Saturday, July 19, 2008

Dear Feminisphere, PUT ON SOME DAMN PANTS

Heidi Schnackenberg would like to apologise say some MORE SHIT for having written a piece in AlterNet News subtitled Women will continue to be oppressed unless they stop prioritizing other causes over their own.

Can you guess which causes she put on the back burner?

Well for those of you who don't currently have a gold star proudly on your foreheads, I'll link and snip you her FIRST explanation/apology/what-the-fuck-ever which ISN'T on AlterNet. It includes:



I have never met a white feminist who doesn't care deeply about what I have to say. I've always gotten the impression that white feminists would welcome the opportunity to improve women's lives in all the areas I mentioned above. Maybe they don't always know about the issues and don't really know what to say, but I haven't seen an intentional dismissal of the unique needs of women of color (in post- modern times).


Apparently Heidi Schnakenberg wasn't alive earlier this year when shit went down with BrownfemiPower and Amanda Marcotte's utter skankiness.

Ms. Schnakenberg then goes on to drop these gems in her second follow up :



  • ...A friend once described me as the Eminem of feminism—a white person who hasn't had an easy life and has been ostracized by white folks and feels more comfortable with people of color as a result...


  • ... And yes, white women have work to do—they've got to be more inclusive and stop being so ignorant. But I can forgive them a little bit, just like I try to forgive the many white women who were cruel to me when I was growing up, because they are victims themselves...


  • ...I'm not necessarily opposed to intersectionality as a theory--I can understand why women of color, especially, must fight against the piles of oppression stacked up against them. I don't want to get in the way of that, but I see how everything else in that lens--race, class, economics, etc., is taking priority over gender...


  • ...I'm not necessarily asking for a banishment of intersectionality-- I'm asking for reform...


Go click the link for yourself. Read the foolishness first hand. Foolishness that persists even though according to this article, she's raising a biracial child.

I guess she hasn't yet connected to what it means to raise a SON who isn't white. Or maybe she'll raise him to believe he's white, despite her claim to multiculturism. Perhaps that's how she reckons to keep him safe.

If you want to read someone pissed off at Heidi Schnakenberg's rampant privilege go read Ami's Rant Here.

I don't want to rant at this woman. I want to cut a bitch. Because she has the GALL to write this shit:

Ask any white woman who has endured daily street harassment or the multitudes of white women who work in the sex industry; they can assure you that men of all classes, races and nationalities are united in the pleasure they take in seeing all types of women being sexually humiliated. If that fact alone doesn't unite white women and women of color, I don't know what will.


All I got to say to her is BITCH SHUT THE FUCK UP. Because I see a parade of little black girls that white women didn't give a fuck about; raped and murdered and tossed to the side. The daughters of their maids and cooks. I see the fucking parade of black women who get tossed to the side everyday too - but don't let no little blonde female go missing. Post modern times my black ass.

RAMONA MOORE. RAMONA MOORE. RAMONA MOORE


Also = Commenter Jan VanDenBerg on the Alternet article? StormFront's calling you to join their ranks. You ARE racist enough.

13 comments:

  1. I was hoping someone would tear this article apart. I remember seeing this article on AlterNet and thinking "Seriously? Was this article really necessarily?" Especially after all the race controversies on feminist blogs - it's like Shnackenberg thought to herself "Hey! A fire! Let me throw gasoline on it!" The whole thing reminded me of the heterosexual white guy who says "I'm broke and have a crappy job - where is this privilege everyone talks about? I don't have it!"

    It annoys me when my fellow white feminists seem to assume that paying attention to someone else's problems for a while somehow diminishes the importance of their problems. When that "Yes Means Yes" book was being talked about on the blogosphere, I remembering seeing a conversations like this (paraphrased):

    "Valenti seems to be focusing only on middle-class white women's experiences again."
    "Are you saying that white women being raped isn't a problem?!? HOW DARE YOU!"
    "What? No! I'm just saying that WOC face different problems!"

    White feminists really need to learn to share the microphone, or else drop the "I care about ALL women!" line. If you really cared about all women, you would LISTEN TO THEM.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DW:

    I'm not sure if I tore the article apart or not. Tearing the writer apart is something I'd still love to do.

    Especially after seeing who she had agreeing with her. And how constipatedly blind she was and is. Some of her personal blog posts talk about R.Kelly's trial as if ALL WoC everywhere rejoiced in the outcome. And it was the perfect example of how putting race issues ahead of gender issues is a setback.

    That's licking your navel lint narrow focused.

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  3. "Apparently Heidi Schnakenberg wasn't alive earlier this year when shit went down with BrownfemiPower and Amanda Marcotte's utter skankiness."

    Amen on this. This was the first thing that came to mind after reading that bit.

    Wish I could see Ami's post.

    What are these post-modern times of which she speaks?

    ~Onion, now with a lj.

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  4. Let's flip the bullshit:

    Women will continue to be oppressed unless so-called feminists stop prioritizing privilege over the cause of all women, everywhere.

    The fucking end.

    I mean, the silence in the face of so much, in just the last 3 years, never mind the last three hundred? That's assent. Assent to the murder of women.

    They're putting their survival over a cause that isn't there for them, doesn't acknowledge them, and doesn't even mourn for them.

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  5. ...Wow. That's the sort of stuff she posts on her blog? I don't know what's more disturbing: the article she wrote, or that someone on AlterNet read her blog and thought "Brilliant! This is exactly the sort of voice AlterNet needs!"

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  6. Onion:

    I hadn't realize I'd posted a link to a flocked post. I usually don't do that. I think I got confused and thought it was from Ami's open rant blog. My total bad there.

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  7. Bankuei:

    Remember the Border Patrol Office earlier this year who lost his job for whistle blowing at how immigrant women and children were being treated? I can't remember seeing the news of that racing across the femiblogsphere. Did it?

    Did you see a lot of the active feminist bloggers talking about the Jenna 6?

    Have you seen ANY of them discuss Ramona Moore?

    Cause I want to know if I'm making this shit up. I'm tired. My brain may be missing their contributions. Exhaustion will make a person blank out like that.

    I know the hot thing right now is Kyle Payne and how he talked feminist out of the left side of his mouth, while his right hand was groping passed out white women and wanking to child porn. And there's all this 'OMFG he could go play nice young gentleman and get off in court!'. And I've not gone near it, because their shock that a young white man could lie to get what he wants and manipulate the courts to get a slap on the wrist just raises my pressure.

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  8. Yeah, that Jan VanDenBerg is something else:

    "Everytime someone tries to actually be a feminist, which means that she is concerned about WOMEN'S issues, some woman stands up and tells her she's "out of touch" unless she talks about OTHER PEOPLES' issues."

    Translation: all women are white and have no "other issues"... You didn't know????????!!!?!

    Jesus h Christ in heaven.

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  9. Daisy:

    I was especially enamored (NOT) of the arguments - "What if the Sierra Club suddenly decided to be all about women's rights" and one other topic that's rolled out of my head. "They'd become so unfocused."

    And then it was combined with VanDenBerg in the comments with:

    "If you want to deal with racial issues or immigration issues etc, then join THOSE movements, stop trying to co-opt the feminist movement for it. I'm so sick of people telling REAL feminists how out of touch they are because they're actually talking about feminism."

    So yes clearly it's 'White Women Issues ARE women's issues and the only women's issues. So bite me.'

    ---

    [[ To the unintelligent or very literal I am paraphrasing the arguments presented.]]

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  10. Bankeui:

    PS - In one of her early blogpost Schnakenberg talks about slavery and the trafficking of women. I didn't click the link. I was rolling my eyes too hard at that point.

    But do you think she was including the teenagers stolen away in China? And if it's happening in China it's likely happening in India too - the result of gender imbalance being women are becoming commodities because there are so few of them of marriageable age for all the little 'had to be/have a sons'. So now instead of women being in demand and being given anything they want to get married, they're stolen as teens so that the son can have a woman on hand OR so that brothels have something to offer the randy young masters.

    Of course it's a little more complicated in China due to the one child (for free) laws and people selling their babies so that the child they keep is a son.

    Do you think Schnakenberg was talking about those women? Or about the young girls stolen to be used for sex AND to ride as jockey's in the richer countries of the desert Middle East?

    Do you think she's talking about the trafficking of young mexican and latino women crossing the border hoping for a freer life and being exploited? Or about young black women in urban environments disappearing off the streets?

    Like I said, I didn't look. When she started comparing it to 'the long ago slavery' - my mind blanked out.

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  11. Hi Willow! :D I was going to put my rant on my rants blog too but I was in a rush packing to go to Rochester (where I am right now! :D), so once I get back to Toronto tonite, I'll put it there and you can link to it :D

    Also...

    WTF!?

    Holy crap she's beaten William Sanders in the hole digging contest o_o;; I mean srsly... I like how she doesn't even consider herself a white woman now (cuz omgihaven'thadthebestlifeevari'mtheeminemofwhitewomen), using "they" and "them" to refer to "white women"

    And the implication that white women may not understand everything but DAMMIT they CARE MORE ABOUT ALL WOMEN than the rest of us >:|

    And that intersectionality needs to be "reformed" by.. white women I guess.. let them solve our problems, they know best.

    ARGHHHHHH >:O

    I'm have to go catch my bus home now, but when I get back I'll put stuff in my rants blog and stuffs! :D

    ReplyDelete
  12. "Heidi Schnackenberg would like to apologise say some MORE SHIT for having written a piece in AlterNet News subtitled Women will continue to be oppressed unless they stop prioritizing other causes over their own."

    Two words come to mind in response to Ms. Schnackenberg:

    FUCKING MULTITASK!

    She sounds like someone who didn't really acknowledge the teen gun violence problem until after Columbine.

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  13. Notintheface:

    Didn't you know that nothing's really a problem until the world gets shocked and ends up shouting:

    "Oh my gosh! Won't someone think of the White children/women/people!"

    ReplyDelete