The Danger of White Feminism in the Non-White World

When I originally told my group of friends that I was planning on studying abroad this summer, one of the first things that came out of their mouths was, “You can’t wear that in Ecuador.” Looking down, I would burst out laughing, seeing my sports bra and short shorts and recognizing that modesty has never been one of my virtues, even by liberal Georgetown standards. But the joking stopped when one of my girlfriends, with a somber expression, told me, “You don’t want to get sexually assaulted.” Now, before y’all rip into my dear friend for not being a feminist or a supporter of women enough, I want to specify that this woman is, in some ways, even more liberal than I am and would never blame any kind of assault on a woman on the woman; we’ve been friends long enough for me to know that. Nevertheless, I was still taken aback by her words and, quite frankly, by the words of all my friends, since they all said something along those same lines: “Just put on a shirt, Kami.” “We want you safe.” “I think I’d wear something a little less revealing down there.” While I knew the culture of Ecuador was much more conservative than D.C. and even my native Southern Illinois, I wasn’t expecting all the foreboding warnings, first from my group of girlfriends, then from my family, and finally but certaining the most jarring, from every one of those damn guide books I read before my trip. I was told not to trust the police to keep me safe, not to go to places where I would “surely be hit on,” and, most ferociously, to never go anywhere by myself. Although I understand and appreciate the fact that my loved ones wanted me safe and unharmed while living abroad, the well-meaning warnings had me paranoid and frightened by the time I took off, feeling more timid than elated when I stepped onto that plane, having packed only two pairs of shorts and a shit load of baggie hoodies.

With all of that being said, I will acknowledge that sexism is more than alive and well in Ecuador, especially in regards to the machismo, or toxic masculinity. This type of sexism is more open and unapologetic, in my experiences, such as men obviously and obnoxiously staring at me wherever I went, regardless of the fact that I was wearing jeans and loose-fitting tees and would shoot them dirty glances all the time. In one lens, I understand what my friends were trying to tell me when they asked me to cover up; some men (falsely) believe that a woman who wears less clothing wants more attention from men and will (sometimes) mean more men will give a woman (unwanted) attention depending on how much skin she is showing. As a feminist, I hate this rationale and double standard, and as an anthropology major, I understand that this is how a lot of men, both in the U.S. and Ecuador, think. In my experience, more men in Ecuador think along these lines, but I have also encountered plenty of men in the States who think similarly. But returning to comments my friends would make, it always made me cringe whenever they, or any of the other white female participants in my group, talked about how sexist the men in Ecuador were for two reasons. One because this fixture on how bad the sexism in Ecuador is tends to paint, especially for the male participants in my program, the sexism in the U.S. as non-existent or less harmful than the sexism in Ecuador and consequently white washes the ugly and ever persistent misogyny inhabiting our own country since its founding days. And two, more importantly, it is a group of white women criticizing and referring to a group of non-white men and their culture as inappropriate, crude, and dangerous. Throughout the history of the Western world, especially in the United States, men of color have been portrayed by White men as promiscuous, lustful, and threatening, their sole motivation being testosterone and acting as though they were animals around white women. This mindset that men of color, specifically Black and Latino men, are irresponsible and untrustworthy around white women indicates three things: One – White men are responsible and trustworthy around white women by nature, which is an inaccurate, presumptuous, and dangerous assertion for the very women these white “saviors” are claiming to protect. Two – The race of these men, specifically the darker their skin, translates as a measure for the content of their character, which as Dr. King Jr. famously declared, is not a correlation nor causation. And three – That white women are helpless, delicate flowers who need white men to protect them from Black and Latino men, reinforcing both the patriarchy and the systemic racism of the Western world.

While I don’t believe the majority of those white women meant any harm or intentionally were trying to follow racial stereotypes, I believe that this racism is so ingrained in our psyches that it’s taken as a truth instead of being distinguished as an issue of cultural differences as opposed to hard-wired genetics. Did I receive more unwanted attention as a white female foreigner in a country of mainly people of color than I do in the States? Yes, a thousand percent, because I was the “exotic foreign beauty” who fit the Western model of beauty almost to a “t” (and since the culture of Latin America considers brunettes blonde because their hair is not black, the people of Ecuador thought I fit the mold perfectly). Part of this is simply being a female traveler outside of my home country; the other part is that due to the United States’ dominance of the beauty market, American women are held as the standard of Western beauty and thought to be gorgeous and alluring, hence receiving an additional amount of unwanted attention. Again, although I don’t like this logic or agree with herding together a group of women based on ethnicity and race like animals, I am well aware of the fact that American men do the same thing with women from non-white nations and that, more critically, this is where my interdisciplinary identity makes things complicated.

Obviously as a woman, I face unchecked discrimination every damn day and have a whole list of concerns whenever and wherever I travel, especially in a country where I’m not familiar with the culture and the language spoken is not my first. On the other hand, as a white, middle class American who attends one of the most elite (and most expensive) universities in the United States, I have very little room to criticize a culture other than my own, even more so a non-white culture, due to my insane amount of privilege. As United States citizens, we are incredibly accustomed to having our culture and ideas accepted as universal truths instead of societal constructs built by our very own hands, even more so in a world where globalization has taken over and most Americans are enraged when they go abroad and can’t find a single soul who speaks English. In this way, Americans look at other cultures as “behind,” “underdeveloped,” or “more sexist/racist/etc.” as opposed to having a different kind of sexism, racism or any other -ism that, in many ways, is no worse than the bigotories in the U.S. Yet this lack of acceptance of other non-western and non-white cultures causes us to paint the world outside America as dark and gray while simultaneously white-washing the bigotries in the United States. 

This, thus, presents us with an opportunity to grow, not only as feminists but as United States and global citizens. At the core of feminism is the belief that all people, despite physical and biological differences, are equal and deserve equal rights, meaning that feminists are not solely advocates for the most privileged of women, but rather for all women and all marginalized peoples, including men of color from every culture, creed, race, and ethnicity. As white American women, we have the ability to use our gender to emphasize with women everywhere and the discriminations they face and the responsibility to use our privileged nationality and race to accept differences in cultural sexism and support those women instead of tearing down and derogatorily labeling those men. It is not our place to criticize the culture when we have the opportunity to empower the women of that culture to overcome the obstacles that they decide are sexist in their own culture.