- Coming into this class, what are some of your initial impressions of the terms “feminism,” “sexism” and “gender and women’s studies?” How do this week’s readings define or explain these terms? Use specific quotes or examples in your response.
I didn’t learn about the word feminism, sexism, or gender and women’s studies until I moved away from my backward hometown. When I did, I felt both relief and anger. Anger to have learned this vocabulary so late in life, relief to find out that problems with society I felt confused and angry about were legitimate and had been discussed expansively. I’ve had the opportunity to learn more and watch the public face of feminism become more prominent and change. There seemed to be so many different factions of feminism, and I didn’t feel like I fit neatly into any of them.
The feminism I was introduced to is what Hooks describes as reformist feminism, which cherry-picked parts of feminism that fit into the current capitalist patriarchal system.
As Hooks explains, “[Reformist feminists] misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media. The feminism they hear about the most is portrayed by women who are primarily committed to gender equality — equal pay for equal work and sometimes women and men sharing household chores and parenting; they see that these women are usually white and materially privileged. They know from mass media that women’s liberation focuses on the freedom to have abortions, to be lesbians, to challenge rape and domestic violence. Among these issues masses of people agree with the idea of gender equity in the workplace — equal pay for equal work.”
This is, however, building a house on a sand hill to ignore so many problems. As I read about revolutionary feminism, I felt similar feelings as when I learned of feminism to start with, anger that this was the first I’d really heard of it, and that these conversations remain in places that aren’t accessible to so many people.
“Most women, especially white women, ceased to even consider revolutionary feminist visions, once they begin to gain economic power within the existing social structure. Ironically revolutionary feminist thinking was most accepted and embraced in academic circles. In those circles the production of revolutionary feminist theory progressed but that theory was not made available to the public. It became and remains a privileged discourse available to those among us who are highly literate, well educated, and usually materially privileged.”
These ideas of structural change raised by revolutionary feminists were hiding within highly inaccessible academic circles all along. The feminism that is allowed to live on in the general public is a capitalist friendly, toothless version of itself, and worse, one that does more to pit women and men against each other and gloss over examining differences between women than to confront the core issues, both emotional and pragmatic, of sexism and the many issues that surround it.
I came away from these readings with the impression that a fight for any civil liberties will ultimately be less effective if we are not doing the work of questioning these structures in their entirety. If we don’t address the history of being gendered, the burdens of subjugation that historically are synonymous with womanhood, and the differences that class and race play in these dynamics, we are missing the point. If feminism makes everything about women and doesn’t include conversations about all forced gender roles and how they impact the entire gender spectrum we miss out on an opportunity to truly end sexist narratives.
As Lorde so beautifully writes, “Certainly, there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.”.Both hooks and Lorde address the ways that differences can operate to bring people together or further divide us. What do they each have to say about ideas of “difference?” How do you see this operating in your own life and/or the world around you?
2. Both Lorde and Hooks describe the ways in which the conversations surrounding difference within feminism are used as weapons of social control against the feminist movement. But the goals of the early contemporary feminist movement did more to recognize and discuss these issues of difference.
As Hooks describes of essays being written in the mid-seventies, “These discussions did not trivialize the feminist insistence that “sisterhood is powerful” they simply emphasized that we could only become sisters in struggle by confronting the ways women through sex, class, and race dominated and exploited other women and creating a political platform that would address these differences.”
So how did society move backwards from a place where a dialogue that combats sexism while taking difference into account would be prominent? This move was a deliberate one made by reformist feminists and uplifted by mass media; it was easier to promote ideas that only incrementally moved the needle for some rather than challenge established systems.
Both Hooks and Lorde examine the role of sisterhood, and how claiming sisterhood before the work is done to earn it is damaging to those being ignored. Pervasive and socially encouraged blind spots toward those with different lived experience drives a wedge through any legitimate attempt at sisterhood. Lorde goes on to describe that, “Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing. By and large within the women’s movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.”.
These readings illuminate the importance of searching outside our own experience to examine differences, so that we might explore the ways in which we contribute, whether intentionally or not, to larger systems of oppression.
Lorde describes how this education becomes burden that typically falls on the oppressed, rather than the oppressor taking initiative to look past their blind spots. “[…] it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. […] The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”
I was able to relate to this passage from the text from both perspectives, unfortunately as someone who has been a burden and put others in the unfair situation of explaining their experience of difference to me. One night, my friend was gracious in her anger and took the time to explain to me why there was a difference between our reactions to being followed by police. It was visibly painful for her to open up in that way, I was, and am, very fortunate to have been extended her emotional energy.
It was painful to recognize my own role as an oppressor. I developed even more anger than I already had when reflecting on my upbringing with this new context, and the behaviors and use of language that were normalized around me. I realized I held privileges that can directly hurt others, especially if I am not aware that they exist, and that certain institutions desired my ignorance and worked to withhold knowledge and factual accounts of history.
I have, on the flip side, experienced the burden of explaining my differences of class, sexual preference and womanhood to others.
As Lorde says, “Now we must recognize differences among women who are our equals, neither inferior nor superior, and devise ways to use each other’s difference to enrich our visions and our joint struggles. The future of our earth may depend upon the ability of all women to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns of relating across difference. The old definitions have not served us, nor the earth that supports us.”
3. What do this week’s readings have you thinking about? Select a quote from each reading that caught your attention. Discuss the author’s meaning and why these lines stood out to you.
“Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over the other and thereby the right to dominance. Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism.” – Lorde
The use of the word inherent stood out to me here. It becomes too easy to think of one group as being better than another because they have had access to resources, time and material goods to become better, and instructions for how to operate within certain systems, especially coming from within that group it is all too easy to forget that everything you learned you were taught in some manner, whether hygiene, financial literacy, or the ability to navigate academia, literally anything.
This reminds me of a line from the movie Parasite, [spoiler alert kinda?] where the mother is being compared to the wealthy mother and how “nice” the wealthy mother is perceived to be. The poor mother says something along the lines of “If I had what she had; I would be that nice too”.
“Simply put feminism is a movement to end sexism. […] I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem, it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism, it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.” – Hooks
This opening says in so few words what so many people wind up missing about feminism, usually those who claim to not like or identify with feminism. Problems of sexism and the patriarchy are harmful to everyone whether they realize it or not. Teaching young boys that they need to be “tough” and withhold their emotions, or that they shouldn’t like scented bubble baths and other forms of self-care that is culturally gendered, or that they have to dominate others to be successful stifles them in ways that are deeply unfair.
Women, girls, trans persons, and gender-nonconforming individuals carry internalized patriarchy within them too and continue to perpetuate the very system that oppresses them in ways both large and small, both personal and systemic. Playing the blame game when it comes to disengaging from systems that are so much bigger than any individual, that span the entirety of human existence, won’t get us where we want to go. We need to evolve to develop systems and ways of speaking and thinking that transcend the shame and blame and that face that pain with accountability and honesty a belief in our collective power to evolve.
