Mikki Kendall

'It is absolutely brilliant, I think every woman should read it' PANDORA SYKES, THE HIGH LOW 'My wish is that every white woman who calls herself a feminist will read this book in a state of hushed and humble respect ... Essential reading' ELIZABETH GILBERT I'm a feminist. Mostly. I'm an asshole. Mostly. All too often the focus of mainstream feminism is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. Meeting basic needs is a feminist issue. Food insecurity, the living wage and access to education are feminist issues. The fight against racism, ableism and transmisogyny are all feminist issues. White feminists often fail to see how race, class, sexual orientation and disability intersect with gender. How can feminists stand in solidarity as a movement when there is a distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others? Insightful, incendiary and ultimately hopeful, Hood Feminism is both an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux and also clear-eyed assessment of how to save it.

Notes from the Women That White Feminists Forgot

Hood Feminism

ame 

A one-size-fits-all approach to feminism is damaging, because it alienates the very people it is supposed to serve, without ever managing to support them.

Stephanie 

Any system that makes basic human rights contingent on a narrow standard of behavior pits potential victims against each other and only benefits those who would pray on them. 

We talk about stress and illness, but the stress of respectability is unparalleled. You muffle yourself over and over, until the screaming is in your veins, in your high blood pressure and lower life expectancy. And then as you look around, you realize that you didn't even get the respect, the validation, or the comfort that you thought was waiting on the other side. 

We need to let go of respectability politics and understand that whiteness as a construct will never approve of us, and that the approval of white supremacy is nothing that we or any community should be seeking.

We don't have bigotry by accident; it's built and sustained by the same cultural institutions we're taught to revere. 

We have to change how we talk about Blackness, about poverty, about the women who inhabit those spaces where access and opportunity rarely intersect. We have to be ready to listen to the girls and women who are still there, and not just the ones who were able to get out.

Darianne

“This tendency to assume that all women are experiencing the same struggles has led us to where reproductive health imagery centers on cisgender able-bodied women to the exclusion of those who are trans, intersex, or otherwise inhabiting bodies that don’t fit the narrow idea that genitalia dictates gender.” 

“…yet unchecked racism often renders women who should be allies as complicit in the abuse until they are targets too.”

“Trans women of color, who are among the most likely targets of violence, see statistics that reflect their reality co-opted to bolster the idea that all women are facing the same level of danger. Yet support from mainstream white feminists for the issues that directly impact trans women has been at best minimal, and often nonexistent.”

“The labor (physical and emotional) of low-income women is often abused and unappreciated. We are constantly watching them struggle and pretending it is voluntary and not result of a system upheld by a powerful few that is fundamentally anti-Black and patriarchal. “

Hood Feminism quotes

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