Blog #1

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I chose a sentence from Between Speech and Silence by Ann Russo.
She was speaking about her experience with being an outspoken feminist.
She said “It didn't occur to me at the time that my taking up space, my sense of authority,
and my comfort with speaking in generalities could be connected with my race, class,
able-bodied, and citizenship privileges in the predominantly white middle class university setting,
 or could serve to marginalize and/or silence women or color, working class, poor and/or
 immigrant women, and/or women with disabilities.” Her main point was that she had spent
so much time speaking out that she had completely skipped over the listening part as well as
 not recognizing her own privilege. She went on to talk about how white privilege is not recognized
in feminism, and it should be.

White feminism focuses on the issues of white women while
ignoring minorities. I think we have a huge problem with this type of feminism, especially in
a university setting where we have so many white woman, often from middle class,
or rich families. I found an article I really liked focusing on this issue.
 “Mainstream feminism has a major problem as old as the movement itself: prioritizing the
experiences and voices of cisgender, straight, white women over women of color,
queer women and those who fall outside this narrow identity.
 While the problem has persisted for decades, it now has a name: "white feminism."
In this article by the Mic they’re giving an actual name for what Russo was talking about.
White feminists will often use their privilege to get ahead and create a platform for the
movement, but that is doing nothing for women who don’t fall in that category.
 "White feminists use theories and perspectives from women of color (and even imagery) to
 seem as though they're being diverse," but effectively "only really care about their own
experiences as well as propping up their own voices," Aph Ko, creator of the comedic web
 series Black Feminist Blogger, told Mic. What many white feminists don’t understand is
that by building a bigger platform for themselves they are shutting out others.

 I think a huge part of this comes from our culture in America. We are a loud country. We take
 pride in status, platform, attention and fame. Speaking out and making our own voices
heard is how we convey power. Nobody wants to be silenced but unfortunately what white
 feminists don’t realize is by using their platform to speak out they are silencing others who
don’t have the same privileges. As a white person, I think we naturally tend to feel
uncomfortable when our privilege is pointed out to us. We don’t want to feel like we’ve done
something wrong so we ignore our whiteness, while simultaneously using our whiteness to
speak out against injustices. The thing is, we cannot ignore what gave us the privilege to
 comfortably speak out in the first place.

We have to get more comfortable HEARING about our whiteness, we need to listen to other women and not just when it’s easy.
We need to get comfortable feeling uncomfortable hearing about how our whiteness
 silences others. Taking a step back and actively listening is the first step to making
ourselves better feminists and making feminism intersectional.

Sources: https://mic.com/articles/125084/the-brutal-truth-every-white-feminist-needs-to-hear#.JoD5etnur