https://twitter.com/WhiteFeminist

I started the WhiteFeminist twitter several months ago in an effort to satirically exorcise some of the frustrations that accompany being an Asian American woman as well as a feminist. With the help of several friends, I developed a character whose politics parodied that of the well intentioned, but historically misguided “social justice warrior”– a personality that is easily found across college campuses and social media platforms. Much of my experience navigating feminist spaces both on- and offline has involved learning to engage with the kind of person who insists that HBO’s ‘Girls’ is a universally representative model for feminist struggles or that frankly appropriative behaviors are “okay” so long as they are couched in a rhetoric of cultural appreciation. To me, White Feminism has always embodied a wholesale obliviousness (or in some cases, indifference) toward the innately intersectional nature of identity politics. The ahistorical notion of “women’s oppression” brandished by mainstream feminists is largely unaccountable to how individuals from different social locations are differently affected by patriarchy (often in addition to racism, classism, ableism, trans*phobia, homophobia etc.)

It is not a coincidence that some of my most resonant confrontations with overt sexism were articulated in terms of both race and gender. The literal and figurative fetishization of Asian culture has been formative in how I understand and relate to patriarchy, and it confounds me when I’m told by other feminists that wanting to bring these issues into a mainstream discourse would be too divisive. Foregrounding the experiences of “women” and, in doing so, positing that an umbrella notion of “womanhood” can uniformly describe all encounters with sexism, is problematic — especially when it conflates “womanhood” with its most privileged constituents. Accordingly, when White Feminism does allow itself to explore subaltern relationships to patriarchy, it seems to unfailingly result in a process that is equal parts cultural vilification and elimination of others’ agencies. @WhiteFeminist attempts to use satire to confront the silencing and speaking-over that this White Feminism engenders.

I was first alerted to Mikki Kendall’s #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen campaign by a vanity Google Alert I made in the earlier stages of @WhiteFeminist’s popularity. The hashtag, which quickly became a worldwide trend on Twitter, has since produced a slew of discussions and opinion pieces examining the inadequacy of mainstream feminist “solidarity”. I am writing to express excitement over this fact, and also to speak candidly about the significance of critical dialogue as a more serious counterpart to the @WhiteFeminist project. #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen gave rise to collective vocalization against real problems that exist within the feminist movement. Its novelty as a “demonstration” stemmed not from the particular challenges users posed (which have existed in the scholarship of black/queer intellectuals for years), but rather in the amount of attention it has received from various online communities. Despite many prominent feminist news outlets failing to cover the campaign, even a cursory exploration of the topic on Twitter reveals that people are continuing to discuss the whitewashing of feminism as it pertains to themselves and to feminist politics in its entirety.

The resulting exchanges have touched on a number issues that I sought to address through the @WhiteFeminist account. Namely, that (1) there is an undeniable importance in attempting to craft a more reflexive and hospitable feminism—and (2) that dialogues akin to the ones that have emerged over the past few weeks are crucial if we are to make progress toward that end. With the advent of social media, we’ve seen the emergence of new tools through which to facilitate widespread and perhaps more accountable speech among feminists. #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomenand @Whitefeminist represent two such tools with which to challenge the same underlying problem, and I believe there is value in exploring how they separately do so.

The image of the sushi-eating White Feminist who has adopted the workplace struggles of Japanese women as her own while also looking into geisha Halloween costumes for an upcoming sorority mixer is funny to me — both because it contains ridiculous ideological contradictions and because it describes something that I have seen. Though there is certainly a dialogue to be had over whether satire is an effective instrument for achieving political mobilization, I find its ability to transform incredulity into humor, at least at the individual level, empowering. It bears repeating that @WhiteFeminist’s tweets are sourced from images and conversations that my friends and I see/overhear almost every day. I feel a lot of anger when self-identifying feminists “decide” to embrace Eastern Mysticism as their trend of the month; however, I also give myself an allowance to recognize how preposterous this is as a thing that actually happens in the first place. Acknowledging that discriminatory behaviors can also be ludicrous doesn’t require one to forget their hurtful overtones. There is a disruptive power in producing laughter at the expenses of institutions built upon legacies of disempowerment, and I am grateful to have (hopefully) helped facilitate that among members of the WhiteFeminist audience.

That said, the shortcomings of satire relative to more direct lines of critical engagement,such as the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomenhashtag, are made apparent in the feedback I’ve received from many @WhiteFeminist followers (and non-followers). Effective satire is challenging, if not illusory. It is nearly impossible to reconcile certain users’ enthusiastic praise with others’ admonition, especially when multiple contradictory criticisms are being posed at once(‘the satire is too real to by funny;’ ‘the satire isn’t realistic enough to be satire at all’). These assessments are all valid and also intrinsic to a medium that relies so heavily on ambiguity; indeed, it seems that satirical projects sacrifice a good portion of their overall potency to comedic vagueness. I’m sorry to those whom I’ve offended.

If satire fulfills a diagnostic purpose by alerting audiences (through humor) to social injustices, then direct criticism, when done right, is its necessary, prescriptive complement. Contrasted with the straightforward critiques generated by #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, it is apparent, in my mind, that the differences between the two strategies are reducible to questions of accessibility.By appropriating the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomenhashtag, anyone could integrate his or her own criticisms of White Feminism into a Twitter-wide dialogue on the subject. Resultantly, the campaign also facilitated a more self-reflexive engagement with Intersectional politics, whereby many participants reflected upon their own complicity in acts of feminist whitewashing. I am particularly impressed by this self-criticism as it steps away from the tendency within identity politics movements to externalize systems of oppression (rather than confronting how their participants may and often do maintain them). The articles that triggered my ‘white feminist’ Google Alert have demonstrated a willingness among authors and readers to examine their own actions as sources of marginalization, and, more importantly, to take the initiative to change them. This is something to be happy about as we move toward greater inclusivity even within the realm of social justice advocacy. I look forward to the material outcomes of this heightened self-awareness, and will continue to find humor in the areas where we as a community inevitably fall short.

– Stephanie Permut – https://twitter.com/WhiteFeminist