I talked about Spice Girls feminism a while ago; now I’ve decided to label another form of feminism that I disagree with. I’m calling it Narcissist Feminism.

Narcissist Feminists - let’s call them NF’s - are, so far in my experience, white heterosexual middle class women who experience feminism only as a friction occurring between themselves and white men. There are no other women on Planet NF. There are no people of color. No queer people. Just her - the woman the patriarchy pictures when it thinks “woman” - and the white men that stand between her and the top of the world.

As she scrambles to get to the top, she dislodges boulders that fall onto the heads of those who stand beneath her in the hierarchy.

Her only goal is to get to the top of the heap.

Let’s think about that for a minute. Because her feminism doesn’t involve anyone in the world but herself and her lot in life and her relationship to the men above her, she has internalized the methods and priorities of the patriarchy. She wants to have what men have, and she thinks that’s feminism. It’s not.

This is a standard phase for white western women on the path to feminism. We grow up in a culture that actively dissuades us from noticing what people “beneath” us in the hierarchy are going through. Naturally, our first beef with the world tends to be with those nasty white men that stand between us and the things we believe we can earn, given the opportunity to prove ourselves. So we know where the NF is coming from.

When I was 20, I was lucky enough to have an African-American friend who was double majoring in women’s studies and black studies. She introduced me to some fascinating thoughts on how there ought to be a black women’s studies course altogether, because you couldn’t just take some ideas from anti-racism and a few from feminism, mix them together in a binder and suddenly understand the fairly unique position African American women find themselves in.

Folks: I gave her ideas full and immediate credit, but it was a decade before I really began to understand what she meant. In the meantime she’d opened my eyes so I could look around and begin to see my own privilege better. And if black women needed something different from feminism than I did, that probably meant lesbians, poor women, and women of each other race out there had different needs. If I didn’t support them as well as myself, I was being a narcissist, not a feminist. I was making legitimate points about the meanness of white men, but I was only doing it to serve myself. Not women everywhere.

And certainly not men and women everywhere, and the improvement of the whole human race.

Here’s a checklist to know if you’re a real feminist (of any of the 15,000 legitimate different breeds), or just a white girl who’s noticed how her own life isn’t fair:

• When a lot of women Unlike You tell you you don’t get where they’re coming from, you say they’re all out to get you.
• …and you unquestionably think this attack on you is far more awful than anything they may have had to endure for, oh, ever.
• You just can’t figure it out what the problem is when people point out that the stuff you’re proposing only benefits white heterosexual girls of means.
• You get defensive when people suggest you aren’t as enlightened as Buddha, rather than welcoming the opportunity to learn and further your own deprogramming.
• You think you are Too Cool to be influenced by tons of childhood programming.
• When a lot of other feminists say something you disagree with, and you tell them how stupid they are, then they explain that, well, you’ve actually just framed it in an exclusively white, middle class, het scene and that’s not where they live, you refuse to back down from supporting your perspective as the only valid perspective for all women/feminists.
• You engage in counter-stereotyping of men whenever you feel like it (I’ve been guilty of this in the past myself).
• …without even explaining that your counter-stereotypes apply only to white men, because you keep forgetting men of color exist and experience a whole different intersection of privileges and anti-privileges than the men you want to be.

If this list sounds like you… you’ll probably need someone else to tell you, since you’re just Too Cool. But if someone tells you it sounds like you, take a deep breath and admit to yourself, “I can be wrong. I can be. It is possible.” And then listen.

Or stop calling yourself a feminist and admit you really just want the toys your brother had.

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I was out for a walk around the neighborhood last night, which meant my brain was in autopilot mode, getting a rare rest. I passed a couple of male gardeners working in someone’s yard, and they took a good long look at me, head to toe. I ignored them. And the following thoughts passed through my relaxed brain:

• Ugh.
• Well, they have a right to look. And I have a right to ignore them.
• Wait a second - how are those two things equal? What would happen if I looked them over real good to see if they’ve got good asses or the outline of their genitals in their pants is appealing?
• Well, according to most men, they’d be flattered. And according to most jurors, they’d be well within their rights to interpret that as an invitation to have forceful sex with me right there on the sidewalk, and it would be my fault. According to most people, this is one of those nature versus nurture things that humans can’t possibly fix, so women will just have to learn to live with it, ah well.

This got me thinking about how the majority of people - not the ones who read here, or post here, or link to this site - think men and women are all equal now. Here I was, engaging in a dialog that for a few seconds sounded reasonable. They have a right to look, and I have the right to ignore.

But “equality” would mean everyone either has the right to ogle or they don’t, and everyone who gets ogled and doesn’t like it has equal avenues of redress. Like, rather than just ignoring them, I would be entitled to fungo bat them about the head until they lose consciousness. Or something, I don’t know. The point is, there’s more than one way to equalize a situation, and we’re constantly conditioned to accept certain versions of equality, most of which aren’t even truly equal by any definition.

What’s the worst that can happen to them if they ogle me? I could kill them, I suppose. But then I’d be in danger of being put to death because that’s such an unreasonable thing to do in response to being leered at, according to the judicial system where I live. What’s the worst that can happen to me if I ogle them? Well, if they were so inclined they could rape me without much fear of reprisal - because ogling them would designate me a whore, and we all know you can’t rape a whore, right? - and if they’ve ever been awake during their lives, they would know this. And no, I don’t think most men have the desire to rape anybody, or can be incited to it merely by lust, but the point is my culture tacitly grants them the right to hurt me if I step out of my place by looking at them the way they look at me.

I mean, this is why I don’t have the nerve to stop, glare, whistle and say, “Turn around, big boy, strut your stuff. Wanna check out the family jewels and see if ya got it. No, you don’t. Bummer - I am outta here.” Or even a simple snapped, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” I should feel well within my rights to comment on their ogling - as their ogling is a non-verbal comment on my body - but I don’t because I know my culture has granted them the privilege to rape women who aren’t properly submissive to them. Even when they’re improperly aggressive.

On the other hand, I realize they may have no idea how their ogling makes me feel because there’s no cultural record about why, exactly, a woman wouldn’t feel flattered with a construction worker hoots at her, for example. We all know that’s considered inappropriate (and there are now fines of several hundred dollars meted out to construction workers who harass passing women in any way), but do most people understand why it’s inappropriate? I don’t think so. I even know women who find it flattering and think one must be an uptight prude to be bothered by it.

Good for you, if you find it flattering, but it’s not prudishness that makes women feel harassed when strange men force attention upon them. It’s the fact that such attention reminds us of all the rights men have in regards to women’s sexuality which we do not have in regards to theirs. Right now, unless this post only reaches feminists, there are young men reading this and thinking, “But men would love for women to hold them down and rape them. Wow, I fantasize about that all the time!”

Which proves my point. Male privilege enables boys never once to think about how having sex might negatively affect their reputation or take away their right to legal redress when they’re criminally victimized. It enables boys to wonder what the hell could be so gosh-darn awful about being raped when sex is so awesome. It enables them to wonder how a woman could fail to crave men’s approval, so much that she would resent being given it on the street by strange men whose behavior society holds her responsible for.

That’s what male privilege really shields even kind and decent men from realizing: that women are responsible for men’s actions, according to the dominant forces in our culture. That even when a man chooses to take full responsibility for his actions and to pass this ethic on to any boys he mentors or parents, if he transgresses society will go looking for an excuse for his behavior, to exonerate one of its precious, valuable men at the expense of a lesser being.

And so being ogled by two men who are each bigger and stronger than me and for all I know may be psychopaths is my responsibility, and my cross to bear.

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Every now and then someone asks whether it’s worse to be a woman or a person of color. Usually, they phrase it just that way, defining the whole term “woman” to mean “white woman”, which gives you a great opportunity to shut down the discussion by pointing out that they just ignored the existence of women of color, so let’s just say “both” and be done with it. (That’s not a very serious reply - for one thing, it doesn’t shut down the “suffering Olympics“, of which there are no winners - but it does shut down an awkward conversation at soundbyte speed when you’re out with friends, not all of whom read blogs about privilege and -isms and stuff.)

Other times you’re just forced to realize people aren’t even debating the topic: they assume being a man of color is tougher than being a white woman, and women of color don’t even enter the equation (which speaks volumes). For example, someone will point out that whites have it easier than people of color, and then white men will jump up to say how hard things are for them, and suddenly no women are in this equation at all (which speaks a few more volumes).

Or you get something really lovely like this gem from a Chicago minister:

“Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home. Barack was,” Wright says in a video of the sermon posted on YouTube. “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary! Hillary ain’t never been called a ‘n—–!’ Hillary has never had her people defined as a non-person.”

With the bolded comment, I assume he’s referring to the outrageous 1787 agreement to count African-Americans as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of deciding how many Representatives a state could send to Washington, even though said African-Americans got zero-fifths of a vote. This was definitely one of the most shameful moments in US history, and definitive a one in shaping my belief that the US was no more an enlightened bastion of liberty than it was a magical land of chocolate.

But his argument that “her people” were never in US history defined as non-persons* relies on the precarious assumption that Clinton identifies with white men more than she identifies with women of color. Because if she identifies with other women, then his statement is invalidated by the existence of African-American women, who suffered every indignity African-American men did (and then some). The very fact he made this assumption is evidence of his male privilege.

Yes, men of color have male privilege even though it doesn’t do much for them, just like poor white people still have white privilege even though it doesn’t do much for them. No matter what race a man is, when he assumes the system that works for the gander must also work fine for the goose, that’s male privilege at work. The minister is assuming Clinton’s white privilege somehow insulates her from bigotry because race privilege is the one he’s had to deal with; he’s never experienced misogyny and doesn’t know what it’s like.

I don’t know what being a black man in America is like, but I don’t assume the minister’s male privilege fixes that trivial problem of racism right up just because gender privilege is the one I’ve had to deal with.

For there ever to be equality or anything close to it, we are all going to have to recognize that there are layers of privilege. When white feminists talk about “reproductive freedom” with no clue what a different set of problems that term invokes for women of color, we do a disservice to feminism. When men of color talk about race in terms that suggest they’ve forgotten women have their own separate burden to bear, they do a disservice to their cause.

*ETA: There’s plenty of room for the argument that even white women have been non-persons in US history, given that we couldn’t vote (until about 55 years after black men), own property, get an education or work in most industries. I suppose it is technically correct to say the US never “defined” white women as non-persons, but only because it was already a given, thanks to the Bible and its vast collection of stories about men bartering their daughters and wives. But that’s a whole other rant.

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A recent book I was reading re-introduced me to the folklore of vagina dentata, the notion that women once had - or Sinister Women have now - teeth in their vaginas. A common variant (found in Europe, Africa, and the Americas) being “witches” whose vaginal bite robbed men of their power and virility, and made slaves of them - unless the teeth were broken - of course no one here is going to miss the level of misogyny inherent in the idea of man’s virility being restored by breaking a woman’s teeth.On one level it’s easy to ignore dentata folklore, as he trappings of it are so blatantly ridiculous.

But then I remember how MRA’s love to tell stories bout how women use mere half-promises of access to a vagina to completely rob a man of his reason. Or about how women hunt in bars and clubs for men they then seduce, become pregnant by, and sue for paternity. And in a world where wealth and material trappings are conflated more than ever with virility and masculinity, how different can these stories and dentata stories really be?

Both treat female sex and sexuality as a devouring thing that takes something rightful away from men. Both see danger in a woman who fucks rather than being fucked. Both invoke the spectre of Sinister Women with powers no man can face - where modern stories don’t have magic any more, they speak of genetics, evolutionary psychology, and biased legal systems -nothing but teeth with a makeover.

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An Open Letter to All Feminists: Statement of Solidarity with Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Women Facing War and Occupation
by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cm130308.html
As feminists and people of conscience, we call for solidarity with Palestinian women in Gaza suffering due to the escalating military attacks that Israel turned into an open war on civilians. This war has targeted women and children, and all those who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and are also denied the right to freedom of movement, health, and education.

We stand in solidarity with Iraqi women whose daughters, sisters, brothers, or sons have been abused, tortured, and raped in U.S. prisons such as Abu Ghraib. Women in Iraq continue to live under a U.S. occupation that has devastated families and homes, and are experiencing a rise in religious extremism and restrictions on their freedom that were unheard of before the U.S. invasion, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” in 2003.

At this moment in Afghanistan, women are living with the return of the Taliban and other misogynistic groups such as the Northern Alliance, a U.S. ally, and with the violence of continuing U.S. and NATO attacks on civilians, despite the U.S. war to “liberate” Afghan women in 2001.

As of March 6, 2008, over 120 Palestinians, including 39 children and 6 women (more than a third of the victims), in Gaza were killed by Israeli air strikes and escalated attacks on civilians over a period of five days, according to human rights groups.1 Hospitals have been struggling to treat 370 injured children, as reported by medical officials. Homes have been destroyed as well as civilian facilities including the headquarters of the General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions.2 On February 29, 2008, Israel ’s Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Valnai, threatened Palestinians in Gaza with a “bigger Shoah,” the Hebrew word usually used only for the Holocaust.3 What does it mean that the international community is standing by while this is happening?

Valnai’s threat of a Holocaust against Palestinians was not just a slip of the tongue, for the war on Gaza is a continuation of genocidal activities against the indigenous population. Israel has controlled the land and sea borders and airspace of Gaza for more than a year and a half, confining 1.5 million Palestinians to a giant prison. Supported by the U.S., Israel has imposed a near total blockade on Gaza since June 2007 which has led to a breakdown in basic services, including water and sanitation, lack of electricity, fuel, and medical supplies. As a result of these sanctions, 30% of children under 5 years suffer from stunted growth and malnutrition. Over 80% of the population cannot afford a balanced meal.4

Is this humanitarian crisis going to approach a situation similar to that of the sanctions against Iraq from 1991-2003, when an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children died due to lack of nutrition and medical supplies, and the woman who was then Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, proclaimed that the death of a half million Iraqi children was worth the price of U.S. national security?

As feminists and anti-imperialist people of conscience, we oppose direct and indirect policies of ethnic cleansing and decimation of native populations by all nation-states.

In the current climate of U.S.-initiated or U.S.-backed assaults on women in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we are deeply troubled by one kind of hypocritical Western feminist discourse that continues to be preoccupied with particular kinds of violence against Muslim or Middle Eastern women, while choosing to remain silent on the lethal violence inflicted on women and families by military occupation, F-16s, Apache helicopters, and missiles paid for by U.S. tax payers. This is a moment when U.S. imperialism brazenly uses direct colonial occupation, masked in a civilizational discourse of bringing Western “freedom” and “democracy.” Such acts echo the language of Manifest Destiny that was used to justify U.S. colonization of the Philippines and Pacific territories in the 19th century, not to mention the genocide of Native Americans. U.S. covert, and not so covert, interventions in Central, South America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean have devastated the lives of countless indigenous peoples, and other civilians, in this region throughout the 20th century. The U.S., as well its proxy militias or client regimes, has inflicted violence on women and girls from Vietnam, Okinawa, and Pakistan to Chile, El Salvador, and Somalia and has avenged the deaths of its soldiers by its own “honor killings” that lay siege to entire towns, such as Fallujah in Iraq.

It is appalling that in these catastrophic times, many U.S. liberal feminists are focused only on misogynistic practices associated with particular local cultures, as if these exist in capsules, far from the arena of imperial occupation. Indeed, imperial violence has given fuel to some of these patriarchal practices of misogyny and sexism. They should also know that such a narrow vision furthers a much older tradition of feminist mobilizing in the service of colonialism — “saving brown, or black women, from brown men,” as observed by Gayatri Spivak.

While we too oppose abuses including domestic violence, “honor killings,” forced marriage, and brutal punishment, we are disturbed that some U.S. feminists — as well as Muslim or Middle Eastern women who claim to be “authorities” on Islam and are employed by right-wing think tanks — are participating in a selective discourse of universal women’s rights that ignores U.S. war crimes and abuses of human rights.

While some progressive U.S. feminists claim to oppose the hijacking of women’s rights to justify U.S. invasions, they simultaneously evade any mention about the plight of women in Palestine, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Their statements continue to focus only on female genital mutilation or dowry deaths under the guise of breaking the “politically correct” silence on abuses of women in the “Muslim world” that the Right disingenuously laments.5

Some progressives may support such statements with good intentions, but these critiques ignore the fact that Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim feminists have been working on these issues for generations, focusing on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and nationalism. Their work is ignored by North American feminists who claim to advocate for a “global sisterhood” but are disillusioned to discover that women in the U.S. military participated in the acts of torture at Abu Ghraib.

We are concerned about these silences and selective condemnations given that the U.S. mainstream media bolsters this imperialist feminism by using an (often liberal) Orientalist approach to covering the Middle East or South Asia. For example, on March 5, 2008, as the death toll due to Israeli attacks in Gaza was mounting, the New York Times chose to publish an article just below its report on the Israeli military incursions that focused on the sentencing of a Palestinian man in Israel for an honor killing; the report was deemed worthy of international coverage because the Palestinian women had broken “the code of silence” by resorting to Israeli courts.6

The implications of this juxtaposition of two unrelated events are that Palestinians belong to a backward, patriarchal culture that, rightly or wrongly, is under attack by a modern, “democratic” state with a legal apparatus that supports women’s rights. Others have shown that the New York Times gave disproportionate attention to the Human Rights Watch report in 2006 on domestic violence against Palestinian women relative to its scant mention of the 76 reports of Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli organization, B’Tselem.7

Similar coverage exists of women from other countries outside the U.S. that are portrayed as victims only of their own cultural traditions, rather than also of the ravages of Western imperialism and predatory global capitalism. No attention is paid in the mainstream U.S. media to reports such as that in Haaretz documenting that Palestinian women citizens of Israel are the most exploited group in the Israeli workforce, making only 47% of the wages earned by their Jewish counterparts in Israel, and with double the rate of unemployment of Jewish women.8 Little is known in the U.S. about what the lives of Iraqi women are really like now that they are pressured to cover themselves in public or not work outside the house, nor of Afghani women whose homes are still being bombed in a war that was supposed to have liberated them many years ago.

We stand in solidarity with feminist and liberatory movements that are opposing U.S. imperialism, U.S.-backed occupation, militarism, and economic exploitation as well as resisting religious and secular fundamentalisms.

We also support the struggles of those within the U.S. opposing the War on Terror and racist practices of detention, deportation, surveillance, and torture linked to the military-industrial-prison complex that selectively targets immigrants, minorities, and youth of color. We are grateful for the courageous scholarship of academics who are at risk of not getting tenure or employment because they do research related to settler colonialism or taboo topics such as Palestinian rights and expose controversial aspects of U.S. policies here and abroad.

At a moment when U.S. military interventions have made “democracy” a dirty word in much of the world, we strive for true democracy and for freedom and justice for all our sisters and brothers.

Piya Chatterjee, University of California-Riverside
Sunaina Maira, University of California-Davis
Campaign of Solidarity with Women Resisting U.S. Wars and Occupation
South Asians for the Liberation of Palastine

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cm130308.html

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