Of course, I knew things like 'free the nipple' and letting girls wear short skirts and show their shoulders in school without being sexualised by male teachers were important issues, but I didn't feel like this mainstream feminism was particularly useful when it came to other forms of oppression. I didn't feel like this feminism was inclusive of other intersections, it became more and more obvious to me that this type of feminism didn't really fight for those who are oppressed because of their race or those who are oppressed because of their class. Becoming invested in 'SJW Twitter' definitely helped here and opened my eyes to the reality of white feminism and to the prospect of intersectional feminism. In short, white feminism is a branch of feminism focused on the struggles of primarily white and privileged women, this is basically liberal feminism which is centered around western ideals and liberalism doesn't really help the movement on a mass scale (but that's a topic for a different time). Intersectional feminism is a branch of feminism that encompasses all intersections because it claims that oppressive institutions are all intertwined, so the obvious one is sexism, but it also takes into account racism, classism, transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, ableism - you name an oppressive -ism and intersectional feminism is against that.
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| This is a picture of one of the walls in my Uni house - me and my housemate Megan adore Angela and wanted to order a poster of her, and then we received two in the post (at no extra charge) so we have two posters right next to each other, yep we cool. |
So how does Angela Davis come into this? Angela Davis is one of the most famous intersectional feminists there are, just a month ago she said in an interview that feminism involves 'embracing but moving beyond gender'. In the 1960s, Angela Davis was a member of the Black Panthers, leader of the Communist Party in the USA, as well as being a member of the Che-Lumumba Club which was the all-black branch of the Communist Party. Being a part of groups like these meant she was not silent on classism or racism. She was (and still is) outspoken about classism and racism in the Suffrage movement, which we're told liberated all women when actually WOC were exploited by white women to push forward the movement. She's also spoken out about sexism in the Civil Rights movement and other socialist movements which resulted in the oppression of women being pushed to the sideline. Angela Davis also emphasizes the importance of women's rights being looked at globally in order for women to form 'a united, multiracial, antimonopoly women’s movement in order to aid oppressed women throughout the world'.
I largely base my feminism on the likes of people like Angela Davis, people who are unapologetically anti-Capitalist (for a while, I was scared to say that I agreed with a lot of communist/anarchist ideals because you automatically get shunned as a fascist apologist - again, this is another topic for another blog post) and people who include POC, most importantly black people (again, colourism - different topic that I shan't go into detail about now), and encompass all of these issues into their feminism - this is the basis of my feminism, and as it is Women's History Month, I'd like to thank Angela Davis for being a big figure in helping me further my feminism, so thank you Angela - you tha real MVP.
