When I talk about “white feminists”, I’m talking about the people who fall into the darkest portions of the venn diagram above, and only those people. If you know that as a feminist, your beliefs fall into the middle portion of those little coloured circles, then keep it to yourself. By insisting we explicitly redeem you personally whenever we talk about a system that disadvantages us, you place yourself firmly into white feminist territory. Every rule has exceptions, but we’d never get anywhere if we had to list every single one whenever the rule was brought up in conversation.
Think you’re the exception? Show don’t tell. You don’t get a cookie for declaring yourself an ally. Yes, “white feminist” is a pejorative term, and I will continue to use it as such. But it’s also a term that means a specific thing, and derailing the community building efforts of WoC in order to declare yourself “one of the good ones” in fact, makes you exactly the kind of person we’re pushing against.
[*I am more than aware that this diagram does not accurately reflect every single theoretical possibility, and of its mathematically limitations. It is simply meant to be an easily understandable visual representation of my assertion that not every white woman is a “white feminist” and not every “white feminist” identifies as white. It’s purpose is as a reference, not statistical fact.]
ETA: ”What people don’t seem to get is that “White Feminism” is feminism for white people, and never exclusively feminism by white people. It’s more about who it benefits exclusively than who is perpetuating it exclusively. It’s really not as much of an accusation as people are making it out to be, more like a word for the institution we’re trying to separate ourselves from." -TheWhistlingFish
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