Not All Men; Not All White Women
Rethinking harm
Photos are from the 1970 Women’s March. Source: Eugene Gordon Photograph Collection, PR 248, New-York Historical Society
“Not All Men”
By now, it’s damn near-impossible that you haven’t seen or heard some man crying “not all men”. Asking women to trust them, telling women they’re not all bad, they’re not all abusers. Telling women that if we don’t trust them, it’s women who will drive them to the manosphere, drive them into the incel and red pill culture and extremist right-wing politics, telling women that men are lonely and men aren’t reading, it’s up to all of us to fix that for them, because that’s how they’ll learn empathy and be less abusive to women. Asking women to acknowledge that he, that man in front of you, he isn’t one of the bad ones. Telling you not vilifying him, to give him another chance. He’ll do apology tour if and when he’s caught or outed as an abuser, pleading for forgiveness while arguing that forgiveness and having the same life they’ve always enjoyed is a pre-condition of them not being abusive anymore. Ignoring that the life of the woman — women, since the average rapist will self confess to 5.8 rapes by college1 — ignoring that her life will never be the same. Men, they’re telling women that we can and should do to help men, to stop them from abusing us.
By now, upon hearing “not all men”, too many woman have responded: “but too damn many of you”, “but which men”, and “but why don’t you correct other men, why won’t call out other men, why won’t you stand by victims who come forward with stories of men abusing and raping them?” “Why won’t you join our fight, why won’t you do more to stop sexual violence?”
Because let’s face it: things are pretty bad. One in three women will experience sexual violence in her lifetime, one in four non-binary the U.S. will, and far fewer men will. By the time you finish reading this essay, about twelve people in the United States alone will be raped.
By now, you’ve likely heard of Giséle Pelicot, the French suburban woman whose ex-husband raped her repeatedly. Then he drugged her and offered her up to other men to rape. The French media called these men Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde, conceptually, “every man”. Everyday men, French men, immigrants, white men, men of color, young and old, plumbers, teachers, policemen. Someone’s son. Someone’s father. A woman’s husband. Another’s woman’s fiancé. A few silently fled before raping Pelicot. Dozens raped her. A total of 51 men were tried for assaulting her, others in the videos of her rape weren’t identified. Around the same time, news came out about a Telegram (private messaging app, like Signal for crypto bros). Seventy thousand men joined this group to share ideas about how to rape and abuse women. Men in the group proudly proclaiming they had raped their wives, mothers, and sisters, and they wanted to tell other men how they could do it, too.
Let that number sink in again: 70,000 men2.
If you’re a woman reading this, think about how that affects you. Think about how fear of men impacts your day-to-day. What that lived reality is like. Think about how you clutch your keys a little tighter when you’re walking home alone, or to your car late at night. What that does to your body, your anxiety levels, your perception of the world. Think about how you maybe had to skip that networking dinner or drinks at the hotel that could have helped your career because you were afraid that man who asked you wouldn’t stop at drinks. What that’s done to your career, your life, your livelihood. Think of how it’s held you back. Think of what your life, your heart, your mind could be if you didn’t have that fear or worse, that lived experience trauma of sexual violence and/or sexual harassment to get through in your life.
It doesn’t matter to you if it’s “all men” or just one man, does it? What you know is that it’s one too many men for you.
“Not All White Women”
Now imagine you’re a woman of color. Or maybe you don’t have to imagine, because you are one, like me.
Imagine knowing that you are higher risk of rape, as Black and indigenous women are3. Imagine knowing that as a Black, Asian, or Latina woman, you are at higher risk for sexual harassment in your workplace. Imagine knowing that you are more likely to leave your career, to leave even though you were on the management track because of sexual harassment4. Imagine knowing that despite that, the world will think you’re less credible, and the world will care less if you are raped or harassed.
About a month ago, or a little more, I connected with a lovely, thoughtful, highly educated Black woman who holds a high position in state government. She told me she’d left her previous job because a man had persistently harassed there, all while her child was in the hospital. The white women, the colleagues and coworkers she’d trusted, had ganged up on her to silence her and to protect her boss.
Her child didn’t make out of the hospital.
I think about the two young women, barely out of college, Chinese-American and Indian-American, both brilliant, with stellar educations and resumes, who were assaulted by the same man. I think of the white woman who orchestrated an entire group of people against those women of color, to have the women labelled manipulative and crazy, and how many accusations I’ve heard against the man who assaulted them.
Here’s a reality of assault that people don’t talk enough: that a lot of the trauma comes not from the rape alone, but much of it comes from the responses of the bystanders after it happens. The white colleagues who ganged up on the Black woman who was harassed. The Chinese-American and Indian-American women who were silenced by a white women. These stories, by the way, are all of good liberal white women, in California. These are not raging racists, no, they’re the nice polite kind — the wolves in sheep’s clothing.
About half of assault victims will develop PTSD. A study from the 1990s found that about one out of three assault/abuse survivors will ideate suicide. In Sexual Justice, Alexandra Brodsky wrote about rape victims graduating with severely depressed GPAs (about 2.5), and how that follows them for the rest of their lives, because it depresses their opportunity to find a great entry-level job, and so forth and so on. Today, we know that social support networks — the aftermath of the trauma — greatly affect the chances someone will end up with trauma and PTSD5.
I don’t need statistics and research to tell me this, though — I used to them to illustrate what I know to you, reader. To back up my assertion with evidence, because as a woman of color in the West, I know my words alone aren’t enough. I prefaced my descriptions of the women-survivors above for similar reasons: that we, women of color, especially Black and indigenous in the U.S. (that is to say that different groups are the most oppressed in other parts of the world) have to prove ourselves worthy and of merit in ways that white women do not. As a rape victim, I learned that the hard way. I was raped, I found prior victims, he confessed on social media — and still it wasn’t enough for the white community around us to “believe women”. Though, of course, the matter wasn’t one of belief, since there was a confession — it was a matter of worth and merit, because as a woman of color, I wasn’t as important as a white man. As with the stories I told above, it was mostly white women — who made that decision, who supported him — that is, until he raped another white woman about eight months later. That woman he raped? She knew my story, she just didn’t believe it.
In my work/advocacy with survivors of assault, I was mentored by two women of color (a Black woman and an indigenous woman). They both had found the same thing I had: that survivors also told them that the aftermath of assault made all the difference in how traumatized survivors felt. That is why the way these white women treat survivors of color matters.
In Women, Race & Class, Davis wrote of the “conspicuous” absence of Black women in anti rape movement. She wrote that Black women stayed away because they were afraid of white women accusing their men falsely (see next section).
That’s only part of it, I think. The other part of it is that we do the work, we’re just not given the credit we’re due. I see this in the anti-rape movement, that white women are given higher positions and more funding for their nonprofits and projects. In Women, Race & Class, Angela Davis wrote about Black women who reported and spoke up about their rapes by white men as early as the 1800s — before white women were doing so. Or look at #metoo. Tarana Burke, a Black activist, began using the hashtag in the MySpace days, and began Me Too as a program for youth in 2006. But the hashtag didn’t take off until 2017, when Alyssa Milano, a white woman, shared it on Twitter.
“Not all white women”? No, you’re right, it’s not all. Maybe not even a majority. But the majority of men aren’t abusive. White women, so many of you still call out men in general. And just as you would tell a man: we don’t know which white women are going to harm us. We don’t know which ones will side with our white rapists to silence us, which ones will be emotionally abusive toward us, which will take credit for our work, which ones will use, learn from, and profit off our unpaid labor, and which will use her tears and distress against us, so that she can avoid accountability for all of it.
Just as you feel oppressed by men, just as that’s altered your life, wrecked your nervous system, impacted your career and the decisions you make; white women, you, too, have impacted women of color. And, overall, people of color.
Racism & Feminism
I first learned of the story of Emmett Till when I was ten. In short: Emmett Till was a little Black boy, only fourteen years old, when a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, falsely accused him of harassing her. Her relatives went after Emmett, gruesomely murdering him. Emmett’s murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury, and they proudly gave an interview about it to Look Magazine. They were paid for that. Amazing that they not only killed him, but they profited off of it. Carolyn Bryant also confessed, years later, that Emmett never harassed her.
In Women, Race & Class, Angela Davis cleanly, clearly, professionally eviscerates white woman writer Susan Brownmiller for writing that Emmett’s “harassment” — which was simply a wolf whistle — was “just short of physical assault”. I’ve told that story before, it’s had a deep impact on my life.
Compare this to the stories I shared in the section before, of how women of color aren’t believed when we come forward.
Another similar story of a white woman whose false accusation led to the death of a young Black man. Jeremiah Reeves was a sixteen year old Black boy jazz musician/grocery store worker. He was allegedly having an affair with a white woman. That woman said he raped her when the affair was discovered. He denied the affair the and the rape accusation.
Reeves was arrested and tortured. His torturers told him that a confession would stop the torture and keep him from the death penalty. Reeves confessed, then recanted. This information was kept from the jury, who convicted him. He was sentenced to death, and killed when he was only twenty-two. Both Martin Luther King, Jr and Rosa Park tried to stay his execution. She also worked to have his poetry published. On Easter Sunday, 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, gave a sermon about Reeves’ capital murder:
“A young man, Jeremiah Reeves, who was little more than a child when he was first arrested, died in the electric chair for the charge of rape. Whether or not he was guilty of this crime is a question that none of us can answer. But the issue before us now is not the innocence or guilt of Jeremiah Reeves. Even if he were guilty, it is the severity and inequality of the penalty that constitutes the injustice. Full grown white men committing comparable crimes against Negro girls are rare ever punished, and are never given the death penalty or even a life sentence.
But not only are we here to repent for the sin committed against Jeremiah Reeves, but we are also here to repent for the constant miscarriage of justice that we confront everyday in our courts. The death of Jeremiah Reeves is only the precipitating factor for our protest, not the causal factor. The causal factor lies deep down in the dark and dreary past of our oppression. The death of Jeremiah Reeves is but one incident, yes a tragic incident, in the long and desolate night of our court injustice. … Truth may be crucified and justice buried, but one day they will rise again. We must live and face death if necessary with that hope.”
Jeremiah Reeves’ story, with the backstory of the affair and false accusation, are written that way in a file in Library of Congress website. Part of me wanted to capture his story and share it since a lot of material that about racism, Black folks, indigenous folks, trans folks, et al., is being erased by the U.S. government. Read footnote three of my essay: I cited an essay written RAINN (a non-profit) an essay I originally read in 2022, but and it’s been taken down recently. Why is all this material on racism disappearing? Because of the current U.S. presidential administration. The current president has been found liable for sexual abuse and accused over a dozen times, has been openly racist…and despite that, 52% of white women voted for him (according to a NBC exit poll).
I have a few examples of nice, polite racism by white women in feminism that I’ve twice before. bell hooks describing how white women treated her in gender studies classes and in early feminist gatherings in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center and Ain’t I a Woman. Amia Srinivasan describing how Black men were disproportionally falsely accused of rape at Colgate University. Angela Davis’ Women, Race & Class. Audre Lorde’s conference speech The Master’s Tools, about feeling marginalized at the conference she was speaking at. Because of white women’s position of relative privilege — of being subordinate to white men, but also protected by them, and still dominant over people of color, white women are in a unique societal position to be able to silence people of color and to avoid accountability when they do harm and silence.
The reasons I focused on racism and othering by white women and not all white people are two fold. I write about intersectional feminism, against rape, and lesbians/gender/sexuality; topics that are female-focused. It made sense to address racism between women because I write about women. The second reason is that there’s something insidious about racism from women, especially feminist women. The expectation is that women are gentler, nicer, softer, and that because women face oppression, they’re less likely to oppress. The former qualities are of course untrue: no group is categorically anything, it’s a stereotype to presume women are. Some women perhaps are less racist because they understand the consequences of oppressing others…but many aren’t, and would oppress others if it benefitted them or helped them escape accountability.
These sorts of essays, reader, are particularly difficult to write. To call attention to behaviors and not to make anyone feel excluded or personally called out. In this essay, I tried to draw an analogy between misogynistic treatment by men toward women and racist treatment by white women toward women and men, so that white women reading it might examine their biases and behaviors.
I’ve read it over, and I’ve made sure to clear that I know it’s not all white women. For every book and essay I’ve read written by a person of color about racism and questioning it, we all also clarify that we don’t mean all of you. And yet, a lot of people also decided that it was okay to say “yes all men”. As you finish this essay, I want you to think about why former isn’t okay — why we socially can’t say “yes all white people” but we can say “yes all men”? That isn’t fair or just, isn’t it?
I also want to add this: I get a fair number of comments from saying that the reader hadn’t thought of something that I’ve written about. I’d love to say that everything I’m writing is original, but I’m often building on previous writers (and I cite them, too). Also, there are many women and men of color who are writing anti racist materials, and writing about Black, Chinese, Indian, indigenous, et al cultures and history here, and elsewhere. Every long form essay I’ve written cites at least one writer of color. Most of the essays and writers I share in notes on Substack are from writers of color, too. Read the many, many books on white feminism that have been written within the last few years or in decades past — I put together a reading list if you’d like some options.
If you want to fight racism, end bias, etc., and get a clear picture so that you can see it in the wild: read and listen to our words. Read our lived experiences, especially when its built off the work of our ancestors, mentors, and teachers of color. Believe us. Don’t ask us to prove our worth or merit in ways that white people aren’t asked to prove theirs. Support our work. Give us credit for our work. Pay us. Instead of learning about anti-racism from other white folks, learn it from women and men of color, Black women, and Black men who choose to do that work, and don’t expect them us and them do that work for free. Include and promote women of color in your feminist writings and activism, instead of merely stating you’re not racist — show us, don’t just tell us, don’t think we can’t see through pithy, empty statements about how antiracist you are. Include people of color — we deserve a seat at the table.
But. In the words of Shirley Chisholm:
“If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
Even if we’re not given a seat at the table, we — people of color — will take one anyway. We’ve been doing that for centuries. We’ll keep doing it. We deserve it.
♥️
unknown canon is a subscriber supported platform that advocates for women. If you can, please consider upgrading to keep this newsletter independent. Every paid subscriber allows me to continue to invest more time into feminist research and writing, and into survivor advocacy. Thank you so much for the time you’ve spent reading my essay(s).
Lisak D, Miller PM. Repeat rape and multiple offending among undetected rapists. Violence Vict. 2002 Feb;17(1):73-84. doi: 10.1891/vivi.17.1.73.33638. PMID: 11991158.
Luyken, Jörg. Telegram ‘rape chat groups’ with up to 70,000 members uncovered. The Telegraph. December 19, 2024.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/19/telegram-rape-chat-groups-germany-investigation-70000-world/
U.S. DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010,” 2013. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvsv9410.pdf
Originally, I had found more information on higher rates of rape of Black women on July 24, 2022 from RAINN https://www.rainn.org/news/many-black-survivors-reporting-raises-complicated-issues. HOWEVER, in response to the current presidential administration, RAINN has recently removed several links referring to trans folks, and sexual assault of racial minorities (and has been publicly criticized for doing so). RAINN has been accused of racial bias in the past (see this Business Insider report). Fortunately, the link was archived in the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20241222172054/https://www.rainn.org/news/many-black-survivors-reporting-raises-complicated-issues
Dobbin, Frank and Kalev, Alexandria. Why Sexual Harassment Programs Backfire. Forbes. May-June 2020.
&
Dobbin, Frank and Kalev, Alexandria. The promise and peril of sexual harassment programs. PNAS. June 3, 2019.
Clapp JD, Gayle Beck J. Understanding the relationship between PTSD and social support: the role of negative network orientation. Behav Res Ther. 2009 Mar;47(3):237-44. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2008.12.006. Epub 2008 Dec 27. PMID: 19162260; PMCID: PMC2656396.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2656396/
I wwas in the military many years ago. I was sexually harassed by all men (black, white, brown). I was only ever raped my white men, although brown men joined the white men when it came to physical intimidation. I am a white woman. While I know it's not all men, it's too many men. I call out my brother on a regular basis (he likes to think he supports woman) for his verbal degradation of woman, especially Asian women. I physically avoid men if possible.
The culture many white women were raised under is not good. Trained from birth to defer to men and protect them at all cost. It comes with a high cost. Many of us have worked to teach our daughters differently, but it's a difficult training to break. I hope that each subsequent generation further changes for the better. I'm sure I still have many ingrained habits of racism and sexism, and I will continue to on breaking free of them. We all deserve to be seen, heard, and supported.
I appreciate your writings very much, and as my finances allow, will continue supporting Black, brown, red, and yellow voices. I find your truth to be much more inclusive and your stories to be closer to mine and therefore easier to relate to and understand.
It still baffles me how little intersectionality is applied in feminist discussions, as a feminist scholar myself. Something I've noticed is in discussions of intersectionality regarding the oppression of women of colour is that they mostly touch on how white feminism renders other issues invisible, and how women of colour are treated by white society, then check it off the list. only really talk about whiteness as a "theory", and offer little-to-no development after framing their desired woc issues, they just pinpoint the oppression and think that's enough for the day.
Reading your section about feminism and racism immediately reminded me of so many things I've noticed throughout my upbringing where marginalized peoples were "canceled" for their actions with a kind of harshness and aggression I had never seen with white people. Even myself, as a white woman, would notice that I'd get a slap on the wrist for doing the same thing my peers of colour would get punished for.
While doing research regarding the policing of lesbian bodies in late 20th century America, I discovered that many white feminist scholars would prevent women of colour from bringing up discussions that involved being racialized women, as they were afraid it would take away the attention from sexism and make it about racism. In my opinion, the hieararchy white women and feminists uphold seems to lie in the belief that white women experience the rawest form of misogyny because it is the only facet of their identity that they need to isolate in order to find why they are being oppressed. If they can isolate the category of woman with such ease, then the patriarchy that they are resisting becomes an outlet for all of the racism, heterosexism, classism etc, that their whiteness has conditioned them into.
Amazing essay, this one particularly struck me because it is the most personal one I've read of yours so far. I am incredibly sorry for what happened to you, and I appreciate everything you do on this platform and on the ground to keep advocating for survivors.