So, it was Shark-Fu's post , which I read this morning, that spurred this one. Although my comment on that thread had more to do with reclaming the word "bitch" it incorporated some ideas I've recently had about trying to be a better ally, and specifically, a better anti-racist.
So let me start with one idea from my reclamation comment:
"But instead of letting my discomfort shut my mind down, I just kept reading and tried to enter the world that the writer was creating, by giving myself over to her voice."
This has been what I've been trying to do to become a better antiracist. And to learn about other feminisms, and womanism, and women who seek equality but who feel so excluded by feminism that the word is anathema to them. Part of me wants to cry out to them, but feminism is good! Ignore the bad feminists, they aren't 'us.' But it really isn't my fucking place, not by a long shot.
So I have a new goal. To stop talking for once, and just to be quiet and listen. Because there are a lot of things I do not understand. They are outside of my experience, and some of what the bloggers say may sound different or wrong, to me, or I may feel blamed. But the truth is, Racialicious is not about me. A Womyn's Ecdysis is not about me. Angry Black Bitch and Baghdad Burning are not about me. But this isn't just a shoutout post from one insignificant blogger to a bunch of vastly more famous ones. When I say these blogs are not about me, I am not saying that they never speak to my experiences, that they never tell me truths about my life, my point is that their goal is not to reach out to and speak to white middle-class feminists like myself.
We want people to listen when we speak, as feminists, really listen and treat us as equals. When we are dealing with oppressions outside of our own experience, we need to do the same, and we need to do it better. Not just listening as we would to equals, but as we would to wise friends. When our friends say things that seem strange or wrong or just incomprehensible, we do not reject what they say. Instead, we think, this is our friend, who we know to be wise, there must be something to what she or he is saying. If the friend speaks to us, we ask questions and try to understand. But if our friend is speaking to someone else who understands what he or she is saying, we sit quietly in the background until context begins to give us a deeper understanding of what goes without saying between our friend and that someone else.
We must engage with that which makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes, the discomfort may come from the fact that some of us wrongly identifying with people who are doing harm, when in fact, some of us are not like them. Sometimes the discomfort may come from the fact that some of us are causing harm, however unwittingly.
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Great post.
And just to add to that, I have to say I'm really thankful for the internet in this case. It provides a space for me to listen to the experiences of other women and to process my feelings and thoughts about them - especially when they make me uncomfortable - in privacy. Basically, I think it helps me to get over myself so that other women aren't always in the position of having to deal with my lack of knowledge about, say, the history of black feminism. Because they shouldn't have to be constantly educating me on that - I should be educating myself. As someone who comes from a working class background, I know that it's incredibly annoying to have to be the one to show middle or upper class folks about the ways their perspectives are shaped by class assumptions.
So, yeah, just to echo this - that we should all be trying to listen, and especially to use the amazing resources that have been put out there, especially by some of the bloggers you mentioned, to help ourselves become better allies (rather than forcing others to help us become better allies, which is a long-standing complaint of many feminists of color).
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post! I've been working with some of the same struggles as you. As a cisgendered, white, middle-class feminist who passes as hetero, I'm still learning to recognize my privelege and not use it to help myself at the expense of others. I hate to hear myself accidentally thinking in ways that are unintentionally prejudiced. I think fear of people who are different is either a natural human emotion or so socially ingrained that it feels like it, but that doesn't excuse everyone from actively overcoming their own prejudice. Some of the things I do: remember that white people are not the default (when I imagine a person, I alternate between races, appearances, etc.), not using coded language like "articulate" or a "bad neighborhood," reading texts by women of color and, when I feel out of place, reminding myself that this is how women of color must feel frequently.
That was beautiful, Ismonie.
Rock on! I've been thinking about this for a long time. I recognize that I have a lot of privilege as a white heterosexual with a college degree, and sometimes I keep myself from fully engaging in activism I care for because I feel like it might be condescending or my "support" may not be wanted. Or I would just look like an asshole. That's probably the most apt: I want to talk about discrimination with people who actually face it, without being an asshole. And like you said, it IS my responsibility to educate myself.
I think it's sort of like Feministing: I *want* people who may not identify as feminists to read it too, because otherwise it would just be preaching to the choir. I just hope that they engage with us in a respectful way. :)