IBARW: feminism, feelings and privilege
Thanks to the work of women of color online, I finally get the dynamic of white women defending our privilege via (supposedly) feminist values around validating feelings.
From 2001 to 2008, I was in the ordination process for the United Methodist Church. We spent a lot (a LOT) of workshops and seminars and papers and group discussion time on feelings. How important it is to validate feelings. How feelings are real to the person who has them, even if they are not connected to any observable external reality.
This meshed very well with the previous 17 or so years I had spent exploring and living into my identity as a feminist. Second wave U.S. feminism, especially as mediated through sexist popular culture, had a lot to say (and write, and paint, and act) about feelings. How men dismiss women's feelings, how women are more emotionally intuitive, emotionally intelligent, how women's more feelings-based way of interacting in the world was just as valid as men's logic-based ways. Third wave feminism of course critiqued the gender duality there, but the centering of feelings never wavered.
It wasn't until around 2006, when I began reading the online writing of women of color about the white supremacist racism in nearly every iteration of feminism and the (white) women's movement, that I first read a critique of this reification of feelings. Mostly, what I read was women of color's frustration and often scorn at the way in which white women retreated immediately to the unassailable bastion of (hurt) feelings whenever our racist behavior or white privilege was checked. Because of course, you can't argue with hurt feelings. If someone's feelings are hurt, they are hurt. And within white feminism, that means everything comes to a halt until the feelings of the white woman in question are soothed.
In about the first 100 iterations of critique or snark about white women's feelings, or white women's tears, I got bent out of shape. You might even say my feelings were hurt. But ... but ... but ... don't you actually care that someone is hurt?? What do you gain if you advance a cause but trample on people in the process? You're just indulging yourselves, you don't care about the cause? All you care about is scoring points.
After my initial reactionary knee-jerking wore off a little, I stopped focusing exclusively on what the women of color were saying about me white women and started reading more for content. And damn, if every time the conversation/discussion/blog post got really alive with the particulars of the way white privilege works ... dam if every single solitary time this happened some white woman didn't stick her toe in with a seemingly innocuous "but" that every single time ended in her with hurt feelings. Crying, or angry, or petulant. No matter how clearly the discussion is focused on behavior, if a white woman FEELS she has been called a racist, end of discussion. See above for the feminist validation of this sophistry.
For bonus points, the women of color in the discussion had (warning, ueber feminist buzzword incoming) triggered the childhood abuse suffered by the white woman in question. Now she and her feelings are the center of attention, the discussion is derailed, her defenders leap in ... and wtf? This is white women working on being in community with women of color? (See macstone in RaceFail 2009. Also, for those of you who were there, see the Women's Leadership Institute weekend in 2005. Nasty, blatant, white supremacist racist behavior by white feminists, black woman calling it out, white woman literally running out of the room in tears, coming back a few hours later to say that her childhood abuse had been "triggered.")
And then when I saw other white women do it, the scales began to fall from my eyes about all of the times I had done it. In debunkingwhite. In snr. In ljfeminist. In my own journal. Fuck.
So while all of this was happening, my ftf life was conspiring to hit me over the head with the clue hammer, too. From September 2007 to August 2008, I was a Chaplain Resident at a level one trauma center. And holy shit, every single moment of a chaplain residency, from beginning to end, is about focusing on ... FEELINGS. Your feelings, the patient's feelings, the other residents' feelings. Mostly your own feelings, though.
Now because all Chaplain residents have some training as religious professionals, this can -- and oh so very often does -- turn into what a colleague at div school memorably called "pastorbation." How do you feel about that, Michael? I hear that you feel sad, Mary.
So on the steam of the writing of WoC I said, at the about the middle of the program year -- hey, you know what? This whole CPE thing, with its focus on feelings and its judging of someone's success at the program by how well they are able to articulate their feelings? This is custom-made to privilege white women. This observation earned me the enmity of the (white woman in her 60s) director, while somehow putting me in the position of the only white woman it applied to in the department. Felt like being boiled in battery acid at the time, but karmic payback I suppose, for all the times I showed my ass and silenced PoC with my feeeeeeelings.
And having seen that in the chaplain residency environment, I started to see it in our other clergy formation events. Retreats where a white retreat leader would do exercises requiring a person to be willing to sit in front of the group and explore their feelings ... somehow, always elicited a white woman volunteer. In a room full of men and women of color and white men and women. Somehow, in every one of the three years I participated in that same retreat led by that same white woman, every single one of the volunteers for her "exercises" were white women. And we were in the ordination process, where our every move is judged. So, huge opportunity to demonstrate the vaunted attributes of "transparency" and "vulnerability" -- and these opportunities are tailor-made to privilege white women.
I am grateful for the writing of the women of color online, whose critique allowed me to see clearly the way feelings-centered paradigms, born out of and continued to be developed and supported by feminism, privilege white women. And how that feminist philosophic underpinning is a perfect setup for white women to use our feelings to derail, destroy, deconstruct, and most importantly neutralize any criticisms of white privilege raised by women of color.
So I still care about and pay attention to feelings. But I am deeply suspect of my own feelings, especially in discussions about racism and privilege*. This can and does leave me feeling unmoored and more than a bit crazy. So be it. I'm sure I'll eventually figure out a way to deal with it. Suggestions welcome.
But I am not a saint, and I get all complacent and full of myself. A lot. Thankfully, other white women provide ample, abundant examples of OMGUHRTMEHFEELINGSYOUNASTYPERSON!!! in discussions about racism and white privilege that I never lack for reminders. I usually start off mocking them in my head until I remember how very special my own snowy snowflake feelings have been. I also have learned by example not to continue to try to discuss anything with a white woman defended in that way.
Which is not to say that I don't pay attention to feelings, or that the feminism I try to live doesn't value feelings. Instead, I see how we white women cry so loud that nobody else's feelings are ever at the table. And then, holy shit, all of that reactionary stuff in my head when I first read WoC critiquing this dynamic? It bites, hard. Remember these ... questions?
"Don't you actually care that someone is hurt??"
What about the people of color being hurt by that someone's racism?
What do you gain if you advance a cause but trample on people in the process?
How can gains be "feminist" just because a white woman's feelings are protected, meanwhile people of color are trampled upon?
You're just indulging yourselves, you don't care about the cause all you care about is scoring points.
So when I stop a difficult discussion because of my hurt feelings ... who is being indulged? what cause is advanced? who has scored points?
So this is a way of saying thank you to all of the women of color who create and maintain online communities that give no quarter to privilege. Thank you, to all of the people of color who have stayed in the conversation and written so powerfully. I know what it is like to cast pearls in hope, so thank you. This is also an apology, for all of the times I have been the one who indulged my feelings to defend my own privilege. And this is my promise to take care of my own feelings so that I stop trampling on yours. And my invitation to just link to this post whenever and wherever anyone needs to call me on my shit.
But mostly, this is thank you. OMG YOU ARE SO MEEN!
==========================================================
*I finally figured out that this is the reason that a good CPE program** focuses on feelings. Not to privilege feelings or the expression of them, but to help the person see how their feelings are getting in the way of their ability to be present to others in need, most notably the patients we were supposed to be helping.
**which the one I was in could have been and was in other years but so was NOT in the year I went through.
From 2001 to 2008, I was in the ordination process for the United Methodist Church. We spent a lot (a LOT) of workshops and seminars and papers and group discussion time on feelings. How important it is to validate feelings. How feelings are real to the person who has them, even if they are not connected to any observable external reality.
This meshed very well with the previous 17 or so years I had spent exploring and living into my identity as a feminist. Second wave U.S. feminism, especially as mediated through sexist popular culture, had a lot to say (and write, and paint, and act) about feelings. How men dismiss women's feelings, how women are more emotionally intuitive, emotionally intelligent, how women's more feelings-based way of interacting in the world was just as valid as men's logic-based ways. Third wave feminism of course critiqued the gender duality there, but the centering of feelings never wavered.
It wasn't until around 2006, when I began reading the online writing of women of color about the white supremacist racism in nearly every iteration of feminism and the (white) women's movement, that I first read a critique of this reification of feelings. Mostly, what I read was women of color's frustration and often scorn at the way in which white women retreated immediately to the unassailable bastion of (hurt) feelings whenever our racist behavior or white privilege was checked. Because of course, you can't argue with hurt feelings. If someone's feelings are hurt, they are hurt. And within white feminism, that means everything comes to a halt until the feelings of the white woman in question are soothed.
In about the first 100 iterations of critique or snark about white women's feelings, or white women's tears, I got bent out of shape. You might even say my feelings were hurt. But ... but ... but ... don't you actually care that someone is hurt?? What do you gain if you advance a cause but trample on people in the process? You're just indulging yourselves, you don't care about the cause? All you care about is scoring points.
After my initial reactionary knee-jerking wore off a little, I stopped focusing exclusively on what the women of color were saying about me white women and started reading more for content. And damn, if every time the conversation/discussion/blog post got really alive with the particulars of the way white privilege works ... dam if every single solitary time this happened some white woman didn't stick her toe in with a seemingly innocuous "but" that every single time ended in her with hurt feelings. Crying, or angry, or petulant. No matter how clearly the discussion is focused on behavior, if a white woman FEELS she has been called a racist, end of discussion. See above for the feminist validation of this sophistry.
For bonus points, the women of color in the discussion had (warning, ueber feminist buzzword incoming) triggered the childhood abuse suffered by the white woman in question. Now she and her feelings are the center of attention, the discussion is derailed, her defenders leap in ... and wtf? This is white women working on being in community with women of color? (See macstone in RaceFail 2009. Also, for those of you who were there, see the Women's Leadership Institute weekend in 2005. Nasty, blatant, white supremacist racist behavior by white feminists, black woman calling it out, white woman literally running out of the room in tears, coming back a few hours later to say that her childhood abuse had been "triggered.")
And then when I saw other white women do it, the scales began to fall from my eyes about all of the times I had done it. In debunkingwhite. In snr. In ljfeminist. In my own journal. Fuck.
So while all of this was happening, my ftf life was conspiring to hit me over the head with the clue hammer, too. From September 2007 to August 2008, I was a Chaplain Resident at a level one trauma center. And holy shit, every single moment of a chaplain residency, from beginning to end, is about focusing on ... FEELINGS. Your feelings, the patient's feelings, the other residents' feelings. Mostly your own feelings, though.
Now because all Chaplain residents have some training as religious professionals, this can -- and oh so very often does -- turn into what a colleague at div school memorably called "pastorbation." How do you feel about that, Michael? I hear that you feel sad, Mary.
So on the steam of the writing of WoC I said, at the about the middle of the program year -- hey, you know what? This whole CPE thing, with its focus on feelings and its judging of someone's success at the program by how well they are able to articulate their feelings? This is custom-made to privilege white women. This observation earned me the enmity of the (white woman in her 60s) director, while somehow putting me in the position of the only white woman it applied to in the department. Felt like being boiled in battery acid at the time, but karmic payback I suppose, for all the times I showed my ass and silenced PoC with my feeeeeeelings.
And having seen that in the chaplain residency environment, I started to see it in our other clergy formation events. Retreats where a white retreat leader would do exercises requiring a person to be willing to sit in front of the group and explore their feelings ... somehow, always elicited a white woman volunteer. In a room full of men and women of color and white men and women. Somehow, in every one of the three years I participated in that same retreat led by that same white woman, every single one of the volunteers for her "exercises" were white women. And we were in the ordination process, where our every move is judged. So, huge opportunity to demonstrate the vaunted attributes of "transparency" and "vulnerability" -- and these opportunities are tailor-made to privilege white women.
I am grateful for the writing of the women of color online, whose critique allowed me to see clearly the way feelings-centered paradigms, born out of and continued to be developed and supported by feminism, privilege white women. And how that feminist philosophic underpinning is a perfect setup for white women to use our feelings to derail, destroy, deconstruct, and most importantly neutralize any criticisms of white privilege raised by women of color.
So I still care about and pay attention to feelings. But I am deeply suspect of my own feelings, especially in discussions about racism and privilege*. This can and does leave me feeling unmoored and more than a bit crazy. So be it. I'm sure I'll eventually figure out a way to deal with it. Suggestions welcome.
But I am not a saint, and I get all complacent and full of myself. A lot. Thankfully, other white women provide ample, abundant examples of OMGUHRTMEHFEELINGSYOUNASTYPERSON!!! in discussions about racism and white privilege that I never lack for reminders. I usually start off mocking them in my head until I remember how very special my own snowy snowflake feelings have been. I also have learned by example not to continue to try to discuss anything with a white woman defended in that way.
Which is not to say that I don't pay attention to feelings, or that the feminism I try to live doesn't value feelings. Instead, I see how we white women cry so loud that nobody else's feelings are ever at the table. And then, holy shit, all of that reactionary stuff in my head when I first read WoC critiquing this dynamic? It bites, hard. Remember these ... questions?
"Don't you actually care that someone is hurt??"
What about the people of color being hurt by that someone's racism?
What do you gain if you advance a cause but trample on people in the process?
How can gains be "feminist" just because a white woman's feelings are protected, meanwhile people of color are trampled upon?
You're just indulging yourselves, you don't care about the cause all you care about is scoring points.
So when I stop a difficult discussion because of my hurt feelings ... who is being indulged? what cause is advanced? who has scored points?
So this is a way of saying thank you to all of the women of color who create and maintain online communities that give no quarter to privilege. Thank you, to all of the people of color who have stayed in the conversation and written so powerfully. I know what it is like to cast pearls in hope, so thank you. This is also an apology, for all of the times I have been the one who indulged my feelings to defend my own privilege. And this is my promise to take care of my own feelings so that I stop trampling on yours. And my invitation to just link to this post whenever and wherever anyone needs to call me on my shit.
But mostly, this is thank you. OMG YOU ARE SO MEEN!
==========================================================
*I finally figured out that this is the reason that a good CPE program** focuses on feelings. Not to privilege feelings or the expression of them, but to help the person see how their feelings are getting in the way of their ability to be present to others in need, most notably the patients we were supposed to be helping.
**which the one I was in could have been and was in other years but so was NOT in the year I went through.