Feminism vs. Womanism

Exactly Empty Purnata! This is what makes the whole feminism movement so unattractive to African American women. They simply can't relate at any level to the experiences of sistas. We are the daughters of women who had to work everyday, who were forced to be the mothers through Paramour Rights and who were the objects of de-humanization. They are the daughters of of the white women who sat on their butts while our mothers and grandmothers served them and took care of their homes.
There is very little that I have in common with those women. They need to give it a rest.

Agbe ni igbe're ki Yemoja Ibikeji odo!

quote:

Originally posted by Empty Purnata:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womanism

quote:

Some feminists take a holistic approach to politics, believing the saying of Martin Luther King Jr., "A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". In that belief, some self-identified feminists support other movements such as the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. At the same time, many black feminists such as bell hooks criticize the movement for being dominated by white women. Feminist claims about the alleged disadvantages women face in Western society are often less relevant to the lives of black women. This idea is the key in postcolonial feminism. Many black feminist women prefer the term womanism for their views.

In other words, Black Feminism was different than "mainstream" Feminism (which was mostly White) because some of the elments of Feminism were specific to White women and didn't really pertain to Black women. Such as the problem of working outside the home. Black women in America, have always worked as hard as males (many female slaves were put out in fields just like male slaves), and after Slavery, African-American workers were paid so much less than White workers, that Black women were most often forced to work outside the home as well to help the family earn ends meet. Womanism more specifically concentrated on Black women having jobs outside of the home other than maid jobs and cleaning jobs.

The wiki piece really should be treated as a stub because it gives a rather poor understanding of womanism as it relates to feminism, particularly in the context of Walker's text. For Walker, womanism includes feminism. She says that womanism is to feminism as purple is to lavender. Purple is the larger category to which lavender belongs.

The piece also does not address the argument put forth by Patricia Hill Collins in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment for preferring the term black feminist to womanist.

To my knowledge, the only community that has adopted the term womanist has been black female theologians/ethicists who use to varying degrees walkers definition as a theoretical context in which to do their theology, hence the name womanist theology. These are folks like Katie Canon, Delores Williams, Kelly Brown Douglas, Joanne Terrell, and Stacy Floyd-Thomas to name just a few. Within this community, there has been tension with respect to Walker's understanding of womanism to include diversity with respect to sexual orientation. Thus, a scholar like Cheryl Saunders at Howard, who was an early participant in womanist theology, no longer identifies herself as such because of her belief heterosexuality should be normative.

I feel real cosy in working-class feminism, which is a part of what womanism is to me.

But I relate to mainstream feminism also.

As Krege said, one is to the other as lavender is to purple.