Jessie Daniels describes how white feminism maintains its postion of power even in online spaces. Using examples that they discuss in depth (Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In book and movement, Eve Ensler’s One Billion Rising, and The Future of Online Feminism report), they establish that “The historical antecedents of white feminism are rooted in colonialism.” (Noble, p 44) Daniels goes on to state that “To the extent that liberal feminism articulates a limited vision of gender equality without challenging racial inequality, White feminism is indistinguishable from White supremacy.” (Noble, p 45)

As such, it stands to reason that white feminism impacts online spaces in such a way that it causes lateral violence in social justice movements. Heather Dalmage describes in their essay “Patrolling Racial Borders: Discrimination Against Mixed Race People,” that “Everyone who has learned about race, U.S. style, looks for clues about how to racially categorize others. Some white people . . . may send that the color line is shifting and fear losing their racial status.” (Adams, p 110) Meanwhile, “For people of color, the desire to make distinctions may concern a quest for allegiance and unity, a means to determine who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’ politically, socially, and culturally.” (Adams, p 110)

But when that division between “us” and “them” becomes broad, as in “the oppressed” versus “the oppressor,” and fails to recognize the nuanced and specific ways in which white feminism, and racism as a whole, discriminate against and oppress various communities in different ways, marginalized groups become more susceptible to inflicting lateral violence upon each other.

While it is important to stand together in terms of denouncing and resisting oppression as a whole, strategies for how to resist should necessarily vary from group to group. And groups would be better serves by recognizing when their “survival strategies and resistance to white supremacy are set by the system of white supremacy itself.” (Adams, p 99)

Ideally, as described by Andrea Smith in their work “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color Organizing,” “. . . we would check our aspirations of other communities to ensure that our model of liberation does not become the model of oppression for others.” (Adams, p 99) Without such a model, lateral violence across social justice movements occurs.

White women in particular need to learn more about how their oppression as women is so vastly different than the oppression forced upon Black women, Indigenous women, the LGBTQ+ community, etc. And how if they continue to ignore how their approach to toppling the patriarchy is rooted in white supremacy, they are doing nothing more than becoming oppressors themselves.

WORKS CITED:

Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class, and Culture Online; Ed. by Safiya Umoja Noble. PETER LANG, 2016.

Adams, Maurianne, et al. Readings for Diversity and Social Justice. Routledge, 2018.