International women’s day was last week and I was totally here for it.
It was hard for this day to go unnoticed due to multiple social media post and news stations covering the day. If you didn’t know, you must have been living under a rock.
This women solidarity is amazing and it’s so empowering.
I can’t get enough of it!
But of course, there are opposers to this type of solidarity.
Recently a friend shared a post with me that left me feeling numb inside. The post was through instagram, a popular social media site, in which a white college girl felt the need to share her thoughts about women’s month. She stated that she is not a feminist and hates what women have become in this new and emerging feminist movement. She finds their actions embarrassing and shameful, she then condemns all of them. She makes a plea for “old feminism” where women knew what they wanted. Long story short, the girl received an abundance of backlash and her post went viral and was taken down.
Her post upset me.
Why? Because a white girl who has no connection to the old feminist movement wants to see all the hard work women of color put forward to make the movement more inclusive disappear. She wants to bring back white feminism which completely disregard other women, except, white women. Old feminism never took into account the struggles of non-white women, but it sure did abuse the strategies of the civil rights movement as a tactic to receive rights for strictly white women.
Many American women suffragist, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, were very quick to compare what Blacks were fighting for in the civil rights movement to what white women were fighting in feminism.
I don’t see the connection though.
While they are a part of our history and are praised throughout our education, we are never told that they were dismissive of Black women’s voices and their critiques of the movement. This is the type of old feminist movement we would be going back to.
I’m so not here for that.
So why am I talking about this as a male? Because it is relevant to my life because of who raised me: Black women.
Being raised by Black women my whole life, I definitely took a strong feeling toward this girl’s post that pleaded for the return of old feminism. Old feminism has no place in many women’s lives because it refuses to recognize the hard work that women of color have done for my life but also for the world.
Alice Walker, coined a term called “womanism” in which people may know today as, “Black feminism.” This term acknowledges not only white women, but all women across the board. In addition, it’s intersectional and acknowledges gay women as a part of the movement, something in which old femnism didn’t do. Alice Walker believed, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.” While lavender is a whitewash form of purple, so is feminism to womanism. Her meaning of this so powerful and it gives me goosebumps.
I hear so many people talk about how black feminism divides us, but in reality it brings us together because its origin is to be more inclusive.
I strongly believe there is a new wave of feminism forming.
I hope to see it flourish even more in the near future.
I hope for it to be even more inclusive amongst all women across race, gender and sexual orientation.
I hope to see my Black sisters excel in all their endeavors through this movement.
Women are the future, but let’s make the future more inclusive for women like my Mother, aunts and sisters.
Cheers to all the to nasty women around the world!