Molly Ormsbee Written Component

Molly Ormsbee New Black Ethnographies Final Project Written Component

The Feminist Project

Today is Thursday, September 27. The year is 3018. My name is Carol and I am a feminist anthropologist, hoping to travel back in time 1,000 years to 2018. I am aware that at this time in our history, the fate of the earth was a concern due to the way humans had treated their environment. Ecology in 3018 is vastly different from what it once was 1,000 years ago. Though the world may not look extremely different, carbon emissions and global warming have taken a toll on mankind. In order to survive, humans had to adapt and mutate in order to handle the extreme temperatures and conditions of the environment. Many humans suffered from Erythema due to the harsh UV radiation. However, those who survived still experienced a permanent reddening of the skin. All survivors of these environmental conditions have this adaptation of their bodies.

As a result of this environmental change, there has been a decrease in division among people based on race. People still have different backgrounds and different cultural experiences.

However, racism has become a much smaller issue, since the world has evolved so much over time. This sparked major changes in society that led us to the world we are living in now, in 3018. Today, when I look around, I see little division among people. Discrimination still exists, though. There are still changes to come in our modern society. For example, women are still fighting for their equality to men, though they have made great strides. Gay and transgender

people also still fight to be treated with equal respect in America. It is for these reasons that I have devoted my anthropological research to feminism specifically and it is why I want to travel back in time to examine feminists 1,000 years ago, how they operated, and how they differ from our community today in 3018. I am aware of the many changes that may have occurred in our society over the past 1,000 years, which is why I am curious about the world my ancestors experienced in 2018.

In the year 3018, I am both an anthropologist and a feminist. I believe in the equal treatment of women. Our society has made great strides in women’s rights over the years, so I am also curious to see how this was different so many years ago, in 2018. I graduated college with a degree in anthropology as well as gender studies. My past work has included research and study on women’s issues in the past. It wasn’t until recently that a colleague captured my interest in race and its impact on our previous societies. My colleague studies our history with race and gender in society, often starting striking conversations about its vast influence on our history and our actions as a whole. We came up with an idea for a groundbreaking anthropological study that would bring our two passions together.

I have traveled back 1,000 years to 2018. Unfortunately, my partner wasn’t able to join me on this journey, so I took it upon myself to document both race, gender, and feminism in the year 2018, in comparison to our modern arge. My mission was to document the differences in the way we perceive “race” in our differing societies as well as the differences in women’s rights, gay and transgender rights, and how these subjects may or may not relate to one another. I am aware that in 2018 race created more division in our society than we have now. I wanted to discover just how much this impacted the rest of this society’s social issues. Were race and feminism related in 2018? Were different races equally represented? Were trans women equally represented? These

are all questions I answered and documented on my academic journey into the past.

When I began conducting my research, I wasn’t exactly sure where to begin or how to explain it all. It wasn’t until I got to the spirituality portion of the ethnography that I really took an interest in the transgender perspective in feminism. This was the portion of the project that surprised me the most and also disappointed me the most. I found myself sorting through information and perspectives from other feminist anthropologists that didn’t want their efforts as feminists to be associated with trans women and actually saw trans women as a threat to their communities.

I found it extremely difficult to find sources that could show a positive perspective on how trans women could benefit the feminist movement. I believe the worst thing that I came across in my research was the fact that these feminists who wanted to exclude transgender people didn’t see these people as “true women”. This means that a group that has so strongly fought for equality and fair representation, is too closed-minded to truly accept trans women as the gender they identify with. I’ve found that division in feminist groups is not restricted to race. There is also a significant misrepresentation for women of the transgender community. My research has also showed me why this division is so harmful. It does not help the cause to have different sections of feminism based on race, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

This division is problematic for a number of reasons. While conducting my research, I found that black women have felt a push to create “black feminism”. While it is good for black women to be empowered and fight for their equality, this can create a negative effect as well (mostly for their own cause). When groups of women separate like this, they speak to separate issues. The problem with this is that some groups aren’t listened to as much as others. This is why black women and other minority groups feel misrepresented at feminist rallies, like the women’s

march. Feminism in 2018 mainly speaks to the issues of white women. This isn’t because black women aren’t facing hardships, it is because they are separate from white women and our society has proven that it is only concerned with what white feminists have to say.

In my ethnography, I have an interview with Patricia Hill Collins, who speaks about the importance of black women’s rights and afro-feminism. In this interview, she spoke about being marginalized as a black woman, yet they rarely promote separatist solutions themselves. Despite the way they are being treated and ignored, black women don’t want this separation in feminism because they know these groups need to stand together in order to see a real change.

In this interview she also speaks about the struggle to be heard in these communities as a black woman. She says, “While Black feminist thought may be recorded by others, it is produced by Black women” (Collins, 3). This is an important point for my research because she brings up the argument that black women are the only ones producing anthropological research about other black women. This may be necessary for the sake of accuracy. However, this also adds to the issue of division. If a work is only about one group of people, produced by one group of people, how will it reach other groups of people and inform them? All of this information that I have found has further proven my argument that these different groups need to come together as one diverse community in order to see a real change. The more people stand together, the louder they will become. My question after all of this research is, how will we ever get people to understand what we’re going through, if the only people who are informed about it are people that have faced the exact same hardships? What effect does it have to inform someone about the same issues they face themselves everyday? The feminist movement would be much more effective if people could stand together.

This point was also made by another woman I interviewed for my ethnographic research.

Meredith Talusan makes the argument, “To find its way, the feminist movement needs guidance and inspiration from trans women and femmes. Cisgender white women are deemed nasty when they behave in a way that challenges gender norms. But trans women and femmes’ very existence is rooted in rebellion against gender expectations: we defy the patriarchy’s fundamental assumption that any person “born” male would never want to give up that privilege” (Talusan, 2018). This brought to my attention how much we can truly learn from one another if we were to listen to everyone’s experiences with an open mind. Talusan provides a strong argument that the feminist movement needs trans femmes because everything they identify with has to do with the feminist ideals to fight gender norms. If feminists were to give trans women a chance, they could learn so much and strengthen their communities even more.

After conducting my research and completing these interviews, I have come to a conclusion about feminism in 2018 and the negative effects of its racial and gender division. We have several subgroups of feminism. We have black feminists, white feminists, trans feminists, and more. However, these groups rarely intersect. In some cases, they exclude each other. This is only harmful to the movement and what they stand for. If I have learned anything from my research, it’s that if these groups were to unite and stand together and accept one another, they would become much stronger and we would see many of the changes that we’ve been fighting for over the years.

Annotated Bibliography 1. Mohdin, Aamna. "For Black Women, Femininity And Feminism Are Not Mutually Exclusive". Quartzy, 2018, https://qz.com/quartzy/1158081/for-black-women-femininityand-feminism-are-not-mutually-exclusive/. Accessed 25 Oct 2018.

This piece was about the different effect our society has had on black women as

feminine beings. Aamna Mohdin explains that black women have often been seen as masculine in the past and as a result, it sensitizes them to sexist issues. She also writes about how our ideals of masculinity and femininity have been based on white people, which gives the effect that these things are “out of reach” for black people. Black women also face stereotypes and dehumanization in our society which has influenced their role in feminism.

2. Rogo, Paula. “Why Are Some Black Women Skipping This Year's Women's March?”

Essence, Essence Communications, 20 Jan. 2018, www.essence.com/culture/blackwomen-boycott-womens-march/.

This piece was about how black women’s issues in feminism are being disregarded.

Often times, black women’s rights get ignored or dismissed. Paula Rogo also speaks about how 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump, which discouraged black women from attending the women’s rally. This piece explains how black women are feel as if they are alone in these movements.

3. Patricia Hill Collins; Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought, Social Problems, Volume 33, Issue 6, 1 December 1986, Pages s14–s32, https://doi.org/10.2307/800672 This piece was about the importance of afro-feminism. She makes the argument that black women are marginalized in America, but they are using it to their advantage.

Patricia Hill Collins also argues that the rest of society would benefit from AfroAmerican women’s culture and we as a society should put more trust in them to speak to our own issues (specifically in regards to feminism).

4. Schmidt, Samantha. “Women's Issues Are Different from Trans Women's Issues, Feminist

Author Says, Sparking Criticism.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 13 Mar. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/13/womens-issues-aredifferent-from-trans-womens-issues-feminist-author-says-sparking-criticism/? noredirect=on&utm_term=.1aa98c7582f1.

This piece was from a feminist who argues against the integration of trans women in the feminist movement. She claims that trans women have not had the same experiences as other women and they cannot speak to these experiences. She also claims that trans women have spent a portion of their lives experiencing male privilege, so they can’t speak to the same issues as other women.

5. Finlayson, Lorna, et al. “‘I'm Not Transphobic, but...": A Feminist Case against the Feminist Case against Trans Inclusivity.” Versobooks.com, Verso Books, www.versobooks.com/blogs/4090-i-m-not-transphobic-but-a-feminist-case-against-thefeminist-case-against-trans-inclusivity.

This piece was written by three women in favor of including trans women in feminist movements. They challenge the argument that some people have made that trans women are not “true” women. They also explain how problematic this argument is and they disprove the argument that trans women are a threat to the feminist movement. They show that trans women are not at all “dangerous” to white, cis feminists.

6. Talusan, Meredith. “Why the Feminist Movement Needs Trans Women and Femmes.”

Them., Them., 21 Jan. 2018, www.them.us/story/weve-always-been-nasty.

This is a piece by Meredith Talusan that also argues against the idea that trans women can’t be feminists. Meredith herself is transgender and explains how the trans perspective could actually help the feminist movement. She also touches upon why trans women are

so frequently excluded from feminist groups and how to get rid of the binary gender system that is oppressing all of us.

7. Harrison, F. V. (1990), Feminism in Anthropological Perspective.. Transforming Anthropology, 1: 25-27. doi:10.1525/tran.1990.1.2.25 This source is mainly about the rise of feminism in New York City in the 1970s. The anthropologist talks about the division of women into different groups at this time. Some women considered themselves “women’s rights advocates”, who were more moderate reformists. Other women called themselves “women’s liberationists”. These women were a bit more radical and had a more extreme vision for social changes. This ethnography is about the structure of the women’s movement in the 1970s and the differences in these two divisions of feminist groups.

8. SAMANTRAI, R. (2004), Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics. American Anthropologist, 106: 201-202. doi:10.1525/aa.2004.106.1.20 This source is about the misrepresentation of the black community (specifically in feminist movements). In this ethnography, the anthropologist, Ranu Samantrai, shows an interest in showing the misrepresentation of African-Americans in her hometown. She explains that her reasoning for creating an ethnography at home is so that she can get the material she needs without harm, hurt, or danger. She is suggesting in this work, that she needed to go and gather the information in her hometown where she knows she is welcomed and will get true, raw information. Since, anthropology that is practiced today frequently misrepresents black communities.

9.

Rodriguez, C. (2007), Black Feminist Anthropology for the 21st Century. Anthropology

News, 48: 7-8 . doi:10.1525/an.2007.48.7.7

This source also explains misrepresentation of African American women, specifically as feminists. Cheryl Rodriguez claims that for women of color, feminism comes with labels attached. She also explains that Euro-American feminism has had to acknowledge its own racist roots. In this piece, Rodriguez explains that in both feminism and anthropology, black women are rendered invisible and they don’t have a voice. It is for this reason that it is important for them to keep working towards change and share their work.

10. Schuller, M. (2015), Introduction to Special Issue: Seeing Obama's Election through the Black Americas: Ethnographic Perspectives as a Mirror. Transform Anthropol, 23: 63-68. doi:10.1111/traa.12044 This anthropological work looks at the election of Barack Obama and what that event meant to black communities. This work looks at different communities’ responses to this event. It also shows networks within these communities and “black linkages”. Mainly, the work looks at how black communities are linked to one another transnationally and how Obama can be seen as a “starting point” in their connections.

11. Bolles, L. (2013), Telling the Story Straight: Black Feminist Intellectual Thought in Anthropology. Transform Anthropol, 21: 57-71. doi:10.1111/traa.12000 This piece focuses on what feminism means to black women and the division between black women and white women in feminist communities. One of the key arguments in this piece is that white privilege allows white feminist anthropologists to exclude their black counterparts. Lynn Bolles mainly focuses on the mission of this discussion in her work. Black female anthropologists have a right to be heard, yet they are are not fully included in reading and teaching of anthropology. She also makes it clear that these women need to set up discussions to articulate black feminist thoughts that can be included in anthropology today.