The Guilty Feminist

The Guilty Feminist

Adult nonfiction
"What is a guilty feminist? In 2015 I described myself as a
'guilty feminist' for the first time, because I lived with the
knowledge that my beliefs were firm, but my feelings existed on a
trampoline. My goals were noble but my concerns were trivial. I
wanted desperately for women to be taken seriously in leadership roles
all over the world, but I also wanted to look good sitting down
naked..."
Deborah Frances-White, quoted above, was feeling like, as a
feminist, she was living by a double standard. She could deny that
being decorative was her raison d'être and cry about putting on weight
in the same day. She saw herself as not being good enough to be
involved in making societal change.
All that changed when she and a fellow woman comedian shared
their self perceived hypocracies on podcasts, hoping their listeners
would identify with them. Plenty of them did.
"...Many had written to tell us that they'd previously felt
unable to call themselves feminists but now they knew they wanted to
and could. Others said the show had acted as a valve for their guilt--
a place they could laugh off things that didn't matter or that they
were working on. They realized they didn't have to be perfect or even
consisent for meaningful change..."
The podcosts evolved into the book that we are looking at today:
The Guilty Feminist. If I was asked to sum it up in one sentence it
would be: you can plenty flawed and work toward a better world.
Actually the people we see as perfect and consistent have
contradictions of their own. The book shows us how to get beyond out
guilts and insecurities to become flawed but fabulous feminists in a
wide range of situations and across a number of relevant issues. I
think most of us can glean important insights from reading it.
One of the book's biggest strengths is its intersectionality
emphasis. Frances-White reminds us throughout the text that most of
us have privileged and oppressed identities and have to own up to our
privileges and the ways they can keep us complicit in systems of
inequity, especially if we refuse to see them. In addition to being
aware of these identities and the leverage they give us, we need to
find ways to bring others into the spaces in which we're accepted and
they are minimally or not at all, not as saviors but as agency
respecting allies.
Although for the most part this book is excellent, there were
several points at which I almost put it down and walked away.
Although Francis-White is aware of the intersections of feminism with
racism, ableism, class, and all the permutations of gender and
sexuality, she reinforces ageism. Every time I read her statements
about "boomers" I felt frustrated. She seems to think that we're all
big fans of the binary. I know people my age and older who get the
picture and are loving it. There are also plenty of much younger
religious fundamentalists who have the binary up there with the
Trinity and immaculate conception.
Deborah, please add ageism to your mix of the
intersectionalities we need to face and fight? When international
flight is again safe I'll be more than happy to fly over the pond and
share my insights on your podcast.
I am a feminist and I am an older, gender fluid, flamboyant,
adventurous, drag king!
On a purrrsonal note, the weather is gradually changing. The trees are
budding. The daffodils are just about ready to blossom.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


Sent from my iPod