Giving Up My Feminist Card
Today, I hand in my Feminist Card. Sorry Steinem and hooks. It’s clear nobody ready your books. Because we aren’t doing this right. One of my favorite quotes about feminism over the years was by bell hooks. She wrote:
“Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.”
― bell Hooks,The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
I bought into this feminism. I believe this feminism. Because I’m black. I have loved black men and boys, and women and girls, back from trauma, and psychological damage, and miseducation. I have seen them for the totality of who they are; created by systems they were born into and ultimately embodied. They had to be re-informed and shown something different. There were many, and many remain, who refused and fought against progress. That’s fine. There will always be those. We rarely have time to engage those people because we are too busy doing the work. POC groups know that method from the various other areas of oppression in our lives and our day in and day out fights to dismantle systems of oppression.
White women don’t know that. And therein lies the problem. This is why I’m handing in my card today.
Intersectionality in feminism is hard because women from oppressed cultures, races, and classes understand fully what it is to bare the unfair burden and weight of oppression in every area of our lives. Everything is colored and nuanced. Equity is valued over equality. Because we know oppression, the idea of oppressing others is an absolute deal breaker.
Traditional feminism (i.e. White Feminism) is one step away from being the most powerful people on earth (under white men). They know no other oppression than that of womanhood. Misogyny keeps them from having all power.
Because most have never seen other oppression, their model to win fights is the white men. In their fight for equality it is no holds barred. Everyone can burn. There is no nuance. No humanity. They will trample and destroy everything in their path to get what they believe to be rightfully theirs. It’s Imperialism: Feminist style. For many feminists, this isn’t about their ability to SURVIVE as it is with other oppressed groups. It is about their ability to have upward mobility. For them it is about doing MORE. For us it is about doing ANYTHING.
To be clear, I’m ok with that. Women are discriminated against every day of our lives. Shit is unfair. We should be fighting tooth and nail to remedy that. However, I refuse to be a part of any fight whose purpose it is to usurp the existing power and take its place instead of giving EVERYONE power. Particularly not for a group showing themselves as unscrupulous as those they want to unseat.
My language is strong today because today I have been in the crossfire of this feminism. It has not been the first time this has happened to me. Or the 10th. But it WILL be the last. My story has been co-oped. My voice has not been heard. And a hail storm has rained on places and people I love and hold sacred because Feminism. bell hooks famously described oppression as being the absence of choices. Today I have seen what happens when your choice, as a feminist, is not of the popular opinion. Your voice is rescinded and you are pushed down. Similar to the methods of ::gasp:: the patriarchy. Only dripped in feminist lexicon and attached to the stories of others.
If this is feminism, you can have it. I don’t identify. I’m pro woman. I’m sex positive. I shatter glass ceilings and redefine what is believed to be true about women and mothers and sisters and daughters. Fuck your gender roles.
But I am NOT a feminist. Please take this card.
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