White feminists have lunch
This year I was a guest at an International Women’s Day lunch. A government Minister with portfolio responsibilities for women’s policy hosted the event. There was something amiss at the lunch. I gave some thought to writing about it at the time but being an invited guest I felt uncomfortable with biting the hand that fed me. Lately I’ve wondered if something else was holding me back. International Women’s Day events are heart-warming, joyful occasions in the feminist calendar. Was I feeling bound by some kind of loyalty, a duty to fellow white feminists not to criticise the event?
I’ve asked myself this question after reading my way through the chasm of anger and sadness that is currently splitting on-line feminism. A divide triggered by racism. Thinking about this split has led me to consider what my feminism has done for a black woman lately? Not an awful lot. Even though there is much to say, I write about Indigenous Australian issues on my feminist blog occasionally, at best. The reasons are varied but among them must be some apathy. So, I am writing this post for The Angry Black Woman’s Carnival of Allies.
Where self-identified allies write to other people like themselves about why this oppression and prejudice is wrong. Why they are allies. Why the usual excuses are not good enough. I figure allies probably know full well all the many and various arguments people throw up to make prejudice and oppression okay. Things that someone on the other side of the fence may not hear. Address those things and more besides.
I’ve decided to hold that lunch up to the same scrutiny I give to the other issues I discuss on this blog. I’m questioning my own and other feminists’ silence in the room that day. The lunch…
As is the custom, the lunch was accompanied by a speech from our host, the Minister. Having written a Ministerial speech or two myself in a previous life, I can usually detect the key points and the filler pretty quickly. The Minister wanted us to celebrate our achievements as women on this special day but she also wanted us to acknowledge her government’s work in this area. So she told us we’d made it, that in this generation gender inequality was finally over. The women in this room now have a wealth of opportunities and the freedom to pursue them. For example, she pointed to the growing number of women elected to Australian parliaments. I hate this kind of sentiment. If we’re so equal then why are we celebrating anything less than 50 per cent female representation in parliament? Why do we still have record levels of domestic violence in our homes and sexual harassment in our workplaces? Why eating disorders, the sexualisation of little girls, the absence of carer rights, rape-blaming, the low number of female protagonists in films and books, female slut shaming, the rampant pinkification of products, the terrorising of prostitutes, the failure to introduce universal paid maternity leave in Australia (and the United States), the persistence of gender pay differences, single mother hating, teen mother hating, the criminalising of abortion etc etc?
I thought the Minister had redeemed herself when she explained that while we in this room had achieved equality, some women in this country had not. Some women had been left behind - the women in remote Aboriginal communities she explained, were not enjoying the same opportunities. A few missteps on the speech-writers part I thought, but now I see where you’re trying to go. Aboriginal women were suffering horribly, the Minister told us, because of the terrible violence they and their children are enduring at the hands of Aboriginal men. Don’t let that ruin the lunch though, there is room for optimism. The government is providing women’s shelters and female mentoring programs, she explained. Yadda yadda, speech finished, enjoy the lunch.
Yes, it is a truly mortifying level of violence, but no mention of the other factors that lead to the suffering and vulnerability of Aboriginal women (and men)? Problems governments and white communities could take some responsibility for too - life expectancy gaps, inadequate health care and education, widespread displacement, homelessness, long histories of extreme family trauma, unemployment, unpaid wages, alcoholism and addiction, grossly disproportionate incarceration rates, judicial discrimination, and deep levels of community racism and hostility towards Aboriginal people? Problems that contribute to violence, and prevent escape? No, this lunch was a time for feminists to come together. Speaking out against the violence of black men, that is something every feminist in the room could get behind, even the white men. Everyone that is except for the only table of Aboriginal women in the room. Utterly embarrassed I looked over to see their reaction. They looked pissed off, but in a resigned kind of way. They’d heard all this before.
My friend and I grimaced at each other. Where do we leave Aboriginal women when we simplify problems to the point of pinning them entirely on Aboriginal men, we wondered in whispers? How do Aboriginal women embrace a feminism that is so appalled by Aboriginal men - by their brothers, and fathers, and husbands? Quite simply, how do Aboriginal women even contemplate raising their sons to be feminist when we hate them?
I know we feminists do it tough, this is a long struggle and it is painful and depleting, and we owe ourselves a nice lunch. But if feminism is about equality with men for all women, then surely we have to start from a place that understands some women are not even equal to other women yet. And if we can’t do that at an International Women’s Day lunch (the irony almost too great)… then we have a long way to go. Until then I wish myself and all other white feminists a little indigestion after the lunch.
Quite.
Well said.
Exactly.