Author: Sara Wolkensdorfer

Using Feminism to Understand White Male Privilege

/ Sara Wolkensdorfer / Leave a comment

About a week ago I stumbled on this tumblr page, white guys doing it by themselves. I thought it was the perfect satirical commentary on the patriarchal “white male” culture we live in.  As I found out after posting a link to the site on Facebook, some of my fellow law students (specifically, white males) did not think so.  They all agreed that our culture should be about promoting diversity, but they didn’t agree with how “anti-white male” everything has become.

It seems as if whenever women or other minority groups make strides, it is at the cost of the “white male” majority.  The baselessness of this argument is perfectly demonstrated in the article, “How Feminism Hurts Men” by Micah J. Murray.

What bothered me most about my fellow students commentary was that they didn’t understand my point: it is not about being a white male, it is the ideology of white male privilege. As Zillah Eisenstein states, “The phallocratic standard in Western industrial societies is white, middle-class male.” Historically, this is fact – whites have always been in more power-filled positions, and this includes white females, like myself.

I think the first step to moving forward is admitting this to ourselves – colorblindness and genderblindness are not the answer. In order to successfully move away from white privilege and towards a society where we can learn to appreciate each other’s differences, we have to accept that the structural inequalities in place position white males at the helm.  As Peggy McIntosh states, “To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions.”

This is not to say that I, or feminism, are “anti-(white) male;” many people have the perception that feminism is about man-hating. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why must we sacrifice the rights of one group in order to elevate the other? Feminism is about human rights, not necessarily women’s rights – we are all a combination of different races, sex/gender, religion, economic status, and more. Feminism is about learning to appreciate those differences in ourselves and in others.

I told all of this to my fellow students, and I hope we (as whites) can become aware of our privilege and learn to use it to change the system of inequality we currently live in.

 

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Legal Barriers to a Women’s Equality

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On Monday, October 28, Texas District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that new abortion restrictions passed by the Texas Legislature were unconstitutional, despite the Texas attorney general’s office’s argument that the law works to protect both the life of the mother and her fetus. Judge Yeakel reasoned that doctors in abortion clinics should have the right to do what they think is bets for their patients and that the restrictions would place further restrictions on women’s access to abortion clinics.

Only a few days before, on October 24, Above The Law broke news of a memorandum from Clifford Chance, a New York law firm that lays out how a female attorney should dress, act, and speak while on the job. The memorandum was leaked by a female associate and recipient of the memo, commenting that, “[F]emale associates are very upset by not only the elementary nature of the tips themselves, but the suggestion that these would only apply to women. We have never been a very female friendly firm, but this is beyond the pale.” Among the many topics covered in the 5-page memorandum, quite a few stand out for their ignorant devotion to stereotypes: “Don’t giggle; Don’t squirm; Don’t tilt your head; Practice hard words; Wear a suit, not your party outfit; No one heard Hillary the day she showed cleavage.”

Clearly, it appears that while women have made huge strides in gaining legal control of their minds and bodies, they have also continued to be subjected to gender stereotypes that demean and perpetuate structural inequalities within our society. And in particular, women in the legal world continue to be expected to walk the fine line between being a “career woman” and having power, AKA being more like a “man,” while at the same time maintaining “traditional” ideals of feminism, docility, and passivity, AKA being like a “woman.” In this culture, if we (as women) want equality we have to act like men, but if a woman acts too much like men in terms of aggression, drive, and passion, she is seen as a “bitch.” This memorandum perfectly exemplifies the oh-so-impossible line that gender stereotypes provide and the sheer impossibility of being a woman that has it all.

So, what can be done about such a deeply-embedded and traditionalized mentality about gender in the workplace, and in the larger world?

First, never think that stories like that in Texas are the norm. Women are always fighting for the means to be free in a man’s world, and making one stride is just winning the battle, not the war.

Second, as a female, don’t be afraid to speak up: so many times we are told to silence who we are in order to become who we think society wants us to be. Being strong, confident, independent, and goal-oriented does not equate to being a bitch or “manly;” it equates to being a confident, independent, and goal-oriented human being.

Lastly, female attorneys are just as capable as male attorneys – to demean and degrade them by sending such a blatant display of sexism is something that has no justification. Women should not have to live up to male standards, they should be able to create their own. As future male and female attorneys, we have to be willing to see these obvious displays of misogyny and patriarchy, and begin to fight back. Instead of taking one step forward and two steps back, we should be continuously moving towards a world without patriarchy.