[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_97

Against White feminism, Rafia Zakaria, 2021

The book opens with the chapter “At the wine bar, a group of feminists.” Zakaria describes the blind date organized by some women who work in the field of feminism to meet for the first time in person. The scene described has something very familiar to me: some women who meet to drink a glass of wine, held together by the unspoken idea of “we must be friends at all costs,” immediately divided by a strong sense of alienation of one of them. It has happened to me dozens of times: Zakaria is the only non-white person; I was the only non-middle-class.

The difference is felt even if it is not made to weigh, even if there is no sentence or a comment aimed at marking it: when you come from different worlds, you immediately recognize each other as such. It is a bit like when you realize a tourist at a glance in your country: you do not need to have spoken to them to know they are not from the area. You can see it. From the way they dress, look around, and move, it is clear that they do not share the same past, the same experiences, and values of the place where they find themselves.

Zakaria describes her discomfort when asked the routine questions of every new meeting: “What can you tell us?” “What is your story?”. She knows well that when people ask this, it is not your real story they want to know; they do not want to experience the tension of an uncomfortable story just as much as you do not wish to receive at the end the usual phrase of circumstance “thank you for sharing it” (which in reality means “never do it again”). She also knows well that stories like hers, stories of violence, are not stories that can be told at an aperitif, much less at a feminist aperitif: “Feminist women,” writes the author, “do not come from backgrounds of abuse, exploitation or trauma, and therefore women who have experienced these things are not credible feminists. The threat of being perceived as substantiating a discriminatory cultural norm – that of the abused woman of color (and in my case, the immigrant and abused woman of color) – enforces its silence.” The author argues that there is a prejudice that if you are genuinely a feminist, you cannot have tolerated or suffered abusive situations.

“Real feminists,” she continues, “are fighting for the cause in the public arena, untrammeled by the shifting burden of messy experience.” What Zakaria is highlighting is how there is a strong hierarchy within the feminist vision in which “some women are there to show us all why we need feminism, and others are there to make it happen, try to get it to work. This dichotomous view of how feminism works is the central mechanism which slots women of color’s experiences under the mental label of ‘other,’ allowing them to be automatically dismissed in the arena of white feminism”. More than a prejudice, what Zakaria describes is a swept under the carpet: abuse happens to the Other, not to us. We are the successful white women; the Other is the less fortunate non-white women. Is this the case?

Even white middle-class feminists experience situations of violence and abuse. I don’t think being a white middle-class feminist coincides with having an incredible relational intelligence that prevents toxic relationships; I don’t think it coincides with having the superpower to choose which non-abusive family to be born into; I don’t think it even means living in a parallel world where discrimination and gender violence don’t exist; just as I don’t think it means being beyond bias, beyond racism and internalized misogyny, otherwise we wouldn’t be here discussing white feminism. The difference between white middle-class feminists and all the others is not that they are beyond abuse, but that when they find themselves in a situation of abuse they have the means to analyze it; and, above all, the means to be able to get out of it. Being middle class means living in an environment characterized by fair economic possibilities, a medium-high level of education, a social network that shares a lifestyle similar to yours, and easy access to essential services. It is easier to recognize and fight situations of violence and abuse in this context, compared to contexts where isolation, precariousness, low level of education, and difficult access to primary services prevail. It is clear that the more well-being increases, the more one has the possibility of distancing oneself from situations of discomfort.

I do not think it is correct, therefore, to say that white middle-class feminists (or “successful” ones, as Zakaria calls them), by definition, do not come from situations characterized by trauma. But that they had and still have the chance to defend themselves with more effective means, that is true. The problem is that instead of reading their situation in terms of privilege, white middle-class feminists choose to read it in terms of merit. I think that what Zakaria means is precisely this: they believe they have avoided abusive relationships not because they lived in a golden bubble of well-being but because they have always been feminists who are attentive to their rights, values, and dignity.