Stop paying superficial lip service to intersectionality, white feminists. It is insulting and strips the power from one of the most important concepts in the politics of gender liberation. If you can’t take a stand against racism you have no business calling yourself intersectional for feminist brownie points. I can’t listen to a white feminist who coos about her love of bell hooks but dismisses the words of a woman of colour she knows on the subject of race.
When will white feminists take collective responsibility for educating themselves? When will they understand the power at play that sings in their skins? We don’t exist in a vacuum and women of colour don’t exist to hold their hands and explain in painful detail why their behaviour continues to hurt us. Intersectional feminist politics are not for white women to co-opt as their own. It is explicitly a theory that was formed from the mind of a Black woman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, to explain Black women’s situations, as they were ignored by the white-centric feminist movement and simultaneously by the male-centric civil rights movement. I cannot speak for every Black woman, and I would never profess to. We are not a monolith. But I think we ought to stand wary of a white woman who calls herself intersectional. You won’t listen to us and you will exclude us from your movement but you will take the ideas you like?
Kesiena Boom for Autostraddle in this incredible essay, “It’s Time for White Feminists to Stop Talking About Solidarity and Start Acting” (via ranger-watson)
