Women’s HerStory Month opened at UConn with an event titled, “Get in Formation: Finding the Feminism That Fits You (And the Rest of the World, Too!)” on February 28th, 2016.
The African American Cultural Center, Asian American Cultural Center, Puerto Rican Latin American Cultural Center, and the Rainbow Center all co-sponsored an inspirational talk with Jamilah Lemieux, Senior Editor at Ebony magazine. Lemieux is a proud advocate for racial equality, feminism, and is an LGBTQ ally. Her expansive accolades include creating the blog “The Beautiful Struggler,” being named one of the Root 100’s most influential African Americans in 2014, and being named one of Fortune’s 44 most influential women on Twitter.
Lemieux’s powerful words centered on the issues of intersectionality and feminism, and finding the kind of feminism that has room for people of all identities and backgrounds. She said she believes in challenging the “pre-school to prison pipeline,” the terror of police brutality, sexual assault, cycles of poverty, and wants to make legal immigration accessible to all. And like anyone else, her identity and privilege have presences in each of these topics.
Because of her multi-faceted identity as a “cisgender, heterosexual, American-born, college-trained, healthy, and middle-class woman,” there are aspects of life that are easier for her than others, Lemieux said. And while it is important to stay aware of these privileges within yourself, you also have the capacity to critique identities that have privilege over you. In Lemieux’s case, she vocally critiques white privilege and male privilege. If you are to challenge structures of privilege that put you in disadvantaged positions, she said, you must acknowledge your own privileges over others.
It is easy for anyone to lose track of how blessed areas of their life are, including collegiettes: having access to health care, transportation, education, housing, meal plans, and more. White women may also forget the privilege that whiteness brings, because race does not affect our lives negatively: police give us the benefit of the doubt and act fatherly towards them, their characters are not judged based on their race, they are well represented in the media, and many, many more privileges. Similarly, straight, cisgender women do not have to worry about others hating or judging them because of their sexuality or gender identity.
Of course, collegiettes are identifying as feminist for good reason. Calling attention to gender inequalities and male privilege within our own lives will help keep awareness about every day sexism going, but white women also can’t forget about their less-privileged comrades who are women of color, disabled, lower economic class, part of the LGBTQ community, or all of the above. Everyone’s experiences are vastly different when intersecting identities are accounted for, and it’s important to remember that many people are much worse off than you are.
Lemieux spoke of the importance of letting others speak about their experiences with injustices so that all identities have a voice within a social movement, especially when your voice is capable of drowning out others’.
Additionally, Lemieux said to be careful of how you speak out, to whom, and when. She gave the reasonable advice to not draw conclusions about an issue unless you’ve taken the time to really understand it and recognized all sides. Too often, I’m sure anyone who goes online has noticed, people put their opinions on social media and it’s clear they’re ignorant to an important aspect of the issue. Rather than trying to be the center of knowledge, it is important to know when someone else has more authority to speak on topics of race, gender, sexuality, ability, and more.
Lemieux said many people haven’t done themselves the favor of listening to the voices of others to gain knowledge, or considering that “a person sitting next to them in a classroom, on an Amtrak train, or in a nightclub, if living in a completely different America than they are.”
Failures to listen to the experiences of others have occurred in every social movement that had worthy goals, including the Women’s Rights Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Panthers organization. White feminists have historically left out the experiences of women of color, and African American men have valued their experiences of racism over those of African American women.
It is dangerous, Lemieux said, to convince yourself that “your struggle is the struggle,” and not having interest in hearing about or engaging with others’ experiences.
As students, she challenged the audience, and as intellectual thinkers, we must try to define space for our own words and experiences while also making space for others dealing with their own injustices and insightful points of view on social issues. For those with privileges over others, it is important to know when to be quiet, and learn to listen.
To all college students, Lemieux said: “If I had my own college career to do over again, I’d wish that I was an activist on campus, I wasn’t. You all are attending school during movement times. You don’t have to be the first, you can walk in the tradition of campus activism at this institution and know that there are people who stand in solidarity with you across the county. The ice has been broken, people are looking to you to do it and there is no shortage of causes to champion.”
Towards the end of her talk, Lemieux dicussed Beyoncé’s role as a feminist in the media, her platform, and the criticisms she has recieved from other feminists.
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