Diversity is the recognized difference society sees between groups of people, based on racial identity and ethnicity; national identity and language; sexual orientation and gender identity; and culture and religion. The way I see society is that the white male holds the most power; he is the goal of equality everyone is working towards. Next come men of color then white woman and finally women of color. How can these women of color work toward the same goal as white feminists when that goal isn’t the same for them? Why would they work toward the equality of white women and not themselves? This article will explore the diversity within feminism and ways in which it has been identified and how it could, with work, be used to help the feminist movement rather than hinder it.
I have worked for the same retail company for over four years. I’ve learned the ins and outs of customer service since I started working there when I was sixteen. Since then, I have naturally worked my way to a very comfortable position of seniority. In my four years, I have seen many managers and assistant managers leave and even more associates move on to their next big thing. However, it wasn’t until my third year with the company that I found myself hoping for the departure of management.
The store I work at prospers very well when manned by women. Its real decline, ironically enough, only began when men took over the business. Suddenly the focus on the female shopper was flipped to focus on the men’s line. This new manager only cared to fill and to sell to men, talk to male associates, and would only let men count the money, because “women don’t know how to count.” For the first time in all of my life I finally knew how it felt to be lesser than a man, or at least to be meant to feel that way. I never wanted any other woman to feel that way. This is when the idea of feminism shifted in my mind from radical, problem seeking women, to free, strong, and educated women fighting for what is rightfully ours. The word “feminism” suddenly sat in my chest and warmed by belly and made me mentally throw my fist in the air with a silent “right on.” I was changed, and for the better.
It wasn’t until very recently that I started to question diversity within this battle for equality of the sexes. I, like most millennials, found myself scrolling through Tumblr (my favorite forum of social media) and came across several posts about a twitter feud between Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift. The post had screenshots of tweets that Minaj had posted about the Video Music Awards (VMAs) nominations and overall how the winners have been and always will be given to white artists. She shared her frustrations as an artist being snubbed for doing the things the other artists are being awarded for. This only became a spat when pop legend, Taylor Swift weighed in.
Under the impression that Minaj was calling her out for her nomination, Swift responded with disappointment to the tweets and Minaj’s blatant degrading of other women artists. The whole interaction was entirely blown out of proportion by the media, but in the end the fight had one great outcome. Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift have resurfaced the on going and undermined idea of White Feminism.
Michelle Goldberg wrote an article for The Nation titled “Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars,” in which she questions whose movement feminism has become. She explores the online forums used originally to spread and connect feminists around the world being turned into a toxic environment in which woman not only have to fear the backlash of society on their ideology but also the lashings of their peers. In her writing Goldberg states:
“Online feminists arguments […] pit middle class white women against all the groups they oppress […] privileged white people dominate feminism, just as they do most other sectors of American life.”
This article brings to light the bullying that white feminists partake in. When women of color express their views on feminism, suddenly they are questioning the very ideology of feminism itself and must be confined in order to sustain the unspoken norms of the discourse. Inside these norms stems the idea of how white feminists should speak to woman of color. Goldberg continues with, “White people need to make an effort not to be racist. And there are countless examples of white feminists failing women of color and then hiding behind their good intentions.” This thought process can be identified easily in Taylor Swift’s insistent tweets that Nicki Minaj was pitting women against each other by calling out the deep seeded racism in award shows.
Within this same mindset, Goldberg brings up the work of Kimberle Crenshaw. Crenshaw worked diligently with the idea of “intersectionality,” a term she coined that deals with the overlap of racism and sexism. Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift highlight this aspect of feminism as well with Swift’s tweet, “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” Which shows not only the inequalities of artists based on sex, but also the underlying hints of racism that show through Swift’s response to begin with.
Jo Freedman is a feminist writer who goes into the explicit idea of trashing the ideology and challenging it. Freedman starts with, “Trashing…accomplished by making you feel that your very existence is inimical to the Movement and that nothing can change this short of ceasing to exist.” When challenging, one is looking to improve and change, with trashing one is simply telling that person that they are a ‘bad person.’ Therefore, while the internet has helped allow feminists to connect all around the world, it has also opened a gate for bullying within the feminist community.
Along the same lines, Gloria Anzaldua explores the idea of feminism with language and the overall inequality society and discourse has placed on her for being not only a borderland Latina American who speaks Spanglish but also being a Latina, a woman in the borderland. She states, “I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one.” This speaks to Anzaldua’s anxieties of living in a place that she can never speak her native tongue. That the push from one side of the border insists she speak Spanish and the pull from the other side needs her to speak English and neither is what she wants to speak. This plays into the idea of trashing within feminism that Freedman introduces. These feminists who wish to speak up about the issues of intersectionality but are silenced by the backlash and exclusion from a home they’ve found on the Internet and their peers with in that home, keeps them from saying what needs to be said.
In her piece “Borderlands/la Frontera,” Anzaldua speaks to the isolation she felt when speaking her native tongue, “Repeated attacks on our native tongues diminish our sense of self. The attacks continue throughout our lives.” Whilst literally talking about the belittling of her native language, her words ring true with in the context of feminism for women of color. These women are fighting a losing battle when they speak against the real issues of intersectionality and are oppressed by not only society and their culture, but also their own peers and white feminists.
The Feminist movement is an ongoing battle. How can women expect men to take them seriously if they are riddled with internal conflict? Looking down on the ideas of fellow feminists will only stilt the battle to equality.