{"id":89,"date":"2014-01-08T13:36:14","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T13:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.transversalmedia.eu\/side-eyeing-feminism-and-undoing-the-harm\/"},"modified":"2014-01-08T13:36:14","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T13:36:14","slug":"side-eyeing-feminism-and-undoing-the-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theresearchpapers.org\/archive\/side-eyeing-feminism-and-undoing-the-harm\/","title":{"rendered":"Side eyeing feminism and undoing the harm"},"content":{"rendered":"

I see things. I read things. I watch social media and the internet at large pass by and I see a lot. I am both interested and deeply invested in seeing these things, in observing and understanding. I thrive to understand not only my life but larger issues at play that affect me. This is why I spend so much time reading and observing how people discuss, how they talk, what they believe in. I always hope that by understanding these discussions, essays, news items, etc, I will come to an understanding of how larger political and cultural issues operate through ideas\/ ideology. I hope that by learning how they are expressed I can be better equipped to resist them and dismantle them.<\/p>\n

Seeing things comes with a weight of sorts, though. A call to a follow up action or reaction. You can see and acknowledge; you can see and remain silent; you can see and roll your eyes (or, as Sara Ahmed calls it \u201cfeminist pedagogy through eye rolling\u201d<\/a>); you can see and side eye; you can see and comment. Side eye has always been my go to \u201cfeminist pedagogy\u201d. \u201cMirando de reojo<\/em>\u201d as my mother used to point out when I was the child with a tendency to impugn through the eyes. But then I became \u201ca writer\u201d. One of multiple, of many, of a sea of others. And then \u201cside eyeing\u201d wasn\u2019t enough to convey a reaction. I needed words to do so. The problem is that by \u201cfinding words\u201d and \u201cusing words to side eye\u201d, I also became painfully aware of the consequence of \u201cside eyeing through publication<\/em>\u201d. I could now only choose to either \u201cobserve and remain silent<\/em>\u201d or \u201cobserve and side eye through what I write<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the list of \u201cthings I observe\u201d, feminist media or women centered media takes a big chunk of the attention. Mostly because I am a feminist but also because I am deeply interested in how this “feminist taxonomy” of sorts behind \u201cwoman\u201d is created. Who is allowed to \u201cbecome woman\u201d in these discourses? Who is represented and spoken about? How does feminist (or woman centered) media propose that we understand \u201cwoman\u201d and the issues pertaining to \u201cwoman\u201d? Those are the questions I seek to answer when I observe media and feminist discussions. But then comes the side eye. Side eyeing is the moment I have to decide whether I will be the public killjoy or if I will move on and \u201clet it go\u201d. That is the precise, pinpoint moment when I am left in the unattainable position of \u201cpointing out the harm<\/em>\u201d or \u201ceating the harm on my own<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

A common idea<\/a> pushed lately by many mainstream white feminists is that denouncing within feminism is somewhat \u201canti feminist\u201d. We should, apparently, \u201cside eye in silence<\/em>\u201d. Even though this is the political ideology that writes the definitions of \u201cwoman\u201d, the one that decides on what it means to be \u201cwoman\u201d and the one that assigns value to \u201cwoman\u201d, we should just accept what we see and not say anything. Saying something is to be the bearer of \u201cdivision\u201d and \u201cabuse\u201d. You then become not only the killjoy but the oppressor itself. You, with your act of \u201cpublic side eye\u201d are the one \u201cabusing women\u201d. The fact that this white feminism is defining what it means to be a woman and perpetuating ideologies that explicitly leave you out, you are not to say anything. \u201cYou are not a woman by our definition<\/em>\u201d, you are now \u201cthe abuser\u201d that divides the movement and creates \u201cbad atmosphere\u201d. Not a woman, not a feminist, not \u201cone of us\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I saw a great number of white feminists \u201cdiscussing things\u201d. And I am purposefully being vague here because I am trying very hard not to play into the stereotypes that will later on be hurled at me for being \u201cdivisive\u201d and for not \u201cpraising what deserves praise\u201d and for not \u201cacknowledging efforts\u201d. All these things will be either insinuated or said openly if I choose to \u201cside eye publicly\u201d. I might even lose friends or support from people for doing so. Because \u201cI can never be happy\u201d with what is done. So, instead of denouncing something concrete, I want to write about the pattern. The repetition of these issues. These discussions were never meant to \u201cleave me out\u201d. Of course not. It\u2019s just that they were never mindful of how the \u201cthings that bring me in\u201d should also be contemplated. When white feminists \u201cdiscuss things\u201d and those \u201cthings\u201d never mention any issue outside white, cisgender and of a certain class or education, those \u201cthings\u201d that they are discussing explicitly leave people out. When discussing \u201cthings\u201d and the words \u201cracism\u201d or \u201ctransmisogyny\u201d or \u201cableism\u201d are not mentioned once, then those \u201cthings\u201d that are discussed fail at conveying the experience of being \u201cwoman\u201d for a great number of people. That\u2019s when side eyeing comes in. That\u2019s when feminism harms me. Because it forces me to either remove myself from this narrowly defined category of \u201cwoman\u201d they have created or, it forces me to erase the specific ways in which \u201cthe things white feminists discuss among each other\u201d affect me differently. When white feminism \u201cdiscusses things\u201d and those \u201cthings\u201d do not involve a single mention of the \u201cthings\u201d that women like me experience, I am left with no representation in the \u201cthings\u201d they discuss. Protesting this lack of representation is, I insist, \u201cdivisive\u201d and \u201cabusive\u201d.<\/p>\n

So, instead of engaging in a discussion of \u201cthings that affect white feminists\u201d, I am going to quietly side eye and use my words to establish the pattern. This, the discussions that do not include women like me, is the concrete way in which feminism specifically harms us. And I got nothing but a massive eye roll for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I see things. I read things. I watch social media and the internet at large pass by and I see a lot. I am both interested and deeply invested in seeing these things, in observing and understanding. I thrive to understand not only my life but larger issues at play that affect me. This is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":1891,"loftocean_coauthors":"","alpaca_post_content_reading_setting":"","alpaca_reading_speed_per_minute":0,"alpaca_reading_speed_unit":"","alpaca_single_post_template_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[81,26,860,1361,40,2103],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ableism","tag-feminism","tag-gender-matters","tag-media","tag-racism","tag-transmisogyny"],"yoast_head":"\nSide eyeing feminism and undoing the harm - The Research Papers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/theresearchpapers.org\/archive\/side-eyeing-feminism-and-undoing-the-harm\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Side eyeing feminism and undoing the harm - The Research Papers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I see things. 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