Class and what's important

[la_vie_noire]

Because I was just having this conversation with my friend the other day about feminism and class.

The problem of saying you have to think of a movement as a class instead of considering the individualities and intersections with other oppressions that people experience is that movements are constructed around the experiences of the most privileged members of a group. There is no such a thing as "a class," there are movements full of people where some are more privileged than others. There is no "greater good" about ignoring oppressions that "are not the center" of said movement (really, "the center" are just the experiences of the most privileged who don't have to live with other oppressions).

FWD (feminists with disabilities) for a way forward: Feminism Objectifies Women.

You’ve heard the term “choice feminism” right? Usually used derisively by a person who is arguing: Just because a woman makes a choice does not make it a feminist choice, we have to be able to examine issues on a systemic rather than individual level, some choices that individual feels are good for them are actually going to be bad for the group as a whole and even bad for that individual when systemic issues are taken into consideration.

Here’s what annoys me about this argument. It always comes from the perspective of a white, cisgendered, currently nondisabled, middle-to-upper-class, heteronormative, and otherwise socially privileged person.

[...]

Here’s the thing. Everything I just said above about “women”? Isn’t true for women. Rather, it is true for white women. Or cisgendered women. Or nondisabled women. It is not true for women as a class.

Yet we continually operate on the assumption that it is!

But ask some other women, sometime, what their experience has been. Many poor and lower-class women, for example, would gladly tell you that they have never had a whiff of an option to stay home with their children — they’ve been out there washing the rich women’s drawers, or sewing them in the first place, so that they can afford dinner for their family a few days out of the week. Ask a black woman about being a nanny and wet nurse. Ask both of those women, and a few mentally or physically disabled women, about when they had their children taken away from them or weren’t allowed to spend any time with them at all (apart from the time they spent cleaning up the messes of the children of those rich/white/nondisabled women they worked for). [...]

Ask the little girl with developmental disabilities about sex sometime, too. No one ever sees fit to give her any information on the subject. They fight to have her sterilized, or even be forced with serious drugs and surgical interventions to stay in a prepubescent state for the rest of her life, so that no one will ever have to deal with the messy proposition of a menstruating or pregnant r*t*rd girl.[...]

Ask the visibly disabled woman about being expected to dress up in skirts and high-heeled shoes. Everybody around her will wince at the thought of her in form-fitting, skin-showing clothing. Because, you know, “women” are oversexualized in that way. Ask her about those super-special parenting powers she supposedly has. Everybody around her will bristle at the thought of her having primary responsibility over a child. Because, you know, “women” are stereotyped as having those super-special powers.

Ask trans women about femininity, and how they are treated if they chose to act according to it. Yeah, a lot of the time it means death.

So there is no a "universal" women's experience.

Comments

[la-vie-noire.livejournal.com]

Yo dije lo de las mujeres elite por esto: eso de ponerle "restricciones" a las mas privilegiadas suena insultante porque estás diciendo que al final lo que harán las mujeres no privilegiadas SI es un daño "para el movimiento" pero vos no les das bolas porque pobrecitas ellas no tienen la misma suerte ni agencia de las privilegiadas entonces "lo dejas pasar." Por que al final Lynx, son o no las prioridades de las mas privilegiadas las de todas? Si las mujeres trans encuentran su reafirmacion en la femineidad, entonces NO debería verse la femineidad como un insulto hacia las cis, como algo que ellas no deberían hacer, es que las mujeres trans son inferiores a las cis? NO, verás todo nuestro mundo está hecho de contrucciones sociales, en mi feminismo cualquier mujer debería usar la construcción social que quiera sin ser juzgada. Como una mujer puede ser "butch," otra puede ser femenina, y nadie debería dcir que es menos feminista tal o cual expresion porque al final ambas estñan construidas pro el mismo sistema problematico en el que vivimos. Tanto la butch, como la femenina, como cualquier otra.

Si una mujer cis y blanca y rica gusta del exhibicionismo, pues ella gusta, si una mujer trans, discapacitada de color gusta de lo mismo para reafirmarse, pues está bien. Ninguna está insultando a andie con lo que hace. No puedo hacer una analogía entre una mujer haciendo pole-dancing y... no sé, una persona blanca alejando a sus hijos de los niños de color, que es algo abiertamente problematico, por ejemplo. Por que en el primero es una mujer cuyo cuerpo es visto como objeto, pero que es LA VICITMA de esa opresión haciendo lo que se le da la gana con su cuerpo.

Mira, NO feminista, sería decirle a otra mujer que no es lo suficientemente femenina, sería decirle a otra mujer que el placer de los hombres es el unico que importa, que el cuerpo femenino está para disfrute masculino. O es decirle a una mujer que su cuerpo no debe ser usado por ella misma para mostrar cuan atractivo ella piensa que es, que está mal que se maquille o se tatue, que use tacones. Si, son cosas que se hacen con mujeres trans, discapacitadas y de color. Pero tambien se pueden hacer con cis, blancas y con todas sus capacidades corporales. Porque no podemos divorciarnos de nuestro sistema, si yo tengo mi libertad de no usar tacones (y usar, no sé, zapatillas "masculinas" porque a mi me gustan), entonces otra debe tener el mismo derecho de hacerlo. Y yo no puedo darle la responsabilidad a la pole-dancer que bailará por lo que quiera, que en realidad tiene la persona o sistema que la ve como objeto. Porque al fin y al cabo estaríamosen elmismo feminismo que piensa que un buen sistema es el cual todas las mujeres actuan como lo hacen esas feministas más privilegiadas cuyos cuerpos siempre fueron "objetivizados" y fueron obligadas a tener hijos y ser femeninas. Lo que no es la realidad de todas, ni siquiera de todas las blancas, cissexuales, no discapcitadas.