Last Friday, Prof. Brittney Cooper, professor of Women & Gender Studies and African American Studies at Rutgers University, came to talk to the Banneker Institute. She was asked to talk about intersectional feminism, and though the things she talked about weren't necessarily new to me, it did remind me of a discussion I had with some of the other Banneker students the week before.
First, for those not hip with the social justice lingo, I'll define intersectional feminism.
"Intersectionality" is a phrase coined by black women like Kimberle Crenshaw and Audre Lorde in the second half of the 20th century. It is a concept that refers to the fact that different people experience different types of oppression based on their various traditionally-discriminated-against identities. For example, a White Gay Man and a Straight Black Woman each experience their own complicated forms of oppression.
"Intersectional feminism" (as I understand it) is the idea that, in order to be a feminist -- someone who seeks to establish equal rights for men and women -- one cannot ignore intersectionality. Being a feminist means gaining equality for all women -- black, latina, gay, trans* -- so to be a feminist is to be an advocator for all of these marginalized groups.
Okay, definition time is (probably) over. Now let's talk about that discussion I had with the other students.
I don't remember how we ended up talking about this, but, during our lunch break, we were talking about what words are appropriate to say and when and who is allowed to say them. More specifically, we were talking about the use of the word "bitch."
One of the male students announced that most women don't mind when gay men call them a bitch. Let's unpack this and talk about what's wrong with that statement.
First, I'd like to point out that it was a man who decided to speak for the women in the room about how women feel when they're called a certain name. Men, it is never okay to tell a woman how she should feel about something.
Second, what is the difference between a gay man calling a woman a bitch and a straight man calling a woman a bitch? Absolutely nothing. This statement was made based on a widespread idea that gay men and women share a special bond, that one (women) fully embraces the other (gay men) as one of their own. Where did this idea come from? Well, it likely came from the media. Shows like Will & Grace and Sex & the City and movies like Mean Girls and Clueless all show the "gay guy best friend" dynamic. This trope has invaded our culture so much so that even I grew up wondering when I would find my GGBF.
But what do all of those shows and movies have in common? Oh yeah, everyone's white. I would absolutely LOVE it if anyone could tell me about a well-known show or movie where the GGBF trope was used with two black characters, But I don't think you'll be able to find many. Do you know why? Because you can have a white gay guy on a TV show, and you can have a straight white woman. (Hell, you can even have a white lesbian, but she would serve a totally different purpose than the GGBF.) But you can't have a black gay dude or a black lesbian or a black woman without turning them into caricatures, because that would just be too much otherness.
The point of that rant is that we've been conditioned to think that white gay men and white women inherently go together and that they share equal social footing. The GGBF can call a woman a bitch and it's okay, because he's just one of the girls. No. A gay man is not the same thing as a woman. Saying so just reduces a gay man to his stereotypical femininity and reduces the woman to her interest in men.
My response in the moment, because saying all of that would have taken too long, was "My reaction to being called a 'bitch' depends first and foremost on the person's intention and then on my relationship with that person."
Thinking we were done with the topic, I turned back to my soup. But I was wrong. That same student told the room that he would never react well to someone calling him a bitch.
I tried, readers, I really, really tried not to say anything, but I couldn't let it go. I had to ask him why.
His response: "Because a bitch is what you call a female dog, and I'm not a dog."
I didn't quite believe that this was the whole reason, so I asked which was worse, being called a bitch or being called a dick? I don't remember how he answered, but this is an important place to stop and unpack the situation.
As a man, no regardless of the circumstances, he would be offended if someone called him a bitch. Could it be because the word is so deeply associated with women? Would he have the same strong reaction if someone called him a whore, which is also almost exclusively used to refer to women? What about any of the other tens of words that are used as derogatory terms for women, as opposed to the handful of male-specific phrases?
All of this points toward one thing that I wish we had spent more time discussing on Friday with Professor Cooper: the Patriarchy.
I recognize that this is kind of a buzzword. It's been thrown around so much in the past few years that it's started to lose its meaning for some people, and for others, it's become a joke to use when talking about man-hating, bra-burning feminists. But it needed to be overused, because the Patriarchy over-exists.
How do you know it's there? You can tell because the only time women and men are put in the same group is when that man is gay, and therefore considered by many to be "less of a man." You can see it in the fact that the number of derogatory slang terms for women is literally orders of magnitude higher than the number of exclusively negative slang terms for men. I see it every time I or one of my friends get catcalled on the street. It's there every time one of my male colleagues/peers thinks he needs to explain simple concepts to me. It's in so many places that I would run out of allotted characters in this blog post if I tried to name them all.
I don't know how to take down the Patriarchy any more than I know how to end racism. But I know that the first step is getting everyone to recognize that it exists. Maybe blog posts like this are the answer. Or maybe it's funny, culturally relevant videos.
Whatever it is, I hope we find it soon, because I'm pretty damn tired of this.
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