Behind the Ivy - Spring 2018

SPRING ISSUE |  BEHIND THE IVY

WH I T E F E M I N I S M

ZARA SALMAN

help, but ambulances will recognize you on—for example—either the “racism road” or the “sexism road,” but not on both. The more intersections you fall under, the less help you get; some intersections include xenophobia, racism, sexism, ableism, classism, homophobia and transphobia. White feminists must understand that the way the “average woman” experiences misogyny is not the way all women experience misogyny. In ignoring us, so many inequalities are ignored. In the Western world alone, these issues are innumerable. When white feminists aim to close the wage gap between men and women, they fail to realize that most of the time, Latina and black women make even less than white women. Police brutality should be viewed as a feminist issue, but because it doesn’t affect white women in the same way, names of women killed doing things like shopping while black, driving while black, and having a mental disability while black, are forgotten due to lack of media coverage. In fact, in media, white women—or the “average women” - like Taylor Swift and Amy Schumer - are often the face of feminism. Most critically, white feminists often forget that there is life “outside of the Western world.” Russia has recently decriminalized certain acts of domestic violence. Zainab Amin, a seven-year-old Pakistani girl who was raped and then strangled to death, was the twelfth girl who was reported attacked in a two-kilometre radius. Child marriage remains an integral part of culture in countries like

To understand why white feminism is problematic, first we need to understand what feminism, white feminism, and intersectionality are. Let’s start with the obvious: white feminism is feminism that ignores intersectionality. The next most obvious point: that definition did not make any sense whatsoever - and that’s okay. It’s a complex topic that unravels the layers of a movement that is constantly being ridiculed for being irrelevant. Reminder time: feminism is a range of movements aiming to achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes. White feminism is the empowerment and advancement of women in terms of Western privileges and ideals. And yes, not all women who are white are white feminists. Yet, most white feminists are white. This is because white people don’t have to think about the difficulties of race on a daily basis. However, white feminism isn’t just about race. It’s also about the lack of acknowledgement of women who fall into minority groups. Feminism is so often represented by white, able-bodied, straight, cisgender, working class women, or, as white feminists like to call themselves, the “average women”. I don’t know about you, but that average seems pretty specific to me. The reality is that they do not face the same struggles as other women who are minorities . This leads us to intersectionality, which is basically the word for women who fall into other minority categories. Dealing with the intersectionality of our different identities is like being hit by traffic coming from multiple directions when standing in the centre of a major intersection. You need

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