Teaching with the third wave new feminists - MailChimp

able much earlier; therefore the perspectives raised by our researches are notnew. 12 The incomprehension in white feminist contexts with regard to suchcritical perceptions might lie in the particular history of white feminisms.White feminisms, as Dagmar Schultz reflects, have a history of dealing withpatriarchal structures in order to obtain equal rights in a hegemonic system thattraditionally privileges men over women. 13 Doing so, Schultz shows that sucha perspective obscures the fact that this only applies to white men’s privilegeover white women and does not work in the same way, when it involves men ofcolour and white women. Consequently, white feminists rather identify themselvesas victims of unequal power relations than as people who uphold a position,which is equally involved in power production and the stratification ofclass and ethnical groups. 14 Furthermore, the construction of women as victimsin general needs to be re-visited by white women in order to understand theirstake and participation in discrimination and the reproduction of hegemonicpower. In relation to this, Critical Whiteness theory, by rejecting an essentialidea of womanhood, offers important starting points for teaching CriticalWhiteness Studies in a feminist context. Instead it scrutinizes the differentexperiences of women from varying racialized, ethicized, and religious or classbackgrounds. 15In this context, the German feminist, Protestant theologian Eske Wollradchallenges the common use of the term gender as a category to describe the oppressionof women. From her perspective the term covers up other mechanismsof oppression such as “race” and class. The term “gender”, Wollrad argues, allowwhite women to conveniently avoid the issue of racial discrimination, if theywant to. Women outside white-middle class-feminist spaces are at best invitedto be incorporated. 16 Furthermore, a simple focus on women as victims of patriarchyhinders an understanding of white women’s participation in sexism andthe oppression of men who are marked by ethnicity or class. In a study of whiteGerman women involved in feminist movements, Nora Räthzel shows that thetendency of white women to perceive men as a threat of their security turns outto be particularly detrimental for men of colour. These white women, who all12Wollrad, Weißsein im Widerspruch, 48–9; Stuart Hall, Ideologie, Identität, Repräsentation – Ausgewählte Schriften 4,(Hamburg: Argument Verlag, 2004).13Dagmar Schultz, “Witnessing Whiteness – ein persönliches Zeugnis“, in Mythen, Masken und Subjekte, ed.Eggers, Kilomba, Piesche, Arndt (Münster: Unrast Verlag), 514–29.14Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture (London: Routledge 2004), 1–2 & 27–44.15Wollrad, Weißsein im Widerspruch, 100–3.16Wollrad, Weißsein im Widerspruch, 102.60