Meta - White Women's Tears Edition

[facetofcathy]

The White Women's Tears and/or White Women's Syndrome collection of meta links.

If you Google the term, White Women's Tears, the first hit is the Feminist SF Wiki where you get a very short definition that emphasizes the term as joking or sarcastic and doesn't dig into the complex intersection or race, gender and power (in a primarily US context) that the phenomenon referred to is formed by.

I feel that, much like a lot of other "bingo card" terms, this one is often being parsed by people intuitively and they're missing the underlying issues the words are meant to refer to. With that in mind, and in light of a recent fannish incident of the term being used and the numerous conversations that resulted, I decided to gather some examples of some more complicated thinking about the words themselves and the realities they arise out of.

• White Feminists and Michelle Obama | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture

This post discusses a particular dispute during the Obama campaign in 2008. The comments cover the gamut of intersecting issues of race and gender in a US context.

I was going to link directly to Witchsistah's comment where she lays out the definition of White Women's Syndrome, but I think the entire comment thread is a good primer on how trying to view these oppressions in isolation will land you in a pile of shit. Everything Witchsistah says is sharp and to the point, but reading the whole set of comments, and all the differing points of view including seeing some white women who demand that their feelings be foregrounded, shows the full picture.

Not_Fandom Meta Feminism Racism Privilege

• white women’s tears « Abagond

The author clearly lays out what the phenomenon is. She explores all the aspects, the way white and chromatic women experience misogyny differently and the way white and chromatic women experience discussions of race and racism differently.

WARNING: the post contains an historical image at the end of the post of murdered African American men and the white crowd who attended their lynching.

Not_Fandom Meta Privilege Feminism Racism

• The pure white woman stereotype « Abagond

"But white women were kept in their place too, even if it was up on a pedestal somewhere closer to the angels."

The historical view of white women and how it functions in the context of racism.

Not_Fandom Racism Feminism Privilege Meta

• The Sapphire stereotype « Abagond

An explanation of the Sapphire stereotype. This is the other side of the misogynist coin in the White Women's Tears phenomenon.

"Many black women seem to feel they have to be strong. You do not hear that so much from white women. That gives some black women a hard edge. They often come off seeming hard and overbearing even when they do not mean to. That gives the stereotype an element of truth."

Not_Fandom Racism Feminism Meta Privilege

• stuff white people do: rush to the aid of crying white instigators of racism, instead of the victims

Comic that shows one way White Woman's Tears can function. The comic makes clear the way the boys respond to the White girl as needing their (male) protection and support and to the Black girl as needing nothing after experiencing a racist incident.

I think that the White people ignoring the Black girl and the erasure of her emotional response is so common that some readers of the comic simply fail to see what isn't there because they would never expect it to be there. The racism inherent in this phenomenon is systemic and lots of white people have problems aprehending it.

Not_Fandom Racism Feminism Privilege Meta

• Pattern recognition: A dialogue on racism in fan communities

A roundtable discussion about how fandom discusses race and racism.

In section 4. Manifestations: Race and white femininity: "Sparkymonster: The common experience that gets shorthanded in bingo card terms as "white women's tears" is when you're talking about race and a white woman's response is, "When I was in high school these black girls were so mean to me!" or, "When you talk about race it makes me cry!" And then suddenly everyone is comforting the white woman instead of continuing to discuss race.

Oyceter: ...Terms are shorthand for this giant intersectional thing: how white men "chivalrously" spring to the defense of white women "under attack" from women of color, and the entire system in which white womanhood is set up as the example of womanhood and how that erases women of color as women. And it's all there in three words as "white women's syndrome.""

Fandom Meta Feminism Racism Privilege

• White Women, Tears, and Coded Images (Repost) | The Angry Black Woman

A look at White Women's Tears through the lens of Taylor Swift and Kanye West one year later.

"There’s some complicated historical and social subtext tangled up in the use of tears this way, and in the reaction to those tears. It’s a subtext that makes the phrase “White Woman’s Tears” a convenient shorthand for a situation that boils down to a white woman wielding her tears as a weapon against a POC. We’re back to intent and the question of whether those tears (genuine or otherwise) and their ability to derail and/or escalate a situation can be separated out from the emotions that may be prompting them.

...I think that we have a long way to go before the major concern is the terminology and not the act. But then, I’m not a white woman and my tears don’t have any power so I’m obviously biased by my experiences with the phenomenon."

Not_Fandom Meta Feminism Racism Privilege

• Something Within » Listen Up White Girl, You And I Are Different

"I can’t deny that nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, makes the hair on black women’s neck rise, my own included, like the sight of a crying white woman. Especially when power is what’s at stake."

Rev. Dr. Weems covers the issue from both a historic view of women using stereotypes about themselves and each other and from a personal view.

She concludes: "As black women we know what it is to be saddled with the stereotype of being strong, aggressive, and animalistic in our sexuality. Stereotyping and projecting our worst memories on each other allow both white women and black women to maintain our places in the status quo. It keeps us from finding common ground and from joining forces to battle against the forces bent keeping women sex objects and breeders.

But when is something a stereotype, and when is it true? Not every white woman you and I know has used tears to get her way. Just a lot. Just one too many. Just enough to keep the stereotype alive, I guess."

Not_Fandom Racism Feminism Meta Privilege

• Those Tears

The ReoCities salvage page of the old GeoCities original home of the poem Those Tears by Chrystos.

A powerful and personal story of the experience of one woman's encounters with White Women's Tears.

Not_Fandom Privilege Feminism Meta Racism

I believe that the phrase White Women's Tears is not something a man or a white woman has the right to use as a weapon in conversations about race or feminism or gender or oppression. It isn't a handy taunt to put down some woman who chooses to foreground their experience or feelings. Using it that way merely shifts the focus to the taunter and then back to their victim and simply puts the White woman's tears front and centre again. What's at issue, after all, isn't the fact of the White woman's emotional response. Calling into question the validity of her feelings is as derailing as running to her aid and comfort. Rather it is her expectation or demand that the importance of her emotional response be validated, coupled with her complete inability to recognize or acknowledge the emotional damage her own expression of racism has caused, that is the problem.

As for chromatic women? I'm not going to put words in their mouths. Or try to take them out.

I think intersectionality is a set of ideas that forms the way you view the world, interpret the world and act in the world. It isn't a team sport where you politely cheer for the other team right up until the playoffs where the gloves come off. It isn't a coat you take off when your identity issues are in play and the fight gets serious. It does require a real effort to see how the world is experienced differently by different people. It isn't something anyone always gets right, nor is it something everyone understands in the same way.

I believe that feminism without intersectionality is an exercise in White supremacy.


ETA March 29:

Three links on the same topic, all of which contain some insights into the idea of defining Female White Privilege.

Go After the Privilege, Not the Tits: Afterthoughts on Alexandra Wallace and White Female Privilege by Andrea Plaid--there are a lot of deniers in comments but the rebuttals are brilliant.

The Feministe Reblog of Same Included for the denial fest and near total lack of rebuttal in the comments as an object lesson.

Womanist Musing follow up