Soujourner Truth was the original Third Wave Feminist

[Catherina]

(cross-posted from Meta

I posted this as part of a Meta discussion about the 2nd and 3rd wave because I don't see the waves as chronological phases. I see them as having always overlapped and that even at the beginning of the Suffragette movement, there were plenty of 3rd Wavers and Lipstick Feminists.

It's been posted in the Feminist Group and the Feminist and Diversity Group. Now that I've joined this group, please forgive me for crossposting this a 4th time if you've already seen it. And please forgive me that it's a little clumsy and not tailored for this group. It came up in Meta after all.

If you need a quick rundown on the three feminist waves,

"The wave terminology is shorthand for different eras with different focuses" (Gormy Cuss)

1st wave feminism: voting rights, property rights, birth control (that existed at the time - condoms or sponges and, just as important, education about sexuality and how to prevent conception.)
2nd wave feminism: sexual freedom, legislative work to change sexist law, integration into the workplace, equal funding, integration into the political arena
3rd wave feminism: sexual freedom, inclusion of gendered females, diversity, inclusion of women of color and women from other cultures - plus the issues surrounding both 1st and 2nd wave feminism.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/124096792#post231)

I see her that way because in gender and race issues throughout the history of Feminism the relationship between feminists and civil rights activists, progressive movements was very uneasy and non-Whites felt that the main Feminist groups tolerated the most insidious kinds of chauvinism, patriarchy and bigotry.

"So, too, our histories with feminism. It is because white women inherently kept gatekeeping the right to determine the forms and agenda of feminist movement building that Alice Walker felt so compelled to create womanism, that Barbara Smith and the members of Combahee had to articulate what Black feminism looked like, that Fran Beale and the members of the TWWA had to articulate what a third world feminism looked like, that Gloria Anzaldua had to articulate what a Chicana feminism looked like."

http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/i-saw-the-sign-but-did-we-really-need-a-sign-slutwalk-and-racism/

Suggested reading for anyone interested in this

1. Michelle Wallace: "Anger in Isolation: A Black Feminist's Search for Sisterhood,"
2. Margaret Simons: "Racism and Feminism: A Schism in the Sisterhood"
3. "Vol. 9.1 - A History of Black Feminism in the U.S." http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v9/9.01/6blackf.html
4. Audre Lorde: "I am your sister"
5. Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke: "Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches"
6. Anything by Dorothy Sue Cobble, Silke Roth, Bell Hooks and Kimberly Springer who wrote about the racism within the predominately White Feminist movement

and it's still going on, to this day. The transphobia, so viciously expressed by some Feminists, stems from the same roots. So does the demand that you only have allegiance to Feminism and no other -isms.

This is just one current example and write up about the racism still prevalent: "White Privilege Diary Series #1 - White Feminist Privilege in Organizations"

Back to Soujourner. I read her short speech "Ain't I A Woman" as a slap in the face to the racists, especially the racist male and female supporters of Feminism who didn't want her to speak, even to the more kind-hearted but privileged ones who wanted to keep race issues out of the picture.

She was accused of being a man and bared her breasts to prove she wasn't, saying "Ain't I A Woman". Shortly afterwards she gave her famous speech off the top of her head.

The incident at Inez Milholland's grave was another ugly show, among many. It looks to me like the third wave, fighting for inclusiveness and equal rights for everyone, was there from the beginning and gained strength as people's attitudes evolved.


Here's an amazing book on the subject



http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/250792.Ain_t_I_a_Woman

[JustAnotherGen]

1. In total agreement

A large part of the 'break' from Black women and feminism was centered around the treatment of black men. It was not just suffrage - it was also lynching, Jim Crow, Slavery by Any Other Name.

I can't call myself a feminist and 'throw black men' under the bus. My father, my brother, my nephews, my uncles, etc. etc. are black men. I know they are maligned - and they simply don't 'get ahead' at American womens' (of all races/ethnicities) expense.

Sojourner stood for the HUMANITY of not just black women - but for the HUMANITY of ALL black people. She got - as did Ida - the 'blood thirsty black man that rapes white women' was a a stereotype/outright lie. She understood that a black man did not have the POWER to impose his values/beliefs on America. . . or to treat white women as white men did. I.E. - You can't blame black men for the way America works. Think about it - who were the black men in Philadelphia that signed the Declaration?

[Number23]

2. Fantastic

Fantastic post. I agree with every word.

I can't call myself a feminist and 'throw black men' under the bus. My father, my brother, my nephews, my uncles, etc. etc. are black men. I know they are maligned - and they simply don't 'get ahead' at American womens' (of all races/ethnicities) expense.

I feel the same way. I can no more distance myself from my grandfather and uncles and cousins than I could from my own children. They are me and I am them.

And as I've noted I don't know how many times, throughout the course of my life and career, I have suffered more discrimination, hatefulness, and OPPRESSION at the hands of white women than from anyone else. A comment from scarletwoman just about blew my head off I was nodding so hard the other day:

I haven't a clue, really, about what "feminism" is supposed to mean anymore - at least on DU. I'm 62 years old, I remember the early days of consciousness raising and battles for equality. But even back then, I was dismayed by some of directions it took - it began, after awhile, to look like mainly a vehicle for upper middle class white women to assert their right to participate fully in the corporate culture of exploitation and greed. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1240&pid=96063

And personally, the white women that made my life the most miserable were always the ones crying "sexism" anytime anything didn't go their way, whether whatever it was was deserved or not. It's really hard to lock arms and call someone my "sister" who's doing everything she can to minimize my contribution and take credit for my achievements all while stabbing me in the very back she's pretending to be looking out for.

[nofurylike]

5. yes!! wow:

scarletwoman: ... it began, after awhile, to look like mainly a vehicle for upper middle class white women to assert their right to participate fully in the corporate culture of exploitation and greed.

eye-opening, and so very true.

and, wow:

It's really hard to lock arms and call someone my "sister" who's doing everything she can to minimize my contribution and take credit for my achievements all while stabbing me in the very back she's pretending to be looking out for.

heartbreakingly necessary, healthy self-respect.



thank you for those insights, Number23!

[JustAnotherGen]

6. Amen

I haven't a clue, really, about what "feminism" is supposed to mean anymore - at least on DU. I'm 62 years old, I remember the early days of consciousness raising and battles for equality. But even back then, I was dismayed by some of directions it took - it began, after awhile, to look like mainly a vehicle for upper middle class white women to assert their right to participate fully in the corporate culture of exploitation and greed.

My mother's break from Feminism came in the early 1980s - she - a good looking blonde with green eyes had a picture of her family on her desk in corporate America. . .

Do I need to say more than that?

[Number23]

11. Nope. No need to say another word

Do I need to say more than that?

I'm sure it's obvious to everyone here what happened when the "sisters" saw the melanin in your mom's family portrait!

We saw alot of this during the 2008 campaign and afterwards. Certain women were all up in arms the minute anyone even LOOKED cross eyed at Hillary. Oh, how the "sisters" sprung into action whenever St. Hillary was in peril! (And I say this as someone who would love to have Hillary Clinton adopt her).

But these same folks were quiet as church mice when the dragons had Michelle Obama, Sonia Sotomayor and/or other assorted women of color in their clutches. For some reason, the non-stop cries of "sexism! sexism!" vanished completely when it was aimed at non-blondes.

This is one of the reasons I always smile and nod whenever white people compare what they've gone through to racism or the black experience in this country. There are very few white people that have a clue what that's like, and that includes white people who have been on the receiving end of various oppressions themselves. White privilege is a force in this country that trumps just about every other imho. When your mom's white female friends and coworkers caused her to turn her back on feminism because of their racism, when white women dismissed their own racism in the time of the ERA leading black women to have to form their own movement, when Hillary supporter Harriet Christian screamed "wait your turn!" to Obama when it was obvious that he was going to secure the Dem nomination, their white privilege shone brighter and hotter than they knew and their need to keep black women and men "in our places" trumped any "sexism" charge they could ever make against anyone else.

[Catherina]

8. +1 Scarletwoman is amazing that way

and so are many others who have had enough.

I hope you come around to the Feminism forum too because the Womanist movement our Black sisters founded is an integral part of the Third Wave, or intersectionality.

I got chills the first time I read this rant and posted it in FG. The timing was perfect because it was during the height of the DU Feminist war of 2012. I didn't know, until those wars started, that so many women were genuinely angry about this and that we can't be marginalized because we're the majority and we're pissed.

This rant has very colorful language, I hope the language won't offend anyone here. If so, I apologize.

MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT!


Now picture this: me screaming the above. Angry. VERY ANGRY as a matter of fact. Screaming this at my computer screen. Screaming it at nobody and everybody. At you. You, person I might have never heard from who might have not even commented on this blog or any of the other publications where I can be regularly found scribbling my discombobulated ideas. Even though we never met before, I AM ACTUALLY, SCREAMING AT YOU RIGHT NOW. MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT!. And I am screaming this because I want to convince you, I want to get it through you that this is not a choice or an abstract concept or an intellectual exercise. I am not screaming because well, you know, I just discovered intersectionality and OMG SO COOL GUYS. YOU NEED TO READ THIS. No. My feminism NEEDS to be intersectional because as a South American, as a Latina, as someone who knows certain parts of the Global South intimately by virtue of being a Southerner, as an immigrant living in Europe, as a woman, I am in the middle of what I like to call the “shit puff pastry”. The shit puff pastry is every layer of fuck that goes on above me, below me, by my sides, all around me. And in this metaphorical puff pastry with multiple layers of excrement, I am the dulce de leche that is supposed to make it palatable so that someone else, more specifically the kyriarchy, can eat me.

And here’s the thing: while I am screaming at you, I am also asking, nay, DEMANDING that you scream with me. And I am asking that you become as angry as I have been this past week. Because without anger and without righteous indignation and without the deep, relentless demand for change, my feminism, YOUR feminism, everyone’s feminism will fail. It will be bullshit.

This past week I’ve been screaming this a lot. Because I like to play “connecting the dots” (s.e. smith ipse dixit) as a matter of political practice. I play “connecting the dots” even though sometimes I might not get a properly outlined landscape but the equivalent of what my 1 year old niece playing with a bunch of sharpies on the coffee table would produce. Which is to say, sometimes, the pictures I draw when I connect dots might not make sense or might be inaccurate or might have missed a few dots to be totally accurate. But I am willing to pay the price of not making sense sometimes if I do eventually get it right. I would rather sometimes come across as far fetched than miss the landscape that the shit puff pastry provides. And these past few days I’ve been playing connect the dots more often than usual. Hence my anger. Hence my disappointment with feminism. FEMINISM! I AM DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU. To the point that I even considered ditching the label altogether. And if that happened, I would use a new label that pretty much sums up my politics: Flame-throwerism. Wherein I set feminism on fire and with its ashes I fill my cats’ kitty litter box and let them pee on it. That’s how angry I’ve been at feminism this week. Kitty litter levels of outrage.

...

Layer five of this week’s shit puff pastry

I am hurting. Like real, physical pain on the right side of my torso. It’s been going on for a few days and I have no idea what’s causing it. I do know it’s gotten worse since I have been letting out all of this anger. I hurt even more so while I was researching my last post about the corporate profits behind the business of undocumented immigrants. Obviously this is not evident in the post itself but I spent days reading accounts of abuses perpetrated on immigrant bodies. I also saw the trailer to this film which Eli recommended in one of the comments. And I cried, when one of the Ethiopian women spoke of her abuse in the hands of smugglers and how she connected it with the European Union’s complicity. She had been raped in the name of my safety. Because I am a legal resident in a European country, I have to acknowledge that the State, on my behalf, deemed it acceptable that this body was abused. And I am also hurting because even though I put a lot of effort into that piece, nobody seemed to care much about it. AND YOU FUCKING SHOULD. Not because I wrote it, fuck that, no. But because all of that is done IN YOUR NAME. Because if you are a legal resident in a Western country, the State is actively abusing these people on your behalf. These immigrant, non White bodies are treated as worthless because YOU HAVE ALLOWED YOUR STATE TO DO THIS. And yet, few people seemed to connect to the piece or even find it worthy.

I do not give a damn that I wrote it. Moreover, I hereby give you permission to use my words as yours. Do not credit me if you do not feel like it. Use the words in that piece to discuss the subject. Tell people you wrote it if you need to. BUT IF YOU CALL YOURSELF A FEMINIST AND YOU DO NOT CARE THAT SOME WOMEN ARE GIVING BIRTH IN INHUMAN CONDITIONS AND THEIR CHILDREN ARE UNDER SUCH GRIEF THAT THEY HAVE SEWN THEIR LIPS TOGETHER THEN I AM NOT PART OF YOUR MOVEMENT. And if you cannot actively unpack your share of responsibility in these actions, which are happening right in your backyard, then one of us cannot call herself a feminist.

And if you cannot see how this issue is so deeply interconnected with all of the above, with racism, with violence on WoC, with rape culture, with colonialism, with our disdain for people from the Global South, with whose bodies are deemed human and whose are not (and as such, unrapeable), with institutionalized violence, with wars waged by our Nations on the countries where these people come from… if you cannot see all of this as part of the same landscape, as part of the same gigantic, oppressive shit puff pastry, then maybe I should not call myself a feminist. Maybe, indeed, throwing flames in the direction of feminism is all I have left.

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/10/my-feminism-will-be-intersectional-or-it-will-be-bullshit/

(Dear hosts, I quoted 6 paragraphs but the author is so fine with this being reproduced, she doesn't care about copyright, doesn't even want credit and doesn't even care if people say they wrote it themselves. It's in the 5th paragraph.)

[nofurylike]

4. excellent! absolutely!! thank you for those insights, JustAnotherGen!! nt

[Catherina]

7. Straight to the heart of the matter!

I refused to call myself a Feminist for a long time because I wanted nothing to do with a movement that refused to examine how it was coming from a position of privilege at other women's expense.

I couldn't call myself a Feminist and throw, not just my black brothers, who were wronged even more viciously by the *patriarchy* they didn't belong to, under the bus, but women of different colors around the world.

Today, now that the battle for intersectionality has won and that brilliant feminists like Sunera Thobani won their battle on making racial issues dominant in Feminism, I'm proud to.

There's been a long fight in Feminism to put a stop to the intolerant attitude that dictated the whole agenda from a single point of view and refused to recognize the contributions of non-white, non-heterosexual sisters, much less their concerns.

The Third Wave is here to stay now and not putting up with that privilege.

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place. And ain’t I a woman?"

Check out two excerpts in this thread if you haven't seen them yet: http://www.democraticunderground.com/11396256

I hope you, and other sisters, and brothers too, will come to the Femininst forum sometimes because we're dead serious about pushing forward and growing together with truth.

Thanks again for your great post in the Meta thread. And this one too which was great.

[nofurylike]

3. yes!! fascinating! thank you for the information, and insights, Catherina! nt

[Catherina]

9. You're welcome nofurylike

I would like to learn more about Sojourner Truth and feminists like her. I'd also like to hear your experiences because you had a post about your long activism but you didn't go into details.

I want to hear my sisters voices about this and learn and grow together because for the first time evah, I feel comfortable in the Feminist movement. Hopeful is the word.

[nofurylike]

10. kind, Catherina. i am very pleased you say that:

I want to hear my sisters voices about this and learn and grow together because for the first time evah, I feel comfortable in the Feminist movement. Hopeful is the word.

i am thrilled that Women of Color are claiming and defining Feminism.
and i have loved reading Crunk Feminists.

and about Intersectionality.

your posts are ever informing me, thank you so very much, Catherina!

yes, i've been in there forty-some years, but i am a student and envelope-stuffer. i sometimes step in, here on DU3, to counter his/herstorical inaccuracies, only because i participated in and/or eye-witnessed so much of it.

thank you, again!