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.
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 “feminist pedagogy through eye rolling”); you can see and side eye; you can see and comment. Side eye has always been my go to “feminist pedagogy”. “Mirando de reojo” as my mother used to point out when I was the child with a tendency to impugn through the eyes. But then I became “a writer”. One of multiple, of many, of a sea of others. And then “side eyeing” wasn’t enough to convey a reaction. I needed words to do so. The problem is that by “finding words” and “using words to side eye”, I also became painfully aware of the consequence of “side eyeing through publication”. I could now only choose to either “observe and remain silent” or “observe and side eye through what I write”.
In the list of “things I observe”, 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 “woman” is created. Who is allowed to “become woman” in these discourses? Who is represented and spoken about? How does feminist (or woman centered) media propose that we understand “woman” and the issues pertaining to “woman”? 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 “let it go”. That is the precise, pinpoint moment when I am left in the unattainable position of “pointing out the harm” or “eating the harm on my own”.
A common idea pushed lately by many mainstream white feminists is that denouncing within feminism is somewhat “anti feminist”. We should, apparently, “side eye in silence”. Even though this is the political ideology that writes the definitions of “woman”, the one that decides on what it means to be “woman” and the one that assigns value to “woman”, we should just accept what we see and not say anything. Saying something is to be the bearer of “division” and “abuse”. You then become not only the killjoy but the oppressor itself. You, with your act of “public side eye” are the one “abusing women”. 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. “You are not a woman by our definition”, you are now “the abuser” that divides the movement and creates “bad atmosphere”. Not a woman, not a feminist, not “one of us”.
Yesterday I saw a great number of white feminists “discussing things”. 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 “divisive” and for not “praising what deserves praise” and for not “acknowledging efforts”. All these things will be either insinuated or said openly if I choose to “side eye publicly”. I might even lose friends or support from people for doing so. Because “I can never be happy” 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 “leave me out”. Of course not. It’s just that they were never mindful of how the “things that bring me in” should also be contemplated. When white feminists “discuss things” and those “things” never mention any issue outside white, cisgender and of a certain class or education, those “things” that they are discussing explicitly leave people out. When discussing “things” and the words “racism” or “transmisogyny” or “ableism” are not mentioned once, then those “things” that are discussed fail at conveying the experience of being “woman” for a great number of people. That’s when side eyeing comes in. That’s when feminism harms me. Because it forces me to either remove myself from this narrowly defined category of “woman” they have created or, it forces me to erase the specific ways in which “the things white feminists discuss among each other” affect me differently. When white feminism “discusses things” and those “things” do not involve a single mention of the “things” that women like me experience, I am left with no representation in the “things” they discuss. Protesting this lack of representation is, I insist, “divisive” and “abusive”.
So, instead of engaging in a discussion of “things that affect white feminists”, 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.
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