Suffragette: Anna Howard Shaw, 1847-1919 (Physician, Methodist minister, president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, inspiration for an episode of 30 Rock) Hooray: “Around me I saw women overworked and underpaid, doing men’s work at half men’s wages, not because their work was inferior, but because they were women.” Wait, What: “You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!” More here: http://the-toast.net/2014/04/21/suffragettes-sucked-white-supremacy-womens-rights/
- If you’re interested in this history – and you should be – you’ll want to look for black women in the “club movement” – not often referred to as suffragists, but rather as “club women.” Source: http://www.wesleyan.edu/mlk/posters/suffrage.html
- A major feature film ….retells this story but skirts the issue of race. See this review, for a good critique: http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/10/film-review-suffragette/ “There are no black people in this movie.”
- Fast forwarding through lots of history….
- Distinguishing here between white women, the idea of ‘white womanhood’ + and white feminism.
- Not much discussion usually of feminism in the time immediately following suffrage.
- Women of the generation after suffrage wanted to distance themselves from their mothers’ and grandmothers’ struggles --- don’t call me a suffragist! (similar to today’s – don’t call me a feminist). Instead, much of ‘feminism’ got played out through consumer culture. Source: http://www.genderforum.org/issues/gender-and-consumerism/flapper-girls-feminism-and-consumer-society-in-the-1920s/
- AT THE SAME TIME….. Lynching, the ‘red record’ and reign of terror happening.
- Jennie Leitweis-Goff argues in her book Blood at the Root, is central to American culture. The facts about lynching are well known to historians, but most people with a high school diploma in the U.S. don’t know a thing about it, because it’s generally not taught in 9-12/H.S. curriculum. I’ve written lots more about the definition, geographical patterns and historical context of lynching here. The peak period of lynching in the U.S. was from 1882-1930 (note: after slavery and well into the 20th century), and estimates are that some 4,742 people have been lynched in the U.S. (through 1968).
- Where were white women in this? Many white women were active participants in lynchings. Source: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/lynch_mob_large.jpg
- And, more broadly, the mythology the “pure” virginal white woman supposedly under attack by the black male rapist was widely used to justify lynching.
- The major them of Th.Dixon’s book The Clansman – and DW Griffith’s film, Birth of a Nation. Source: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/lynch_mob_large.jpg
- Ida B. Wells – journalist, scholar, public intellectual + activist – worked tirelessly to expose what she called the “red record” of lynching – really a reign of racial violence and terror – that was also gendered. And, Wells was among the first – and for along time only – voices to point out the “mythical” nature of the ideology surrounding lynching.
- At the same time, there are a tiny few white women who were resistors and advocates for social justice….but if you look at the large number of white women, they were organizing in support of lynching.
- This is what a majority of white women were doing. Source: http://usslave.blogspot.com/2012/10/women-of-klan.html
- Millions in the Klan during the 1920s – held a march down Pennsylvania Avenue
- At the same time, there are a few white women who were resistors and advocates for social justice
- This move to resist lynching by white, southern women was relatively late in the ‘reign of terror’ that was lynching.
- Again, fast forwarding through history…. Known as “The Great Depression” – extended through the 1930s and into the 1940s.
- Black Americans were especially hard hit during this time.
- Fast forwarding again….WWII helped pull the US economy out of economic depression.
- It also changed gender norms. Jobs that were otherwise restricted for male incumbents / employees – were suddenly open to women. Usually, these defense jobs were also racially segregated, but some African American women got jobs in defense plants.
- More fast-forwarding through history….following WWII, those changes and seeming ‘openness’ in gender norms promptly closed and gender norms became the most rigid they’d been in decades.
- Partly, rigid gender norms were due to the rise in suburbs….but these too were racially restricted.
- Suburbs had implications for gender + race + labor = particularly for white women.
- One of the other consequences of WWII was that it created rising expectations among African Americans – who served in the military, fighting fascism and tyranny abroad to come home and face racial discrimination and tyranny here.
- While we tend to tell a story about the ‘non-violence’ of the CRM, it was actually very violent….on the part of the white establishment.
- And, continuing with our theme, the vast majority of white women supported segregation…. Either in the streets or quietly at home. Source: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/i/media/bridges4.jpg
- And, continuing with our theme, the vast majority of white women supported segregation…. Either in the streets or quietly at home. Source: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/i/media/bridges4.jpg
- A teeny, tiny handful resisted…. Like Viola Liuzzo.
- Triple evils: militarism, racism + economic exploitation – MLK not so good on the gender stuff, but a man of his time and all that.
- As the CRM grew, it sparked other movements that grew out of it….including, the student movement against the VietNam war, and… “Student power” – yet women making coffee Source: http://old.seattletimes.com/special/centennial/october/art/StudentPower.jpg Eldridge Cleaver: “There is only one position for women in the movement…prone”
- In large part, so-called “second wave” feminism --- like the ‘first wave’ suffragists – grew out of exclusion within male-dominated anti-war and black power movements. And, simultaneously, disatisfaction with suburban housewifery.
- Betty Friedan penned a book that captured a moment in the culture and, for many women, sparked a new consciousness about ‘the problem with no name” -- that is, the disastisfaction of educated, upper-middle class, white women who were suburban housewives.
- ” -- that is, the disastisfaction of educated, upper-middle class, white women who were suburban housewives who were being kept out of the paid labor force.
- Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pittman-Hughes – the second wave recognized race as important and made efforts to do real, cross-racial coalition building.
- One of these real moments of hopeful organizing across difference was the Welfare Rights Organization, and theoretically the promise of socialist feminism https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/the-promise-of-socialist-feminism/ Source: https://www.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Triece-Pic.jpg
- At the same time, Kimberle Crenshaw – intersectionality term.
- 3 case studies of white feminism
- 3 case studies of white feminism
- 3 case studies of white feminism
- LOTS of press and attention.
- Ok, so… fine.
- See any problems with this?
- Began in Toronto –
- Slut Walk protests spread throughout Canada + US – one of the leaders who emerged at Slut Walk in Boston was Jaclyn Friedman who spoke at that rally... and, Jaclyn Friedman also has one of the all-time greatest lines about ‘how feminist digital activism is like the clitoris’ = it’s not a button.
- The critiques of the Valenti & Martin report which have emerged, largely from women of color, many but not all of them mentioned here, have to do more with whiteness, privilege + unexamined power dynamics than with explicit racism.
- This kind of critique is experienced as “painful and embarrassing” for white feminists, but it’s important to learn to take it in and move past it. Personal communication with Jaclyn Friedman.
- Definition: relying on state violence as a response to violence against women. See Bernstein, Davis. See also: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/against-carceral-feminism/
- 1989.
- Victim: Trisha Meilli, identity unknown for many years, but ID’d as a white woman who worked on Wall St. (upper middle class) Source: http://www.brainline.org/content/2008/08/i-am-central-park-jogger-story-hope-and-possibility_pageall.html
- Elizabeth Lederer was the lead prosecutor
- Source: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5uWu0nSsg7w/maxresdefault.jpg
- Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/daily_videos/new-york-city-awards-40-million-to-the-wrongly-imprisoned-central-park-five/ 2014 – awarded $40 million
- Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/social-power-and-the-central-park-five/275552/
- Now to the good part…. How are women of color resisting…
- re-shaping
- And “hacking” white feminism. TO borrow from DH, I want to suggest that we need to move toward “hacking not yacking” when it comes to online feminism.
- At the vanguard….Mikki Kendall.
- Kendall started the hashtag #Solidarity is for white women. Read more about this here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/14/solidarityisforwhitewomen-hashtag-feminism
- And, it is black queer women who started the hashtag now movement…. BlackLivesMatter.
- These women truly give me life: Patrisse Cullors, Opal Torneti, Alicia Garza. So grateful I lived to see this movement begin and pray I live to see real change.
- Kimberle Crenshaw’s latest…
- If the reaction to the Charleston massacre is to be realized as something beyond a singular moment of redemptive mourning, then neither the intersectional dynamics of racism and patriarchy which produced this hateful crime, nor the inept rhetorical politics that sustain the separation of feminism from antiracism, can be allowed to continue. As antiracist feminists of every color, we refute the patriarchal, racist practices that endanger Black people across the nation. Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kimberle-crenshaw/the-charleston-imperative_b_7757996.html
- So, what does “hacking” white feminism look like? More reasons it’s necessary for feminists to hack Wikipedia.... Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/wikipedias-sexism.html Wikipedia’s Sexism By AMANDA FILIPACCHI April 27, 2013 Early last week I noticed something strange on Wikipedia. It appeared that, gradually, over time, the volunteer editors who create the site had begun moving women, one by one, from the “American Novelists” category to the “American Women Novelists” subcategory. Female authors whose last names began with A or B had been most affected. The intention appeared to be to create a list of “American Novelists” made up almost entirely of men. The category listed 3,837 authors, and the first few hundred were mainly men. An explanation at the top of the page said that the list of “American Novelists” was too long, and novelists had to be put in subcategories whenever possible. People who might have gone to Wikipedia to get ideas for whom to hire, or honor, or read, and looked at that list of “American Novelists” for inspiration, might not even have noticed that the first page of it included far more men than women. They might simply have used that list without thinking twice about it. It’s probably small, easily fixable things like this that make it harder and slower for women to gain equality in the literary world. Many female novelists, like Harper Lee, Anne Rice, Amy Tan, Donna Tartt and some 300 others, had been relegated to the ranks of “American Women Novelists” only, and no longer appeared in the category “American Novelists.” Male novelists on Wikipedia, however — no matter how obscure — all got to be in the category “American Novelists.” In an Op-Ed article I wrote, published on The New York Times’s Web site on Wednesday, I suggested it was too bad that there wasn’t a subcategory for “American Men Novelists.” And what do you know; shortly after, a new subcategory called exactly that appeared. But there was more. Much more. As soon as the Op-Ed article appeared, unhappy Wikipedia editors pounced on my Wikipedia page and started making alterations to it, erasing as much as they possibly could without (I assume) technically breaking the rules. They removed the links to outside sources, like interviews of me and reviews of my novels. Not surprisingly, they also removed the link to the Op-Ed article. At the same time, they put up a banner at the top of my page saying the page needed “additional citations for verifications.” Too bad they’d just taken out the useful sources. In 24 hours, there were 22 changes to my page. Before that, there had been 22 changes in four years. Thursday night, a kind soul went in there and put back the deleted sources. The Wiki editors instantly took them out again. I knew my page might take a beating. But at least I’m back in the “American Novelists” category, along with many other women. For the moment anyway.
- Necessary because of real gaps in knowledge on Wikipedia ~ like this disappointing result when you search for “Black feminist thought.”
- This action took place at the GC back in February - why necessary?
- Source: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/toofew-feminist-people-of-color-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-on-friday-11am-3pm-est-2/47379
- Yes, what would a feminist bot do...?
- Would it jailbreak the patriarchy, do genderswaps with pronouns...(like this Google Chrome add-on)? Source: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jailbreak-the-patriarchy/fiidcfoaaciclafodoficaofidfencgd?hl=en-US
- Or, would a feminist bot jailbreak gender altogether, allowing us to ‘imagine a world without gender’ ~ as this add-on does? Source: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jailbreak-the-binary-zehi/mmdlclbfhplmbjfefngjbicmelpbbdnh?hl=en
- These are some of the future leaders of “hacking” white feminism.
- What we need, as we have, is an intersectional feminism – that sees race and class and colonialism interwoven and finds ways to create coalition across difference, Source: http://sarahgetscritical.com/2013/02/16/why-intersectionality-is-crucial-in-any-liberation-movement/