"White woman syndrome", because white women draw on their own experience of sexism, to understand racism, and then try to express solidarity.
I refuse to believe this is a bad thing, though I do understand what the poet is getting at, because I'm a white woman and I've seen it from the other side when well-meaning men do it in feminist discussion groups. :-) It's all about people who want to help but instead suck up more than their share of the attention.
The thing is, it's a rare person who can pull understanding out of the air, without looking at it through the lens of their own experience. Remember when we were small children and our mothers told us not to hit other kids because how would we feel if they hit us? This is the most basic tool people have, to understand each other with. Also, in many cases, to remain silent is to accept the status quo, which is what we all want to get away from. So it's important for people to speak.
Since I do know how it feels to get drowned out, I try to tread lightly when I'm in some other group's space. But I also try not to get sucked into debates about who ought to STFU in any group, since no matter which side you jump in on, chiming in on something like this just chews up more of the small space. Also, the STFU debates just lead to alienated people tossing out buzzwords like "oppression olympics" and that doesn't help anyone, except possibly fox news.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I refuse to believe this is a bad thing, though I do understand what the poet is getting at, because I'm a white woman and I've seen it from the other side when well-meaning men do it in feminist discussion groups. :-) It's all about people who want to help but instead suck up more than their share of the attention.
The thing is, it's a rare person who can pull understanding out of the air, without looking at it through the lens of their own experience. Remember when we were small children and our mothers told us not to hit other kids because how would we feel if they hit us? This is the most basic tool people have, to understand each other with. Also, in many cases, to remain silent is to accept the status quo, which is what we all want to get away from. So it's important for people to speak.
Since I do know how it feels to get drowned out, I try to tread lightly when I'm in some other group's space. But I also try not to get sucked into debates about who ought to STFU in any group, since no matter which side you jump in on, chiming in on something like this just chews up more of the small space. Also, the STFU debates just lead to alienated people tossing out buzzwords like "oppression olympics" and that doesn't help anyone, except possibly fox news.