Last week, three young women from the Feminist Majority Foundation visited the large Intro to Women’s Studies class that I work as a TA. They did what I take to be a standard invitation:
FMF member: Okay! So who here is a feminist? Raise your hand!
(a smattering of hands go up)
FMF rep: Okay! So who here believes there should be equality between men and women?
(A lot more hands go up, but slowly.)
FMF rep: Okay then! That means you’re all feminists!
This is a group of young women and men, taking a Women’s Studies class. A large portion of the students were women of color. And they did not identify as feminist. If I was an FMF representative, I’d be curious to know why. Perhaps we could talk about their ideas about feminism. What was it about feminism, or perhaps just the term “feminist,” that they did not find relatable?
They FMF members smiled a lot, and seemed like nice enough young women. But they were also arrogant, and their blithe dismissal of any concerns the students had — oh yes you too are a feminist! — made me angry.
When I met with my students in discussion class, I asked them about why they didn’t raise their hands. Some said it was just because they were uncomfortable with the term.
A number were upset about FMF’s support for the invasion and continued occupation of Afghanistan. One student used the term “colonialist,” and another said it was attempt to “save brown women from brown men.” These were first- and second-year students, quoting Spivak. I almost cried.
Others took issue with the second question, the facile “equality between men and women.” One Chicana student recalled the racism leveled at her father, her brothers, and her boyfriend faced every single day. Another student brought up Devah Pager’s “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” a matched-pair experiment that showed how white men with criminal records still received higher job callback rates that Black applicants with similar work experience but no criminal record. What men were the FMF reps referring to?
In the end, we did get a good discussion out of the FMF visit. And I did learn a lot about and from my students. The FMF reps might have too, had they bothered to ask questions and listen.
thank you for writing this. It concurs completely with my experience with reps from the agency as a faculty of color and the reactions my students, white and woc, had to their behavior (which included considerable entitlement vis-a-vis the black professor in the front of the room) and their policies.
Ugh, Prof. Susurro, I was hoping that it was only these three clueless reps. But of course it makes sense that it’s institutional, esp considering their Afghanistan campaign.
Were I one of the students, even as a white woman, I would have been wondering why the hell they didn’t also ask if any of those in attendance were Womanists.
That of course does nothing to address the legitimate concerns your students brought up.
But it’s an irritating oversight and erasure of other strains of thought. And if they’re taking up some “expert” position on the subject of gender justice theory, well, then that’s a rather big fail, imo.
Hi whatername,
I totally agree that a question about womanism might have gotten more hands. Or at least, some students might have responded with “What’s womanism” and there would have been a dialogue.
I was unprepared for their visit, but the next time, I think I’ll raise the issue. Maybe not in front of the lecture class, but at least ask them if we can speak outside the lecture hall and let them know. I’ll make sure to ask them about womanism and mujeristas and pinayism as well. Salamat!
I agree, mentioning other forms of gender justice would be a critical move, but I do want to caution against the common strain in feminism that thinks “womanism is just black feminism.” As a black feminist, who gets labeled a womanist all the time, I really resent this dichotomy and its misreading of key nuances in womanism, not to mention its ultimate otherizing of feminists of color.
Ultimately, FMF and all mainstream feminist organizations need to deal critically with the meaning of “mainstream liberal feminism” and how their use of the word “Feminism” is embedded in that very specific kind of feminism to the exclusion or erasure of other kinds. It sounded like that is what you and your students were reacting to with the “you’re a feminist” lesson FMF reps used.
“how their use of the word “Feminism” is embedded in that very specific kind of feminism to the exclusion or erasure of other kinds.”
I think this is key, prof. sussoro, salamat for articulating it. It’s difficult to go into real depth in an intro class, where we have to overview everything. By the time the FMF reps visited, we had read Lila Abu-Lughod and Alice Walker, so there was basis for discussion, but had they come earlier, I’m not so sure.
Salamat too for raising the point about the nuances of womanism and woc feminism. We did have discussions in this intro class, but not in depth. I’m still working out how to have productive sessions on these for when I get my own classes.
Bravo you.
Bravo your students.
Bravo the students indeed, Lisa. They’re quite cool
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