Are you Too rich, white, and able bodied and straight to be a feminist? [View all]

[Pretzel_Warrior]

My post title is the title of the column from The Guardian. Admittedly an older article from earlier in 2013, but I found it when looking for other info.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/18/are-you-too-white-rich-straight-to-be-feminist

This is a story about intersectionality. It's going to displease a few people who don't know what intersectionality is, annoy a few people who do, and enrage a load of people who don't use Twitter. But I checked with my privilege, and my privilege said it was OK. (Don't know what "check your privilege" means? This might turn out to be a problem for you, too).

In January, an argument on Twitter started in the manner characteristic of, possibly unique to, that medium. Someone called historian Mary Beard a racist. Helen Lewis, the deputy editor of the New Statesman, asked what made Beard a racist. A small but persistent Twitter intersectionality-core rounded on Lewis, accusing her of mindlessly defending the establishment against outsiders, effectively using her platform in the mainstream to defend racists within feminism from the critical voices whom feminism ought properly to champion and defend.

That precis doesn't quite evoke the tone of the attack: another Twitter feminist defended Lewis later with: "It is never OK to call another woman a vicious rancid bitch." The fact that this needs to be said, in an argument between one feminist and another, makes me chuckle, though of course I won't be chuckling if (when) it is said to me.