Crowd scientists estimate that at least 470,000 people attended the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 21, the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. There were people from all backgrounds who protested the inauguration, supporting a wide range of issues from reproductive rights to racial equality and immigration reform.
People marched against the inauguration in every populated continent and though it was inspiring to see the world come together in support against Trump, one faction of the protests diluted the whole message: white feminism.
White feminism is a form of pseudo-feminism that usually consists of straight, cisgender white women with messed up priorities. White feminists are the women who seem to pinpoint their focus on the most trivial issues. They are the ones who seem to care more about getting called a “b***h” and being slut-shamed than they do about the systematic oppression of minority women.
Issues like slut-shaming are incredibly important to talk about on a wide platform, but white feminists tend to ignore the bigger issues altogether. One of the biggest problems with white feminism is the exclusion of trans women and the casual transmisogyny incorporated into women’s movements.
Many posters at the marches equated womanhood to having a vagina or uterus, and that message excludes a lot of trans women in the country. Trans women are some of the most vulnerable people in America right now, and feminism is not real feminism without supporting all women.
According to a national survey conducted by the LGBT Task Force, 24 percent of transgender American Indians, 18 percent of transgender people identifying as multiracial, 17 percent of transgender Asians and 15 percent of Black transgender respondents experienced sexual assault in K-12 education settings — much higher rates than cisgender students.
Nearly 30 transgender people were killed in 2016, and almost all of them were transgender women of color. Trans women face some of the highest percentages of sexual assault within the LGBT community, and they desperately need feminist support because they often live in fear of abuse or death.
“Intersectionality simply means that there are lots of different parts to our womanhood,” said Brittney Cooper, an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, in a Vox.com article. “And those parts — race, gender, sexuality, and religion, and ability — are not incidental or auxiliary. They matter politically.”
Intersectionality has been missing from the white feminist movement since white women fought for their right to vote.
“In 1870, the suffragists found themselves on opposing ends of the equal-rights battle when Congress passed the 15th Amendment, enabling black men to vote (at least, in theory) — and not women,” said writer Monee Fields. “That measure engendered resentment among some white suffragists, especially in the South.”
On election day, some women who voted for Hillary Clinton put their “I voted” stickers on Susan B. Anthony’s grave, but they ignored the fact that Anthony did not fight for all women. Anthony helped white women win the right to vote, but she did not do much to help minorities.
After white men, white women are the most privileged people in the country. White women must come to terms with this fact and use their privilege to help those less fortunate than they are.
If something is only beneficial to white women, it is not beneficial to all women. Feminism is about bringing everyone together and supporting true equality and liberation throughout the genders as well as everything else.
In Trump’s America, the only way through is to stand together. Feminism is a central part of the movement, and if the community can focus on being all-inclusive and welcoming, then the country just might have a chance at overcoming the next four years.
Lynne Bunch is an 18-year-old mass communication freshman from Terrytown, Louisiana.