Current hostilities flared up when Moran, who had recently interviewed
Lena Dunham, the creator of the HBO show, ‘Girls’, had been asked on her feed
the not-unreasonable question of why she hadn’t addressed earlier criticisms of
Dunham for failing to include any characters of colour in her show, given that
it is set in one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet. Moran
replied that that she “literally couldn’t give a shit about it”. Now, Moran has a reputation for being pithy and robust, but this
seemed to quite a lot of her followers and others on Twitter to simply be a racist
viewpoint, because essentially what she was saying was that she didn’t care
about the concerns that others had raised about race. Even if you don’t think
this was at the very least racially insensitive, it’s hard to see this as
anything other than openly hostile and deeply unwise to post in a public forum*.
Moran subsequently got a lot of stick for what she had
written – some of it not very nice at all (this is the internet, after all),
some of it extremely nuanced and considered: Renni Eddo-Lodge’s piece in the F-Word is especially good in terms of
Racism-101. But she also had some people coming to her defence. The latest
riposte comes from the editors of the Vagenda
in the New Statesman and boy howdy, I’m sure they have no fucks to give about a
lowly blogger like me but this was the last straw for me in terms of their
brand of feminism, and I have subsequently unfollowed them (which is a shame because
before they started to cover more dubious material I had really enjoyed some of their
pieces and I think they have some fantastic contributors).
Let me tell you why their piece riled me so, although I
would very much encourage you to first, instead of reading a middle-class white
woman’s response, go and read some responses from feminist WOC, because there’s
no-one who understands more how much ground there is to be lost here than those
who’ve actively had it ripped from under their feet before. Ready? Good.
It seems to me that the thrust of the argument in the NS
piece is twofold:
· deflecting
criticisms of racial insensitivity by asserting that the discussion of class in
Moran’s work and in the feminist project overall somehow overrides this.
· ‘Reclaiming’
feminism from academia, which is portrayed in quasi-Disney villainess terms.
The first tranch is utterly amazing because it manages to
mount a spirited defence of the importance of recognising classism while at the same time denouncing
intersectionality as a stuffy academic conceit. They have clearly been reading
a lot of Kafka (whoops, that literary reference might be too ivory tower, my bad). For those of you
who’ve never heard the term before, I’ll explain in one sentence, because its
meaning is actually not hard at all to grasp. Intersectionality is the idea
that people are oppressed for many different and sometimes overlapping reasons,
such as race, class, gender, age, mental health and so on. Does that make sense?
I want to make it totally clear that I do actively recognise that I myself am
speaking from a place of educational privilege, but despite that I truly do
not think that concept is a difficult one to understand. Yes, it’s certainly
used in gender studies classes, but it’s also used all over the internet. If you
are able to use Google you will be able to find out what it means in about ten
seconds.
The piece actively places class (although it conflates class
with poverty, which is not a wholly accurate picture) in a hierarchy where it
supercedes other handicaps. The point of intersectionality is to say, look
at all of the ways in which the power
structure is holding us back – and working on one of them at a time will not
get us very far, but if we tackle them all then we raise the overall standard
of our entire society for everyone in it, because no-one’s needs have been ignored.
Now it’s completely fine if you don’t agree with that ideology, but to dismiss
it completely is to have an argument in bad faith.
It’s also not the best idea ever to demonise the idea of
academic feminism as “stuffy” and “almost incomprehensible”. Every single
academic discipline in the humanities is elitist and intellectually difficult
at the hard theory end; this is an inexorable fact of learning. Academic theorists
will regard a book which is a journalistic personal memoir as much as it is a
feminist work as a non-academic book not because they are being snobs but because
it is exactly that – a non-academic book. This doesn’t mean that they are
dismissing it, just that they probably wouldn’t put it on a Masters syllabus, just
as the Vagenda Magazine probably wouldn’t print an extract from Julia Kristeva.
It might just be me, but I fail to see what’s wrong with that.
But the worst thing about this article is the ‘this concept is too elitist,
you’re picking on a working class woman because she can’t be expected to
understand these ideas’ subtext, because this is FUCKING INFURIATING.
As Zohra Moosa points out in her piece linked above, “'working class' does not
equal uneducated”. This idea is just so goddamn offensive I don’t know where to begin
so I’ll let Moosa have the money quote on this one too, and it’s a good
one: “the idea that she shouldn't be called out to have a more sophisticated
feminist politics because she grew up working class or because some of her
readers don't have MAs in gender studies is patronizing”. To say the least. It
also goes without saying that quoting the phrase “my feminism will be
intersectional or it will be bullshit”, which is from a widely circulated and
high profile piece by a prominent feminist,
Flavia Dzodan, without a citation is really fucking bad form.
Look,
no-one likes to see figures they admire get criticised, much less accused of
racism. But here’s the rub – there are two ways to handle that kind of thing. One
is to go on the defensive and write an impassioned plea supporting said figure
and attempting to steer the dialogue away from the thing you find most
difficult. The other is to shut up and listen. Here’s a maxim I try to follow
as a white person and human being – when people of colour tell you that
something’s a bit racist, then the chances are it’s a bit racist, because
no-one understands the cause and effect of racism better than its victims. Full
disclosure, I don’t always get it right either, because, y’know, I live in this
fucked-up society too where I have subconsciously swallowed all the bullshit
messages about the superiority of my skin-colour and my class and sometimes
that poison comes to the surface. But you know what I do when it does? I
listen. And then I bloody well apologise, because I really do fucking wish my ‘fellow’
white women would stop defending the indefensible.
*although of course probably far more dangerous to be having
these thoughts in a private forum,
all told.
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