White women, in the absence of racialization, sometimes racialize womanhood itself, deliberately ignoring that many womanhoods are already racialized. The phrase "white feminism" calls this out as white, rather than neutral, which is how the perpetrators must see themselves.

An obvious example of this is the use of "womanface" as morally synonymous with "blackface." More broadly, any attempt to describe "women's culture" as monolithic appeals to racialization, because women collectively lack the locality or history to have a shared culture.

One key indication of this is that "women's culture" as a phrase almost always refers to Victorian English sensibilities, as Adrienne Rich outright confesses despite ironically embracing for much of her career, manipulating sexual dimorphism into cultural dimorphism.

I'm white and have been trying to figure out why some white women do this. I think one reason is that unique analysis of sexualization, rather than racialization, offers conclusions some women find unacceptable, such as solidarity with LGBT populations.

(In this sense it's vital LGBT people support the uniqueness of race, and platform racialized members of our communities. I am a trans woman, but I can't transition to two-spirit, khwaja sara, or travesti, because I'm not indigenous, Indian, or Brazilian respectively.)

But I also think it's a kind of moral laziness. Collectively racializing womanhood appeals to narratives of colonization or slavery. It's meant to terminate thought on the evil of sexualization, but actually has the effect of self-deception, of not taking one's self seriously.

There are some extremely important senses in which analyses of sexualization and racialization differ. One is that sexuality & gender, though distinct, are far more intimately linked with one another than with race.

Another is that race, much more regularly than sex, is taken as unambiguously socially constructed. Yet, feminists advocate the dissolution of femininity much more routinely than antiracists advocate the dissolution of, say, blackness.

Feminists have supported "girly boys," while antiracists do not support "blackish white ppl." This is because of specific, distinct histories. Historically, girlish boys & boyish girls are oppressed while "blackish white ppl" are celebrated at cost to black livelihoods.

Another primary difference is that there is no contestation over the presence of more than two races. The way race is reproduced is distinctive: we understand it ancestrally. Unlike sex, race and racial trauma are literally inherited.

Biological assertions about of race are embarrassed by interracial reproduction, while intersexuality has no analogous mode of reproduction. Same-sex, not cross-sex, marriage is what was vital and liberatory. Feminism has no equivalent to endogamy.

When we racialize the category "woman" as woman, we lose out on these basic facts, and deny feminism itself as a distinctive and productive social movement. //

I randomly wrote this thread bc I'm this white girl real angsty over the way a lot of gender talk treats race. It's taken off more than anticipated & I wanted to thank black women here for some really incisive commentary. I've my own mental blocks they're helping me see through.