#only for it to break down because of white middle class women throwing virulently racist tantrums | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

palms-upturned · 1 year

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According to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the moral to be drawn from women’s (i.e., white women’s) Civil War experiences was that women should never “labor to second man’s endeavors and exalt his sex above her own.”

There was a strong element of political naïvete in Stanton’s analysis of the conditions prevailing at the war’s end, which meant that she was more vulnerable than ever to racist ideology. As soon as the Union Army triumphed over their Confederate opponents, she and her co-workers insisted that the Republican party reward them for their wartime efforts. The reward they demanded was woman suffrage—as if a deal had been made; as if women’s rights proponents had fought for the defeat of slavery with the understanding that their prize would be the vote.

Of course the Republicans did not lend their support to woman suffrage after the Union victory was won. But it was not so much because they were men, it was rather because, as politicians, they were beholden to the dominant economic interests of the period. Insofar as the military contest between the North and the South was a war to overthrow the Southern slaveholding class, it was a war which had been basically conducted in the interests of the Northern bourgeoisie, i.e., the young and enthusiastic industrial capitalists who found their political voice in the Republican party. The Northern capitalists sought economic control over the entire nation. Their struggle against the Southern slaveocracy did not therefore mean that they supported the liberation of Black men or women as human beings.

(…) Granted, the [Fourteenth and Fifteenth] Amendments excluded women from the new process of enfranchisement and were thus interpreted by them as detrimental to their political aims. Granted, they felt they had as powerful a case for suffrage as Black men. Yet in articulating their opposition with arguments invoking the privileges of white supremacy, they revealed how defenseless they remained—even after years of involvement in progressive causes—to the pernicious ideological influence of racism.

Angela Y. Davis, Women Race & Class

#book club #fascinating to read about how there used to be an understanding of the importance of intersectionality in liberation efforts #only for it to break down because of white middle class women throwing virulently racist tantrums #as soon as they were asked to show some selflessness #tale as old as time…#and u still see the same bs in white feminist circles now #i feel that logic of ‘’women should never labor for men’s endeavors and elevate his sex above their own’’#really shows itself in anti trans rhetoric too #the way white cis women will cry that women are being erased by acknowledging that not only women need access to abortion for instance #or how they’ll say that acknowledging trans women as women somehow makes it easier for men to sneak into their safe spaces and harm them #as if trans women and especially trans women of color don’t face far worse levels of violence and poverty and discrimination #than ur average middle class cis white woman will ever experience #and just like white suffragettes abandoned the fight for black liberation and embraced violent racists to champion their cause #white ‘’radical feminists’’ will do the same and throw black people and trans people and anyone who isn’t a middle class ww under the bus #shit is grim

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