I say, go for it. I am a member of the Desi (American term for Asian) community, and my family is Muslim. Personally, I think that there is a great value in outsiders coming in and doing research, as they provide a perspective that someone from within could not. I think it's especially important with the Asian Muslim community in the UK, as it tends to be a lot more insular and less open to outsiders than the one in the US and elsewhere. I don't think that the girls would treat you with disdain. Most Muslim girls, in particular the ones who are religious, welcome the opportunity to dispel stereotypes in whatever way they can, including by talking to an outside researcher.

Speaking as an embodiment of the hegemon (a white, hetero, relatively well-off protestant American male) in an academic grad program in the humanities, I totally sympathize. Though my situation isn't exactly like yours, I think it's similar.

On the one hand, I believe we need a great many more people doing research on voices that have historically been pushed aside: those of women, of nonwhite persons, of LGBT individuals, etc. The academy must move beyond dead white males; I take seriously scholars who suggest that the voices of women and nonwhite ethnicities and LGBT individuals should pervade our academic discourses, not be relegated to ghettoized book sections or departments. And I think that my writing about these topics as a white male heterosexual would be problematic - as you said, the oppressor telling the oppressed how it is.

On the other hand, I do want a career, and I may pursue a career in academia if that's the direction I want to go in.

So I feel like I'm stuck in a bind - I can't in good conscience write about more white straight dead dudes, but I also don't feel like I can in good conscience do scholarship dealing with race, LGBT individuals, or women, because I would be imposing my viewpoint as the hegemon on the oppressed. And to be honest, there's a part of me that thinks that the academic world has enough white hetero dudes, and if I can't write about the things that I think need more coverage I should get out of the way for someone who can; but at the same time, I have to put food on the table and a check in the landlord's hand every month, and academic work is something I really love to do.

I wish I could help you more than to tell you that it's a tough issue, and one that I am working through as well, as I'm sure a lot of people are and have and will. But I really can't offer anything except encouragement; if nothing else, you're examining these things, and examining them publicly, and that can only help our discourse in the long run.

Thanks for this post.

I personally think it 's good to learn about the experiences of women from all backgrounds--and perhaps more to the point to listen to the stories of other women themselves.

As a white female history and archaeology undergraduate who has researched the gender composition of American slave households, I empathize. I can't really offer any solutions, because I've been wrestling with this problem as well.

On the one hand, allowing the current historical narrative that treats POC (and especially WOC) as socially dead, acultural accessories to a "more important" white regime to continue to dominate popular perceptions of the United States' past seems inconscionable. On the other, my status as a privileged individual unavoidably shapes my worldview.

Every day, I'm appalled by the paucity of archaeological scholarship about the Chesapeake female slave experience. It doesn't sit well with me that a bunch of white dudes, some white women, and only a few WOC are uncovering the stories of the first African-American women.

That dearth is, obviously, due to a whole bunch of racist and sexist forces that I work to rectify through activism/volunteering. But is that enough? Is it just one more display of my privilege to research and write about the lives of people who experienced more oppression than I could ever hope to fathom, even if I'm attempting to offer a stage for the historically voiceless to speak? But is it also presumptuous of me to leave the work of interpreting the slave experience to POC?

I've justified my focus, tentatively, because I believe and hope that reclaiming history from white patriarchy empowers people of the present. Whether one is Asian or female or genderqueer or Muslim black or lesbian or any combination of any number of traits that does not fit the model of power, we are told in a million subtle ways every day that we are not as valuable as white, straight, rich men.

Reading about "nonstandard" historical figures was one of the things that lit a fire in my belly. I remember reading about people like Emma Goldman or Rosalind Franklin and countless others and thinking, "By God, why have I not learned about her in school?" I remember wondering why every time a woman was in my standard history texts, she was in a sidebar or under the heading of "women's history." These ruminations introduced me to feminism. They gave me the intellectual tools to understand the complex cocktail of social forces that shaped my own existence. Ultimately, they empowered me to actively resist the forces opposing me and shape my own path.

They also awakened me to the oppressions other than sexism. I saw that the model of feminity was very different for black women than it was for me. If my textbooks gave only cursory attention white women, they wholly ignored every black woman except perhaps Harriet Tubman. I didn't have much opportunity in school to explore the history of people who were, in a very important way, like me. Many of my classmates had even less. And worse, they had less because the assumption was that people who were like them just weren't as important. If you don't have the good fortune to get the external confirmation that yes, that assumption is bullshit, it's hard not to internalize it, at least a bit. Furthermore it just hardens the prejudice of oppressors and perpetuates ill-gained privilege.

It angered me; it still angers me. There are few things that move me to tears of rage faster than a standard elementary school history text book.

That's what I hope to change. But I may be the wrong person to do it. As I said, I don't want to patronize anyone, pretend to relate to something that is so clearly beyond my life experiences, or stand in the way of anyone who, due to a roll of history's dice, had less opportunity than me.

I don't want to help anyone out of the good graces of my heart. I want to dismantle an oppressive, pervasive, and deeply unjust system whose maintenance I have contributed to, however unwittingly, because that is my responsibility. Is this the path I should go down or are my eyes clouded by my privilege?

But yeah, Joanne, I feel ya. :\

I think you're confusing a couple of things, though.

Regarding Renee's post, the claim is not that all white feminists are pearl clutchers or that white women cannot think about or research the issues of women from different socio-economic or ethnic backgrounds. "Pearl clutchers" are women from privileged backgrounds who claim to be interested in the experiences of WoC, but then turn out to be shitty listeners who always end up turning it around to make it about themselves again, either by comparing the experiences of WoC to some experience of theirs that is not the same, or by engaging in some token act that will absolve them of any guilt and get them out of engaging in any real work. However, white women who are interested in truly constructive dialogue, who are at least as willing to listen as they are to talk, and who are willing to check their privilege and preconceptions at the door, can and should engage in studying/thinking/writing about the experiences of women from all different backgrounds.

The question is, how are you conducting this research? Have you read a couple of secondary sources and now feel like you're prepared to make some generalized claims about the experiences of WoC? Do you tend to think of WoC as some sort of monolithic group who share one experience? Then you've got some work to do. However, if your research style is ethnographic, immersive, and particular, then you've got a place to start. Because the problem with privileged groups trying to speak on behalf of marginalized groups is that systems and norms are the kinds of things that can best be understood from an outsider's perspective. And the experiences of the marginalized can only be captured by getting your info from the marginalized themselves. It's not the kind of thing you can examine from the outside, and speaking on behalf of somebody else who is perfectly capable of speaking for themselves is just patriarchal.

So as long as your work attempts to capture the particular, embedded experiences, in their own voices, then you can engage in some fruitful research. This doesn't mean you can't ever draw conclusions or make generalizations. It does mean that you have to be very careful to identify the demographic you're studying, what they have in common, what differentiates them from the norm or the "in" group, etc. It doesn't mean you can spend a couple of afternoons interviewing women in the inner-city and then claim to speak for WoC everywhere. It does mean you should spend some serious time with whomever you choose to study, let them tell you what's important to them, what they're excited about, what they're frustrated about, what they hope, what they fear, etc.

Historically, the kinds of mistakes and blind spots that white feminists have been criticized for is those that are based on the assumption that their experiences, or the experiences of a very small group of women, were representative of the experiences of all women. So if you find yourself writing a sentence like, "In the fifties, women experienced XYZ..." you need to stop yourself and ask "which women?" Similarly, if your sentence reads "African-American women feel like blah blah blah" then you need to stop and ask yourself "which African-American women am I talking about? Is Michelle Obama's life all that similar to the girl working at the corner gas station to support her mother and 3 y/o son? Probably not.