Renee wrote an excellent post responding to an emailer who wanted to know whether a white woman can call herself “womanist. I’ll pull a Renee here — here’s a quote to get you started; you’ll have to head over to her blog to read the rest:

I understand why womanism seems attractive from the outside.  It truly advocates for the equality of all beings however, it is a movement spawned by the rejection of WOC; more specifically black women by mainstream feminism.

When we look at social justice movements across the western world they all have one thing in common, they are lead by whiteness.   Despite a claim that said movements are about equality, the racial dynamics are positioned in such a way as to reaffirm our dissonance in worth and value.   This purposeful erasure,  or more specifically absence of power is a result of the social belief that whiteness is not only naturally fit to lead but ordained to do so.

How many times have blacks and whites worked together in various organizations only to find that our voices are silenced?  We continually make  suggestions for activism only to have it denied and then later accepted when it is rephrased by a white member of the organization.  The racism in this activity is never acknowledged and the white person is given the credit for the idea.   When we make a comment as to how race interacts with an issue, we are again silenced and told that we “are imagining racism”, as though whiteness is any position to decide what is and isn’t racist.

In a recent post Monica of TransGriot suggested that feminism needs to work on its own issues first and I must say that I highly concur with this point.  There are so many divisions in feminism that we cannot even begin from the basic idea that all women are equal and face multiple forms of oppression.   What we find is that different offshoots tend to privilege their experience over that of another and then declare themselves fit to judge how other women live their lives. We have radfems slut shaming sex workers,  third wave feminists stumbling on their privilege while ignoring critical anti-racist work, eco-feminists who promote  environmentalism based in an essentialist understanding of gender, Marxist feminists  that are blind to anything that is not related to finance and liberal feminists who only want to be the “equal to a man”, never thinking about what constitutes “woman”. While there can never be a monolithic woman, the lie that sisterhood will save us all continues to be repeated.  Privilege has always been and always will be the Achilles heel of women’s organizing….

Go read the rest

Seriously, go read Renee first.
What follows are my own personal reflections as a white woman watching womanism with interest.

I know what I am. I’m a privileged white girl. I may’ve grown up poor but I sit in a seat of comfort now. I live with a disability, but one which grants me a fair amount of privilege even within the ranks of pwd. And… that’s really about it. I am privileged in every other way. White, young, cis, straight, heteronormative, middle class, thin and healthy-looking, native English speaker, mobile, disabled but “pass”able.

So, there’s a lot of bullshit to bulldoze thru’ before I can start to see things clearly.

It took a serious smack in the face for me to get off my ass and start seeking out the opinion of WOC during the conflicts that broke out in the feminist blogosphere (iirc) early last year. Race has been part of my background, growing up — something I was definitely aware of, something I cared about on a core level, but something that stayed safely in the background at all times. That’s privilege. I never had to think about race in my day-to-day life.

But something in that conflict just got under my skin.

And I wanted to start thinking about it. I wanted to learn, I wanted to listen. I wanted to be an advocate, a friend. I wanted to be witness to what I saw going on in their circles, something that just looked right.

Honestly, that’s the same way I was drawn into the feminist blogosphere a couple years previous.

Feminism… it is what it is. Feminism is what gave me a framework for understanding social justice. I’ve learned so much from feminism. And I’ve met so many awesome women through this community. But there is no doubt in my mind that feminism, for its strengths, is a movement centered, to a fault, around women like me. The feminist movement is built to serve the interests of white, higher-class, straight, cis, fully-abled, “enlightened” liberal, “health-conscious” women. And it is a movement which is undeniably hostile to those who challenge that paradigm — purposefully alienating.

Which is why womanism came about. So women of color had a space to work for the benefit of women where they were the center — where they weren’t treated with disdain, like dogs at the table begging for scraps.

It’s incredible to watch what results. These are amazing women doing amazing work. And there is something about the movement that really cuts to the core of social justice. There is something about womanism that centers people as people in a way that feminism, in my eye, just doesn’t, when looked at as a whole.

I’ve seen that same something in the disability community, and in the trans/queer communities. There is just something about these people, beat upon by the world, who reach inside and dig down to the core of humanity. And it shines through. The movement does not aim to simply grab power for a class of people. The movement aims to find those most hurt by a hostile society, and to treat them with dignity and respect. No matter who they are.

There is a heart in these communities that I only see in part of feminism. People who are taking the beginning principles of feminism and attempting to strip them of the privilege-upholding layers of shit that have been laid upon them through history. But it’s not enough to make feminism better. To make feminism not a privilege-upholding, power-seeking movement.

But there is something in womanism that works differently. That moves, not for power, but for justice. And that something — it just feels right.

These movements are not perfect. There are dynamics in every movement that merit a critical eye. Humanity is messy.

I admire the hell out of these movements. But I can only lay claim to one. The others, no matter how I identify with the heart of them, I do not get to claim. I do not get to be part of. They are not mine.

They just are. They exist. For their own purposes.

When I see a woman I admire the hell out of speaking about how deeply she was hurt, by my movement, a movement to which I contribute — she speaks about how she tried to work with them — us — and was betrayed — and now she wants nothing to do with us, that they — we — I, make her skin crawl…

I am anxious. I feel awful. But I know what she is saying is truth.

I call myself feminist. It’s the best shorthand I’ve found to convey what it is I care about. But I know what else it conveys.

And I have to own that if that’s the movement I’m going to claim. I have to own all that bullshit. I don’t get to say “Well, I’m feminist, but I’m not one of those feminists.” It doesn’t work that way. I have the same damn privilege. I’ve been part of the same damn problems!

It’s tempting, confronting this, to toss away the label “feminist.” And to look longingly at the label “womanist.”

But that’s not my movement. I don’t get to lay claim to it. I don’t get to use it to cover up for all the bullshit that happens in my name — the bullshit I, inevitably, am part of making. That is not fair. That is not just.

That is, yet again, white women moving up a step on the backs of women of color. It is, yet again, white folk appropriating that which POC have built, by their own damn selves, for their own damn purpose, and using it in a way which not only makes them and their work invisible, but sets foot in their space, centers their community around us, again.

Takes over.

No. We don’t get to do that.

I want to be your friend, not your leader.

And the only way to do that is to stand back and let you do what you were already fucking doing.