Solidarity Is For White Women (But It Doesn't Have To Be)
I've been discussing the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen hashtag over on Jezebel for the better part of two days now, and I've noticed that a lot of people had been replying to me in the threads to say that they didn't know, or didn't really understand what happened with this Hugo Schwyzer debacle, so I figured I'd compile all the best links I could find and post them into one spot (off the Gawker server) so people can browse them as they see fit.
First, a (slightly edited) summary, from the comment I posted on Jezebel's pitiful response of an article:
Basically Hugo Schwyzer wormed his way into feminist spaces and used white feminists as a shield against criticism for his racism from WoC. Feminist WoC complained, Hugo blackballed and harassed them, and the WoC were labelled troublemakers for making a fuss.
Come to find, last week HS basically has a meltdown on twitter, and admits that Yes! He is a racist, misogynistic fuck, and he knew it the whole time! He lied to everybody!
So now, all the white led spaces that ignored WoC's protests are faced with having to deal with the metaphorical jizz on their face, (for empowerment, naturally) from having been TOLD repeatedly by feminist WoC, that he was harmful to feminist spaces and specifically to WoC, and choosing to side with an abuser.
Now, for follow up and background information, start with these:
And continue with the the following:
- Storify of Solidarity Is For White Women
- Does Feminism Have a Race Problem?
- We Need To Talk About Hugo Race And Feminism
- #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen Has Nothing To Do With Hugo; Everything To Do With Listening
- The Soapbox: On #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen; Feminism Is Not Black And White
- Retired Male Feminist Inadvertently Prompts Meaningful Conversation
- H Is For Hubris, Hugo; S Is For Sordid, Schwyzer
- 1o Thoughts On Mental Illness, Abuse And Survivors
- Now Collecting: Hugo Schwyzer Apologists
- I'm The Sex Worker Who Was Outed As Hugo Schwyzer's Sexting Partner
- What I Think of Apologies
The links aren't in chronological order or in order of escalation unfortunately, but together they give a pretty comprehensive view of everything that's happened in the last two days I think. If you have found other links, let me know and I'll add them to the list.
I'm really glad that so many people seemed to be willing to have this discussion even if the editors at Jezebel, XOJane and The Atlantic aren't. I'd also encourage you to engage Mikki Kendall (who started the hashtag) directly on twitter if you have any other questions or concerns I guess. I mean, I can answer stuff from my perspective, but she started this, andI don't want to speak for her if I can avoid it. Anyway, happy* reading!
*By happy, I mean I hope you don't puke.
