Creating, not reacting - why The master’s tools was born

By Reni:

  This blog needn’t inform you what the traditional picture of leadership looks like in the West- pale, male, straight, upper class, stale- but this blog does aim to push deeper into analysis of leadership in feminism.

  The master’s tools will facilitate a platform to speak back. We’re interested in the voices of the many, not the few. But we’ll also create the conversations- free from boundaries narrowly defined by media trends. With a handful of high profile feminists attempting to confine the word ‘intersectionality’ to the same unpopular place that the word ‘feminism’ once inhabited, it’s time to set the agenda.

  It’s not good enough to challenge patriarchy where and when it manifests, whilst considering our own politics to be squeaky clean. We speak of self-defined male feminist allies with a smile, grateful that they refuse to confront the concept of patriarchy with defence and belittlement. Whilst feminists across the globe are winning hearts and changing minds to eventually change the world, we can start with ourselves. To work together, we need to listen to women who rarely find themselves leading the movement- we need to learn from them- and then we need to work with them.

  To regard intersectionality as an incomprehensible, far off subject is a luxury. Women are not just woman but who are also Black, or LGB, or trans, or disabled, (or all of those things) experience the intersecting oppressions of structural inequality every day. And yes, these women might disagree and debate about how these things affect their lives- but those are their discussions to have- led by them, without perimeters dictated by white women with media platforms.  

  There’s no dichotomy between being aware of this and challenging patriarchy in all of its political and personal forms. Understanding women’s oppression outside of the white, heteronormative, cisgender dominant voice isn’t too difficult- it just requires a little bit of listening.

   Feminism has the potential to be truly liberating movement- but much like we’ve unlearned patriarchy, we need to release those comforting crutches of other oppressions that secure our freedoms and privileges whilst denying them to so many others. A feminism that replicates the structures of the dominant narrative is wholly insufficient, because the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

Why be aware of whiteness?

By Bethany: 

I refuse to promote a feminism that only works for women like me.

There is no real feminism that is not intersectional feminism. Women who only work for themselves are not feminists, they are opportunists. If you do not want to listen to the quietest voices, the least ‘articulate’ ones, the stories told in a half-mastered interpretation of your language, to see the women who your society has deemed unworthy of being seen, of being represented, then you have to ask yourself who your feminism is for.

I’m sure everyone reading this knows the heart-palpitating terror and rage of having a cisman explain to you that marital rape doesn’t exist, or that access to abortions should be severely limited, or that women are just ‘naturally’ adapted to certain professions. As feminists, we understand the sweat-inducing hatred we feel when we’re disempowered, and our arguments are invalidated because we are not part of the dominant structure.

Before you speak, before you project your experience onto someone else, before you tell someone their experience of oppression was circumstantial or just plain imagined, and before you exercise your right to wield power, ask yourself who exactly you’re trying to help.

I’m a woman, I’m white and I’m British. Growing up, my family had enough money for me to have what I needed, and more. I’m cisgender. I got a great education. Even though I’m queer, I date cismen too. I’m able-bodied, and I’m neurotypical. My nonmonogamy is easy to hide. I’m fat, but I’m the ‘acceptable’ kind of fat most people can get over. Aside from the fact I’m a ciswoman, I get to navigate the world in a way that means the world just works for me. In the simplest terms: I benefit from racism, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and heteronormativity. This happens whether or not I want it to.

 All women are not the same. If you look at the list of attributes I just gave, you’ll see that I’m not just a woman. I’m a privileged woman, whose class and ethnicity and physical ability have completely and utterly dictated how I experience my society in a positive way.

 The first step in becoming a less shitty person was understanding and then believing that not everyone is like me. The second step was listening to the people who are expressing the ways in which they are not like me. The third step was, and still is, figuring out how to facilitate change for the people who are not like me.

   My privilege means I will mess up again and again. I will, consciously or otherwise, project my needs and experiences onto people whose needs and experiences are different to mine. The process by which you try and try to divest yourself of your own shittiness means you have to know that. Privilege means your rightness is reinforced often, and more women like me need to have their wrongness shown the hell up. 

 Who stands to gain when white women decide what is racism and what is not? Who benefits when ciswomen decide a vagina is the first and last word in their feminism? Who benefits when heterosexual people decide what is a homophobic slur and what isn’t? I don’t want to gain that.

 Let’s be suspicious of who is dictating the terms of the debate. Having the power to control what the rules of the game are means you have privilege, and you are using it. Feminists, sisters, friends: do you want to be a part of that? Don’t you, I, we- already have enough?