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White tears, white rage: victimhood and (as) violence in mainstream feminism
Version 2 2023-06-12, 09:31
Version 1 2023-06-09, 21:44
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-12, 09:31 authored by Alison PhippsUsing #MeToo as a starting point, this paper argues that the cultural power of mainstream white feminism partly derives from the cultural power of white tears. This in turn depends on the dehumanisation of people of colour, who were constructed in colonial ‘race science’ as incapable of complex feeling (Schuller, 2018). Colonialism also created a circuit between bourgeois white women’s tears and white men’s rage, often activated by allegations of rape, which operated in the service of economic extraction and exploitation. This circuit endures, abetting the criminal punishment system and the weaponisation of ‘women’s safety’ by the various border regimes of the right. It has especially been utilised by reactionary forms of feminism, which set themselves against sex workers and trans people. Such feminisms exemplify what I call ‘political whiteness’, which centres assertions of victimhood: through these, womanhood (and personhood) is claimed to the exclusion of the enemy. Through legitimating criminal punishment and border policing and dehumanising marginalised Others, claims to victimhood in mainstream feminism often end up strengthening the intersecting violence of racial capitalism and heteropatriarchy.
History
Publication status
- Published
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- Published version
Journal
European Journal of Cultural StudiesISSN
1367-5494Publisher
SAGE PublicationsExternal DOI
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1-13Department affiliated with
- Sociology and Criminology Publications
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- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2020-10-01First Open Access (FOA) Date
2020-10-01First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2020-09-30Usage metrics
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