The reason I label white women who are feminists as ‘white feminists’ is because womanhood has a very distinctive definition for Black women than it does for white women.
That whole edgy, dye-your-armpit-hair, shave your head, be aggressively non-feminine shit works for white/white-passing women because for centuries white women have been regulated to overtly feminine roles, stereotypes, tropes, etc.
Black women have always been made into mammy tropes/stereotypes, masculine and desexualized figures, or super strong she-beasts who can’t be hurt and therefore can never be associated with terms like ‘feminine’ or ‘delicate’ or ‘dainty’ or deigned worthy of protection.
So when I see posts railing against these ultra-feminine tropes I roll my eyes because it’s usually a white feminist behind them.
Ya know. I never realized this was a thing until this post. I’m glad to have my eyes opened to it. And yeah, it’s true, the masculine female thing as a rebellion is absolutely a white woman thing. Never noticed before.
It is. And that’s well and good for white feminists wanting to just exchange themselves with men instead of shaking up the status quo with some intersectionality. They’ve been at it for centuries, from the whole “women can’t wear pants” bit from back in the day, to now with the whole “I don’t have to look like what your idea of a woman is to be treated like a woman” thing.
It’s damaging to Black women in the feminist movement because even when we DO “look the part” of “what a woman is” we still get regulated to roles that are super-strong negresses that can’t be hurt, fetishized into some weird femdom fantasy, or turned into magical mammy negroes for white women.
For some of us, those traditional gender roles and ultra-feminine tropes are a welcome change from how we’re usually treated and viewed by society. They are a luxury we have never been afforded given our history in this country. White womanhood and Black womanhood have two very different trajectories in society.
So I don’t buy into all these pseudo-intellectual think pieces and criticisms because they’re all viewed through a lens of white feminism with no accounting for nuance and how non-white women–especially Black women–have to navigate womanhood differently in a society that actively tells us we aren’t worthy of protection and respect as women in the first place.
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callanswall 