The “Or” versus the “And” – Women of Color and Mainstream Feminism

by Latoya Peterson

Over at Feministing, there was a nice discussion about a click moment – the moment when you realize that you began to identify as a feminist.

It occurs to me that I have only discussed half of my own personal click moment. I mentioned that it was the Spice Girls that made me identify as a feminist, but it wasn’t their personalities or their music that pushed me toward feminism.

The catalyst for my click moment was actually a knock-off tee shirt. Riding the girl power wave of the late-nineties, a lot of the cheap teen clothing stores were filled with branded tee-shirts. I had one that read in big silver lettering “Girl Power.” I remember wearing the shirt out one day, and having a guy friend walk up to me and pause to read the shirt.

“Girl power?” he said with a smirk, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He walked away laughing. After that day, I never wore that shirt again, but I stayed thinking about that moment for years afterward.

Why would the concept of girl power be so ridiculous that it was laughable?

That was the moment that started the shift in thinking. Why did so many men mock the idea of women having power, or get upset when women stood up for themselves? A few years later, I found feminism and thought I found my long lost community.

Little did I know that finding feminism was also the beginning of the anti-click moments, dozens of little conversations and actions that served as a constant reminder that I was different. Reading anthology after anthology on contemporary feminist work and only hearing one or two tokenized voices from women of color. Attending feminist gatherings and realizing that a lot of the situations and scenarios discussed were things I had never experienced. Trying to articulate my experiences, and being told that we need to focus on the “real” feminist issues. Things that impact “all” (read: white) women.

I possess both a gender identity and a racial identity and feminists weren’t having that, not one little bit.

At first, I thought if I could just find the right area, things would be different. Maybe it was just the feminist girls at my high school that were fucked up and racist – when I got to college, it would be different. I got to college and the triple-whammy of elitism, racism, and classism kept me out of organized feminism. Then, I decided to do my own thing and just read but a lot of the books on feminism where from one limited perspective. There was no me in this feminism.

However, there was a me in anti-racist work. So I worked on that, discussed gender outside the contexts of feminist theory, found more books on the experiences of women of color, fell in love with Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, challenged my male friends on their ideas about the place of women and did what I did best – live.

For you see, for me, feminism was not about theory and academia – it was about being able to explain the things that wore heavily on my mind. I didn’t have the words to express certain concepts and feminism gave me those words. With those words came the ability to speak truth and seek to banish those things that continue to do untold damage to young black women every day. But those words also came with a price. The gatekeepers of those words asked me to ignore my issues and align with theirs. The gatekeepers of those words have absolutely no concept of the idea that my responsibility to my community and my responsibility to my gender are equal in my mind – I cannot put one away in favor of the other. The men in my community are my allies – our stories are intertwined. Even if some of them are in the wrong, I cannot leave them out of the conversation. The stakes are too high.

And yet, feminism continued to hold some appeal. Donna Darko sums it up best:

Since I was a teenager, I noticed APIA women did not speak out against sexism of APIA men. They were in denial or made excuses. I noticed this in college, too, among women of color.

Women of color are a hundred times more likely to condone or enable the sexism of men of color than they are to condone or enable the racism of whites. In other words, women of color are a hundred times more likely to speak out against racism than they are to speak out against the sexism of men of color even though most rape and domestic violence occurs within the community. You see this pattern in real life and online.

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