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.
Yes, I try to be inclusive; to bring up racism without excluding white people but instead, trying to bring it up so that we can be included and work together.
Re: rape. I'm so sorry for your experiences. I do survivor advocacy -- in my work (in California), I found that there are a lot of Asian-American survivors -- so that verbal degradation of Asian-American women has a real world effect. I found that most of the men doing the raping were white men, too. I think because of the way privilege works; a lot of white men know they can get away with it. Look at the U.S. president - found liable for sexual abuse and re-elected.
And yes to breaking free of old thoughts and learned behaviors and biases. Thanks for reading my essay.
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.
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. -- 100%. It's become enough for a lot of feminists to say they're not racist or that they're intersectional, without doing any of the work to be intersectional or inclusive of woc.
Re: policing of lesbian bodies. That's been an issue in both first and second wave feminism - that racism is pushed to the back burner because feminists have been afraid that feminism would be secondary if they started to talk about racism. Given that history, it makes a sort of unfortunate sense that feminism itself became racist when they weren't doing work to make sure it wouldn't.
And yes, I suspect for white, middle class, heteronormative, cis women that don't experience classism, racism, trans/homophobia, it's too easy to say that white women experience misogyny because they don't experience the other things I labelled. Nearly every big feminist writers here on Substack has written something to that effect -- something about misogyny being worse against white women, something to show that they're a TERF, something that was racially biased. I almost wonder if they do that because THAT'S what makes them so big and popular - the racism, the transphobia, etc. Being racist, transphobic, etc. allows their audience to center themselves.
It is a bit more personal & stream of consciousness than most of my other essays, but it felt right, makes the issue feel more - I don't know, topical and urgent? Usually, I like to heavily researched pieces.
I love all of your replies to my essays, they always give me things to think about. Thanks so much!
"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." It's so important for us to be aware of this. Thank you again for raising awareness of this reality.
I was groped by a man during a night out with friends: six guys, one female friend and me.
The only person who stood by me and spoke up was her.
Not one of the guys said a word. It was a blatant display of complicity by inaction and a painful wake-up call for me.
Needless to say, that was the last time I hung out with them.
Reading the rest of the post led to another, more uncomfortable realization: that same silence can show up in us, white women, too. Sometimes it’s not just silence but active harm. It’s an ugly truth to face: whiteness, even within feminism, still holds power. And too many of us have used it to protect ourselves instead of taking real accountability. That’s a dynamic I want to understand and challenge.
It's a hard road, but I will walk it with you. I will give what support I can here and out in the world. More will come. More will do the hard work of looking inward and examining their own words and actions. I've been fortunate to have done so; like bell hooks, I've studied Buddhism and found meditation and introspection to be essential to my personal/spiritual/emotional growth. (There are many paths, however.) I still have plenty to learn and continue to be grateful to the work you're doing, Jo. May you and everyone be well!
What the world has yet to accept is that men are the cause of most of the world's violence. Men commit over 90% of homicides worldwide, 99% of rapes worldwide, and 79% of physical assaults worldwide. Male leaders are the primary catalysts for war. And yet there are no thinktanks devoted to the study of the impact of male violence on modern life. There are no economic studies on the global cost of male violence on modern society. There is no discussion of a "male violence tax" levied on men with violent and aggressive tendencies. There is no research on the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and violence against women and children, between hegemonic masculinity and the well-being of women and children. There are no male thinkers who have devoted their scholarship to understanding the impact of hegemonic masculinity and male violence on the well-being of not just women and children, but also on non-hegemonically masculine men.
If we were truly interested in improving human well-being and reducing economic waste, we would be diligently studying this topic and looking for ways to undo the enormous societal costs of hegemonic masculinity, male violence and aggression. However, even those who agree with this perspective are too afraid to tell the truth about the impact of modern masculinity on our lives. They know that male aggression is the underpinning of male dominance and to question male dominance in this world is to risk self-annihilation.
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.
Yes, I try to be inclusive; to bring up racism without excluding white people but instead, trying to bring it up so that we can be included and work together.
Re: rape. I'm so sorry for your experiences. I do survivor advocacy -- in my work (in California), I found that there are a lot of Asian-American survivors -- so that verbal degradation of Asian-American women has a real world effect. I found that most of the men doing the raping were white men, too. I think because of the way privilege works; a lot of white men know they can get away with it. Look at the U.S. president - found liable for sexual abuse and re-elected.
And yes to breaking free of old thoughts and learned behaviors and biases. Thanks for reading my essay.
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.
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. -- 100%. It's become enough for a lot of feminists to say they're not racist or that they're intersectional, without doing any of the work to be intersectional or inclusive of woc.
Re: policing of lesbian bodies. That's been an issue in both first and second wave feminism - that racism is pushed to the back burner because feminists have been afraid that feminism would be secondary if they started to talk about racism. Given that history, it makes a sort of unfortunate sense that feminism itself became racist when they weren't doing work to make sure it wouldn't.
And yes, I suspect for white, middle class, heteronormative, cis women that don't experience classism, racism, trans/homophobia, it's too easy to say that white women experience misogyny because they don't experience the other things I labelled. Nearly every big feminist writers here on Substack has written something to that effect -- something about misogyny being worse against white women, something to show that they're a TERF, something that was racially biased. I almost wonder if they do that because THAT'S what makes them so big and popular - the racism, the transphobia, etc. Being racist, transphobic, etc. allows their audience to center themselves.
It is a bit more personal & stream of consciousness than most of my other essays, but it felt right, makes the issue feel more - I don't know, topical and urgent? Usually, I like to heavily researched pieces.
I love all of your replies to my essays, they always give me things to think about. Thanks so much!
Incredible work as always. I am so sorry that happened to you Jo. Jesus Christ that's fucking awful.
Thanks - it's unfortunately too common. I'm glad that I was able to channel my experience into helping other survivors. And into my work here.
"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." It's so important for us to be aware of this. Thank you again for raising awareness of this reality.
Thank you!
I’ve lived it.
I was groped by a man during a night out with friends: six guys, one female friend and me.
The only person who stood by me and spoke up was her.
Not one of the guys said a word. It was a blatant display of complicity by inaction and a painful wake-up call for me.
Needless to say, that was the last time I hung out with them.
Reading the rest of the post led to another, more uncomfortable realization: that same silence can show up in us, white women, too. Sometimes it’s not just silence but active harm. It’s an ugly truth to face: whiteness, even within feminism, still holds power. And too many of us have used it to protect ourselves instead of taking real accountability. That’s a dynamic I want to understand and challenge.
It's a hard road, but I will walk it with you. I will give what support I can here and out in the world. More will come. More will do the hard work of looking inward and examining their own words and actions. I've been fortunate to have done so; like bell hooks, I've studied Buddhism and found meditation and introspection to be essential to my personal/spiritual/emotional growth. (There are many paths, however.) I still have plenty to learn and continue to be grateful to the work you're doing, Jo. May you and everyone be well!
What the world has yet to accept is that men are the cause of most of the world's violence. Men commit over 90% of homicides worldwide, 99% of rapes worldwide, and 79% of physical assaults worldwide. Male leaders are the primary catalysts for war. And yet there are no thinktanks devoted to the study of the impact of male violence on modern life. There are no economic studies on the global cost of male violence on modern society. There is no discussion of a "male violence tax" levied on men with violent and aggressive tendencies. There is no research on the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and violence against women and children, between hegemonic masculinity and the well-being of women and children. There are no male thinkers who have devoted their scholarship to understanding the impact of hegemonic masculinity and male violence on the well-being of not just women and children, but also on non-hegemonically masculine men.
If we were truly interested in improving human well-being and reducing economic waste, we would be diligently studying this topic and looking for ways to undo the enormous societal costs of hegemonic masculinity, male violence and aggression. However, even those who agree with this perspective are too afraid to tell the truth about the impact of modern masculinity on our lives. They know that male aggression is the underpinning of male dominance and to question male dominance in this world is to risk self-annihilation.