WTF! (WHAT THE Feminist)

WTF! (WHAT THE Feminist)

While growing up I always thought the word feminist meant fighting for equality for every woman in all race. After reading “The Development of Feminist Consciousness among Asian American Women”, “Feeling Foreign in Feminism”, “Cartographies: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism”, “Feminism and Indigenous Hawaiian Nationalism”, and “Cleaning up/Kept Down: A Historical Perspective on Racial Inequality in ‘Women’s Work’ ”; it opened my eyes to the real meaning of what a feminist is. The certain group that changed my idea of feminism is the First World Feminist, which is strictly made up of white Euro-American women. Their actions as a group were opposite of what I believed feminism stood for. The First World feminist only cared about their racial superiority through colonialism, exploitation, and close mindedness.

This group of white feminist only thought about themselves and not the benefits of women throughout the whole world. One of the ways they show their selfishness was by their support of imperialism towards Hawaii.   According to Haunani-Kay Trask’s article “Feminism and Indigenous Hawaiin Nationalism”, white feminist supports the American way of colonization which destroyed the land and the culture of Native Hawaiians in Hawaii (p. 911).  

When it comes to the American tradition of imperialism, First World feminist supports it even though they know the fact that women in the colonized country were having a hard time creating history for their gender. It seemed that White Feminist would have picked the American way of being conquerors rather than the equality for third world women in their countries like Hawaii. Also, it brought to my attention that maybe there wasn’t any Hawaiian feminism movement because they were more worry about fighting to take back their lands from the whites.

Another way that the First World Feminist showed their lack of concern for other women in the world was their mindset of racial superiority. They expressed their supremacy through exploitation of colored women.   In the article “Cleaning up/Kept Down: A Historical Perspective on Racial Inequality in ‘Women’s Work’ “by Evelyn Nokano Glen; it points out how white women were in favor of racial subordination of colored women in labor. For example, the author mentions in the passage that “White women may actually have material interest in continuing subordination of women of color in the work place… The division of labor has subjected women of color to special forms of exploitations , subordinating them to White women and ensuring that their labor benefits  White women and their families ”( p.1335). 

This shows that First World Feminist do not value the goal of overall woman and men equality as much as the mindset that no other race of women can be equal with them.  White Feminist mindset of racial superiority provokes them to exploit colored women for their own benefits. It is very ironic how white women are fighting for gender equality but they do not want to racial equality with women of third world. A movement for equal rights will not be successful if there is no equality in the group.

Having lack of concern for others can lead to close minded perspective. The White feminist shows this type of characteristic in the article “The Development of Feminist Consciousness among Asian American Women” by Esther Ngan-Ling Chow. The author indicates that “White feminist were not aware or sympathetic to differences in the concerns and priorities of Asian American Women” (263).  This example express the white feminist characteristic of we fight for women equality but only for whites. The groups close mindedness exhibit their self fish goal to succeed as a race not as a whole gender. I do not consider them as feminist; I see them as more of White Supremacist. They should change their name to “Supreme White Women” because feminism for me is a movement for the whole gender equality

  

Hers a link of Daliya Jakondo,  another blogger that expose the White Femanist characteristic of selfishness.

If White Feminist can think this way , maybe there would be gender equality