A comment someone made over at this thread has me thinking about when it’s time to shut up and when it’s time to speak out.
I was standing in line on Friday to get my lunch. It was the Day of Silence and there was a group of students sitting at the Bell Tower on Temple campus handing out information on the protest. Two girls got in line behind me. One of them said, “Are you glad they’re all going to be deaf from sitting under that bell when it rings?”
And the other said something about the “Fag-straight alliance.”
I didn’t even think about it, I just reacted. “Wow,” I asked her, turning to look her in the face. “Did you really just say that out loud?”
She didn’t really answer me, and when I turned back around she and her friend started quickly talking about how they were in the gay-straight alliance back in high school, so somehow that alleviated them being assholes about these students’ protesting. (Reminded me of this.)
I didn’t even know about the protest until that day. I’m a grad student, which means I live under a rock when it comes to campus events. Regardless of whether or not I was involved in it, or whether or not I was the person being put down by that girl’s words, I had to say SOMETHING to let her know that what she said wasn’t cool.
See, over at that Feministe thread (the first one I linked to), someone pointed out that the thread was full of white women who were angry about the racist imagery in It’s a Jungle Out There. And that person suggested that white women who were speaking out were just as bad as others in appropriating the words, feelings, and thoughts of women of color.
I know sometimes I err on the side of not speaking up because I feel like it isn’t my place. Hi, privileged white girl. But lately I just can’t keep quiet and wait for someone else to say it. Even in the feminist blogosphere, I find myself annoyed with the persistence of attention paid to white middle-class women’s issues while other issues that affect women of all ethnic backgrounds and economic status are ignored. I’ve started to see why women I admire, like Patti Smith and Susan Sarandon, (yes, white women) don’t claim the label feminist, and why bloggers I admire are leaving.
So I have to speak up when I see things that are just effing wrong. I have to not feel uncomfortable calling people out on their racism and homophobia the same way I regularly call them out on their sexism.
And at the same time we all need to know that there are times when I do need to shut up and listen. There will always be people whose lived experience gives them a right to speak out about racism and homophobia and transphobia and poverty and many other things that I have simply never experienced. And the last thing any of us should ever do is tell anyone else that their concerns are trivial, that they should get over it, or that they’re jealous.
On these blogs, as I mentioned here, we don’t have to claim our race or gender or age or privilege level (other than the obvious, which is computer access and enough time to blog). But yet we do, and it gets brought into all the discussions, either as a positive or a negative. It is painful for me to see, even in a world which is supposedly free of judgment based on appearance, how even here voices are privileged because of the bodies they come from.
Giving white women a pass because they’re feminists, because they’ve experienced sexism, misses the point. Giving them a pass because they’re our friends doesn’t work either. Because someone is on the right side of one issue, it doesn’t make them right about all of them. (See Dick Cheney and his disagreement with Bush about gay marriage, for example.) When they’re our friends, it’s even more important to call them out on the things they do wrong, because we care and want them to do better.
When they aren’t our friends, but are people in a position of more power than we are, whether that be a big-name feminist blogger or a presidential candidate, it is hard for a few voices only from the group being slighted to speak up and be heard. They need more voices to join in the chorus.
Those voices are not more important because they are white. They are important because they are making that chorus louder. If there are enough of us, we WILL be heard.
This is very nicely done and very apt. Thanks for writing it.
Sarah,
You should drop me an e-mail about some blog stuff. You can get my address off my blog. I can’t figure out how to find an e-mail address for you, which could easily be my own inability to navigate web pages properly.
“They are important because they are making that chorus louder. If there are enough of us, we WILL be heard.”
So true, so true. Thanks for reiterating this.
Sarah, this was so beautifully written. Especially the last paragraph. I couldn’t agree more. On one hand, sometimes i have a hard time speaking up about (especially) race issues because i feel like i’m going to get called out on it, even though i try my damnedest to acknowledge my own privilege. On the other, we simply NEED to speak up, even if we haven’t directly experienced the oppression we are fighting, we need to make our voices heard. No one’s voice is more or less important, but having the opportunity to hear everyone is what we should be striving for.
“When they’re our friends, it’s even more important to call them out on the things they do wrong, because we care and want them to do better.” I agree with this 100%. Especially in the feminist community where we are all about challenging our notions of right and wrong, lots of that is about admitting when we may have made mistakes and doing better next time around. Like is a learning experience for all of us and the important thing is to speak up while being able to listen at the same time
And P.S. Happy Birthday
Also, i didn’t realize you weren’t in my links section until now - so sorry about that, that’s fixed now
I want to add to the chorus of agreement, and also say that your initial response (”Wow, did you really just say that out loud?”) was PERFECT! I will remember that.
I like the comparison to Dick Cheney.