We've all heard about the continuous saga of human rights violations in Arizona, from legalizing racial profiling, to eliminating ethnic studies, to preventing anyone with an "accent" from teaching English (read: anyone who doesn't sound like an old white man from the eastern/northern states since I'm pretty sure we ALL have accents) and this extremely racist, oppressive, colonial and cultural genocide list goes on.
What's been happening in Arizona is horrific on so many levels to so many people and communities -- but it has really had me reflecting. When do certain issues get considered "feminist" and when do they not? And when do they require a real feminist response in action?
There have been several excellent female responses to the situation in Arizona by way of intersecting the impacts to women and children, sexuality and even religion (read all of the amazing stuff the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health is posting here), yet so much of the mainstream media we've been hearing is of course way too predictably patriarchal in nature; people making excuses for enacting racist legislation, utilizing fear-based tactics to legitimize white supremacy to "protect" the women and children, etc., etc.
So here I am responding to it and asking you frankly: Does an issue have to have an identified or presenting woman involved to truly be considered feminist? When abortion rights are threatened, we're out in the masses online and offline to protect them repeatedly, blog post after Facebook link, clinic defense after pro-choice club initiation, without question -- and we certainly come together on it even if we disagree on tactics.
But what about when status, documentation, skin color, ethnicity, and culture are threatened? What's our feminist response to this? And how much or to what degree are we going to mobilize and do something the same way we would if the usual suspects (like sexual/reproductive health) came into play? (And no, I don't mean, "Oh look at this one blog post here on a feminist site about this" -- I mean the same amount of feminist response that you would see on other issues. You know what I mean).
Or are we again going to leave this to the so-called "ethnic" groups to deal with?
This post first appeared in Bitch Magazine.
I am not sure what point the question is raising.
On the one hand, it is an interesting question that needs to be examined by anyone interested in feminist activism.
On the other, it seems to assume that there is some relevant gain to be had by construing race, ethinicity, immigration and generally human rights issues as "feminist". But what would that be? Why not just deal with race issues as race issues? (and ethnic issues as ethnic issues, etc.)
Not to say that feminists should not be active on race issues (or any other that seems urgent) -- it would be pointless to demand that feminists keep their noses out of race or ethnic issues, just as much as the reverse.
Not to say also that the combined effects of race and gender discrimination are not worth talking about, but that would require acknowledging a distinction between race and gender issues.
But what is the point in re-packaging all these diverse issues as "feminist"?
Does that imply that the only way you can get women/feminists interested in a problem is by calling it feminist? That's obviously not true.
When an issue gets a feminist take, it seems to consist in focusing exclusively on how it affects women. E.g. consider the issue of rape used as a weapon of war. What about murder as a weapon of war? While the women are being raped it is common for the men to be marched off into the woods and shot in the back of the head. In a case like this, the feminist take seems to actually reduce the full significance of an issue (in this example, war crime).
Of course, there's nothing wrong with feminism focusing on the effects of issues on women -- presumably that is the point of feminism. But then what would be the point of creating a merger with every other social justice issue, as if feminism were some panacea for all social ills?
In any case, isn't there a persistent complaint that women's issues/feminist issues are not getting enough attention? If so, then it would make sense to focus feminist activism on those issues. So why worry about how race issues fit into the feminist mandate?
Not to say that race issues aren't important problems in our society, but unless you are going to live forever, you have to focus your efforts on your primary concerns (and hope that others are doing the same, but on different issues).