September 23, 2013 • 37 mins
Cristen and Caroline discuss a recent Twitter hashtag, #solidarityisforwhitewomen, that sparked an important conversation about feminism and race and revisit their episode on 6 Black Feminists You Should Know.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff mom never told you. From house to
folks not color. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today's episode is a refresh um.
We're revisiting a podcast we recorded a while ago about
black feminists that you should know, and we're calling the
(00:24):
episode is Solidarity for White Women because a hashtag recently
emerged on Twitter that actually caused a great debate, a
lengthy debate over whether solidarity actually is for white women
and what that means. Yeah, what the hashtag is referring
to in general, in a nutshell and the nuttiest of
(00:47):
nutshells I can offer, is that feminism hasn't always done
the greatest job with acknowledging privilege, which is something that
Caroline and I do talk about in that episode on
Black Femine Us you should know. So what the hashtag
solidarity is for white women is essentially all about is
(01:08):
the fact that feminism hasn't always done the greatest job
with acknowledging privilege and intersectionality and privilege essentially refers to
the societal benefits that are conferred upon you on the
basis of your gender, race, ability, etcetera. So the fact
that Caroline and I are white feminist sitting here. We're
(01:29):
talking to you from a position of privilege because we
are white, and there are lots of social privileges conferred
upon us for that. And not only are we white,
we are sis gender heterosexual women, so there are lots
of other privileges that come along with that because we aren't,
for instance, trans or black or etcetera. You know, we
(01:53):
were sitting at the intersection of more of the mainstream
that tends to get more attention and tends to have
a broader and louder platform, right, and then you also
mentioned intersectionality, which is the interwoven discrimination against people on
the basis of those things things like gender, race, sexual orientation,
(02:14):
et cetera. And so the foundation of this hashtag on
Twitter is the fact that a lot of women's voices
are not included maybe in a larger feminist discussion, specifically
in this discussion women of color and to understand a
(02:36):
little bit more about where solidarity is for white women
originated NPRS code switch Team offered a pretty tidy summary
and again in a nutshell, the hashtag started with the
Twitter self immolation in a way of this guy named
Hugo Schweizer, whose name might be familiar to people who
(02:58):
listen to the podcast because cited him before, and if
you read Jezebel, you've probably seen his articles over there.
He's also written for The Atlantic and a number of
other publications because he was one of the most prominent
voices among male feminists. And long story short, though, what
a lot of people weren't aware of about Hugo Schweitzer
(03:20):
is that he had developed a reputation for lashing out
against women of color feminists, and meanwhile, he was contributing
to these large feminist sites like Jezebel, which are largely
run by white women. And when his meltdown happened and
he essentially copped to his racist tendencies which had been
(03:43):
brushed aside up until then, solidarity is for white women
happened when finally, blogger Mickey Kendall started the hashtag saying, Wow,
are we just now paying attention to what this guy
has been doing? And I feel like we need to
offer brief mea culpa for citing his work in podcasts
(04:04):
as well. Yeah, I I can say personally, I was
not aware of the extent of this slimy stuff in
its background. Yeah, and I don't think that a lot
of people were, which was why the hashtag really took off,
because it was such uh an perfect example of how
(04:25):
women of colors experiences and voices were not being heard. Right.
And so blogger Mickey Kendall is the person who started
the hashtag, and she wrote in a column and The
Guardian admittedly this isn't a new problem. White feminism has
argued that it should trump race since its inception, and
she says that that rhetoric not only erases the experiences
(04:47):
of women of color, but also alienates many from a
movement that claims to want equality for all. And so
the hashtag, in its essence is a rallying cry for
greater visibility and broader platforms for non white feminist voices
to be heard. And we could sit here and spend
the next hour reading all of the tweets to the
(05:09):
hashtag generated um. But we're not going to do that, um,
because you could go online. There's a whole storify of
a lot of these tweets to give you a sense
of what these women meant by solidarities for white women
and all of the the examples that they offered, and
we wanted to instead take this opportunity to talk about
(05:33):
the hashtag and also use it to tee up a
rerun of our episodes Six Black Feminist Pioneers. You should
know that we aired earlier this year because we did
discuss some of the issues raised in this in terms
of things like privilege and also trying to highlight, uh
the failings of second wave feminism in terms of women
(05:54):
of color, and also trying to shed some light on
some women that you should know that aren't talked about
as often as say, someone like Gloria Steinham or Betty
for Dan and so I hope this isn't considered a
form of tokenism on our part, but genuine and sincere
acknowledgement that we know we're sitting here as two white feminists,
(06:16):
but we also know we can do a better job
of highlighting the experiences of women of color and that
this issue of race and feminism started long before Twitter
came around, as is highlighted in the stories of these
six Black Feminist Pioneers that you should know. So with that,
let's revisit that episode, Caroline before we start talking about um,
(06:43):
these women, these incredible women. You know, what we gotta
to talk about first, what ourselves obviously obviously what I
mean is, Okay, we need to address briefly the issue
of privilege, because we're gonna be talking about black women
and feminism and how feminism relates to to black women,
(07:09):
and as two women of Caucasian descent with very fair
skin that is easily sunburned, Um, we should talk about
privilege first, right, yeah, yeah, and basically recognizing that privilege
is the key to having a good discussion about feminism
(07:30):
and about black feminism in particular, which is what we'll
be focusing on in this episode, because it was Bell Hooks,
the feminist writer with the lower case name we'll talk
about later in this episode, who said that feminism ignores
non white and poor white women. Books like the Feminine
(07:51):
Mystique overlooked an entire portion of the population. So it's
important to admit that we are, as young white women Kristen,
as the Feminist Wire would put it in maywelve, we
have been afforded certain unearned privileges on the basis of
one or more parts of our identity, and that part
of our identity would be uh, you know, the being
(08:14):
white essentially, and and speaking more to the connection between
like the feminalistique and bettyfor Dan and second wave feminism. Um,
there was a huge criticism, and rightfully so, about how
it was largely a movement initially, that that really did
speak directly to the needs of middle and upper middle
(08:35):
class white women. UM. And to get more of a
sense of that, let's go back again to Belle Hooks,
she writes. For Dan's famous phrase the problem that has
no name, that's from the femininistique, often quoted to describe
the condition of women in this society, actually referred to
the plight of a select group of college educated, middle
(08:57):
and upper class married white women house vibes, board with leisure,
with home with children, with buying products, who wanted more
out of life. And for black women listening to that
at the time and even today, UM, they were like,
well that you were incredibly privileged to be wanting to
fight this fight, because you know, you're talking about, oh, well,
(09:18):
you know, we want to get outside of the home.
And these these other women who were not afforded luxuries
like going to college and maybe even being able to
stay um in the home, had been working outside of
the home for a long time. And this also reminded
me of our domestic service podcasts UM and when we
(09:39):
were researching for that, UH, we found some some commentary
on how the National Organization for Women at the time
was in favor of extaying the Fair Labor Standards Act
two household workers in order to make that field more
attractive to lower class women, since the those middle and
upper class college educated women who we're organizing with now
(10:01):
we're going to be needing to leave the home, so
they would need someone else to come in and take
care of it. So we're not saying that second way
feminism is bad, it just overlooked a lot, right, and
Hooks wrote that, you know, the concerns of housewives of
whatever class we're worth being considered, but she said they
(10:22):
were not the pressing political concerns of masses of women.
And so then you get into black feminism, which is
distinct from uh like feminists second way feminism, I guess
you would say, and intentionally so, right, Black feminism was
something that existed outside of both regular mainstream feminism and
(10:46):
the black liberation movement. A lot of activists at this
time point out, like we've already talked about that the
middle class white housewife concerns were not the same as
those of a lot of either poor white people or
people of color, but neither were the concerns of the
Black liberation movement entirely covering those of black feminists, because
a lot of people point out the Black liberation movement
(11:08):
had a lot to do with men's Black men's rights
and their manhood and there, you know, basically extending their
rights in society. Yeah, I I forget which feminist scholar
was writing about this, but she she pointed out that
for black women at the time who were engaged in
the Black liberation movement, and that encompasses several movements such
(11:30):
as civil rights movement, black nationalism, black panthers, a student
non violent Coordinating Committee UM. When they would be in conversations,
when the word men would be dropped, it would be
in reference to black men. When the word feminism would
be dropped, it would be inherently in reference to white women.
And so they were saying, well, where are we? And
(11:51):
so black feminism was born out of this UM. We
can will also bring up womanism later in the podcast,
which is a word coined by Alice Walker to delineate
a more intersectional um feminism from the from the main stream,
to encompass everybody, not just not just white women. Essentially, yeah,
(12:15):
bell Hooks wrote. Going back to Bell Hooks, Who Is Wonderful?
She wrote that black women basically denied a part of themselves.
This is coming from her book Ain't I a Woman?
She says contemporary Black women could not join together to
fight for women's rights because we did not see quote
womanhood as an important aspect of our identity. Racist sex.
With socialization, it conditioned us to do value our femaleness
(12:37):
and to regard race is the only relevant label of identification.
So there's this push to see not just your race
but also your gender and how those two things combine
to shape both who you are and how the outside
world views you. And considering, um, that the way that
those kind of things have been overshadowed by, uh, the
(13:00):
the culture that they were living in and society for
a long time. Um, why don't we talk about these
six women who were like, you know what, I am
really not going to have this. I don't care. I
have a voice, I have a mind, and I'm gonna
speak it and I'm going to pave the way for
some incredible change. Yeah. One of those women was Maria Stewart.
(13:24):
She lived from eighteen o three to eighteen seventy nine.
This is coming from a PBS article about her. She
was actually born free in Boston, orphaned at the age
of five, and subsequently hired out as a domestic worker.
She was largely self taught. She she really worked hard
during her time as a domestic worker to educate herself.
(13:45):
And she ended up meeting David Walker, who was the
author of the Anti Slavery Treatise and Appeal to the
Colored People of the World. And after his death Walker's death,
she ended up writing articles for the abolitionist paper The Liberator,
publishing anti slavery tracks and becoming one of the first,
if not the first. There is a question about who
was the first African American woman to speak in public,
(14:07):
and not only in public Kristen in front of a
promiscuous audience of both men and women. Now by promiscuous,
we mean that's an old school term for both men
and women gender. How scandalous. Yeah, And and some scholars
say that she represents the first public representation of black
feminism because a lot of her speeches that she gave well,
(14:29):
and I say a lot of her speeches she only
spoke publicly for I want to say, like four years, um.
But during that time a lot of her stuff focused
more on pro black nationalism. But she was also very
insistent not just an extending education to black children, but
specifically two girls and talking about how women need education
(14:53):
just as much as those boys do. And um she
published this was also very here for a woman at
the time, much less um, an African American woman at
the time. She published her writings in a book called
The Meditations from the Pen of Mrs Maria W. Stewart.
So yeah, in addition to this writing and her you know,
(15:14):
emphasis on morality, religion, and education, she was actually a
public school teacher in New York and founded schools in
Baltimore and Washington, d C. Yeah, and her speeches and
essays were part of a growing abolitionist movement and a
stimulus for the women's rights movement. And um, and that's
really important, like to to talk about how uh there
(15:37):
she bridged not only abolition but also women's rights, because um,
that was pretty rare at the time as well. If
we go back to a quote from sojourn or truth.
For instance, she once said, there's a great stare about
colored men getting their rights, but not a word about
colored women. And if colored men are to get their
rights and non colored women, there's you see, the colored
men will be masters over the women and it will
(15:59):
be just as bad as it was before. And what
Marie Stewart did was kind of a hearken to those
those words from Sogourner truth and advocate for women to
educate themselves and rise up as well. Now, you mentioned,
Caroline that Stewart was a public school teacher and founded
schools in Baltimore in d C. And that is an
(16:20):
excellent transition to our next inspiring woman, Daisy Bates, because
she led the effort to integrate schools public schools in Arkansas. Yeah,
she and her husband actually have a great story. They
worked very closely together to in segregation and improve education
(16:44):
for black students. She was actually the president of the
Arkansas in Double A CP and her husband was its
regional director and they went on to run a newspaper together.
He was the publisher of the Arkansas State Press, which
was the largest black newspaper in the state, and she
was his star wars porter and you know, of course,
like when he was out of town, she filled in
as publisher and editor and all this stuff. So they
(17:05):
were actually very dynamic couple. So Daisy and the in
double A c P. Took the Little Rock school Board
to task after the Supreme Courts nineteen four call to
in segregation, and she helped recruit those nine bright kids
who would defy segregationists. Yeah, nineteen fifty four, that Brown
(17:25):
versus Topeka Board of Education decision from the Supreme Court
struck down the previous separate but equal ruling, and Dacy
Bates said, hey, you know what, I guess what it's
time Little Rock for for us to follow suit and
desegregate as well. Of course, this was not greeted with
(17:46):
open arms by either the school board or really any
of the white people in Little Rock. It it seems
like and her health became the headquarters for the plan
and execution of this now that it's also became a
target for for people who are looking to do violence
against those wishing to desegregate. Um and speaking to Mpr
(18:09):
Earnest Green, who was one of the Little Rock nine
of that group of students who integrated Central High School, said,
Daisy Bates was a poster child of black resistance. She
was a quarterback of the coach and we were the players. Yeah.
And after this this whole event, Uh, an advertiser boycott
of the couple's paper forced it to shut down in
(18:29):
nineteen fifty nine, But she was not down and out.
In four she brought the paper back in that same
year ended up receiving an honorary Doctor of Law's degree
from University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Yeah, and in honor
of the work that Daisy Bates did, because she became
like the national spokesperson for I mean not just something
(18:49):
that was happening in Little Rock, but it was symbolic
for the civil rights movement that was kicking off all
over the nation. And for that work, she became the
first and only still African American July in state of
the Arkansas capital when she died in and one of
Daisy Bates's contemporaries was a lawyer and activist by the
(19:12):
name of Flow Kennedy. Uh. This is coming from the
New York Times, who wrote an incredible obituary about Kennedy,
pointing out that she was very recognizable in a cowboy
hat and pink sunglasses, often with her middle finger in
the air. And it was her flamboyant attire that drew
attention to the very powerful words and deeds that she
(19:34):
did a surrounding civil rights and feminism. Yeah, I feel
like Flow Kennedy was kind of an embodiment of the
second wave feminism going on in Um the late sixties.
She would tour around actually with Glorious stein Um and
talking about feminism, and a lot of times, as a
(19:54):
Steimond now tells, there would be men in the audience
who would at some point stand up and say are
you guys, are you two lesbians or what? And Flow
Kennedy would look at them and say, well why, I mean,
are you the my alternative? And then everyone be like,
oh this snap, But yeah, she yah. She has a
(20:15):
really interesting law school story. She was one of the
first black women to graduate from Columbia Law School and
was admitted to the school after threatening a discrimination suit.
So when she got in she was one of eight
women in the class and the only black person. And
after she graduated in nineteen fifty one, she worked for
a Manhattan law firm before opening her own law office
(20:36):
in nineteen fifty four. Unfortunately, she actually had to take
a job at Bloomingdale's at one point to pay the
rent because she was struggling in her law practice. Yeah,
and practicing law initially soured Flow Kennedy because what she
did at first was the first pacase she got. At least,
we're representing these states of Billy Holliday and Charlie Parker
(20:57):
to recover money owed to them from record companies. And
she says that handling those cases quote taught me more
than I was really ready for about government and business
delinquency and the hostility and helplessness of the courts. And
that energized Flow Kennedy to then move more, far more
into straight up activism. For instance, in nineteen sixty six
(21:18):
she set up the organization Media Workshop to fight racism
and journalism and advertising. And in the legal cases that
she took on from there were almost always very overtly political. Yeah.
In nineteen sixty eight, she actually sued the Roman Catholic
Church for what she viewed as interference with abortion. In
(21:39):
nineteen sixty nine, there are two big cases. The first,
she organized a group of feminist lawyers to challenge the
constitutionality of New York's abortion law and also that year
helped represent and helped get acquitted twenty one Black panthers
on trial for conspiracy to commit bombings. And on top
of that, because she wasn't busy or anything like that,
she was a founding member of the Nation Organization for Women.
(22:02):
She didn't really stay highly involved with now that long
because she always wanted to keep starting these little, these
little fires everywhere. And I say that in in a
positive way. For instance, in nineteen nineteen seventy one, she
founded the Feminist Party, the political party which nominated Representative
Surely Chisholm for president. And uh. One of her one
(22:24):
of her colorful, many colorful quotes that she left behind
that the New York Times quoted in their obituary ever,
was quote, I'm just a loudmouth, middle aged colored lady
with a few spine and three feet of intestines missing,
and a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you
do too, But I never stopped to wonder why I'm
not like a lot of other people. The mystery to
me is why more people aren't like me. Yeah. Well,
(22:46):
another colorful character that I know we've talked about on
the podcast before is Audrey Lord, who was a poet
who died in nineteen after a long battle with cancer,
and a lot of her work was actually in inspired
by that battle. But she referred to herself as a
black feminist lesbian mother poet. You forgot warrior? Oh, I
can't forge a warrior black feminist, lesbian mother warrior poet. Yeah,
(23:11):
that that was a bad omission. I mean talk about
a title. Can you fit all of that on a
business card? Audrey Lord was one of the earlier spokespeople
in a way that's not the correct term, but um,
her writing really highlighted what we would now come to
call intersectionality. In other words, she celebrated differences because her
(23:34):
passion was for the liberation of oppressed people's and organizing
across differences in race, gender, sexual orientation, class, age, and ability,
and she found marginalization in categories like lesbian or black women.
Lord actually, you know, knew she was different from an
early age and was very sensitive. She actually communicated through poetry,
(23:58):
and she says that if she didn't, you know, have
a poem memorized to basically summarize how she felt, she
would start making her own. So around twelve or three team.
She started writing poetry, which launched her into a whole
career in academia, and interestingly, her first poem was accepted
into seventeen magazine. She actually saw art as a way
to protest destructive social patterns. So from her position as
(24:21):
a popular poet, she really kind of took the hammer
to people who were, you know, racist, homophobic, just basically
afraid of differences in society. She said that my sexuality
is part and parcel of who I am, and my
poetry comes from the intersection of me and my world.
Jesse Helms, who's who was a white conservative senator. Jesse
(24:44):
helms objection to my work is not about obscenity or
even about sex. It is about revolution and change. Helms
represents white patriarchal power, and he knows that my writing
is aimed at his destruction and the destruction of every
single thing he stands for. Yeah, I feel like Audrey
Lord one of the bravest women. She clearly was not
(25:05):
not afraid to speak her mind. And speaking of her sexuality,
she did initially marry attorney Edwin Rawlins, and they had
two kids together, and then they got divorced, and then
she got together with who would become her twenty year partner,
Francis Clayton, and a lot of her poetry does focus
on um sexuality. She spoke very openly about um being
(25:26):
a lesbian, but also her concept of being a lesbian,
which did not just include you know, women who openly
identified with being attracted to other women, but really all
women in general. UM. But I feel like all of
that roots though back to her passion for intersectionality. UM.
(25:48):
Here's a quote from her nine eight three book, There
Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions. She writes, I cannot afford
the luxury fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot
afford to believe that freedom from into lawrence is the
right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford
to choose between the fronts upon me which I must
battle these forces of discrimination wherever they appear to destroy me.
(26:09):
And when they appear to destroy me, it will not
be long before they appear to destroy you. And I
feel like, I don't know about you, Caroline, but I
feel like intersectionality is something that only just now. I
mean that she was writing that night three It's two
thousand thirteen, and I feel like it's only something that
even now is starting to kind of breakthrough to more
(26:31):
mainstream conversations of taking all of these things into account,
all the different types of discrimination that exists. So she
was definitely a pioneer in that way of of of
seeing the multi dimensional um forms of oppression. And she
also received a number of accolades for her poetry. She
(26:54):
was named New York State Poet Laureate actually in nine
and she was still a poet Lauria when she died
from cancer the following year in nineteen. Well, one woman
that we've already mentioned earlier who is more of a
contemporary writer is Bell Hooks, who was born Gloria Watkins.
(27:15):
She actually adopted her pseudonym not only to honor her
grandmother whose name she took, and her mother, but she
felt that it established a separate voice from that of
Gloria Watkins and put the focus on her writing. That's
she felt the lower casing her name put more of
the focus on her writing. She said that she was
a quote suicidal depressed team when she began to resist
(27:39):
male domination, to rebel against patriarchal thinking, and to oppose
the strongest patriarchal voice in my life, my mother's voice.
She asked her readers to imagine quote imagine living in
a world where there is no domination, where females and
males are not alike or even always equal, but where
a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction.
(28:03):
She really looked forward to a day that feminism would
let men and women be quote fully self actualized in
order to establish a real community. Yeah, and a lot
of um Hooks's scholarship has not only looked into feminism,
but also applying that um I gendered scholarship to looking
(28:23):
at pop culture and how UM men and women and
how race and ability and a sexual orientation all of
that are portrayed and consumed by the masses. She also
has very much UM anti materialism. There was a New
York Times article that I found which focused really just
on the sparseness of her apartment. She was living in
(28:45):
New York at the time. Right now, she is a
Distinguished Professor in Residence and Appalachian Studies at Barria College
in Kentucky. And like one of the reasons why people
I love Bell Hooks, she's She's often cited UM in
any kind of like feminist one oh one article you
might read is because, for instance, from her feminist theory
(29:07):
from Margin to Center. Uh, this little nugget she writes,
a feminism is a struggle to in sexist oppression. Its
aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women,
any particular race or class of women. It does not
privilege women over men. It has the power to transform
meaningfully all of our lives. And she also ties in
a lot of intersectionality and and it is very insistent
(29:30):
on us knowing what we're talking about when we're talking
about feminism. Um. And some critics have said that Bell
Hooks is too political. Other ads have said that she's
not radical enough. And and maybe because of the notoriety
that she's gotten and the backlash as well, she has
kind of remained out of the public I a lot. Actually,
(29:52):
the most recent thing that I read written by Bell
Hooks was a review of Vistas the Southern Wild and
spoiler alert. She did not like it. We also heard
something recently from the sixth woman on our list, Alice Walker.
She wrote the poem Democratic Womanism for the election, talking
about regime change, but not the type of regime change
(30:13):
that we would think of when a presidential election is
taking place, she wrote, where women rise to take their
place on mass at the helm of the Earth's frail
and failing ship. She says in the poem, I am
thinking of democratic and perhaps socialist womanism. For who else
knows so deeply how to share but mothers and grandmother's,
big sisters and aunts to love and adore, both female
(30:36):
and male, not to mention those in between. So Alice Walker,
for those who don't know her, is an author, poet,
and activist, and she happens to be the first African
American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and
that was in nineteen eighty three for the color Purple.
And she was the one, as we mentioned at the
top of the podcast, who coined the term woman is
(30:58):
in womanism in nineteen eighty three, and she derived it
from the word woman ish, which is the opposite of
girl ish. UM. And she defines it as a black
feminist or feminist of color from the Black folk expression
of mothers, you're acting a woman ish, usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous,
or willful behavior. UM. And it's interesting too that Um.
(31:20):
Rebecca Walker, her daughter who they've had kind of a
publicly uh not hostile, but distant relationship. But her daughter
Rebecca coined the term third wave feminist, and so, my
goodness runs in the family, it does. She also defined
womanist as a woman who loves women, whether sexually or
non sexually, appreciates and prefers women's culture, emotional flexibility, and strength,
(31:44):
and loves herself quote unquote regardless. And she said the
womanist is too feminist as purple is slavender. So I
guess she thought it was a more all encompassing, a
stronger term. It seems like. Well, so we hope you
enjoyed revisiting that episode, and we hope that it um
(32:07):
added to the conversation, and we would love to hear
from you. But before we get to any letters, there
are some women of color feminists that we wanted to acknowledge. Yes,
since we highlighted mostly historical figures, we did want to
give a shout out to a number of women who
are very active on Twitter and also on blogs as well,
(32:27):
such as Roxanne Gay who writes a lot for Salon.
You can follow her at Our Gay and also LaToya Peterson,
whose blog Racial Isious is a must read. Yeah, we
also have Anna Holmes who's the founder of Jezebel, and
you can find her on Twitter at Anna Holmes. And
we also have Adrian Kay and you can find her
(32:48):
at native a Props. And then finally Lindsay You who
writes at Filthy Freedom dot com and you can follow
her as well at Lindsay You. And I realize these
are just five women. I know that there are so
many more, but we don't have time to just read
a roster of them, so we highly encourage you to
send us your suggestions. Let's share names, Let's help highlight
(33:11):
and have more voices heard in this conversation about women
and feminism and all of our diverse intersectional experiences. Mom
Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can send
your emails, hit us up on Facebook, and speaking of Twitter,
you can follow us at Mom's Stuff podcast. And we
got a couple of letters to share before we sign off.
(33:34):
Jack Threads has quickly become the online shopping destination for dudes.
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(33:57):
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dot com slash mom. And now back to our letters.
So we've got a couple of letters here to share
from our episode on open relationships. We've gotten a lot
(34:20):
of great feedback on that one, I gotta say. And
this one is from Angela who was in a polyamorous
relationship and wanted to write about some of the things
that she has learned, and she also brought up this.
I did want to mention that it has annoyed me
frequently when listening to various podcasts on the subject that
(34:40):
people point out jealousy only in reference to open relationships
and polyamory. However, relationships around me are falling apart constantly
because of jealousy, and usually it's monogamous relationships that do.
You're going to meet jealousy in every relationship. It may
prevent you from making friends, going to dinner with coworkers,
even for playing a video game if the other person
(35:02):
is jealous that they aren't able to play it or
as jealous of your attention. Choosing to share is one
way of avoiding jealousy. Nowadays, I avoid jealousy and boredom
by being in a polly fidelity relationship. My boyfriend and
I only will have sex with someone else if we
ask first, and so I never ever have to wonder
if he's quote unquote cheated, because why what do you
(35:22):
want to? And I never feel trapped because I always
have the option of finding a second partner myself. So
how many outside partners have we been with collectively? Zero?
I hope you guys are having an awesome week and
keep up the fantastic work. And I have a letter
here from Stella, who also mentions jealousy in open relationships.
(35:43):
She says, when I first started dating my boyfriend, I
was also dating another guy at the same time. Our
first dates were within the same week. I like them
both very much for different reasons, and I didn't want
to have to choose one of them. Pitch the idea
of having a polyamorous relationship in which I was the
center of the love triangle. The other guy wasn't sure
how comfortable he was, but he decided that I was
(36:03):
worth it. The first few months of the relationships were fantastic.
We split our time well and I treated them equally. Eventually, however,
the guy who proposed the Polly idea in the first
place started to become jealous and we had to end
the relationship because he couldn't handle not being number one.
And now my boyfriend of three years and I are
going incredibly strong. We still identify as open, but pick
(36:25):
and choose our partners. I've been casually dating a lovely
woman for a year. However, my boyfriend has yet to
find a person that he'd like to date who was
also into Polly. So thank you, Stella, and thanks to
everybody who has written in mom Stuff. Discovery dot com
is already can send your emails, can follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, find us on Facebook, and
(36:46):
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of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com
Welcome to stuff mom never told you. From house to
folks not color. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today's episode is a refresh um.
We're revisiting a podcast we recorded a while ago about
black feminists that you should know, and we're calling the
(00:24):
episode is Solidarity for White Women because a hashtag recently
emerged on Twitter that actually caused a great debate, a
lengthy debate over whether solidarity actually is for white women
and what that means. Yeah, what the hashtag is referring
to in general, in a nutshell and the nuttiest of
(00:47):
nutshells I can offer, is that feminism hasn't always done
the greatest job with acknowledging privilege, which is something that
Caroline and I do talk about in that episode on
Black Femine Us you should know. So what the hashtag
solidarity is for white women is essentially all about is
(01:08):
the fact that feminism hasn't always done the greatest job
with acknowledging privilege and intersectionality and privilege essentially refers to
the societal benefits that are conferred upon you on the
basis of your gender, race, ability, etcetera. So the fact
that Caroline and I are white feminist sitting here. We're
(01:29):
talking to you from a position of privilege because we
are white, and there are lots of social privileges conferred
upon us for that. And not only are we white,
we are sis gender heterosexual women, so there are lots
of other privileges that come along with that because we aren't,
for instance, trans or black or etcetera. You know, we
(01:53):
were sitting at the intersection of more of the mainstream
that tends to get more attention and tends to have
a broader and louder platform, right, and then you also
mentioned intersectionality, which is the interwoven discrimination against people on
the basis of those things things like gender, race, sexual orientation,
(02:14):
et cetera. And so the foundation of this hashtag on
Twitter is the fact that a lot of women's voices
are not included maybe in a larger feminist discussion, specifically
in this discussion women of color and to understand a
(02:36):
little bit more about where solidarity is for white women
originated NPRS code switch Team offered a pretty tidy summary
and again in a nutshell, the hashtag started with the
Twitter self immolation in a way of this guy named
Hugo Schweizer, whose name might be familiar to people who
(02:58):
listen to the podcast because cited him before, and if
you read Jezebel, you've probably seen his articles over there.
He's also written for The Atlantic and a number of
other publications because he was one of the most prominent
voices among male feminists. And long story short, though, what
a lot of people weren't aware of about Hugo Schweitzer
(03:20):
is that he had developed a reputation for lashing out
against women of color feminists, and meanwhile, he was contributing
to these large feminist sites like Jezebel, which are largely
run by white women. And when his meltdown happened and
he essentially copped to his racist tendencies which had been
(03:43):
brushed aside up until then, solidarity is for white women
happened when finally, blogger Mickey Kendall started the hashtag saying, Wow,
are we just now paying attention to what this guy
has been doing? And I feel like we need to
offer brief mea culpa for citing his work in podcasts
(04:04):
as well. Yeah, I I can say personally, I was
not aware of the extent of this slimy stuff in
its background. Yeah, and I don't think that a lot
of people were, which was why the hashtag really took off,
because it was such uh an perfect example of how
(04:25):
women of colors experiences and voices were not being heard. Right.
And so blogger Mickey Kendall is the person who started
the hashtag, and she wrote in a column and The
Guardian admittedly this isn't a new problem. White feminism has
argued that it should trump race since its inception, and
she says that that rhetoric not only erases the experiences
(04:47):
of women of color, but also alienates many from a
movement that claims to want equality for all. And so
the hashtag, in its essence is a rallying cry for
greater visibility and broader platforms for non white feminist voices
to be heard. And we could sit here and spend
the next hour reading all of the tweets to the
(05:09):
hashtag generated um. But we're not going to do that, um,
because you could go online. There's a whole storify of
a lot of these tweets to give you a sense
of what these women meant by solidarities for white women
and all of the the examples that they offered, and
we wanted to instead take this opportunity to talk about
(05:33):
the hashtag and also use it to tee up a
rerun of our episodes Six Black Feminist Pioneers. You should
know that we aired earlier this year because we did
discuss some of the issues raised in this in terms
of things like privilege and also trying to highlight, uh
the failings of second wave feminism in terms of women
(05:54):
of color, and also trying to shed some light on
some women that you should know that aren't talked about
as often as say, someone like Gloria Steinham or Betty
for Dan and so I hope this isn't considered a
form of tokenism on our part, but genuine and sincere
acknowledgement that we know we're sitting here as two white feminists,
(06:16):
but we also know we can do a better job
of highlighting the experiences of women of color and that
this issue of race and feminism started long before Twitter
came around, as is highlighted in the stories of these
six Black Feminist Pioneers that you should know. So with that,
let's revisit that episode, Caroline before we start talking about um,
(06:43):
these women, these incredible women. You know, what we gotta
to talk about first, what ourselves obviously obviously what I
mean is, Okay, we need to address briefly the issue
of privilege, because we're gonna be talking about black women
and feminism and how feminism relates to to black women,
(07:09):
and as two women of Caucasian descent with very fair
skin that is easily sunburned, Um, we should talk about
privilege first, right, yeah, yeah, and basically recognizing that privilege
is the key to having a good discussion about feminism
(07:30):
and about black feminism in particular, which is what we'll
be focusing on in this episode, because it was Bell Hooks,
the feminist writer with the lower case name we'll talk
about later in this episode, who said that feminism ignores
non white and poor white women. Books like the Feminine
(07:51):
Mystique overlooked an entire portion of the population. So it's
important to admit that we are, as young white women Kristen,
as the Feminist Wire would put it in maywelve, we
have been afforded certain unearned privileges on the basis of
one or more parts of our identity, and that part
of our identity would be uh, you know, the being
(08:14):
white essentially, and and speaking more to the connection between
like the feminalistique and bettyfor Dan and second wave feminism. Um,
there was a huge criticism, and rightfully so, about how
it was largely a movement initially, that that really did
speak directly to the needs of middle and upper middle
(08:35):
class white women. UM. And to get more of a
sense of that, let's go back again to Belle Hooks,
she writes. For Dan's famous phrase the problem that has
no name, that's from the femininistique, often quoted to describe
the condition of women in this society, actually referred to
the plight of a select group of college educated, middle
(08:57):
and upper class married white women house vibes, board with leisure,
with home with children, with buying products, who wanted more
out of life. And for black women listening to that
at the time and even today, UM, they were like,
well that you were incredibly privileged to be wanting to
fight this fight, because you know, you're talking about, oh, well,
(09:18):
you know, we want to get outside of the home.
And these these other women who were not afforded luxuries
like going to college and maybe even being able to
stay um in the home, had been working outside of
the home for a long time. And this also reminded
me of our domestic service podcasts UM and when we
(09:39):
were researching for that, UH, we found some some commentary
on how the National Organization for Women at the time
was in favor of extaying the Fair Labor Standards Act
two household workers in order to make that field more
attractive to lower class women, since the those middle and
upper class college educated women who we're organizing with now
(10:01):
we're going to be needing to leave the home, so
they would need someone else to come in and take
care of it. So we're not saying that second way
feminism is bad, it just overlooked a lot, right, and
Hooks wrote that, you know, the concerns of housewives of
whatever class we're worth being considered, but she said they
(10:22):
were not the pressing political concerns of masses of women.
And so then you get into black feminism, which is
distinct from uh like feminists second way feminism, I guess
you would say, and intentionally so, right, Black feminism was
something that existed outside of both regular mainstream feminism and
(10:46):
the black liberation movement. A lot of activists at this
time point out, like we've already talked about that the
middle class white housewife concerns were not the same as
those of a lot of either poor white people or
people of color, but neither were the concerns of the
Black liberation movement entirely covering those of black feminists, because
a lot of people point out the Black liberation movement
(11:08):
had a lot to do with men's Black men's rights
and their manhood and there, you know, basically extending their
rights in society. Yeah, I I forget which feminist scholar
was writing about this, but she she pointed out that
for black women at the time who were engaged in
the Black liberation movement, and that encompasses several movements such
(11:30):
as civil rights movement, black nationalism, black panthers, a student
non violent Coordinating Committee UM. When they would be in conversations,
when the word men would be dropped, it would be
in reference to black men. When the word feminism would
be dropped, it would be inherently in reference to white women.
And so they were saying, well, where are we? And
(11:51):
so black feminism was born out of this UM. We
can will also bring up womanism later in the podcast,
which is a word coined by Alice Walker to delineate
a more intersectional um feminism from the from the main stream,
to encompass everybody, not just not just white women. Essentially, yeah,
(12:15):
bell Hooks wrote. Going back to Bell Hooks, Who Is Wonderful?
She wrote that black women basically denied a part of themselves.
This is coming from her book Ain't I a Woman?
She says contemporary Black women could not join together to
fight for women's rights because we did not see quote
womanhood as an important aspect of our identity. Racist sex.
With socialization, it conditioned us to do value our femaleness
(12:37):
and to regard race is the only relevant label of identification.
So there's this push to see not just your race
but also your gender and how those two things combine
to shape both who you are and how the outside
world views you. And considering, um, that the way that
those kind of things have been overshadowed by, uh, the
(13:00):
the culture that they were living in and society for
a long time. Um, why don't we talk about these
six women who were like, you know what, I am
really not going to have this. I don't care. I
have a voice, I have a mind, and I'm gonna
speak it and I'm going to pave the way for
some incredible change. Yeah. One of those women was Maria Stewart.
(13:24):
She lived from eighteen o three to eighteen seventy nine.
This is coming from a PBS article about her. She
was actually born free in Boston, orphaned at the age
of five, and subsequently hired out as a domestic worker.
She was largely self taught. She she really worked hard
during her time as a domestic worker to educate herself.
(13:45):
And she ended up meeting David Walker, who was the
author of the Anti Slavery Treatise and Appeal to the
Colored People of the World. And after his death Walker's death,
she ended up writing articles for the abolitionist paper The Liberator,
publishing anti slavery tracks and becoming one of the first,
if not the first. There is a question about who
was the first African American woman to speak in public,
(14:07):
and not only in public Kristen in front of a
promiscuous audience of both men and women. Now by promiscuous,
we mean that's an old school term for both men
and women gender. How scandalous. Yeah, And and some scholars
say that she represents the first public representation of black
feminism because a lot of her speeches that she gave well,
(14:29):
and I say a lot of her speeches she only
spoke publicly for I want to say, like four years, um.
But during that time a lot of her stuff focused
more on pro black nationalism. But she was also very
insistent not just an extending education to black children, but
specifically two girls and talking about how women need education
(14:53):
just as much as those boys do. And um she
published this was also very here for a woman at
the time, much less um, an African American woman at
the time. She published her writings in a book called
The Meditations from the Pen of Mrs Maria W. Stewart.
So yeah, in addition to this writing and her you know,
(15:14):
emphasis on morality, religion, and education, she was actually a
public school teacher in New York and founded schools in
Baltimore and Washington, d C. Yeah, and her speeches and
essays were part of a growing abolitionist movement and a
stimulus for the women's rights movement. And um, and that's
really important, like to to talk about how uh there
(15:37):
she bridged not only abolition but also women's rights, because um,
that was pretty rare at the time as well. If
we go back to a quote from sojourn or truth.
For instance, she once said, there's a great stare about
colored men getting their rights, but not a word about
colored women. And if colored men are to get their
rights and non colored women, there's you see, the colored
men will be masters over the women and it will
(15:59):
be just as bad as it was before. And what
Marie Stewart did was kind of a hearken to those
those words from Sogourner truth and advocate for women to
educate themselves and rise up as well. Now, you mentioned,
Caroline that Stewart was a public school teacher and founded
schools in Baltimore in d C. And that is an
(16:20):
excellent transition to our next inspiring woman, Daisy Bates, because
she led the effort to integrate schools public schools in Arkansas. Yeah,
she and her husband actually have a great story. They
worked very closely together to in segregation and improve education
(16:44):
for black students. She was actually the president of the
Arkansas in Double A CP and her husband was its
regional director and they went on to run a newspaper together.
He was the publisher of the Arkansas State Press, which
was the largest black newspaper in the state, and she
was his star wars porter and you know, of course,
like when he was out of town, she filled in
as publisher and editor and all this stuff. So they
(17:05):
were actually very dynamic couple. So Daisy and the in
double A c P. Took the Little Rock school Board
to task after the Supreme Courts nineteen four call to
in segregation, and she helped recruit those nine bright kids
who would defy segregationists. Yeah, nineteen fifty four, that Brown
(17:25):
versus Topeka Board of Education decision from the Supreme Court
struck down the previous separate but equal ruling, and Dacy
Bates said, hey, you know what, I guess what it's
time Little Rock for for us to follow suit and
desegregate as well. Of course, this was not greeted with
(17:46):
open arms by either the school board or really any
of the white people in Little Rock. It it seems
like and her health became the headquarters for the plan
and execution of this now that it's also became a
target for for people who are looking to do violence
against those wishing to desegregate. Um and speaking to Mpr
(18:09):
Earnest Green, who was one of the Little Rock nine
of that group of students who integrated Central High School, said,
Daisy Bates was a poster child of black resistance. She
was a quarterback of the coach and we were the players. Yeah.
And after this this whole event, Uh, an advertiser boycott
of the couple's paper forced it to shut down in
(18:29):
nineteen fifty nine, But she was not down and out.
In four she brought the paper back in that same
year ended up receiving an honorary Doctor of Law's degree
from University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Yeah, and in honor
of the work that Daisy Bates did, because she became
like the national spokesperson for I mean not just something
(18:49):
that was happening in Little Rock, but it was symbolic
for the civil rights movement that was kicking off all
over the nation. And for that work, she became the
first and only still African American July in state of
the Arkansas capital when she died in and one of
Daisy Bates's contemporaries was a lawyer and activist by the
(19:12):
name of Flow Kennedy. Uh. This is coming from the
New York Times, who wrote an incredible obituary about Kennedy,
pointing out that she was very recognizable in a cowboy
hat and pink sunglasses, often with her middle finger in
the air. And it was her flamboyant attire that drew
attention to the very powerful words and deeds that she
(19:34):
did a surrounding civil rights and feminism. Yeah, I feel
like Flow Kennedy was kind of an embodiment of the
second wave feminism going on in Um the late sixties.
She would tour around actually with Glorious stein Um and
talking about feminism, and a lot of times, as a
(19:54):
Steimond now tells, there would be men in the audience
who would at some point stand up and say are
you guys, are you two lesbians or what? And Flow
Kennedy would look at them and say, well why, I mean,
are you the my alternative? And then everyone be like,
oh this snap, But yeah, she yah. She has a
(20:15):
really interesting law school story. She was one of the
first black women to graduate from Columbia Law School and
was admitted to the school after threatening a discrimination suit.
So when she got in she was one of eight
women in the class and the only black person. And
after she graduated in nineteen fifty one, she worked for
a Manhattan law firm before opening her own law office
(20:36):
in nineteen fifty four. Unfortunately, she actually had to take
a job at Bloomingdale's at one point to pay the
rent because she was struggling in her law practice. Yeah,
and practicing law initially soured Flow Kennedy because what she
did at first was the first pacase she got. At least,
we're representing these states of Billy Holliday and Charlie Parker
(20:57):
to recover money owed to them from record companies. And
she says that handling those cases quote taught me more
than I was really ready for about government and business
delinquency and the hostility and helplessness of the courts. And
that energized Flow Kennedy to then move more, far more
into straight up activism. For instance, in nineteen sixty six
(21:18):
she set up the organization Media Workshop to fight racism
and journalism and advertising. And in the legal cases that
she took on from there were almost always very overtly political. Yeah.
In nineteen sixty eight, she actually sued the Roman Catholic
Church for what she viewed as interference with abortion. In
(21:39):
nineteen sixty nine, there are two big cases. The first,
she organized a group of feminist lawyers to challenge the
constitutionality of New York's abortion law and also that year
helped represent and helped get acquitted twenty one Black panthers
on trial for conspiracy to commit bombings. And on top
of that, because she wasn't busy or anything like that,
she was a founding member of the Nation Organization for Women.
(22:02):
She didn't really stay highly involved with now that long
because she always wanted to keep starting these little, these
little fires everywhere. And I say that in in a
positive way. For instance, in nineteen nineteen seventy one, she
founded the Feminist Party, the political party which nominated Representative
Surely Chisholm for president. And uh. One of her one
(22:24):
of her colorful, many colorful quotes that she left behind
that the New York Times quoted in their obituary ever,
was quote, I'm just a loudmouth, middle aged colored lady
with a few spine and three feet of intestines missing,
and a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you
do too, But I never stopped to wonder why I'm
not like a lot of other people. The mystery to
me is why more people aren't like me. Yeah. Well,
(22:46):
another colorful character that I know we've talked about on
the podcast before is Audrey Lord, who was a poet
who died in nineteen after a long battle with cancer,
and a lot of her work was actually in inspired
by that battle. But she referred to herself as a
black feminist lesbian mother poet. You forgot warrior? Oh, I
can't forge a warrior black feminist, lesbian mother warrior poet. Yeah,
(23:11):
that that was a bad omission. I mean talk about
a title. Can you fit all of that on a
business card? Audrey Lord was one of the earlier spokespeople
in a way that's not the correct term, but um,
her writing really highlighted what we would now come to
call intersectionality. In other words, she celebrated differences because her
(23:34):
passion was for the liberation of oppressed people's and organizing
across differences in race, gender, sexual orientation, class, age, and ability,
and she found marginalization in categories like lesbian or black women.
Lord actually, you know, knew she was different from an
early age and was very sensitive. She actually communicated through poetry,
(23:58):
and she says that if she didn't, you know, have
a poem memorized to basically summarize how she felt, she
would start making her own. So around twelve or three team.
She started writing poetry, which launched her into a whole
career in academia, and interestingly, her first poem was accepted
into seventeen magazine. She actually saw art as a way
to protest destructive social patterns. So from her position as
(24:21):
a popular poet, she really kind of took the hammer
to people who were, you know, racist, homophobic, just basically
afraid of differences in society. She said that my sexuality
is part and parcel of who I am, and my
poetry comes from the intersection of me and my world.
Jesse Helms, who's who was a white conservative senator. Jesse
(24:44):
helms objection to my work is not about obscenity or
even about sex. It is about revolution and change. Helms
represents white patriarchal power, and he knows that my writing
is aimed at his destruction and the destruction of every
single thing he stands for. Yeah, I feel like Audrey
Lord one of the bravest women. She clearly was not
(25:05):
not afraid to speak her mind. And speaking of her sexuality,
she did initially marry attorney Edwin Rawlins, and they had
two kids together, and then they got divorced, and then
she got together with who would become her twenty year partner,
Francis Clayton, and a lot of her poetry does focus
on um sexuality. She spoke very openly about um being
(25:26):
a lesbian, but also her concept of being a lesbian,
which did not just include you know, women who openly
identified with being attracted to other women, but really all
women in general. UM. But I feel like all of
that roots though back to her passion for intersectionality. UM.
(25:48):
Here's a quote from her nine eight three book, There
Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions. She writes, I cannot afford
the luxury fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot
afford to believe that freedom from into lawrence is the
right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford
to choose between the fronts upon me which I must
battle these forces of discrimination wherever they appear to destroy me.
(26:09):
And when they appear to destroy me, it will not
be long before they appear to destroy you. And I
feel like, I don't know about you, Caroline, but I
feel like intersectionality is something that only just now. I
mean that she was writing that night three It's two
thousand thirteen, and I feel like it's only something that
even now is starting to kind of breakthrough to more
(26:31):
mainstream conversations of taking all of these things into account,
all the different types of discrimination that exists. So she
was definitely a pioneer in that way of of of
seeing the multi dimensional um forms of oppression. And she
also received a number of accolades for her poetry. She
(26:54):
was named New York State Poet Laureate actually in nine
and she was still a poet Lauria when she died
from cancer the following year in nineteen. Well, one woman
that we've already mentioned earlier who is more of a
contemporary writer is Bell Hooks, who was born Gloria Watkins.
(27:15):
She actually adopted her pseudonym not only to honor her
grandmother whose name she took, and her mother, but she
felt that it established a separate voice from that of
Gloria Watkins and put the focus on her writing. That's
she felt the lower casing her name put more of
the focus on her writing. She said that she was
a quote suicidal depressed team when she began to resist
(27:39):
male domination, to rebel against patriarchal thinking, and to oppose
the strongest patriarchal voice in my life, my mother's voice.
She asked her readers to imagine quote imagine living in
a world where there is no domination, where females and
males are not alike or even always equal, but where
a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction.
(28:03):
She really looked forward to a day that feminism would
let men and women be quote fully self actualized in
order to establish a real community. Yeah, and a lot
of um Hooks's scholarship has not only looked into feminism,
but also applying that um I gendered scholarship to looking
(28:23):
at pop culture and how UM men and women and
how race and ability and a sexual orientation all of
that are portrayed and consumed by the masses. She also
has very much UM anti materialism. There was a New
York Times article that I found which focused really just
on the sparseness of her apartment. She was living in
(28:45):
New York at the time. Right now, she is a
Distinguished Professor in Residence and Appalachian Studies at Barria College
in Kentucky. And like one of the reasons why people
I love Bell Hooks, she's She's often cited UM in
any kind of like feminist one oh one article you
might read is because, for instance, from her feminist theory
(29:07):
from Margin to Center. Uh, this little nugget she writes,
a feminism is a struggle to in sexist oppression. Its
aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women,
any particular race or class of women. It does not
privilege women over men. It has the power to transform
meaningfully all of our lives. And she also ties in
a lot of intersectionality and and it is very insistent
(29:30):
on us knowing what we're talking about when we're talking
about feminism. Um. And some critics have said that Bell
Hooks is too political. Other ads have said that she's
not radical enough. And and maybe because of the notoriety
that she's gotten and the backlash as well, she has
kind of remained out of the public I a lot. Actually,
(29:52):
the most recent thing that I read written by Bell
Hooks was a review of Vistas the Southern Wild and
spoiler alert. She did not like it. We also heard
something recently from the sixth woman on our list, Alice Walker.
She wrote the poem Democratic Womanism for the election, talking
about regime change, but not the type of regime change
(30:13):
that we would think of when a presidential election is
taking place, she wrote, where women rise to take their
place on mass at the helm of the Earth's frail
and failing ship. She says in the poem, I am
thinking of democratic and perhaps socialist womanism. For who else
knows so deeply how to share but mothers and grandmother's,
big sisters and aunts to love and adore, both female
(30:36):
and male, not to mention those in between. So Alice Walker,
for those who don't know her, is an author, poet,
and activist, and she happens to be the first African
American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and
that was in nineteen eighty three for the color Purple.
And she was the one, as we mentioned at the
top of the podcast, who coined the term woman is
(30:58):
in womanism in nineteen eighty three, and she derived it
from the word woman ish, which is the opposite of
girl ish. UM. And she defines it as a black
feminist or feminist of color from the Black folk expression
of mothers, you're acting a woman ish, usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous,
or willful behavior. UM. And it's interesting too that Um.
(31:20):
Rebecca Walker, her daughter who they've had kind of a
publicly uh not hostile, but distant relationship. But her daughter
Rebecca coined the term third wave feminist, and so, my
goodness runs in the family, it does. She also defined
womanist as a woman who loves women, whether sexually or
non sexually, appreciates and prefers women's culture, emotional flexibility, and strength,
(31:44):
and loves herself quote unquote regardless. And she said the
womanist is too feminist as purple is slavender. So I
guess she thought it was a more all encompassing, a
stronger term. It seems like. Well, so we hope you
enjoyed revisiting that episode, and we hope that it um
(32:07):
added to the conversation, and we would love to hear
from you. But before we get to any letters, there
are some women of color feminists that we wanted to acknowledge. Yes,
since we highlighted mostly historical figures, we did want to
give a shout out to a number of women who
are very active on Twitter and also on blogs as well,
(32:27):
such as Roxanne Gay who writes a lot for Salon.
You can follow her at Our Gay and also LaToya Peterson,
whose blog Racial Isious is a must read. Yeah, we
also have Anna Holmes who's the founder of Jezebel, and
you can find her on Twitter at Anna Holmes. And
we also have Adrian Kay and you can find her
(32:48):
at native a Props. And then finally Lindsay You who
writes at Filthy Freedom dot com and you can follow
her as well at Lindsay You. And I realize these
are just five women. I know that there are so
many more, but we don't have time to just read
a roster of them, so we highly encourage you to
send us your suggestions. Let's share names, Let's help highlight
(33:11):
and have more voices heard in this conversation about women
and feminism and all of our diverse intersectional experiences. Mom
Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can send
your emails, hit us up on Facebook, and speaking of Twitter,
you can follow us at Mom's Stuff podcast. And we
got a couple of letters to share before we sign off.
(33:34):
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dot com slash mom. And now back to our letters.
So we've got a couple of letters here to share
from our episode on open relationships. We've gotten a lot
(34:20):
of great feedback on that one, I gotta say. And
this one is from Angela who was in a polyamorous
relationship and wanted to write about some of the things
that she has learned, and she also brought up this.
I did want to mention that it has annoyed me
frequently when listening to various podcasts on the subject that
(34:40):
people point out jealousy only in reference to open relationships
and polyamory. However, relationships around me are falling apart constantly
because of jealousy, and usually it's monogamous relationships that do.
You're going to meet jealousy in every relationship. It may
prevent you from making friends, going to dinner with coworkers,
even for playing a video game if the other person
(35:02):
is jealous that they aren't able to play it or
as jealous of your attention. Choosing to share is one
way of avoiding jealousy. Nowadays, I avoid jealousy and boredom
by being in a polly fidelity relationship. My boyfriend and
I only will have sex with someone else if we
ask first, and so I never ever have to wonder
if he's quote unquote cheated, because why what do you
(35:22):
want to? And I never feel trapped because I always
have the option of finding a second partner myself. So
how many outside partners have we been with collectively? Zero?
I hope you guys are having an awesome week and
keep up the fantastic work. And I have a letter
here from Stella, who also mentions jealousy in open relationships.
(35:43):
She says, when I first started dating my boyfriend, I
was also dating another guy at the same time. Our
first dates were within the same week. I like them
both very much for different reasons, and I didn't want
to have to choose one of them. Pitch the idea
of having a polyamorous relationship in which I was the
center of the love triangle. The other guy wasn't sure
how comfortable he was, but he decided that I was
(36:03):
worth it. The first few months of the relationships were fantastic.
We split our time well and I treated them equally. Eventually, however,
the guy who proposed the Polly idea in the first
place started to become jealous and we had to end
the relationship because he couldn't handle not being number one.
And now my boyfriend of three years and I are
going incredibly strong. We still identify as open, but pick
(36:25):
and choose our partners. I've been casually dating a lovely
woman for a year. However, my boyfriend has yet to
find a person that he'd like to date who was
also into Polly. So thank you, Stella, and thanks to
everybody who has written in mom Stuff. Discovery dot com
is already can send your emails, can follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, find us on Facebook, and
(36:46):
we're on Tumbler as well. Stuff Mom Never Told You
dot tumbler dot com, and if you'd like to see us,
we're on Instagram at stuff I'm Never told You. And finally,
don't forget to check out our YouTube channel as to
YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told You, and
don't forget to subscribe or more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com
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