I ask simply because I find myself in the position where I feel as if I have learnt a lot from reading this, and other, feminist blogs over the past few weeks. I feel grateful for having been taught and wish to express that without causing offence.

I know this isn’t your blog, and comments should be focused on tekanji’s excellent post, but I want to just mentioned a few things about the whole controversy that occured on your blog. First, the whole race traitor thing by some people was totally uncalled for. You are obviously not a “race traitor” whatever that is, and you never will be. Second, I think most of the “people”, and I use that term loosely, that were so angered are Asian/Asian-American males. As an Asian-American transracial adoptee, I can understand their angry somewhat, but they took it too far. I believe these men felt that white culture perpetuates the stereotype of the oppressive, chauvinistic, sexist Asian man enough, that it hurt for an Asian-Canadian woman to address the topic as well. That’s where the feeling of betrayal came from, as misguided as it might be.

Sorry for the thread hijack.

The idea seems to be for some that they can either be ONLY oppressed or oppressor, and never both.

Yes, I’ve come across that attitude, too. In my experience, those people also are the ones who say things like, “bringing up the concept of ‘privilege’ is a surefire way to end a conversation.” Only, you know, if they were arguing from a privileged position — without actual knowledge on the way privilege works — then I’d argue that the conversation was shut down from the start.

Personally, I think intersectionality is one of the main thing that oppression movements need to realize. There can be a lot gained from having tunnel vision and focusing on the movement’s main issue, but then you gotta ask — whose version of it are we focusing on?

From what I know of the Asian American community (upheld in what I saw happen to your posts on the matter), it seems that the male AA experience is privileged above all. In the feminist sphere, it’s the white (and often upper to middle class) experience. I have to say that, in seeing what’s happened to nubian over these past 6 months, I have been shocked to see the amount of racism still alive and well in the feminist community. Even now, I make these posts and I think to myself, “Have you all learned nothing???”

I don’t know. Maybe change really does have to be slow, but these problems with woc have been around in the feminist movement basically since feminism began. You would have thought we’d have made more headway with them by now…