I had Some Thoughts about white feminism and its blindness to intersectionality that I wanted to share, and for me it starts from the slew of women's self-defense courses and books on "intuition" that were so popular in the late 90s/early aughts. 1/

If you've read books like The Gift of Fear or taken an Impact/Model Mugging weekend women's self-defense course (or others like it), a lot of the focus is on trusting your own instincts when determining if you're in a dangerous situation or not. 2/

This is REALLY GOOD advice for women who, for example, let themselves be manipulated into dangerous situations because they don't want to be seen as rude, or can convince themselves that someone who's behaving in a predatory way is just being nice, for example. 3/

But on the other hand, it can also open you up to confirmation bias and in my opinion lead you (esp. white women) into the types of situations where you end up calling the police on a birdwatcher who's asking you to leash your dog or someone who's chalking their own home. 4/

If you teach white women to trust their own instincts for their safety and those white women have the same inherent bias that we all do but without being aware of it or working on it, then it's not hard to envision a situation where women feel "unsafe" because of racism. 5/

A lot of women's self-defense classes teach de-escalation, so if you cross the street every time you see a non-white male approaching you, you could think you're protecting yourself from danger at every turn even if there was never any real danger. 6/

Now, nobody wants to be responsible for women not getting to safety because they second-guessed the intentions of an attacker for these reasons, but at the same time, we see all these white women who overreact and call the police, and some actually think they're in danger. 7/

I believe that some (not all) of them really are embarrassed when they see themselves on video, but of course that's nothing compared to the people who they are putting at Literal Risk of Murder (or assault or harassment or trumped up charges or whatnot) when the police come. 8/

TL;DR Women's self-defense books and classes that teach (largely white) women to "trust their instincts" to prevent danger can help you avoid attack, but can also be a recipe for confirmation bias that leads to unnecessary 911 calls and puts BIPOC men in danger. 9/

I have more thoughts on all of the noble lies in women self-defense classes but I'll save those for a future thread. 10/