Whose Feminism?
by Guest Contributor Thea Lim
For the past few months, I’ve felt agitated and short-tempered most of the time. Taking the afternoon off, watching all three of the Bourne movies in a row, unplugging for a long weekend – even the dreaded Talking About My Feelings hasn’t made a dent in the ball of rage that’s been growing steadily in my lungs, my solar plexus and my belly. The rage creates even more rage – and I find myself wondering, why can’t I just freakin’ calm down?
And then I got this note last week from Carmen through the New Demographic newsletter:
A couple of weeks ago I found myself feeling really angry and rundown, but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly was causing these emotions…This has been a grueling year for people like you and me — folks who are passionate about fighting racism and creating social change. While this election has given many of us cause for hope, it has also brought out a lot of ugliness around us.
I’m a Canadian living in Canada, and due to a hangover from a very short affair with anarchy, I’m fairly suspicious of electoral politics, and sometimes don’t even vote. So when trying to unravel the roots of this ball of rage, the Democratic Primary Race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was not the first place I looked.
But you see, I’m starting to understand what my problem is: I identify as a feminist. And I don’t just mean I read bell hooks from time to time and appreciate the equity undertones of Gilmore Girls. I mean, I really live feminism. I work for an overtly feminist women’s health organisation, my first novel was a work of feminist fiction, and I helped put together the Shameless Magazine blog – online companion to Canada’s only feminist print magazine for teenagers.
I’m also an anti-racist woman of colour.
Last week as I waded through Geraldine Ferraro’s horrible op-ed and yet another listserv conversation about how feminists must support Clinton, I realised that, Canadian or not, for the past few months being an anti-racist person of colour AND a feminist has become a source of heartache, deep sorrow, and yes, pure, seething, rage. Because it feels like feminism, a cause that I have defended and supported for four years, has turned its back on me.
What has hurt me about this far-removed, distant and abstract primary race, is not what Clinton has done – though the racism that marred the end of her campaign sure stings. It is what’s happening at the grassroots level, not at the level of Chris Matthews and CNN, that hurts me. What’s truly gut-wrenching is the message the feminist blogosphere, feminist journalists, and feminist politicians have broadcast, bull-horned and sky-written in response to Clinton’s candidacy.
It’s the assumption that if you are a woman, Hillary speaks for you. It is the assumption that if you are a feminist, you will vote for a woman, no matter who she is, and no matter how little she may represent your experience. It is the assumption that if you are a woman, if you are a feminist, you will agree that gender is the greatest barrier to success in (North) America.
It is the assumption, in short, that if you are a woman, you are a straight, white, middle-class woman.
It is painful enough to be told that race and class don’t matter. It is far more painful to be told that race and class don’t matter by a movement, that by its very definition, knows that gender matters – but today won’t admit that anything else does. At the risk of being dramatic, for the past few months, living as a woman of colour who is also a working feminist – which means every day trudging through emails, blog posts, reports, listservs and conversations that imply (or exply!) that only gender matters – has been a bit like having my extremities cut off one by one.
The primary race brought the divisions between anti-racist feminists and non-anti-racist feminists* to the surface, but the worst thing about this ugly reveal, is that being forced to face a schism that feminism has been unable to brook over and over, could’ve been a chance to work through some of those rifts. Instead it just revealed exactly how unequipped feminism is to deal with race.
As our friend Latoya has mentioned on this here blog many times, white American feminists were shockingly silent on the racism in Clinton’s campaign.**
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