Reddit mentions of Women, Race, & Class

Yes. Women perpetuate patriarchy and gender norms. Women police each other. It’s not new. Just because women can be as toxic in perpetuating these norms doesn’t mean men don’t benefit from it...

Edit: typo

Edit 2: hey! My first silver! Thank you, kind stranger!

I know these comments are always fairly controversial and spark a lot of conversation. It’s a complicated subject and though I tried I feel it’s hard to respond without either being overly simplistic or falling into lengthy responses (not fun on mobile!) or both.

Suffice it to say I likely won’t be responding to most of any—but I’m reading all the comments (good bad and the ugly) and appreciate those polite responses.

Regarding feminism/patriarchy and such there’s a lot of great resources. So if you have genuine curiosity to learn more, here are a couple sources that were helpful for me:

Video Lecture: Masculinity and Male Socialization

Book: Women, Race and Class, by Angela Davis

Whew, okay. Pulled out my actual computer to answer this.
So, a lot of what I could recommend isn't short stuff you could read in an afternoon because 1. it's depressing as fuck, and 2. it's likely heavy with the sheer volume of references wherein at least one book attempts to bludgeon you with the facts that "this was depressing as fuck." Frequent breaks or alternating history-related books with fiction/poetry/other topics is rather recommended from my experience. Can't remember if I got onto this topic through Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States or Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong or just some random book found in the library.

The very clean cut, textbook Wikipedia definition of "sundown town", aka "Don't let the sun set (down) on you here.", (Ref: BlackThen.com), is:
> sometimes known as sunset towns or gray towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of segregation by enforcing restrictions excluding people of other races via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence.

For my intro into the subject however, read Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America. This is a very emotionally draining, mentally exhausting book though, frequently with lists of atrocities in paragraph form. I think it's an important read, one which frankly should've been covered my senior year of highschool or so, but it's a difficult one. Also on my reading list is The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration which is a surprising and sneakily hopeful title for such a depressing topic, so only guessing the narration may be somewhat more accessible.

Also, 'cause I totally didn't run to my kindle app to list out titles before fully reading your post, here's some below, and relisted one above, by timeline placement, best as can be figured. These might not be the best on each topic, but they're the ones available to my budget at the time and some are still on my reading list.

The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion

• Timeline 1831
  
  Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America
  
• Timeline post-Civil War in 1865 through the 1920's, with thousands of towns still containing obvious racial divides (see "wrong side of the tracks", etc) and sometimes still utilizing laws to push black folks out of neighborhoods today.
  
  The Mis-Education of the Negro
  
• 1933, please see the book later down the list "Brainwashed"
  
  At the Dark End of the Street: A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
  
• 1944 through the 1970's
  
  Assata
  
• 1960's through 1970's, about Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard)
  
  Revolutionary Suicide
  
• 1940's through late 1980's, about Huey P. Newton, Black Panther co-founder.
  
  Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
  
• 1980's through ?
  
  Sister Outsider
  
• 1980's essays on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class
  
  See also:
  
  Black Street Speech: Its History, Structure, and Survival
  
  Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis
  
• "A powerful study of the women's liberation movement in the U.S., from abolitionist days to the present, that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders."
  
  Black Feminist Thought
  
• Supposedly there's a correct and incorrect version of this with severely cut or modified chapters, but not sure which is which.
  
  Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations by Bell Hooks
  
• Contemporary essays
  
  Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority
  
• from slavery through today, how black people have been taught they're inferior to the point they help drag themselves and each other down
  
  The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
  
• Supposed to be really good, haven't read this yet.
  
  
  
  
  

welp, it depends on what facet of feminism you'd like to learn about. at it's core, it's just, women and men are equal, yeah? that's not hateful. the feminist concepts of gender equality and patriarchy are things that effect everyone, of whatever gender. the 'patriarchy' is the theory that, in this culture, men generally hold more power than women, institutionally and socially. [a lot of us prefer the word kyriarchy.] you, personally, may not feel like you hold any power in your day to day life, and you prolly don't. you're probably not rich, maybe you're not even white. so you probably don't feel super powerful. and no one's saying you are. but statistically, you have a higher chance of holding a position of power in your life. be it a cop, a ceo, or a president. you are also less statistically likely to be raped, to have your intellect doubted, etc etc. and feminism is just about breaking down the reasons our society works that way, recognizing them, and trying to get people to change those bad ways.

men aren't exempt from these issues! men are afraid of acting in ways that culture has 'feminized'. being afraid, being weak, asking for help from others are 'unmanly' practices. so when a man is abused or mentally suffering, culture tells you to suck it up or shut up. your only outlet is anger and violence, but you'll also be punished if you act too angry and violent, cause then you're being 'hysterical' and men also keep their cool.

feminists work to end pressures and violence against men and boys as well. so, i'm curious what you've read that would make you think otherwise. there are some writer who were respected in the 70s, who wrote some 'hateful' things. andrea dworkin and janice raymond come to mind. but most 'third wave feminists' [that's the current 'wave'] disagree with those things now. feminism, like science and psychology, is not a religion. it is a sphere of people working towards a common goal. many of those people are going to disagree on things, and some ideas will be left behind and moved on from. so, when you say feminism is hateful, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. because some people who called themselves feminists were hateful, the idea of women's equality is hateful? that's sorta like saying 'science is worthless because it's not always right'. philosophical and social research and theory doesn't really work that way.

if you'd like to read whole books about the subject, i'd try these:

backlash by susan faludi
women, race, and class by angela davis
the sexual contract by carole pateman

[note, some of these are kinda old, but that's because this is fairly basic, intro stuff. newest stuff is usually about queer theory, the prison industrial complex, etc, because most of the 'women should be equal to men' stuff is kinda a given. :p]