#alison phipps

[matchawithsoy]

"Trans-exclusionary and anti-sex-work feminists represent peak political whiteness. They magnify mainstream feminist narcissism, not only centering themselves but also acting as gatekeepers who withhold the designation 'woman' from others. This especially applies to trans women, defined as 'biological men' while trans-exclusionary feminists proclaim themselves as 'adult human females' (which leads to policing other categories such as 'lesbian', reserved for 'adult human females' attracted to each other). And the juxtaposition of sex workers' rights and 'women's safety' implicitly withholds womanhood from sex workers as well. This is a reassertion of the normative economically productive body and reproductive sex. In this bourgeois mentality, neither 'unnatural' or the 'unrespectable' woman can ever be a real woman. Instead, these woman become the enemy...The reactionary feminist will to power is then realized in necropolitics that harms these more marginalized women, under the guise of fighting powerful, conspiratorial lobbied and asserting rightful ownership of womanhood and feminism."

-Alison Phipps in Me Not You, The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

[blackcoffeestudies]

“This concern with white women’s safety is not new, nor does it contradict the abuse perpetrated by powerful and privileged men. It reflects our status as property (and historically, we literally were) we are possessions of these men, to be used and abused but violently defended from Others, especially when economic interests are at stake.”

- Me, Not You by Alison Phipps

[quyotes]

Feminism underpinned by political whiteness seeks power within the existing system, not the overthrow of the system itself. This is ‘lean-in’ corporate feminism, and the governance feminism that has put ‘femocrats’ in local, national and international bureaucracies. This feminism advocates for women on banknotes, but does not necessarily dispute the hands that the majority of these banknotes are in. It sees both Sheryl Sandberg and Hillary Clinton, with their investments in racial capitalism and militarism, as icons of women’s success. It consumes ideas of diversity and inclusion as if the playing field is level underneath. But its slogans – ‘Girl Power!’, ‘This is What a Feminist Looks Like!’ – appear on T-shirts made by abused and underpaid female sweatshop workers in the Global South. Mainstream feminism leans in to both the punitive state and the capitalist economy.

Alison Phipps - Me, not you

[rightsinexile]

There is a politics of death in asylum

The following opinion piece was written by Alison Phipps. The piece was published on 5 July 2020 by The National.

You might think that the so-called Offshore Processing Centre, better known as the prison camp of Manus Island where Australia has housed those seeking asylum, is a long way from Park Inn and Maclays Guest House in Glasgow. It is. It’s 8,384 miles. But the worlds of despair and calculated deprivation created in both are strikingly similar. In fact, they parallel each other. Park Inn and Maclays Guest House are two of the hotels being presently used by the Home Office contractor Mears Group to “house” people who are newly arrived in Glasgow and seeking asylum. [Read more here.]

[shivoa]

I have been thinking a lot about outrage. Recently, I have been outraged a lot. Outrageous things have been happening. Outrage is an important feature of contemporary politics, within a proliferati…

I have worked for ten years now in a field in which there are periodic swells of outrage. Sexual harassment and violence in higher education institutions is absolutely outrageous. When outrage swells, I feel vindicated and supported – when it ebbs, I worry about what happens next. One of my key concerns in these ‘between’ times is the unchecked power of the neoliberal university over its students and staff, and of the neoliberal state over us all. I understand why outrage produces demands for punishment: in this system it is the only justice survivors get, and ostracism and incarceration of perpetrators seem the only routes to protection. Furthermore, outrage does not welcome complexity, and although I do not want to bolster punitive and carceral processes, in a similarly unproductive way my outrage has led me to imagine tearing everything down.

My fantasies of demolition bring me back to Lorde: she writes that anger alone cannot create the future, it can only demolish the past. Due to the qualities I have described, perhaps this is even more true of outrage. Tearing down is not helpful unless I am prepared to build something better. Of course, I am not suggesting that we ‘work within’ the system rather than raging against it: it is much more difficult than this, and requires a great deal more thought. I am also aware that Lorde writes about women connecting across their differences – she does not advise entering into relationships with the kyriarchical state. Indeed, she warns against white women in particular being seduced into joining this oppressor under the pretence of sharing power.

With this in mind, I am certainly not aspiring to a politics constituted by compromises within, or with, dysfunctional institutions: particularly since it is always the most compromised who end up compromising the most. But I do want outrage to be more than catharsis. As it ebbs away I want more of us, especially those with social and institutional privilege, to stay behind to do the work of thinking, and enacting, alternatives. This need not take place within institutions: when issues are particularly outrageous, sometimes we can work more productively outside them. But the work must happen nonetheless – survivors need and deserve that too.