Are we silencing our own voices? Do we really want to be heard? Do we really want to hear each other?
Here’s how I learned about #solidarityisforwhitewomen: an email from Jill apologizing for the role she’s played in the Hugo debacle. She, who has already been shamed, apologizing for a situation in which she is one of many victims. And this isn’t a contest: I’m not here to talk about who is more of a victim and who played more of a role in making this happen. Shit is fucked up and bullshit; fuck Hugo, I don’t care about him.
Nobody has called me out on anything and I haven’t engaged in the conversation, but it’s brought up a lot of the anger I’ve felt in this space over the years, an anger that comes from presenting sites like Feministing, Feministe, Jezebel and others as mainstream, white feminism.
Because, as so often happens, in the discussions after #solidarityisforwhitewomen hit the “mainstream” (that is, left the confines of feminist blogs and twitter accounts and entered sites like Salon and Global Comment), I’ve read again and again the worry/sentiment that mainstream online feminism is white.
I do not want to declare war on other women of color. I know these women, their existence is not news to me. Some of these women are ones I looked up to when I started blogging, freaked out about if they commented on a blog post of mine, and were thrilled to be on blogtalkradio with. Furthermore, women of color aren’t the only ones who do this, white allies do as well. We need allies and women of color need to keep speaking up, but at what cost?
I’m tired of these sites being white-washed. At Feministe, we women of color constantly defended ourselves and reminded others that we are not, in fact, white. It is exhausting, at best, and violating, at worst, to constantly have your identity completely ignored or erased by readers, critics, commenters, other bloggers, whoever.
How can we expect others to elevate our voices and experiences, to let us be seen and heard, when we can’t even acknowledge and support other women of color trying to do just that?
It should never be the case that a woman of color writing for a mainstream feminist site should 1) be presumed to be white or 2) become so frustrated by the regularity of this presumption that it is one reason for her leaving the site. Here is a platform so many people believe is responsible for making some voices louder than others and then we silence other women of color to the point that they leave the site.
I remember the day I was invited to join Feministe and how excited I was to be joining a “big feminist blog.” My tiny blog was an incredible community, and one I continued to write at, but I was happy to have a wider reach. I longed for more conversations, deeper connections with writers I admired, new relationships, and a chance to promote and support other people I admired who were just starting out and also wanted the bigger platform.
I did get all of those things. But I also got a rude awakening: I would forever be one of “those” writers.
You know the image well, I’m sure: white, middle-class, straight, single, no children, women’s studies major who obnoxiously wears her feminism on her sleeve. I was only some of those things and even so, why were those things bad? My parents brought me to this country specifically so I could go to college; I never considered any alternative an option.
It’s absurd to consider starting every piece of writing listing every privilege I have, and equally absurd to list all the ways in which I’m a minority. “Single, 25-35, Latina, immigrant, cis, formerly-engaged, BA in psychology & women’s studies, preference for non-monogamy, depression, ambiguous sexuality…” A bit long for a byline. The more I felt I had to justify my identity in posts and in comments, the less I engaged.
We’re not helping anyone by continuing this practice — you think I’m white and some form of the enemy, I feel ignored and defeated until I’m totally over it and stop engaging altogether, then there are only white women left.
The only thing worse than white commenters invalidating my experience because I’m Latina? Women of color invalidating my identity as Latina by assuming I’m white.
And I get that this is partially my fault. Surely, if I had the guts to write more, then Jill wouldn’t be The Face of Feministe. Then again, Samhita has been editor of Feministing for how many years now? Jezebel founder, Anna Holmes, is also a woman of color. Yet Feministing and Jezebel are still included in discussions of online feminism as white.
And I also get that including writers/editors of color in these spaces doesn’t change the demographic of the commenters or the culture they create but, damn, it makes it hard to change that culture when the writers themselves feel shut down by people who look like them.
I’m not sure what the solution is. Feministe openly accepts guest posts and we invite people to write but obviously, we can’t force people to use this platform. And while I don’t write here regularly anymore, I’m not down with the idea of shutting the whole thing down (as incredibly frustrating as the space can be at times).
Maybe it starts with more lovingkindness, to echo Chally’s final post as a regular writer at Feministe.
Now, I have fucked up on multiple occasions just like everyone else in this space. There is no prize for Perfect Ally because nobody would apply for it and nobody would win.
We ALL need to do a better job of not assuming, not blaming, not hating, not accusing, not hiding. It might help us get from where we’ve been and where we are to where we keep saying we want to be.
Maybe it’s not possible to get there, I don’t know. But in the meantime, can we please stop invalidating the very voices we say we want to elevate?
So I’ll end with the questions I started with, which are very real questions for me because I no longer have the answers to them:
Are we silencing our own voices? Do we really want to be heard? Do we really want to hear each other?