2 pages caohan

Chapter 34: Regulating Negative Identity

• The regulation of Native identity has been central to the colonization process in both Canada and the United States. Systems of classification and control enable settler governments to define who is “Indian,” and control access to Native land. These regulatory systems have forcibly supplanted traditional Indigenous ways of identifying the self in relation to land and community, functioning discursively to naturalize colonial worldviews. Decolonization, then, must involve deconstructing and reshaping how we understand Indigenous identity.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOuLsGh MRh4

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4IMXLY MQ3U&feature=youtu.be (show this one)

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Chapter 34: Regulating Negative Identity

• To be federally recognized as an Indian either in Canada or the United States, an individual must be able to comply with very distinct standards of government regulation. The effect of these regulatory regimes might best be understood in terms of a discourse, in the sense that Foucault used the term—as a way of seeing life that is produced and reproduced by various rules, systems and procedures— forming an entire conceptual territory on which knowledge is produced and shaped (Loomba 1998, 38). The Indian Act in Canada, in this respect, is much more than a body of laws that for over a century have controlled every aspect of Indian life. As a regulatory regime, the Indian Act provides ways of understanding Native identity, organizing a conceptual framework that has shaped contemporary Native life in ways that are now so familiar as to almost seem “natural.”

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Chapter 34: Regulating Negative Identity

• While one focus of this paper explores some aspects of how Canadian regulation of Native identity created gendered notions of Indianness, in exploring gender issues I take very seriously the warning of Mohawk scholar Patricia Monture- Angus that for Native women in Canada, “feminism as an ideology remains colonial” (1995, 171). Monture-Angus has noted in particular that the concept of “patriarchy” alone is inadequate for explaining the many levels of violence that Native women face within their communities, and the apparent inability or unwillingness of band governments to make their circumstances a priority (172). I concur with Monture-Angus that we must look more deeply and in a more nuanced manner for an understanding of why certain communities have supported, for example, sexist provisions within the Indian Act, and that to simply regard this issue as one of sexism ignores how constant colonial incursions into Native spaces generate almost unimaginable levels of violence, which includes, but is not restricted to, sexist oppression.

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Chapter 34: Regulating Negative Identity

• On the other hand, I also agree with writers such as Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo) and Janice Acoose (Cree Metis/Saulteaux), who explore how colonization has always been a gendered process, and how the Church in particular has very speciD cally attacked the social status of Native women as a way of undermining the power of Native societies in general (Allen 1986, Acoose 1995). This issue is central for understanding how gendered regulation of Native identity under the Indian Act has disrupted the viability of Native communities for over a century by forcibly removing tens of thousands of Native women and their descendents from their communities for marrying nonstatus or non-Native men. The children and grandchildren of these women, today, as urban mixed-race Native people, are struggling to situate themselves with respect to their mothers’ and grandmothers’ communities within a discourse of Indianness that denies their realities. In the next section I will explore the roots of this problem.

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Chapter 34: Regulating Negative Identity

• For over a century, the Indian Act has controlled Canadian Native identity by creating a legal category, that of the “status Indian,” which is the only category of Native person to whom a historic nation-to-nation relationship between Canada and the Indigenous peoples is recognized.2 With this legal category set into place, until recently the only individuals who could consider themselves Indian were those who could prove they were related, through the male line, to individuals who were already status Indians.

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Chapter 35: Nishnaabeg. Leanne Simpson

• In June 21, 2009, a community procession of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg2 dancers, artists, singers, drummers, community leaders, Elders, families and children walked clown the main street of Nogojiwanong. 3 With our traditional and contemporary performers gently dancing on the back of our Mikinaag,4 we wove our way through the city streets, streets where we had all indirectly, or directly, experienced the violence of colonialism, dispossession and desperation at one time or another. O

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Chapter 35: Nishnaabeg. Leanne Simpson

• Our drummers provided the heartbeat; our singers provided the prayers. Settler-Canadians poked their heads out of office buildings and stared at us from the sidelines. "Indians. What did they want now? What did they want this time?'' But that clay, we didn't have any want. We were not seeking recognition or asking for rights. We were not trying to fit into Canada. We were celebrating our nation on our lands in the spirit of joy, exuberance and individual expression.

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Chapter 35: Nishnaabeg. Leanne Simpson

• Our allies lined the streets offering smiles and encouraging shouts of approval. Flanked by huge, colourful puppets and a flock of sparkling bineshiinyag5 made by local children, the procession was both strikingly disarming and deeply political at the same time. This was not a protest. This was not a demonstration. This was a quiet, collective act of resurgence. It was a mobilization and it was political because it was a reminder. It was a reminder that although we are collectively unseen in the city of Peterborough, when we come together with one mind and one heart we can transform our land and our city into a decolonizecl space and a place of resurgence, even if it is only for a brief amount of time.

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Chapter 35: Nishnaabeg. Leanne Simpson

• It was a reminder of everything good about our traditions, our culture, our songs, dances and performances. It was a celebration of our resistance, a celebration that after everything, we are still here. It was an insertion of Nishnaabeg presence.

• https://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=u03qLJ50bf4 (WE WATCHED THIS IN CLASS)

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Chapter 37: The Cattle Thief

• “The Cattle Thief” begins with the chasing down, confrontation, and killing of a Cree chief by English settlers. It then shifts, as the daughter of the chief comes and rebukes the killers, undermining their ideas about the land, food, ownership, and religion.

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Chapter 37: The Cattle Thief

• In the poem “The Cattle Thief” E. Pauline Johnson is critiquing the denial of colonialism. The angry white man fails to realize that they have been the ones stealing from the aboriginal people this whole time, as opposed to the view we receive from the white man at the beginning of the poem.

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Chapter 37: The Cattle Thief

• Johnson shows the hypocrisy of the angry white settlers murdering the Eagle Chief, through the use of body deprecation, the word man, and the thieving that takes place.

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Chapter 37: The Cattle Thief

• The settlers threaten to deprecate the body of the Eagle Chief claiming, “he’d have treated us the same.” The colonizers fail to realize the unfairness in what they plan to do. The Cattle Thief may have been ‘stealing’ from the settlers, but they stole from him something much greater, and that was his life, for just trying to survive: “your robbing an Indian’s body, and mocking his soul with food.” The settlers take great triumph in murdering a man who was, “starved to the bone and old.”

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Chapter 37: The Cattle Thief

• The Eagle Chief faced the men unarmed and honourably, and they wish to cut him up into pieces. The settlers starve the Eagle Chief and his people to near death, and on top of that, they wish to disrespect him body.

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Chapter 37: The Cattle Thief

• The settlers simply want to turn the Eagle Chief into a meal for the wildlife: “cut the fiend up into inches … let the wolves eat the cursed Indian,” there would be nothing left for the Eagle Chiefs family to lay to rest.

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Chapter 37: The Cattle Thief

• The settlers have come to this land and do not recognize the people that were there before them, and that these people like themselves also have their own religious practices. Had a settler been chopped to pieces and fed to the wolves the settlers would be outraged as they would not be able to have a proper Christian burial for the settler.

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Chapter 37: The Cattle Thief

• The settlers completely disregard that the aboriginals lived peacefully for many years, and the only reason the Eagle Chief is killing the cattle is for his own survival. The threat of the deprecation of the Eagle Chiefs body shows how little the settlers understand the aboriginal people and what they have done to them. The term man is used several times throughout the poem. If the Eagle Chief is not a man that must mean he is some wild animal, meant to be taken down or trained by the settlers who know

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• In August, 2013 Mikki Kendall, writer and pop culture analyst, started the hashtag #SolidarityisforWhiteWomenas a form of cyberfeminist activism directed at the predominantly white feminist activists and bloggers at sites like Feministing, Jezebel and Pandagon who failed to acknowledge the racist, sexist behavior of one their frequent contributors. Kendall’s hashtag activism quickly began trending and reignited a discussion about the trouble with white feminism. A number of journalists have excoriated Kendall specifically, and women of color more generally, for contributing to a “toxic” form of feminism. Yet what remains unquestioned in these journalistic accounts and in the scholarship to date, is the dominance of white women as architects and defenders of a framework of white feminism – not just in the second wave but today, in the digital era..

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• One journalist, Michelle Goldberg, excoriated Kendall specifically, and women of color more generally, for starting a “toxic Twitter war” that is destructive for feminism (Goldberg, 2014). Another journalist referred to Kendall’s hashtag in a sideways swipe at the “convulsions of censoriousness” among American liberals online and is damaging for all of liberalism (Chait, 2015). A third journalist, Ronson, writes sympathetically about a white woman who lost her PR job because of “one stupid Tweet” (“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”) that “blew up” her life (Ronson, 2015). Ronson is also the author of a book about being ‘publicly shamed,’ and his focus is on the destructiveness of call-out culture and social media on the lives of otherwise wellintentioned people. While not about white feminism online, Ronson’s account of the “one stupid Tweet” incident completely elides the racism of the woman’s remarks and instead reconfigures her as a victim of those who called her out online, including many of the women of color Kendall was supporting with her hashtag activism. This is precisely what Goldberg argues in her analysis of the “toxicity” online, which she locates within women of color, such as Kendall, and not within dominant white feminism.

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• In the summer of 2013, writer and pop culture analyst Mikki Kendall grew increasingly frustrated watching her friends being viciously attacked online. Kendall’s friends, like her, are women of color engaged in digital activism through social media, particularly Twitter and writing in longer form on their own blogs and online news outlets. Kendall’s friends were being called names, bullied, and threatened by a white male academic who identified as a “male feminist”. During a rather public meltdown, the man admitted that he had intentionally “trashed” women of color, posting on Twitter: “I was awful to you because you were in the way” (Kendall, 2013)

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• If the behavior of this one man was hurtful and disappointing, it was the lack of action by mostly white digital feminists that prompted Kendall to start the hashtag. For Kendall, it was the inaction of prominent white feminists bloggers1 who failed to acknowledge the racist, sexist behavior of one their frequent contributors prompted her to create #SolidarityisforWhiteWomen.2 Kendall’s form of cyberfeminist activism in creating the hashtag quickly began trending on Twitter and ignited a wide range of discussions about social media, feminism and call-out culture.

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• What remains unquestioned in these journalistic accounts and in the scholarship to date, is the dominance of white women as architects and defenders of a framework of feminism in the digital era. Although a number of scholars have critiqued the first or second waves of feminist movements as rooted in whiteness (Hull, Scott, Smith, 1982; Truth, 2009; Ware, 1992), there is little existing literature that does lays out a systematic critique of whiteness in contemporary digital feminist activism. To address this gap in our understanding of white feminism, I examine three case studies of white feminist activism: 1) Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and “Ban Bossy” campaigns, 2) Eve Ensler’s One Billion Rising, and 3) The Future of Online Feminism report. Through these three case studies I will demonstrate some of the trouble with white feminism.

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• During the early days of the Internet, some scholars theorized that the emergence of virtual environments and a culture of fantasy would mean an escape the boundaries of race and the experience of racism. A few imagined that people would go online to escape their embodied racial and gender identities (Nakamura, 2002; Turkle, 1997) and some saw this as a “utopia” where there is “no race, no gender” as the 1990s telecom commercial rendered it. Yet, the reality that has emerged is quite different. Race and racism persist online in ways that are both new and unique to the Internet, alongside vestiges of centuries-old forms that reverberate significantly both offline and on (Brock, 2006, 2009; Daniels, 2009, 2013). The reality of the Internet we have today has important implications for understanding whiteness and feminism.

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• The examination of whiteness in the scholarly literature is, by now, well established (Fine et al., 1997; Frankenberg, 1993; Hughey, 2010; Twine and Gallagher, 2008). Whiteness, like other racial categories, is socially constructed and actively maintained through social boundaries. A key strategy in maintaining these boundaries is through efforts to define who is, and is not, white, with ample historical evidence showing how the boundaries of whiteness are malleable across time, place and social context (Allen, 1994; Daniels, 1997; Roediger, 2007; Wray, 2006). Along with this shape-shifting feature of whiteness, a seeming invisibility, or ‘unmarked’ quality, is often noted as a central mechanism of whiteness because it allows those within the category ‘white’ to think of themselves as simply human, individual and without race, while Others are racialized (Dyer, 1988). At the same time, some scholars have noted that whiteness can also be characterized by a paradoxical ‘hypervisiblity’ (Reddy, 1998). We know that whiteness shapes housing (Low, 2009), education (Leonardo, 2009), politics (Feagin, 2012; Painter, 2010), law (Lopez, 2006; Painter, 2010), social science research methods (Arnesen, 2001; Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva, 2008) and indeed, frames much of our (mis)understanding of U.S. society (Feagin, 2010; Lipsitz, 2006/1998; Painter, 2010; Mills, 1999). Much of the writing in the field of whiteness studies has come from the U.S. and remains rather myopically focused on the North American context (Bonnett, 2008); however, scholars writing in a transnational, postcolonial framework have begun the work of “re-orienting whiteness” with a more global lens (Anderson, 2006; Boucher, Carey, & Ellinghaus, 2009).

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• Those writing in the field of media studies point to British scholar Richard Dyer’s (1988) essay ‘White’ in the film journal Screen as the catalyst for subsequent scholarly considerations of the representational power of whiteness. Of course, such a reading of the field of whiteness studies elides the contributions of scholars such as W.E.B. DuBois who was writing about whiteness a century earlier. As a number of scholars from DuBois onward (e.g., Brock, 2006; Twine and Gallagher, 2008) have been critical observers of whiteness out of necessity. As bell hooks notes: “black folks have, from slavery on, shared with one another ...knowledge of whiteness gleaned from close scrutiny of white people” (hooks, 1992, p. 338). Still, Dyer’s work, in both the Screen article (1988) and the elaboration of that into book-length form in White (1993), has been enormously influential in both whiteness studies and visual culture. In this too, Dyer follows the path of DuBois who through his photo exhibition at the 1900 world’s fair was principally concerned with addressing racial inequality through a particular deployment of visual representation (Smith, 2004).

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• One of the key insights of whiteness studies is that it is difficult to speak about white pathology because, as Dyer suggests, it falls apart in your hands, or it fades into what is merely “human” (Dyer, 1988, p.22). Whiteness is such a mercurial topic to analyze precisely because it does not inhere in bodies but rather functions to reinforce a system of domination (Nakayama 2000). The issue is not only the representation of whiteness, but what whiteness is used to do (Projansky and Ono, 1999). The white racial frame (Feagin, 2006; 2010) is a key component of how whiteness gets operationalized in popular culture. Yet, whiteness is not often the focus of critical attention when it comes to discussions of the Internet and race (a notable exception to this is MacPherson, 2003), and to date, there is scant research on whiteness and women online (Daniels, 2009).

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• The historical antecedents of white feminism are rooted in colonialism. In Beyond the Pale (1992), Ware examines the way attempts to enlarge the scope of women's opportunities simultaneously worked to support regimes that restricted such opportunities for people of color. She uses the historical evidence to make the argument that contemporary feminists' failure to recognize the function of race in the fashioning of white femininity. One of Ware's most enduring contributions is her argument for the political necessity of analyzing whiteness as an ethnicity as a way forward. As she observes, “white feminists have managed to avoid dissecting these cultural and racial components of white femininity, although they have become eager to hear what black women have to say about their racialized and gendered identities” (Ware, 1992, p.85). Subsequent research has explained how it is that white feminists “avoid dissecting” white femininity.

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• Whiteness is crucial in structuring the lived experiences of white women across a variety of contexts. In a qualitative study with white women in California, Frankenberg found that most white girls are taught to fear black men, yet all the women in her small sample said they struggled with trying to situate themselves within or outside of existing structures of racialization. In a study of white women in South London, Byrne (2008) demonstrates how dominant ideas of the commonsense and normal come to be overlaid with racialized notions of whiteness. In the UK, understanding 'race' among white women is often about understanding silences because it is regarded a taboo subject. However, race is not a taboo subject for all white women, such as those of the far right.

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness,

Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet. • Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook

and has recently emerged as a leading spokesperson for a particular kind of feminism. In 2013, Sandberg explains that she was encouraged to write Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead (2013) based on her TED Talk that received more than 5 million views. Sandberg’s basic message is that there are so few women leaders in politics, government and corporations because women are limiting themselves. If women can just get out of their own way and “lean in” – by which she means assert themselves in maledominated offices and board rooms -- then the entire “power structure of the world” will be changed and this will “expand opportunities for all” (Sandberg, 2013). More than merely a self-help book, Lean In is also an online campaign and what Sandberg likes to refer to as “a movement”. Sandberg hopes to inspire women to create their own “Lean In Circles,” or peer support groups, to facilitate leaning in. Sandberg concedes that she has only recently begun to identify as a feminist. While her book is her first public declaration of her feminism, what she articulates is a form of liberal feminism with a long history interwoven with whiteness, class privilege, colonialism and heteronormativity (Ahmed, 2006; Collins, 2002; Spelman, 1988; Srivastava, 2005).

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Chapter 42: The Trouble with White Feminism, Whiteness, Digital Feminism and the Intersectional Internet.

• The answer to Sandberg’s central question of “why there aren’t more women leaders” is not that there are structural barriers or systematic inequality, but that women need to change. The intended audience for Sandberg’s message is and a particular kind of woman: heterosexual, married (or planning to marry), cisgender, middle to upper-middle class, predominantly (though not exclusively) white women working in corporations. Drawing on her experience as an executive at Facebook, and before that at Google, Sandberg instructs her audience on “choosing the right husband” (one who helps with domestic labor and childcare). A search for the words “lesbian” “gay” or “transgender” in the text of Lean In yields “no results.” Similarly, there is almost no mention of African American, Asian American, Native American or Latina in the book or any discussion of how “leaning in” might be different for women who are not white. Reading Sandberg it is clear that she imagines a world where all the women are white, cisgender, heterosexual, married or about to be, middle or uppermiddle class, and working in corporations. Such a narrow conceptualization of who is included in the category of “woman” fits neatly with liberal feminism

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One Billion Rising (OBR)

• Eve Ensler is an American playwright most well-known for her play, “The Vagina Monologues” (1994) about the rape and sexual violence. Ensler is also a feminist activist who has launched a number of campaigns intended to raise awareness about violence against women. Ensler’s most recent endeavor One Billion Rising (OBR) is an expansion of the V-Day franchise and intended to reach a broader global audience. As Ensler explains: “We founded V-Day, a global movement to stop such violence 16 years ago, and we have had many victories. But still we have not ended the violence.

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One Billion Rising (OBR)

• There is no account available of why Ensler chose February 14 as the focus for her charitable efforts other than alliteration. The wikipedia entry for Ensler states that “the 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina.” According to the website for V-Day, “Eve, with a group of women in New York City, established V-Day. Set up as a 501(c)(3) and originally staffed by volunteers, the organization's seed money came from a star-studded, sold out benefit performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, a show that raised $250,000 in a single evening.” At the time of Ensler’s inaugural “star-studded, sold out” event, February 14 was already a signifier for the struggle of indigenous women. Since 1990, indigenous and First Nations women in Canada have led marches on February 14 to call attention to the violence against native women. These events, known as the “Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women” (shared using the hashtag #MMIW), began as a way to commemorate the murder of an Indigenous woman on Powell Street in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. If Ensler’s V-Day had remained a New York City-based event, or even a US-focused event, this confluence of dates might not have been an issue, but V-Day expanded to Canada., “When I told you that your white, colonial, feminism is hurting us, you started

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One Billion Rising (OBR)

• In an “Open Letter to Eve Ensler,” Lauren Chief Elk, a Native American activist, critiqued the organization’s marketing campaign in Canada, writing: “Your organization took a photo of Ashley Callingbull, and used it to promote VDay Canada and One Billion Rising, without her consent. You then wrote the word “vanishing” on the photo, and implied that Indigenous women are disappearing, and inherently suggested that we are in some type of dire need of your saving. You then said that Indigenous women were V-Day Canada’s “spotlight”. V- Day completely ignored the fact that February 14th is an iconic day for Indigenous women in Canada, and marches, vigils, and rallies had already been happening for decades to honor the missing and murdered Indigenous women” (Chief Elk, 2013). In response, Ensler and a spokesperson for OBR said they did not know that there was a conflict with the date, then the spokesperson added, “every date in the calendar has importance.” The move into Canada by Ensler’s organization OBR on a day already commemorated by indigenous women, using the photo of Ashleigh Callingbull without permission, and writing “vanishing” on it, are forms of theft, appropriation and erasure of indigenous women and their activism. Theft, appropriation and erasure are painful to those whose work is being stolen and whose very existence is being erased. Yet, through the lens of white feminism, it is difficult if not impossible to stay focused on indigenous women’s pain of erasure. As Lauren Chief Elk goes on to explain in her Open Letter

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One Billion Rising (OBR)

• crying. Eve, you are not the victim here.” Theft, appropriation and erasure are key strategies of settler colonialism, a disturbingly consistent feature of OBR.

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• Digital activism is the most important advance in feminism in fifty years, but it is in crisis and unsustainable. This is the central message of a report released in April 2013 by the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW). The report, called The Future of Online Feminism (using the hashtag #FemFuture), was written by Courtney Martin and Vanessa Valenti, both involved at different times with the prominent feminist blog Feministing.com. While less widely known than the work of Sandberg or Ensler, the report by Martin and Valenti seemed to encapsulate a set of debates about digital activism; and, as with Sandberg and Ensler, the report illustrates some of the trouble with white feminism.

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• Martin and Valenti, currently the co-principals of a communications consulting firm, approached BCRW about doing a report on the ‘online revolution’ in feminism. A key observation of the report is that “feminist blogs the 21st century version of consciousness raising” (Martin & Valenti 2013, p. 3). The 34-page report sets out an overview of what the authors call “online feminism,” by which they mean blogs and online petitions in support of feminist issues. The report was informed by a one-day “convening” of online feminists in June 2012, but it is authored by Martin and Valenti and contains their vision. While they recognize that the emergence of digital technologies has been a boon to feminist causes, Martin and Valenti contend that online feminism is at “a crisis point” because feminist bloggers are not getting paid for their activism, thus making such activism “unsustainable.” But, as the BCRW wepage for the report explains: “Martin and Valenti had a compelling vision to make the landscape of feminist writers and activists online stronger” and they proposed doing this through a variety of tactics

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• When it was released, there was an immediate negative reaction to the report voiced largely, but not exclusively, by women of color (Johnson, 2013; Loza, 2014). Many objected to the closed-ended nature of the report, which was released as a PDF document which does not allow for commenting, an ironic choice for a report about the power of the Internet for engaging wide audiences in feminist causes. The hashtag #FemFuture, created by the authors to publicize the report, instead quickly became a mechanism for focused criticism.

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• The trouble with the white feminism of the report is rooted in the ideas, if not quite theories, that inform it. Martin and Valenti write that they were inspired to create a “feminist version” of something called “collective impact”, a model for social change developed by non-profit consultants John Kania and Mark Kramer. The key idea that Martin and Valenti take from this model is that the key to large scale social change is convening power and agenda setting. What make these effective, according to Kania and Kramer, is a “shared vision for change, one that includes a common understanding of the problem and a joint approach to solving it through agreed upon actions” (Kania and Kramer, 2011). The formidable challenge in trying to create a feminist version of the Kania and Kramer model is finding a “shared vision” among feminists that includes a “common understanding of the problem.” It may be that Martin and Valenti believed that they had arrived at this based on the convening of twenty- one “trailblazing” feminists, but they did not, indeed could not, with such a small group however diverse or well intentioned. Instead, Martin and Valenti proceeded with the “convening power” and “agenda setting” without the shared vision and this, in many ways, illustrates some of the trouble with white feminism.

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• The crisis that the report identifies among feminist online activists is primarily an economic one, with affective peril a close second. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that the solutions Martin and Valenti offer include a wide-range of tactics and strategies to make feminist blogging economically lucrative and more emotionally satisfying. Some of the proposed solutions include sponsoring a “Feminist Business Boot Camp” (a weeklong opportunity to learn about business and financial structures and examine social business case studies), “Corporate Partnerships” (not every corporation’s mission and operations would fit within the ethical and political framework that many online feminists demand of our partners), and “Self-Care & Solidarity Retreats” (order to reconnect with renewed purpose and clarity). The proposed solutions in the report are a combination of economic empowerment and emotional uplift, with an ambitious overall goal: “We must create a new culture of work, a vibrant and valued feminist economy that could resolve an issue that’s existed for waves before us” (Martin and Valenti, 2013, p.23).

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• There are a number of challenges with discussing white feminism. For women of color, the initial challenge is simply being heard, as they are frequently ignored. Once their voices have registered, they risk being bullied and verbally abused (or worse). Most likely they will be called “angry”, or in some cases, accused of starting a “war” (Goldberg, 2014). These misreadings of critique as attack cause white women to further retreat from engaging about race and may even lead them to excluding women of color from feminist organizing in order to avoid even the possibility of criticism. For white women, like myself, speaking out about white feminism is to risk losing connection with white women – and the opportunities that come with that - and hurt feelings. Even as I was writing this piece, I could not keep from my mind the white women I know who might be upset by my writing this. To speak about white feminism, then, is to speak against a social order.

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• When Mikki Kendall’s hashtag #SolidarityisforWhiteWomen was trending, many white feminists reporting feeling hurt, attacked, wounded, or simply left out of the conversation (Van Deven, 2013). In many ways, the reaction to challenges to white feminism causes “unhappiness” which, as Sara Ahmed explains, can be a good thing: “To be willing to go against a social order, which is protected as a moral order, a happiness order is to be willing to cause unhappiness, even if unhappiness is not your cause. To be willing to cause unhappiness might be about how we live an individual life (not to choose "the right path" is readable as giving up the happiness that is presumed to follow that path). …To be willing to cause unhappiness can also be how we immerse ourselves in collective struggle, as we work with and through others who share our points of alienation. Those who are unseated by the tables of happiness can find each other.” (Ahmed, 2010) As I read it, Ahmed’s is a hopeful analysis for those who seek to challenge white feminism. For those who are willing to cause unhappiness by challenging white feminism we can find each other as we work together and share our alienation from it.

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• The era of digital activism presents new opportunities for digital feminism, at the same time the intersectional Internet makes challenging hegemonic white feminism easier and more effective. Twitter, in particular, is changing the landscape of feminism. Loza notes that the proliferation of hashtags created by feminists of color with intersectional themes and observes “these hashtags are a direct indictment of the parochial vision of online feminism articulated in the #FemFuturereport” (Loza, 2014). And Mikki Kendall agrees: “I do know that Twitter is changing everything. Now, people are forced to hear us and women of color no longer need the platform of white feminism because they have their own microphones” (quoted in Vasquez, 2013). If the goal is a sustained critique of white feminism, then we have to see Twitter as a key tool in that effort.

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• Taken together, Sandberg’s Lean In and “Ban Bossy,” Eve Ensler’s V-Day and OBR, and The Future of Online Feminism report reveal some of the dominance of white women as architects and defenders of a framework of feminism in the digital era.

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The Future of Online Feminism Report

• Challenging white feminism in favor of an intersectional feminism that centers the experiences of black, Latina, Asian, Indigenous, queer, disabled, and trans women, is to speak against a social order. To challenge white feminism is also to risk causing unhappiness, but this is a risk we must take so that we can find each other in our resistance to it.

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Chapter 44: The Facilities

• https://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=XAcARiiK5uY (watch this)

• Do you think we need gender neutral bathrooms?

• Where do we need more of gender neutral bathrooms?

• Do we need eliminate sex-based bathrooms?

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • “With a body that doesn’t

‘measure up’, we learn pretty quickly what our culture wants from women” – The New Our Bodies, Ourselves

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? When I was approached to write about the issue of body image and its impact on women with disabilities, the invitation brought with it a chance to explore the link between fat oppression and the experiences of women with disabilities. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on this issue, which may reflect the belief that the lived experiences of many women with disabilities are not important, nor perceived as valid by mainstream researchers.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • I do not represent the experiences of all

women with disabilities regarding the issues of body image and self-perception; however, over the years I have listened to the stories of many women with a range of disabilities. This includes women whose disabilities include being non- verbal, mobility, hard of hearing and/or visual impairments. Many of these women spoke of their lives and how they have begun to deal with some of their concerns around body image and self- perception. While recognizing that the issues for women with disabilities may vary from those of non-disabled women, our lives, experiences and fears are very similar.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Women are identified socially with their

bodies. For women living in Western culture, thinness is often equated with health and success. We are taught early to be conscious of our body shape, size, weight and physical attributes. The current cultural “norm” or ideal is unattainable for most women. Fat women, women with disabilities, women from particular racial or ethnic groups or with non-heterosexual orientation, and other women who do not conform to the prescribed “norm” of social desirability are viewed as having experiences and attributes somewhat different from that of other women in this culture and as a result are often isolated.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Women with disabilities living in this

society are not exempt from the influence of messages that attempt to dictate what is desirable and what is undesirable in a woman. These messages are often internalized, and they have an impact on how we see ourselves. The further we view ourselves from the popular standard of beauty, the more likely our self-image will suffer. We may experience a greater need to gain control over our bodies, either by our own efforts of restrictive eating and exercising, or the intrusive procedures performed by those deemed to be the “experts”—the medical profession.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • We form images of ourselves early in

infancy and these are confirmed or altered by the responses, or evaluations, made by others. Based on physical judgments, women with disabilities hear various messages from family, friends and society-at-large about our perceived inability to participate in the roles that are usually expected of women. Society believes that lack of physical attractiveness, as defined by the dominant culture, hampers our ability to be intimate. These misperceptions hamper our ability to get beyond our physical differences, perpetuate body- image dissatisfaction and contribute to eating problems.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Within this culture, having a disability

is viewed negatively. This notion is supported by the fact that the lives of women with different disabilities are not reflected in the media. We are invisible. However, when our lives are spoken of, they are distorted through romantic or bizarre portrayals of childlike dependency, monster-like anger and superhuman feats. This increases the discomfort of others when in contact with women with disabilities, which in turn perpetuates the sense of “otherness” that women may feel.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • As women and individuals with disabilities, the

messages that we receive often indicate the lack of role expectations for us. For young girls with disabilities, the invisibility of our lives becomes reinforced by the fact that much of popular advertising implies the belief that the “normal” body is that which is desirable. Once these messages become internalized and reinforced, young girls and women with disabilities may try to compensate for their disabilities by striving to look as close to the non-disabled “norm” as possible. Similar to many non-disabled women’s experiences, some girls and women with different disabilities may try to hide their bodies or change how their bodies look. Comfort and health may be sacrificed as we attempt to move closer to the realm of what the “normal” body appears to be, by manipulating our bodies through continuous dieting, plucking, shaving, cutting and constricting.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Much feminist theory has been focused

on identifying the reality that within Western culture women’s bodies are objectified for the purpose of male pleasure and domination. As a result, women’s perceptions of themselves and their bodies become distorted. We are taught to mistrust our own experience and judgment about desirability and acceptance. These qualities are defined by the dominant culture. They are socially and economically defined by those in power—white, able-bodied, heterosexual men. Within this context, the body becomes a commodity with which one may bargain in order to obtain more desirable opportunities, e.g., work or security.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Feminist analysis identifies women’s

alienation from themselves and their bodies as a result of the objectification of the female body. However, a great deal of feminist analysis may not be reflective of all women’s experience. The way in which women’s bodies are portrayed, as commodities in the media, may not be a reality for many women labelled “disabled.” In reflecting societal beliefs regarding disability, our bodies become objectified for the purposes of domination, but within a different context.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Traditionally, disability, whether visible or

invisible, has tended to be viewed as something that is undesirable. Whether we are born with our disability or acquire it later, our bodies become objectified by the medical process. Medical examinations are often undertaken by groups of male doctors, who despite their aura of “professionalism,” are still perceived by the client as a group of anonymous men. Regular routines such as dressing ourselves, or other activities, are observed by doctors while on their “rounds,” as this is seen as an excellent training of new doctors.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Many of us recount our

experiences, as young children, of having to display our bodies to groups of male doctors in the guise of “medical treatment” without prior knowledge or consent. We may have been asked to strip, to walk back and forth in front of complete strangers so that they could get a better view of what the physical “problem” is, or to manually manipulate our limbs to determine flexibility and dexterity.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Today, pictures or videos are taken

of us and used as educational tools for future doctors, with little thought given to our needs to have control over what happens to our bodies or who sees us. While the medical profession attempts to maintain control over our bodies, some women with disabilities may attempt to regain control through dieting, bingeing or other methods of body mutilation.

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Some disabled women speak of having numerous

surgeries conducted with the hope of a “cure,” when in reality the surgeries may result in increased pain, discomfort and altered physical state of one’s body. The concept of body-image as it impacts on young girls and women with disabilities is crucial, especially when one looks at instances where the functioning of certain body parts must change or be altered, resulting in scars, diminished sensation or radically changing the physical state, e.g., amputation, mastectomies. A common theme emerges between intrusive medical intervention and popular methods of cosmetic surgery: the perceived need to change or alter the “imperfect” body. For many women with disabilities, the message is clear—the way our bodies are now is neither acceptable nor desirable. To be non-disabled is the “ideal” and along with that comes the additional expectations for the quest for the “perfect” body.

• Body image, self-image and self-esteem are often linked with the perceptions held by society, family and friends. Disability is often seen as a “deficit,” and women with disabilities must address the reality that the “ideal” imposed by the dominant culture regarding women’s bodies is neither part of our experience nor within our reach. We thus often need to grieve the loss of the dream of the “body perfect,” let alone the “body ideal.” As women with disabilities, some of us experience difficulty in having others identify us as “female.”

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Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/Body Perfect: Where do Women with disabilities fit in? • Disability and “differentness” results in many of us

living our lives from the margins of society. As women with disabilities, we must begin to challenge the perceptions of “body beautiful,” along with the perceptions held by some non- disabled feminists who resist the notion of “body beautiful,” but ignore or affirm the notion of “body perfect.” Disability challenges all notions of perfection and beauty as defined by popular, dominant culture. We must reclaim what has been traditionally viewed as “negative” and accentuate the reality that “differentness” carries with it exciting and creative opportunities for change. A lot can be learned from the experiences of women with disabilities as we begin the process of reclaiming and embracing our “differences.” This includes both a celebration of our range of sizes, shapes and abilities.

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Emphasize the positive

• If you use an aid for mobility, you may want to decorate it: Wrap brightly coloured scarves around crutches, thread streamers through wheel spokes…

• ƒ Assert your right to access services; join an advocacy group. ƒ Accept the validity of your feelings: If you deny them, you deny yourself and may turn to unconstructive methods to feel better, such as problematic attitudes towards food and weight.

• ƒ Explore body-image issues with people you trust: a partner, a friend, counsellor, colleague. Join or start a support group. ƒ Work towards accepting your body as falling within the wide range of human form and experience. It is therefore both natural and lovable. ƒ

• Celebrate the things that you can do, and the creativity that you use to do things.

• ƒ Pamper yourself in ways that bring you the full joy of your body: Take an aromatic bath, have a massage, share touch with a loved one…

• ƒ Take control of your life. Learn which health problems that you may develop are truly associated with weight

• ƒ Wear comfortable clothes in which you feel good. ƒ Replace “all or nothing” thoughts with something more realistic and affirm the things that you can, and do, do. Realize that food and weight preoccupation leaves little time or energy for self-development and affirming activities.

Chapter 50: HIV/AIDS, Globalization and International Women’s Movement • HIV/AIDS and globalisation Globalisation has

been described as ‘the drive towards an economic system dominated by supranational trade and banking institutions that are not accountable to democratic processes or national governments’ (Globalisation Guide, www.globalisationguide.org /01.html). It is characterised by an increase in cross-border economic, social, and technological exchange under conditions of (extreme) capitalism. As human bodies move across borders in search of new economic and educational opportunities, or in search of lives free from political conflict and violence, they bring with them dreams and aspirations. Sometimes, they carry the virus that causes AIDS, and often, they meet the virus at their destinations.

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Chapter 50: HIV/AIDS, Globalization and International Women’s Movement • As corporations increasingly patrol the

planet, looking for new markets, and natural and human resources to exploit, they set up and abandon economic infrastructure – opening and closing factories, establishing hostels. In so doing, they create peripheral communities hoping to benefit from employment and the presence of new populations where previously there were none. And when they move on, once they have found a cheaper place to go, they leave in their wake communities that are extremely susceptible to HIV/AIDS.

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Chapter 50: HIV/AIDS, Globalization and International Women’s Movement • This is because the virus follows

vulnerability, crosses borders with ease, and finds itself at home where there is conflict, hunger, and poverty. The virus is particularly comfortable where wealth and poverty co-exist – it thrives on inequality. It is not surprising, then, that Southern Africa provides an excellent case study of the collusion between globalising processes and HIV/AIDS.

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Chapter 50: HIV/AIDS, Globalization and International Women’s Movement • The economy of the region has

been defined in the last two centuries by mining: gold and diamonds. In an era of plummeting gold prices, and an increasing shift towards the service industry, Southern Africa is shedding thousands of jobs. Yet the last century of globalisation has provided a solid platform for the current AIDS crisis.

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Chapter 50: HIV/AIDS, Globalization and International Women’s Movement • If there was a recipe for creating an

AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa, it would read as follows: ‘Steal some land and subjugate its people. Take some men from rural areas and put them in hostels far away from home, in different countries if need be. Build excellent roads. Ensure that the communities surrounding the men are impoverished so that a ring of sex workers develops around each mining town. Add HIV. Now take some miners and send them home for holidays to their rural, uninfected wives. Add a few girlfriends in communities along the road home.

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Chapter 50: HIV/AIDS, Globalization and International Women’s Movement • Add liberal amounts of patriarchy,

both home-grown and of the colonial variety. Ensure that women have no right to determine the conditions under which sex will take place. Make sure that they have no access to credit, education, or any of the measures that would give them options to leave unhappy unions, or dream of lives in which men are not the centre of their activities. Shake well and watch an epidemic explode.’

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Chapter 50: HIV/AIDS, Globalization and International Women’s Movement • There’s an optional part of the

recipe, which adds an extra spice to the pot: African countries on average spend four times more on debt servicing than they do on health. Throw in a bit of World Bank propaganda, some loans from the IMF, and beat well. Voilà. We have icing on the cake.

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Chapter 50: HIV/AIDS, Globalization and International Women’s Movement As the gap between the rich countries of the North and the poor countries of the South grows, we are beginning to see serious differences in the ways that states can afford to take care of their citizens. Access to technology, drugs, and strong social safety nets in the North, mean that HIV/AIDS is a manageable chronic illness in most developed countries. Yet there are pockets of poor, immigrant, gay, and otherwise marginalised communities within these countries, where HIV prevalence is on the rise. An analysis of the complex intersections between inequalities tells us that it is not enough to belong to a rich country – that alone does not protect you from vulnerability to HIV infection, nor does it guarantee treatment. Where you sit in relation to the state is equally important – whether you are a woman, a poor woman, a black woman, an educated woman, a lesbian, a woman with a disability who is assumed not to be having sex, an immigrant who is not entitled to many of the social security benefits of citizens. All these factors determine your vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• During the last eight years of my work on sexual and reproductive rights, my focus has been primarily on HIV and AIDS. For me, the pandemic brings into stark relief the fact that states have failed to provide their citizens with the basic rights enshrined in the declaration of human rights.

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• Twenty years ago, AIDS was known as Gay Related Immune Disease – so associated was it with gay men. Today, the face of AIDS has changed. It looks like mine. It is now black, female, and extremely young. In some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, girls aged 15–19 are six times more likely than their male counterparts to be HIV-positive. Something is very wrong.

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• In the next ten years, the epidemic will explode in Asia and in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Latin America. The pandemic will have profound effects on the burden of reproductive work that women do, and this in turn will have far-reaching consequences for the participation of women in politics, the economic sector, and other sectors of society. The very maintenance of the household, the work that feminist economists like Marilyn Waring, Diane Elson, and others tell us keeps the world running, may no longer be possible.

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• life expectancy shrinks to the forties and fifties, in Africa we face the prospect of a generation without grandparents, and an imminent orphan and vulnerable children crisis that will effectively leave kids to take care of kids. As the orphan crisis deepens, child abuse is on the rise. Girls without families to protect them are engaging in survival sex to feed themselves and their siblings, and we are told that communities will ‘cope.’ There is a myth of coping that pervades the development discourse on AIDS. What it really means is that women will do it. What it translates into is that families split up, girls hook for money and food,3 and a vicious circle is born.

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• In the context of HIV/AIDS, it is no longer enough to frame our conversations solely in terms of race, class, and gender. These are primary markers of identity, but increasingly, we need more. We need to look at where women are located spatially in relation to centres of political, social, and economic power. We need also to examine how where we live – rural, urban, North or South – intersects with poverty and gender. We also need to think about how the experience of poverty interacts with, and not just intersects with, gender. Culture is another factor that deserves attention.

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• We are beginning to see dangerous patriarchal responses to the epidemic – from virginity tests to decrees about female chastity from leaders. In part this is simply an extension of deeply rooted myths about female sexuality. However, with HIV/ AIDS, it can also be attributed to the fact that in many cases women are the first to receive news of their sero- positive status. This is often during pre- natal screening, or when babies are born sick. Bringing home the ‘news’ that there is HIV in the family often means being identified as the person who caused the infection in the first place. We know that, in the vast majority of cases, this is simply not true.

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• Gender activists to date have struggled to get their voices heard in the doctor-dominated AIDS world. The mainstream women’s movement needs to get on board and face up to the challenge of HIV/AIDS. AWID’s (The Association for Women’s Rights in Development) ‘Globalise This’ campaign provides an opportunity to highlight the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the threat it poses to women.

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• At precisely the moment when we need international solidarity to focus on the impact of AIDS on poor women’s lives, and their need to be able to control their lives and their bodies, we have to oppose the US administration’s cutbacks on funding for essential reproductive health services. We are also still waiting for the G8 to enact their long-standing commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) on overseas development assistance each year. How likely is it that they will ever reach this target if they focus instead on supporting the war against Iraq?

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HIV/AIDS and feminism

• Our sisters in the North need to develop a consciousness about the fight against AIDS as a feminist fight. We need civil society and feminist voices in developing countries to challenge their governments to tackle HIV/AIDS as a health issue, as a human-rights issue, and as a sexual and reproductive rights issue. If we lose this fight, it will have profound effects on the lives of girls and women into the next century.

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