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Kyla Schuller: Counterhistories of Feminism — Transcript

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0:02Welcome and happy New Year. I'm Roland
0:04Greene, director of the Stanford
0:06Humanities Center,
0:07and all of us here are delighted that
0:09you're joining us for our first event of
0:112022.
0:13Today's discussion is part of our Inside
0:15the Center series, which highlights the
0:17research and writing of our current and
0:19recent fellows.
0:21Our purpose in the series is always to
0:23gather attention to some of the most
0:25provocative, groundbreaking, and unusual
0:27work that is happening at the SHC.
0:31Before we begin, I'd like to mention
0:33that real-time captioning is available.
0:35Please click on the closed caption icon
0:37at the bottom where it says CC
0:40to start or stop viewing the captioning.
0:43The up arrow adjacent to the CC icon
0:46permits you to show subtitles, view the
0:48full transcript, and adjust captions as
0:51needed.
0:53I assumed the role of director of the
0:55center a little over 2 years ago, and at
0:58that time,
0:59and continuing despite the pandemic, one
1:01of my priorities was and has been to
1:04reinforce our distinctive office at
1:07Stanford as a research institute with
1:10public-facing programs.
1:12The SHC is unusual among
1:14university-based humanities centers in
1:17that we both house a large number of
1:19fellows working on their own projects.
1:21This year, we have more than 50 of them
1:23working under our roof, and present
1:26events like this one that are open to
1:28everyone.
1:30These two sides of our agenda enrich
1:32each other. The fellows find their work
1:33enlivened by the visiting speakers,
1:35while the visitors encounter an audience
1:37that includes not only Stanford scholars
1:39and students, but many others who have
1:41met for the year at this intellectual
1:44crossroads.
1:45You who now join us online are part of
1:47that audience, too.
1:49No doubt some of you are former fellows
1:51who now for the first time are able to
1:52reconnect with the center
1:54intellectually.
1:56A glance at the reservations shows me
1:58that a record number of former fellows
2:00are here today and as a former fellow
2:02myself, I am so pleased to have you
2:04back.
2:05Others are Stanford alumni or simply
2:08thinking people who've discovered what
2:10we do. Over the past 2 years, we've
2:12launched several series and initiatives
2:14of which this is one and we intend to
2:17keep providing you with events like
2:18these that will enlarge your horizons.
2:21Before I introduce our speaker, I'd like
2:24to remind you that today's presentation
2:25is being recorded and will be available
2:27on our website in the coming days.
2:30Also, if you would like to submit a
2:31question to the speaker,
2:33please use the Q&A feature in Zoom and
2:36we'll do our best to get to it following
2:38the lecture.
2:40Now, I'd like to extend a warm welcome
2:42to Professor Kyra Shuler who was a
2:45Humanity Center fellow during the
2:472017-18
2:48academic year.
2:50Today, she'll be discussing her new and
2:52acclaimed book, The Trouble with White
2:54Women, a counter history of feminism.
2:57It's an insightful history of the
2:59struggle between white feminism and a
3:01long vibrant tradition of intersectional
3:05feminism that overthrows supremacist
3:07politics of all kinds.
3:09The New York Times Book Review praised
3:11The Trouble with White Women as
3:13mesmerizing, a welcome addition to the
3:15feminist canon and the work of a gifted
3:17storyteller.
3:19The book was published last year and as
3:21you would expect, translations are
3:23forthcoming.
3:25Professor Shuler is also the author of
3:27the monograph, The Biopolitics of
3:29Feeling, Race, Sex, and Science in the
3:3119th Century, published in 2018. She is
3:35associate professor and undergraduate
3:37director of Women's, Gender, and
3:39Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University
3:42in New Brunswick.
3:43She is a recipient of fellowships from
3:45the American Council of Learned
3:47Societies, the University of California
3:49Humanities Research Institute, as well
3:51as of course the Stanford Humanities
3:53Center. She writes for academic and
3:56general audience and audiences and her
3:58work for the public has appeared in the
4:00nation, Slate, The Rumpus, the Los
4:03Angeles Review of Books, and other
4:05venues.
4:07Kyla, thank you for joining us today. It
4:09is an honor for the SHC to welcome you
4:12back virtually.
4:17Thank you so much for having me.
4:20It's a pleasure to be here.
4:24And
4:27we've all heard that nearly 50% of white
4:31women voted for Trump twice
4:35in 2016
4:36and also in 2020.
4:39We've also heard that
4:41nearly 50% or over 50% of white women
4:46have voted for far-right
4:50even white supremacist candidates in
4:53state elections in places like Alabama
4:56and Georgia.
4:58Yet, I want to suggest that those
5:00numbers of nearly 50% of white women
5:04voting for far-right candidates
5:07don't actually capture the full scale of
5:10the trouble.
5:12In the 2016 election, Ivanka Trump on
5:16the campaign trail said, "My father is a
5:19feminist."
5:21Sociologist Jessie Daniels has found
5:25that white supremacist online
5:27communities like Stormfront have regular
5:31and active conversations about feminism,
5:35where many participants testify to their
5:39their feminist principles
5:41such as belief in sex equality and even
5:44support for abortion in some cases.
5:48One of the most surprising things that I
5:50found was that in a Pew Research poll in
5:55the summer of 2020,
5:58that 42%
6:00of women today who vote Republican
6:03regularly
6:04identify as feminists.
6:07And this is what I want to suggest is
6:09the trouble.
6:11The trouble is that many of the
6:15women who are complicit with white
6:18supremacy in its current form and
6:20complicit with a contemporary form of
6:23hard-right politics uh that as far
6:27outside what was recently a mainstream
6:31public position of white supremacy,
6:34that many of these women are not just
6:36women. They identify as feminists.
6:40And that issue has been overlooked in
6:43the larger hand-wringing over those
6:45infamous numbers of the 50% of white
6:48women voting for these candidates.
6:51So, I wrote this book, The Trouble with
6:53White Women: A Counter-History of
6:55Feminism, because I wanted to understand
6:58how did we get here?
7:00How did we get to the point that
7:03feminism
7:04as a political position
7:06is nonetheless espoused by people on
7:10opposite sides of the political
7:12spectrum, Black Lives Matter organizers
7:15and Stormfront online posters?
7:19And what I found is that in many ways we
7:23were always going to end up here.
7:26That there's been a version of feminism
7:28since its beginnings as an organized
7:30movement in the 1840s in the US that has
7:33long been cozy with racism, capitalism,
7:37and empire.
7:39And of course, the term for that kind of
7:40feminism that has become so popular in
7:44the last few years is white feminism.
7:47I find this term very exciting, um, the
7:50way that it has moved from the pages of
7:53academic journals from the 1990s, and
7:56now you're as likely to see it on uh on
8:00Twitter or online discussion or even on
8:03a handmade sign drawn on cardboard
8:07marched on the street in a protest.
8:10But I also want to understand, and that
8:12and this is the underlying goal of the
8:14book,
8:15to find out what does this term actually
8:18refer to?
8:20Is there something coherent over time
8:23that we could call white feminism?
8:26And what has been organized under this
8:29rubric that is helpful for us to
8:31understand?
8:33And typically, white feminism is defined
8:36as a type of feminism that ignores
8:40people of color and poor women. It's a
8:43feminism that centers the concerns of
8:46middle-class white women, often
8:49typically straight,
8:51and marginalizes and
8:54doesn't attend to everyone else.
8:58But what I found is that typical
9:00definition doesn't go nearly far enough
9:03in helping us grasp the true trouble
9:06with white feminism.
9:08The issue is not that it's a sin of
9:11omission.
9:13The issue with white feminism is
9:14actually that it's an act
9:16of dispossession.
9:19And I'm going to drop in and out a bit
9:21of uh PowerPoint. Um, I just have a a
9:24limited amount of slides so as not to um
9:29not to be a tiny little box in the
9:31middle
9:32of the um
9:33of the screen for most of the
9:34presentation.
9:36But I did put some key information on
9:38the PowerPoint. Um and such as the
9:40overall argument uh of thesis of this
9:43book is that the trouble with white
9:45feminist politics is not what it fails
9:47to address
9:49and whom it leaves out.
9:51The trouble is what it does and whom it
9:54suppresses.
9:56And I found that even the typical
9:58definition of feminism often reinforces
10:02this position of white feminism.
10:05And that typical definition of feminism
10:07is
10:08the belief uh of
10:10a belief in equality
10:12between the sexes.
10:14And that's seemingly straightforward
10:20common sense, right? Of course that
10:23But the problem with equating feminism
10:25with belief in equality of the sexes,
10:28full stop, is that it then puts gender
10:31above all. And it sidelines all other
10:34forms of structural injustice.
10:38For example, what happened to systemic
10:40racism in that formulation?
10:43What happens to the wild wealth
10:45disparities of contemporary capitalism?
10:48What happens to climate collapse? Aren't
10:51these also feminist issues?
10:54But white feminism is a politics. It is
10:57not a It's not a position. It's not an
11:00identity.
11:01It does If one is white, of course you
11:03are not necessarily a white feminist.
11:06Instead, a white feminist is one who
11:08believes that gender inequality is the
11:12central and potentially even singular
11:15issue of justice we're facing today.
11:19And that all other struggles toward
11:21justice
11:23take secondary positions to this central
11:27campaign
11:28of white feminism.
11:31And that at at its worst, white feminism
11:34white feminism becomes a politics that's
11:36fighting to get women to the top. Right?
11:39Um
11:40And a a famous line of someone like
11:42Sheryl Sandberg, who says, "We'll have
11:44true equality when women lead half our
11:47countries and half our companies and men
11:50lead half our homes."
11:53But this framework of getting women to
11:55the top ends up leaning in to all the
11:59other inequities that have created that
12:02hierarchy in the first place.
12:05But happily, there's long been a
12:07counter-history.
12:08A different kind of feminism that has
12:10never identified sex equality as its
12:13central and primary goal.
12:15And instead fights for justice on
12:17multiple fronts. And that feminism was,
12:21of course, named intersectional feminism
12:24by the black feminist legal scholar
12:25Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.
12:29But there's a much longer history of
12:31what later came to be called
12:33intersectional feminism. And that's what
12:35I also show in this book.
12:38That
12:39where where we're paying attention to
12:40the central white feminist icons like
12:43Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
12:45Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Betty Friedan,
12:49all the way to Sheryl Sandberg,
12:51that we're re-centering this feminism
12:54that puts sex equality above all,
12:57um
12:57and
12:59further marginalizing
13:01a feminism that has been led by women of
13:04color and fighting for cap for
13:07um
13:08redressing inequities of capitalism,
13:12of racial injustice, of homophobia and
13:15transphobia,
13:16of disability
13:18hierarchies and others. Yet, that often
13:21hasn't risen to the level of feminist
13:24history.
13:26It hasn't displaced those central icons
13:30of white feminism.
13:32So, in the project of this book is that
13:34I deliberately bring those um overlooked
13:37and forgotten histories to light.
13:40And each chapter pairs two women in
13:44struggle within the same sub-movement of
13:49the larger feminist project. And here's
13:52a look at the table of contents.
13:54Um and in this way, I'm doing two things
13:58um
13:58as as a methodology for this project.
14:02And the first is synthesis.
14:05Many of the stories of especially of the
14:07black feminists that I tell such as
14:09Francis Harper, Harriet Jacobs, Pauli
14:12Murray, these stories have been
14:14uncovered carefully by the work of black
14:17feminist historians
14:19for decades and decades.
14:21Yet, often their work has not been fully
14:25um incorporated within what is
14:28considered the history of feminism. So,
14:31I'm doing synthesis work to bring um
14:35the research of these reader of the of
14:37these um
14:38scholars into a public eye and to
14:41incorporate it into a larger um
14:45re-narration of how we understand
14:47feminist history in the US.
14:50My goal here is to create something
14:51that's highly readable
14:53um readable after work even
14:56um
14:57and also teachable. Something that we
14:59could bring to our undergraduate
15:02classrooms.
15:03That helps translate feminist theory to
15:07a broader audience.
15:09And I'm also pushing forward. I'm
15:12thinking of intersectional feminism in
15:14the way that we now understand it as a
15:16position articulated by black,
15:18indigenous, Latina, and trans feminist
15:22that undoes some of the central
15:24paradigms of the sex binary,
15:28of racial injustice,
15:31and even of the liberal humanist project
15:33that puts rationalism and reason above
15:36all.
15:38And I do this work by telling this
15:40history through these paired stories.
15:42Showing how chapter by chapter, how on
15:45the ground
15:47women were in struggle
15:49in the same movement, whether it is
15:52abolition, beginning of women's rights,
15:55the the rights of indigenous people in
15:58the midst of assimilation campaigns,
16:01birth control, civil rights,
16:05the role of trans women in lesbian
16:07feminism in the '70s, and all the way up
16:10to contemporary understandings of
16:12women's leadership.
16:14That all along, while there's been a
16:17dominant white feminist position that
16:19has often absorbed most of the oxygen in
16:22the room,
16:23that there's been a different kind of
16:24feminism the whole time pushing back.
16:28And this structure of it reveals that
16:31white feminists were not just products
16:34of their time, right? They made
16:35deliberate choices over and over again
16:38to center
16:40them themselves and to reinforce
16:42whiteness on their campaign for women's
16:46rights.
16:48I'm also careful to not tell this as a
16:51story of simple heroes and villains.
16:54This isn't a project about purity
16:56politics.
16:58It's not a goal of saying, "Here are
17:00some white feminists who we should toss
17:03in the dustbin of history and never
17:05return to."
17:06One of the striking things about doing
17:08this research is just how captivating
17:11all of these feminist activists were.
17:13And that's partly why they were able to
17:15be so successful and gain so many
17:19um
17:19uh
17:20you know follow followers and drive so
17:23many people to the movement in their
17:24time.
17:25Um so for example, Elizabeth Cady
17:27Stanton
17:29um
17:29would you know had the the skill and the
17:33renegade charm um to be able to say
17:35things like once she was giving a
17:39lecture
17:40um she was heckled a lot by a man in the
17:42front row.
17:44And at the end, he stood up and said,
17:47"My wife has given me eight sons.
17:50How could you possibly say that her life
17:53has been less important because she
17:55hasn't been a part of the political
17:57process?"
17:59And Elizabeth Cady Stanton just stepped
18:01back and looked him up and down head to
18:04toe and said,
18:06"I've met few men in my life worth
18:09repeating eight times."
18:12So this is someone of incredible acumen
18:16and publicity skill.
18:18And yet at the same time, she is one who
18:22when
18:24in the aftermath of reconstruction
18:26when
18:28black men were were were received right
18:30to vote and white women did not, she
18:34turned a full scale of her rhetorical
18:38wit
18:39toward racism
18:41and made extensive speeches about um the
18:46using plenty of of racist derogatory
18:48terms about all the uh
18:51inferior people who were now had more
18:54rights than the pure white wives of the
19:00nation's leading citizens.
19:02So this isn't a matter of her inability
19:05to see the larger issue of racism.
19:08It's not about a
19:10um
19:11a shortcoming or an ignorance or a
19:14blindness. Um it is about a deliberate
19:16politics that chose to lean into racism
19:20in order to fight for white women's
19:23rights.
19:28In doing this work, I was surprised to
19:31see just how interlocked this the
19:34struggles
19:35between these two paired feminist issues
19:38were.
19:40That the the intersectional feminism and
19:44white feminism growing up side by side,
19:47sometimes in collaboration,
19:49often in tension, and sometimes in full
19:53conflict uh was happening beat by beat
19:56across the last 170 years. So, I'll give
20:00you two examples.
20:02In the second chapter on Harriet Beecher
20:05Stowe and Harriet Jacobs, I talk about
20:09how
20:11Harriet Jacobs' amazing
20:14um autobiography,
20:17Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,
20:19which is the first
20:21um
20:22autobiography published by a black woman
20:25in the United States, how it came to be.
20:29And in the beginning, she wasn't sure
20:31she wanted to write her own story to the
20:35world um for multiple reasons.
20:40Um and she in instead, in the wake of
20:43the success of
20:46Uncle Tom's Cabin, had an ally approach
20:49Harriet Beecher Stowe with her story
20:52and said, "Would you be willing to work
20:55with Harriet Jacobs to tell her
20:58incredible story of how, among many
21:01other things, she escaped from slavery
21:04in part by ha- hiding in an attic crawl
21:07space so small that she couldn't even
21:10stand up for seven full years.
21:13Less than two blocks from the house of
21:15her enslaver before she could find an
21:18opportunity to go north.
21:21And Harriet Beecher Stowe responded by
21:23saying,
21:24"Thank you very much for this story.
21:26It's fascinating. I'm going to use it in
21:29my next book. Could you please verify
21:32its accuracy before I publish it
21:35myself."
21:37Harriet Jacobs was so offended
21:40that she started considering, "Maybe I
21:42have to write my own story."
21:45And meanwhile, Harriet Beecher Stowe
21:47went off to Liverpool where Uncle Tom's
21:49Cabin was well on its way to being the
21:51second best-selling book behind the
21:53Bible of the entire 19th century.
21:57And
21:58she read all these glowing accolades
22:00about Harriet Beecher Stowe in the local
22:03New York papers.
22:04And got further incensed and decided,
22:07"I'm going to write this story myself."
22:10And she did in the attic of her
22:13employer's house
22:14at night while the children went to bed
22:17that she was worked as a nanny.
22:19And she wrote her the the book herself
22:21and ended up publishing it herself when
22:23she couldn't find a publisher willing to
22:25take on
22:26a book about the sexual abuses of
22:28enslavement.
22:30And this kind of back-and-forth
22:32structure, where it wasn't just that the
22:34white feminist position like Harriet
22:36Beecher Stowe, who quite a dramatically
22:39positioned herself as a savior and
22:43instructor
22:44to the to the enslaved. Wasn't that she
22:47was ignoring the existence of other
22:50women and other kinds of
22:53activists um against slavery.
22:56It was an actual act of dispossession
22:59that her she wanted to
23:01take that story from Jacob's and we have
23:04Jacob's story in part because she was so
23:08incensed by realizing that she wasn't
23:10going to find a white male ally that she
23:13needed in Harriet Beecher Stowe.
23:16But meanwhile, all of these stories have
23:19huge ramifications beyond the level of
23:21discourse.
23:23After the Civil War,
23:25Harriet Beecher Stowe and her husband
23:27bought the largest orange plantation in
23:31Florida.
23:33And they moved there during the winters
23:36in part to escape Connecticut winters
23:39and in part because their goal was that
23:42Harriet Beecher Stowe wanted herself to
23:44civilize the formerly enslaved.
23:47Uncle Tom's Cabin is a lot about the
23:49role of white women in training their
23:53domestic helpers.
23:55Training the
23:57um the the people they enslave and
23:59giving them good morals or bad morals.
24:03That project was so deep for her that
24:05she was one of the many white women
24:07after reconstruction who themselves went
24:09south with the goal of disciplining and
24:12saving the formerly enslaved.
24:16Meanwhile, Harriet Beecher Stowe I mean
24:18I mean meanwhile Harriet Jacobs and her
24:19daughter started an extensive mutual aid
24:22project to bring
24:25clothes and shoes and blankets and other
24:29resources to those self-emancipating
24:32um
24:33and leaving the South in the wake of the
24:35Civil War.
24:38These kinds of structural, not merely
24:41incidental, relationships I between
24:44these two positions of feminism I kept
24:46finding again and again in doing this
24:49research.
24:51And my second example comes from chapter
24:53five in this book about Betty Friedan
24:55and Pauli Murray. And I'm going to read
24:58a short uh
25:00the half-page excerpt directly from the
25:03book.
25:04And this excerpt follows a brief
25:06discussion of how Betty Friedan had been
25:10a socialist activist and labor
25:12journalist in the years before she wrote
25:15The Feminine Mystique, which is famously
25:19her book about liberating the
25:21middle-class housewife.
25:25Friedan and other middle-class white
25:27feminists identify sex as the only thing
25:30holding them back from flourishing.
25:33Friedan saw women as a class unto
25:35themselves, uniquely marginalized in
25:38relation to middle-class white men.
25:41"My early political experience writing
25:44for the so-called working class," she
25:46contended, "had taught me that ideas,
25:49style, change in America comes from the
25:52middle class."
25:54The possibility of interrogating other
25:56vectors of power dropped away.
25:59And middle-class women became, in the
26:02tradition of white feminists before her,
26:04a single axis, a discrete half of an
26:07analogy, a population to be defended.
26:13But Pauli Murray knew that black women
26:15lived their lives at the confluence of
26:17Jim Crow, Jane Crow, and capitalism.
26:22And that if civil rights were to mean
26:23anything, protections from race and sex
26:27discrimination in employment and other
26:29arenas were necessary.
26:32In the mid-1950s, for example, Murray
26:35held two law degrees.
26:38And she had published an important book
26:40on state segregation laws
26:42that attorney and future Supreme Court
26:45Justice Thurgood Marshall referred to as
26:48the Bible.
26:50She even occasionally spent weekends at
26:52her friend Eleanor Roosevelt's Hudson
26:54River Retreat.
26:56On the strength of her creative writing,
26:59she had just become the first
27:00African-American to be awarded a
27:02residency at the MacDowell Colony,
27:05where she befriended James Baldwin when
27:07he arrived at the famed artist retreat a
27:10few weeks later.
27:12Murray would publish her first
27:13autobiography, an account of her
27:16family's history, in 1956.
27:19Yet, despite all this achievement, she
27:22simply couldn't find enough
27:23organizations willing to hire a black
27:26female attorney, nor could she support
27:28herself as a writer and poet.
27:31She wasn't earning a living,
27:33so her literary agent found her work as
27:35a typist.
27:37Murray anonymously prepared the
27:39manuscripts of other authors.
27:42In 1955 and 1956,
27:46Murray regularly typed for Betty
27:48Friedan.
27:52bell hooks, of course, famously showed
27:55in the 1980s that Betty Friedan's
27:58project of liberating the housewife
28:00relied on sacrificing
28:04the work of others, especially the
28:06working-class women who Friedan
28:08recommended be hired to do the
28:11groceries, to do the laundry, to do the
28:14housecleaning, and to help with the
28:16childcare.
28:18What I found is that the position of
28:22sacrificing
28:24the work of other women and other
28:26feminists
28:27in the life of someone like Friedan,
28:29again, wasn't just incidental to the
28:32feminism.
28:33She actually would have actually was a
28:36structural position of someone like
28:37Pauli Murray, who she went on a decade
28:39later and co-founded now with Pauli
28:42Murray. But, a decade earlier, Murray
28:45was working as her typist, and Betty
28:47Friedan likely never even knew.
28:52When I turned to the Betty Friedan
28:54chapter in particular, I will admit that
28:56I was relatively nervous because I
28:58thought, "What can I say that's new
29:01about this form of feminism that
29:03famously is about liberating the middle
29:06house middle-class housewife and had not
29:09much to say about all other women?"
29:13But as I read Betty Friedan's Feminine
29:16Mystique, you know, for the first time
29:18since college,
29:21I found the lens that I was going to use
29:25for the book, which is
29:27understanding the role of white feminism
29:30as a kind of biopolitics.
29:34What I saw Betty Friedan doing is
29:37portraying housewives as suffering from
29:39a fatal disease,
29:41as weakening America,
29:44as being so invested in their role as
29:47mothers,
29:49and so shrunken in their own identity
29:51development.
29:54She argues
29:56that this is pathological. She famously
29:58says that the
29:59that the um middle-class home is a
30:02cultural concentration camp.
30:05Overarchingly, her metaphors throughout
30:07the book are about a biological weakness
30:11that housewives are inflicting upon the
30:13nation because they are curbing their
30:16own development and their investment in
30:18their own femininity.
30:20And that's when I understood that white
30:24feminism as a larger project is a
30:26project of
30:29not just individualism
30:32and not just reinforcing
30:35discrete
30:37inequities
30:38of such as racial and sexual injustice,
30:42but as a larger project of
30:45biopolitical
30:48um inequality.
30:50And so, what do I What I mean by
30:51biopolitics is two things.
30:54Oh, and
30:55my thinking about biopolitics comes
30:58especially from Michel Foucault, of
31:00course, but also um from the work of
31:04others who look at structural injustice
31:06in the contemporary period, uh like Ruha
31:09Benjamin,
31:11um
31:12and uh Ruth Wilson Gilmore in
31:13particular.
31:15And these two These two central elements
31:17of biopolitics are are the first of
31:20having a central um biological base
31:23theory of politics.
31:25The idea that to govern and to govern
31:28well is to maximize the biological
31:31economic potential of the population.
31:34It's to understand humans as primarily
31:36organic beings and as a species
31:41for whom it is the task of governance to
31:45allow us and encourage us, foster us to
31:49grow into the most healthy, productive,
31:54vital version of the species that we
31:56could be.
31:58And the second part of biopolitics is
32:00how this actually plays out in practice.
32:03And that's by That is the biopolitical
32:06governance approaches a bifurcated mode
32:10of standing the population. Some are
32:13selected to thrive, and those some are
32:16generally the white, wealthier classes.
32:20While others are designated
32:23contagions
32:26at worst, or at best a exploitable labor
32:30plot labor supply that is there for
32:33their vitality to be extracted.
32:37They're there to enable the other part
32:40of the population to thrive and to
32:42flourish.
32:43But for this mass of population, the
32:46goal of governance is really just to
32:49extract and let die.
32:52This is the politics of disposability.
32:55Um that
32:56uh this this has been so helpful as a
32:59rubric inside and outside the academy in
33:01helping us understand how we got to
33:03position that we're in like today where
33:07in some of the largest cities in America
33:10the average lifespan in the wealthiest
33:14zip codes is 30 years longer than the
33:17average lifespan in the poorest zip
33:19codes 1 mile away, 2 miles away.
33:23How we got here is a mode of governance
33:26that literally understands some parts of
33:29the population as there for extraction
33:32to support the flourishing of the few.
33:36So white feminism I found is a form of
33:38biopolitics.
33:39It's fighting for white women to be
33:42among the that group chosen to thrive.
33:45And it works by leaning in to letting
33:48others labor and expire when required.
33:54So in retelling this history of white
33:57feminism feminism as this tension
34:00between white feminism and
34:01intersectional feminism, I found that
34:03the traditional models of waves of first
34:06wave feminism, second wave feminism,
34:08third wave feminism weren't really that
34:10useful for me
34:11because they are ways of periodizing
34:14different kinds of white feminism.
34:16Instead I found three major periods that
34:20organized these feminist tensions.
34:24And the first is the period of that I
34:26call civilizing, which was in 19th
34:29century.
34:31And the goal here was for white women
34:33like Alice Fletcher, Harriet Beecher
34:35Stowe,
34:37um Elizabeth Cady Stanton
34:39to
34:42bolster their own political position by
34:45extending the role they had been awarded
34:48in civilization, which is famously to be
34:51the angels of the house, and say, "Well,
34:53if it's our job to raise into moral um
34:59uh adulthood the children of the nation,
35:03why can't we do that for the nation as a
35:05whole?"
35:07And they used that analogy that it was
35:10their role to raise the children quite
35:13literally and understood people of
35:15color, especially Native Americans and
35:18formerly enslaved people as children
35:22relative to
35:24adult whites who were in need of the
35:27maternal instruction
35:29of white women.
35:32And I
35:34look especially at how some of the
35:36feminists of color who are known from
35:39that period
35:41were those who were turned
35:43by white feminists into proxies for
35:46someone who fought only for
35:49um the rights of women
35:51and not for a broad-based goal of
35:54racial, economic, and sex justice.
35:58So, for example, uh I'm going to drop
36:00back into the PowerPoint and show um
36:05some famous text of Sojourner Truth's
36:09speech, uh "Ain't I a Woman?"
36:12Um and this is drawing on research that
36:14historian Nell Irvin Painter uh found in
36:17the 1990s and yet has not fully or even
36:23very partially percolated yet into a
36:26public or sometimes even academic sphere
36:28of understanding Sojourner Truth.
36:31So Sojourner Truth is
36:33famously a women's rights activist
36:36who supposedly gave an important speech
36:39where she said in um
36:42in the early 1850s, "Ain't I a woman?"
36:46And the opening line of this speech is
36:48what I have here on the slide.
36:51And it has since gone down in history to
36:53this day
36:54um as
36:56Sojourner Truth being our most one of
36:58our two most visible black feminists of
37:01the 19th century. The other, of course,
37:03being Harriet Tubman.
37:06Yet, this speech was written down by
37:08Frances Gage, who was a white woman in
37:10the early 1860s.
37:12A good 12 years after Sojourner Truth
37:16actually gave this speech.
37:18We have another transcript, though, that
37:20Nell Irvin Painter found
37:22that was printed just a few weeks after
37:25Sojourner Truth's speech and printed it
37:28in an anti-slavery black newspaper.
37:31And this is the opening line from that
37:33original transcript. She says, "May I
37:36say a few words? I want to say a few
37:39words about this matter."
37:42Sojourner Truth was from upstate New
37:44York. Her first language was low Dutch.
37:48She never spoke a southern dialect
37:51anything like it.
37:52Yet, the version of Sojourner Truth that
37:54we have inherited today is often this
37:57made-up version. It was codified by
38:00Frances Gage and then especially by
38:03Elizabeth Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
38:05Susan B. Anthony when they printed
38:07Frances Gage's version in their history
38:10of women's suffrage.
38:12So even often when we think we're
38:15telling a counter history of white
38:18feminism,
38:19the version that we've received and has
38:21been accepted over the decades and
38:24centuries
38:25is often a palatable version that
38:27produces
38:29or a palatable a white palatable version
38:31that produces a very distinct version
38:35of feminism
38:37from
38:38what was actually articulated at the
38:40time. In this case, Sojourner Truth was
38:42literally transformed into a plantation
38:44mammy figure instead of the broad-based
38:49race
38:51and economic
38:53and gender activist that she was in the
38:5519th century.
38:58The second period I look at is
39:00what I call cleansing and that's from
39:02the night around 1900 to 1980.
39:06And the goal of white feminism in this
39:07period was to
39:11remove so-called contagions from society
39:15so that the chosen could thrive.
39:18And I look especially at Margaret Sanger
39:20Betty Friedan and then at the role of
39:24anti-trans politics in 19
39:2870s and 80s lesbian feminism.
39:31I'll talk a little bit about Sanger as
39:33as a by way of example.
39:35You know, Sanger is such an important
39:38figure now because many have
39:42used her um
39:44many people are more aware of her work
39:47with black communities and the
39:51pro-life movement in particular
39:54has promoted her as an extreme racist as
39:58a way to discredit
40:00birth control and abortion full stop as
40:02projects.
40:05I spent two weeks in the Planned
40:07Parenthood archives at Smith College
40:09because I especially wanted to
40:11understand what exactly were Sanger's
40:14politics Um, and
40:17to what degree was she a eugenicist? And
40:20and
40:24these issues are 10 Singer is actually a
40:27part of how we have reproductive rights
40:30today.
40:31Given that a recent Supreme Court
40:33opinion by Clarence Thomas had 20 pages
40:37referencing Margaret Sanger as a way to
40:39discredit
40:41abortion law. And in particular about
40:43Margaret Sanger's eugenics.
40:47What I found is that Margaret Sanger's
40:49work is absolutely eugenicist. She
40:52argued repeatedly that one in four
40:55people are not of biological worthy
40:59material to reproduce. And that was
41:02something she argued from 1920s to the
41:041950s. It wasn't a temporary
41:08position, and it wasn't something said
41:10only at the height of eugenics in order
41:12to gain popularity.
41:14That said, she wasn't a special she was
41:18a an anti-racist for her time period.
41:20Her work with black communities was
41:22motivated by a desire to bring birth
41:24control to black women.
41:27Yet, she always approached birth control
41:30as a way of one, giving reproductive
41:34autonomy to women she called fit.
41:37And two, eliminating the the
41:41reproductive capacity
41:42of women she called unfit. It was a
41:44project of of disability cleansing
41:49much more than it was a project of of
41:52racism. What I find is that is important
41:56for us for this lens of what biopolitics
41:59can show and what looking at
42:01intersectionality can show is that the
42:04structural
42:06um
42:07the interlocking structures that produce
42:10some population
42:12to be preserved and to even thrive and
42:15some to be sacrificed go way beyond
42:18levels of
42:20racial injustice.
42:23And we need to look at many other
42:24factors of structural equality as part
42:27of what produces this difference in
42:29populations.
42:31And then meanwhile, while white feminism
42:33was producing a cleansing politics,
42:36intersectional feminism was articulating
42:38a coalition politics. And I look at the
42:41work of Dr. Dorothy Ferebee, an
42:43important physician and reproductive
42:45rights activist who actually folded in
42:48birth control and other
42:51reproductive justice and health concerns
42:53into a larger project of racial justice
42:56in the 1940s and 1950s. And it was black
42:59women's organizations that first adopted
43:02public positions of support supporting
43:04birth control. But they did so not for
43:07the goal of
43:09preventing the unfit from reproducing,
43:12but because they saw birth control as
43:14part of a larger goal of what is now
43:17called reproductive justice. The fight's
43:19for three things, not just the right to
43:22prevent pregnancy,
43:23but also the right to
43:26have kids in the first place,
43:28especially in conditions of poverty,
43:31and three, the right to raise kids in a
43:34healthy environment.
43:36The white feminist position articulated
43:37by Sanger was essentially about
43:40preventing pregnancy.
43:42A more broad-based intersectional
43:43feminist position has been about a
43:46larger goal of reproductive justice,
43:48which includes being able to support
43:51kids that one does have, especially if
43:54not from the middle classes.
43:57And then the last frame is looking at
43:59the contemporary period about
44:01optimizing, that looks at the how the
44:05chosen at this point in neoliberalism
44:08are being targeted not just to thrive
44:11but to optimize and Sheryl Sandberg
44:14being the most famous example of that.
44:18While meanwhile people like Alexandria
44:20Ocasio-Cortez and others are fighting
44:23for a kind of collective action. That
44:26doesn't seek to optimize individual
44:29chosen few
44:31but instead call for broad-based
44:35structural reform.
44:37And
44:38in looking at this frame of biopolitics
44:42I found that
44:45in its
44:46its goal is essentially working at the
44:48level where the horizon is capitalist
44:51modernity.
44:52And the goal becomes optimizing the
44:54self.
44:55But intersectional feminism
44:57the most interesting thing I found was
45:00that it works at the level of mind, body
45:03and spirit.
45:04It goes outside the individual
45:06altogether.
45:08And even reconceiving what we think of
45:11as power. And when we're fighting for
45:14power inequality what we're fighting
45:16for. Cuz intersectional feminist the
45:18frame isn't fighting over the biological
45:21realities of ourselves as organic
45:24species.
45:25It's not even about seizing power.
45:28It's about thriving in a full
45:30dimensionality.
45:32About sharing power and conceiving of it
45:34on the scale of the universe. It's
45:37really almost a spiritual vision. Of
45:40understanding
45:42our ourselves as being open to a new
45:46larger way of conceiving of life itself.
45:50That life is not a resource to be
45:51extracted.
45:53But it's a gift to be shared.
45:55Power is not something we can partake of
45:58or seize or monopolize.
46:00It is instead something that radiates
46:03from something much larger than the
46:04human and much larger even than the
46:07planet. And I find that as we're facing
46:10a world of climate collapse, that this
46:13intersectional feminist vision of
46:16understanding power and justice on the
46:18scale of the planetary and even the
46:20universal is a really helpful, hopeful
46:24way forward.
46:26Very quickly, by way of conclusion, I
46:29want to share the
46:33my findings about what is remarkably
46:35consistent about white feminism and
46:38intersectional feminism over time.
46:42And that is across this 170-year span
46:45that I was looking at, I found that
46:47white feminism consistently articulates
46:50a theory
46:52that sexism is the most significant
46:54force of oppression.
46:56And that the discrimination that woman
46:58faces is more similar than different.
47:01Woman become capital W becoming this
47:03universal, a parallel of the capital M
47:06enlightenment man.
47:08That ignores the
47:10um
47:11how we are all cross-cut by many
47:14vectors of power beyond sex.
47:18And it works
47:20in access theory
47:22by working with them through a method of
47:23extraction, extracting emotion, energy,
47:27labor power, and even spirit from people
47:31of color and the poor
47:33in order to further shore up the rights
47:36of woman.
47:43And last, it does so with the ultimate
47:45goal that when woman ascends to the top
47:48of the power hierarchy, that she will
47:51redeem that hierarchy.
47:53The idea is that when woman is in charge
47:57of
47:59um say
48:01uh corporate capitalism, it'll be a
48:03gentler corporate corporate capitalism.
48:05Um Kirsten Gillibrand famously
48:09um gave a
48:10a joke a few years ago on the campaign
48:13trail where she said, "If it had been
48:15Lehman sisters, not Lehman brothers, in
48:182008, we wouldn't have had the financial
48:20collapse."
48:22Um this is that that this is that
48:24fantasy, um which actually was a a
48:26repeated joke she gave from somebody
48:28else. Um
48:30that woman will actually redeem that
48:32hierarchy once she's on top.
48:35But intersectional feminism has a quite
48:37distinct theory, method, and goal. Um
48:41the theory it works with is that the
48:43vantage of black women and others who
48:47are pinned to the bottom of the
48:48hierarchy
48:50best illuminates the extent and effects
48:52of power.
48:55A core it's not a project about
48:57identity. It's a project about analyzing
49:01power.
49:02And understanding that we we analyze
49:05power from the bottom, not from the top,
49:08if we really want to understand all the
49:11different interlocking pieces that make
49:14up
49:15modern social worlds.
49:19It works the method of building alliance
49:21and solidarity across social positions
49:25to dismantle structural inequality.
49:28Instead of extracting
49:30from the more marginalized, it works
49:32through
49:34building across identity and coalition,
49:37and often through linking up people uh
49:40in positions of a lot of power with peo-
49:45people and insights from those who are
49:48quite marginalized to produce
49:51entirely new kinds of political
49:53formations on the public scene.
49:57And last, um,
49:58it works with the goal of fundamentally
50:00redistributing resources to create more
50:03equitable systems that serve the many
50:05rather than privilege the few. And then
50:07I find this to be such a useful way of
50:09understanding feminism going forward.
50:12It's not about equality between the
50:14sexes, it's a broad-based platform about
50:18fundamentally recreating systems to
50:22serve the many rather than liberate and
50:26prioritize the few.
50:32So, as a final thought, um, I'll leave
50:34you with the with the goal of
50:39a structural transformation that
50:41produces a thriving for all. I'm really
50:43inspired by one of the essential
50:45messages of Robin Wall Kimmerer's
50:48book,
50:49Braiding Sweetgrass, where she says over
50:52and over again, mutual. Right? True
50:55flourishing is not that which is
50:57produced by biopolitics, where you get a
50:59feminist CEO by producing a wealth
51:03extraction machine,
51:04um, like we have in contemporary
51:06capitalism. Instead, true flourishing is
51:09about a collective vision that can
51:12actually redistribute
51:15uh, justice and
51:17resources for all. And so, what I hope
51:21and what I hope to offer with this book,
51:23uh, is the is the idea that knowing this
51:26counter-history can help give us a
51:29blueprint and tools for understanding
51:32what it means to fight for a collective
51:34future.
51:42Thank you, Kayla. That was, uh,
51:45a rich introduction to the book and I'm
51:48sure it will you said a number of things
51:50along the way that I think will prompt
51:53questions from our our very large
51:55audience
51:57and let me just address that audience
51:59for a moment. We've gotten a lot of
52:01questions from you. Um
52:03We are we have uh
52:05uh over 200 people in the audience right
52:07now and you're joining us from
52:09across the US and all the way from uh
52:13Bangkok, Istanbul, Genoa, Brisbane and
52:17many other places. I will do my best to
52:19get to as many questions as I can and if
52:21you haven't yet submitted your question,
52:23please please feel free to do so through
52:25the Q&A function in Zoom.
52:28Um Kyra, I want to I want to ask you a
52:31first a kind of um question about the
52:33book as a whole. Um
52:36You know, in as you know, in places like
52:39the Stanford Humanities Center and in
52:41the humanities generally, we we spend a
52:43certain amount of time these days
52:44thinking about what's called the public
52:46humanities and the trouble with white
52:48women is clearly uh
52:50an exemplary project in the public
52:54humanities uh and uh
52:59I I'm at the same time there is I sense
53:02a movement in your thinking and in your
53:04practice from the first book which came
53:06out only four years ago, the the
53:08biopolitics of feeling and I went back
53:11and I looked at um your
53:14um your little blurb from when you were
53:17a fellow at the Humanities Center only
53:19four years ago
53:20uh in which you describe the current
53:23book
53:24in its uh in its unrealized state and
53:28the description of it there
53:30makes it sound considerably more um
53:34conventionally academic than the way
53:36that the trouble with white women has
53:38emerged onto the scene and I'm wondering
53:41for the benefit of the audience if you
53:42could take us through
53:44the evolution of your thinking about
53:46this project and how you um
53:49in I assume
53:51conceived it along the way somewhere as
53:54uh
53:55moving bridging a kind of academic
53:58project and a kind of public humanities
54:00orientation
54:01and how you went about thinking how you
54:04think about the concept of the public,
54:06your public in a public humanities
54:08sense, how you went about gathering an
54:10audience for this book, and um
54:13uh how you uh you know, how you uh
54:17how how how it turned out the way it
54:18did.
54:20Yeah, thank you.
54:21Um
54:23yeah, that that that book that I was um
54:26hoping to write I was I working on
54:29starting at the Humanity Center 4 years
54:31ago
54:32actually I think it's going to be the
54:33next project.
54:35Um and uh which is about uh
54:38the this the science and practice of the
54:41sex binary Mhm. and the invention of
54:44gender in the 1950s. And I've been
54:46writing some academic articles about
54:48that. Um but what I found
54:52um a a few years ago and especially in
54:54light of all the hand ringing about
54:57white women voting for Trump is that I
55:00wanted to one I love to write
55:04and two that I had had this gift of this
55:06incredible, you know, ongoing education
55:09for the last 20 years and I wanted to
55:12write to larger audiences. I wanted to
55:16be able to
55:17use the research I've been doing into
55:19the history of
55:21uh racism and sexism to make an
55:24intervention into a public a public
55:27sphere. Um I and to make a political
55:31intervention actually, right? Uh
55:32clarifying uh what it is we're doing in
55:36feminism because I found so often that
55:39mainstream feminism was actually
55:40reinforcing white supremacy instead of
55:44activating against it.
55:47Uh I will say that I I had a lot to
55:49learn what it means to write for the
55:51public when I
55:53began first doing that
55:55in this project. And that was I had I
55:57realized I had this really parochial
55:59academic idea of what the public was.
56:01Like there was part of me that thought,
56:03you know, when we're writing for the
56:04public it's sort of like, "Well, People
56:06magazine and the New Yorker, that's all
56:08just the public, right?"
56:10But of course not, right? There's many,
56:12many different versions of the public.
56:16And I was really inspired by writers
56:19like Corey Robin or even Louis Menand,
56:21who I saw at the Kennedy Center when he
56:23came to speak 4 years ago, who say like,
56:26"You don't write to the public. What you
56:28do is you produce the work that you want
56:30to produce, and you make it you
56:33translate it so that it loses its jargon
56:36and that educates people about the
56:37jargon. And then the audience just kind
56:39of comes along."
56:41Um the people will find people will find
56:44you rather than rather than like you
56:47arrive at some preordained audience. And
56:50I did find that that was true because I
56:52was very lucky that the nation asked me
56:54to do an interview about Biopolitics of
56:56Feeling. That is a very academic book.
57:00But I did my best in the interview to
57:02translate its concerns into more
57:04contemporary ones. And that article
57:07became a Twitter hit, um and suddenly I
57:09had an agent saying, "Hey, do you want
57:11to write a book for the public?" And I
57:12said, "Yes, I absolutely do." But it
57:15came out of my academic monograph
57:18Biopolitics of Feeling. Because I think
57:20people are really hungry for what
57:22scholarship can teach us, right? We know
57:25that we get so much misinformation.
57:28The larger public wants to benefit from
57:31what is done in the academy, and we just
57:34need to do that work
57:35to make our language more approachable
57:38and friendly to others.
57:40Can you think of an example
57:42in the in the development of this
57:44project where you sort of were at a
57:46crossroads, I could do this this way or
57:49I could do this the other way, and I and
57:51I'm I'm deliberately
57:53thinking about a public in this more
57:54sophisticated way, and and I'm going to
57:57choose to do it this way.
57:59Yeah, I took four creative nonfiction
58:01writing classes because I wanted to
58:03learn how to write narrative. You know,
58:05I'm a comparative literature major, as
58:07you know. Um
58:09You know, you um you I've known you for
58:1120 years as director of comparative
58:13literature and I was an undergrad, and I
58:15love story, right? And so when I did the
58:18research for this project, I didn't have
58:21outlines. I had charts of scenes.
58:25Yeah. Because I wanted to find like
58:27where where were these women actually
58:29enacting their politics in their lives
58:32in a way that takes discourse off the
58:34page and shows instead Stowe buying a
58:37plantation in Florida to civilize the
58:40workers.
58:41Uh and even on the paragraph level, my
58:43editor taught me I don't start with a
58:45thesis statement. I start with the
58:47story. I bring the reader inside the
58:51evidence, and then at the end of the
58:53paragraph, I reflect on what it means.
58:56So in all kinds of ways I invert the
58:58typical academic structure of starting
59:00with a thesis and deleting the point,
59:02and instead I immerse the reader in the
59:04narrative, in the story, in the voice
59:06and scene and settings of these people,
59:09and it makes for much more compelling
59:11reading, and it lets the reader discover
59:13for themselves the argument that I'm
59:15making.
59:16Yeah, a lot of I can see from the
59:18questions a lot of people in the
59:19audience are They really appreciate this
59:21kind of reflection on on the the nature
59:24of the project. Here's a follow-up
59:26question,
59:27uh somewhat in the same vein.
59:29What do you think are the best
59:30strategies for white feminists to
59:32discuss feminism in front of a diverse
59:35audience, and have you encountered any
59:37suspicion of academic feminism from the
59:41public, and how did you deal with it?
59:44Yeah, I think the best strategy for uh
59:46sorry, for it was for white women
59:48talking about white feminism? Or talking
59:50about white feminism
59:52full stop.
59:54Uh I think the the best strategy I think
59:56is to make sure you're not just
59:58re-centering a conversation about
1:00:00whiteness.
1:00:01Um and that's why I I always wanted this
1:00:05book to be
1:00:06not just not just a critique of white
1:00:09feminism, but showing what white
1:00:11feminism has displaced
1:00:15in order to make itself seem like the
1:00:17only game in town. And I also think that
1:00:20it's important in all these
1:00:22conversations to underscore that this
1:00:24work has been done by people like Paula
1:00:26Giddings, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall,
1:00:28Angela Davis, and many, many others. Uh
1:00:32Audre Lorde, bell hooks, from at least
1:00:34the 1970s on. And that work when we're
1:00:37doing this work, it's as much synthesis
1:00:40um it it as anything. It's not new
1:00:42discovery because of the richness of the
1:00:45work of of these scholars.
1:00:48Yeah. Good. Thank you. Yeah, I confess I
1:00:51forgot I forgot the second part of the
1:00:53Oh, it was
1:00:54uh uh
1:00:54suspicion of academic feminism from the
1:00:56public.
1:00:57Oh, you know, um
1:00:59I haven't so much. I've definitely
1:01:01encountered suspicion in that that's
1:01:03that criticizing white women is racist.
1:01:06You know, like that like there's a fair
1:01:08amount of goodreads reviews, for
1:01:10example, that say this book is racist.
1:01:12It's racist against white women. Um
1:01:16I haven't
1:01:19That much. That said, I'm I'm sure that
1:01:21it We all need more forms of activism
1:01:24besides writing and reading. Mhm.
1:01:27Uh you know, you mentioned that that
1:01:29that that that kind of um
1:01:33apparently critique of the book that I
1:01:35haven't seen it but on on in venues like
1:01:38Goodreads
1:01:39uh a couple of people asked if you could
1:01:41reflect on
1:01:43uh the term white feminism itself. What
1:01:46what can you do? What can you not do
1:01:48with it? Um
1:01:51you know, you've you've defined it a
1:01:52couple of times as uh uh a kind of
1:01:56feminism that puts sexism as the
1:01:58principal problem to be solved. Uh
1:02:02what's
1:02:03just tell us a little more about your
1:02:04choice of the term and as you as it as
1:02:06you developed it in the work, how you
1:02:07reflected on it. Yeah. I was really
1:02:10drawn to it because it's the lingua
1:02:12franca of today. Mhm. And right and I
1:02:15and I find it so refreshing that there
1:02:19is a accessible term that names the way
1:02:23that
1:02:24mainstream feminism has often leaned
1:02:27into white supremacy, right? In ways
1:02:29that terms like liberal feminism or
1:02:32individualist feminism or even cultural
1:02:35feminism if we got go back to a term
1:02:37from a few decades ago um or mainstream
1:02:41feminism, they don't quite get at the
1:02:43political harm done by that term.
1:02:47The risk of the term, of course, is that
1:02:48people think that it's synonymous with
1:02:50white women who are feminists.
1:02:53You know, um and sometimes I'm even more
1:02:55careful than I was today to say at the
1:02:57outset, white feminism does not mean
1:03:00white you know, peo- feminists who
1:03:03aren't white, right? It's a political
1:03:05position about reinforcing white
1:03:07supremacy. I think that the the way that
1:03:10the conversation in the public sphere
1:03:12about white supremacy has advanced in
1:03:14the last few years also makes that term
1:03:17more accessible. People understand much
1:03:19more now that white supremacy is not
1:03:21just people who don white hats and march
1:03:23with the KKK,
1:03:25but it's a vast structure of which many
1:03:28are complicit in, even if if they are
1:03:31unknowing. Um the risk of it um is that
1:03:35it can seem to be about identity, when I
1:03:38want to keep stressing it's about
1:03:39politics, right? And so often in the
1:03:42book I say white feminist politics. Um
1:03:45which I probably should have said today,
1:03:46but I did but I often revert to the more
1:03:48traditional term of white feminism. Um
1:03:50and the other risk is that
1:03:52um it doesn't necessarily point to the
1:03:56other structures of power that white
1:03:58feminism is
1:03:59is um implicated within. Um but I also
1:04:03think that as a larger conversation
1:04:06today,
1:04:07by the work of Black Lives Matter
1:04:08activists to writers like Ibram X.
1:04:10Kendi, there's a much broader
1:04:12understanding of how white supremacy is
1:04:14actually part and parcel with uh
1:04:17capitalist hierarchies and climate
1:04:19collapse and any number of other
1:04:21structural injustices. Yeah, presumably
1:04:24more more a broader understanding than
1:04:26when you started writing the book, I
1:04:28would imagine. It's amazing. It's
1:04:30amazing in 3 years. Yeah. Yeah, what
1:04:33happens. Yep.
1:04:35There are a number of questions that ask
1:04:37you for uh recommendations of things to
1:04:39read that you encountered in the course
1:04:41of preparing The Trouble with White
1:04:43Women that that you would recommend. But
1:04:45let me I mean here's a typical one. So
1:04:47uh a representative one is um
1:04:50can you uh recommend uh
1:04:53something to correct the impre- the
1:04:55impression of Sojourner Truth handed
1:04:58down by white feminists. But let me ask
1:05:00you that, but also expand a little bit
1:05:02and say
1:05:03because I know the audience wants to
1:05:05hear this. Can you are there two or
1:05:06three things that um the book builds on
1:05:10that you would recommend uh for people
1:05:13who are trying to go more deeply into
1:05:14some of the questions you're
1:05:16you're doing, the historical questions
1:05:18you're dealing with here. Yeah, you
1:05:20know, the the classic still of course is
1:05:23Angela Davis's Women, Race, and Class,
1:05:26you know, a book she published in the
1:05:27early '80s
1:05:28that is still an absolute go-to for
1:05:32understanding these tensions between
1:05:34white supremacist and anti-racist
1:05:37feminism.
1:05:38I will confess that I was you know, took
1:05:41a quite historical method in this book.
1:05:44So, it was really the primary sources
1:05:47that were leading the way for me. And I
1:05:49would say, you know, Pauli Murray and
1:05:52the incredible work done on Pauli Murray
1:05:55but people like Britney Cooper, her book
1:05:57Beyond Respectability is tremendously
1:06:00helpful in understanding a longer
1:06:02history of intersectional feminism. And
1:06:04also Pauli Murray
1:06:06fighting for really understanding sexism
1:06:10as a caste system. And I think that even
1:06:13today where so often we'll understand
1:06:16sexism as a form of you know, personal
1:06:20marginalization, right? Or individual
1:06:23attack or something that strips women of
1:06:26their agency and safety and power.
1:06:29But we often forget that it also rises
1:06:32to the level of a structural caste
1:06:35system, right? Married women couldn't
1:06:37have credit cards or checking accounts
1:06:39in their own name until the 1970s in the
1:06:41US.
1:06:42A number of the Ivy Leagues didn't go
1:06:44fully co-ed until the 1980s.
1:06:47Women couldn't attend or couldn't enter
1:06:50restaurants in the financial districts
1:06:52of the major US cities until the late
1:06:551960s or early 1970s unless they were
1:06:57accompanied by men. These are actual
1:07:00forms of structural injustice that the
1:07:02work of Pauli Murray and especially her
1:07:06her essays
1:07:07which does not yet a Pauli Murray reader
1:07:10out there yet that I know of. So, I
1:07:11would really point to Brittney Cooper's
1:07:13book.
1:07:14A really helpful
1:07:15help you to understand when we take
1:07:17white feminism to be feminism,
1:07:20we also miss the true nature of sexism
1:07:23itself,
1:07:25which is as this structural caste
1:07:28inequality. And then last time I say
1:07:30that there's a number of recent books on
1:07:33white feminism. This This book ended up
1:07:35being published in the in a in a flurry
1:07:39of books about white feminism that I
1:07:40would all recommend, especially Ruby
1:07:43Hamad's White Tears, Brown Scars, which
1:07:46looks especially at Anglo-American
1:07:50Empire and the role of recruiting white
1:07:53women and white women's tears as
1:07:56apologists and masks for empire, right?
1:07:59As well as Rafia
1:08:01Zakaria's Against White Feminism. It was
1:08:04published just 2 months before mine. And
1:08:07she's a major figure, for example, on
1:08:09critiquing
1:08:10the role of white feminism in
1:08:12legitimating the invasion of
1:08:14Afghanistan, right? The famous
1:08:17logic of needing white women to save
1:08:20brown women from brown men, like Spivak
1:08:22named decades ago.
1:08:25Those books are excellent for
1:08:26understanding a more global frame of
1:08:30white feminism.
1:08:32Yeah.
1:08:33Um
1:08:34thank you. And I know there's a lot more
1:08:35you could you could mention, but I know
1:08:38that the audience will appreciate having
1:08:40a few recommendations of where to where
1:08:41to go next. Um what
1:08:44I want to ask you something about one of
1:08:46the latter
1:08:47the last chapter of the book is is where
1:08:49you deal with
1:08:51two present-day figures, and you sort of
1:08:56pose them against each other, Sheryl
1:08:57Sandberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
1:09:00Um
1:09:02What um, apart from those,
1:09:05uh, about which you have a lot of
1:09:06insightful things to say in the chapter,
1:09:09are there other present-day figures that
1:09:11you would point to, not necessarily
1:09:13scholars or theorists or academics, but
1:09:15people out in the world, uh, who would
1:09:19would you would if you were going to
1:09:21write another chapter or if there were a
1:09:22sequel to this book that you would want
1:09:24us to think about in the context of of
1:09:26the argument?
1:09:28Yeah.
1:09:29Um, you know, um, fortunately, the
1:09:32social media,
1:09:34um,
1:09:35a wave of girlbossing is kind of in
1:09:39decline, um, because there are more and
1:09:41more who are suspicious of this kind of
1:09:44feminism that's about out capitalizing
1:09:48out capitalizing capitalism.
1:09:50Um, that said, I've been learning more
1:09:53about how
1:09:54even as the girlboss is falling out of
1:09:58favor, the boss mom is rising in favor
1:10:02on social media in particular, and this
1:10:03fantasy of being, you know, the the
1:10:06superwoman mother, uh, who can do it
1:10:09all. And I do think that that kind of
1:10:11optimizing,
1:10:13uh, strain and force of white feminism,
1:10:16it's one of its most pernicious
1:10:18elements,
1:10:19um, because it's not just about a
1:10:22campaign for individual rights, right?
1:10:24That liberal humanism and liberal
1:10:26feminism names, which is harmful enough,
1:10:28but it really is this full, you know,
1:10:30biopolitical capitalist fantasy, um,
1:10:34that
1:10:36to be among those who are chosen to
1:10:39thrive is this duty to make the absolute
1:10:42most of who you are at every moment. Um,
1:10:45and there are a lot of social media
1:10:47cultures that glorify this kind of of
1:10:50fantasy of perfection. And that do the
1:10:52work also of tokenizing women of color,
1:10:56especially activists like Stacey Abrams,
1:10:59and kind of imprisoning them them in the
1:11:01role of a goddess,
1:11:03and say and and it's
1:11:05becomes another form of dehumanizing.
1:11:08It's another kind of turning a
1:11:10multi-dimensional
1:11:12person like Sojourner Truth into a
1:11:16caricature useful for white women. In
1:11:19the 19th century, that was turning
1:11:20Sojourner Truth into plantation mammy.
1:11:22In the 21st century, it's saying Stacey
1:11:24Abrams is a god is a goddess and don't
1:11:27worry, she's taking care of voting right
1:11:30inequality, so you can keep on doing
1:11:33what you're doing and you will look like
1:11:35an intersectional feminist if you're
1:11:36calling a black woman a goddess.
1:11:40So,
1:11:41those ongoing traps
1:11:43um
1:11:46I think where white feminism Oh, if we
1:11:48just stop ignoring women of color, then
1:11:51we won't be white feminism anymore. But,
1:11:53the problem with white feminism, as I've
1:11:54said, you know, repeatedly, is not that
1:11:56it's ignoring, it's dispossessing. And
1:11:58the kind of activism that names and
1:12:01counteracts that dispossession are folks
1:12:04like Black Lives Matter, right? We have
1:12:06this incredible
1:12:07organizing rally of like we all count,
1:12:11we all matter, right? We're not here to
1:12:13be disposable and sacrificed and
1:12:15exploited so that others can thrive. So,
1:12:19I find, you know, the black queer
1:12:21women-led leadership of places like
1:12:23Black Lives Matter especially uh
1:12:26exemplary of what intersectional
1:12:28feminism can mean for us now.
1:12:30I also want to
1:12:32point in the former question, there was
1:12:34a question about the book I mentioned
1:12:35about Sojourner Truth. Uh it's Nell
1:12:38Irvin Painter and it's her biography of
1:12:42Sojourner Truth. There also is a really
1:12:44helpful website that I have taught and I
1:12:47recommend for classroom use called the
1:12:49Sojourner Truth Project and it lays out
1:12:53the two different texts of the speech
1:12:55side by side and it's really helpful for
1:12:58students and others and us to see just
1:13:03how Sojourner Truth was transformed into
1:13:05a fictitious character.
1:13:08Good, thank you.
1:13:10A couple of people have asked if you
1:13:12could say a few words about the the role
1:13:14of class in your analysis in the book.
1:13:17Yeah, I'm especially interested in
1:13:21capitalism as one of the central you
1:13:24know structural
1:13:25inequities that all these folks are are
1:13:29organizing against. And so for example
1:13:32in the first chapter about Elizabeth
1:13:34Cady Stanton and Frances E.W. Harper,
1:13:37I look at her as Frances Harper
1:13:41as someone who you know in the midst of
1:13:43while while Stanton is giving racist
1:13:46stump speeches about how black men will
1:13:50only be emboldened as rapists if they
1:13:52get the vote.
1:13:54Frances Harper is touring the
1:13:56reconstruction south giving free
1:13:59lectures to women's audiences and
1:14:03lectures up to five 600 people
1:14:07regularly.
1:14:09And her the title of her lectures were
1:14:11often things like land, literacy and
1:14:14liberation. She understood that for a
1:14:18true form of
1:14:20political enfranchisement to take place,
1:14:22it wasn't going to just mean giving
1:14:25black men or black people a ballot. It
1:14:28was going to mean a change in who owned
1:14:30the means of production. And I don't
1:14:32mean to make her sound like a socialist
1:14:34exactly, she was not.
1:14:36But she absolutely understood a change
1:14:40in um
1:14:42in ownership
1:14:44and in who could participate in the
1:14:47economy as a central part of that
1:14:48project. Just like when Harriet Beecher
1:14:51Stowe bought the plantation, she is
1:14:53leaning into capitalism as a force that
1:14:56will help to civilize
1:14:58uh the the Uni- the United States.
1:15:00Uh or or
1:15:01or rather a civilized um
1:15:03post uh slavery Florida. Um I now track
1:15:07it throughout and of course especially
1:15:09in the last chapter on Sheryl Sandberg
1:15:11and AOC, where I'm especially interested
1:15:14in looking and using Shoshana Zuboff's
1:15:17framework of surveillance capitalism as
1:15:20a way to understand the issues with
1:15:22Sandberg's fortune. Right? Cuz of course
1:15:25um Sandberg's fortune comes from data
1:15:28mining on Facebook on a mass scale that
1:15:31we are only now starting to learn about
1:15:34how pernicious that structure might be.
1:15:38Um so the issue yes, feminist or women
1:15:42employees at Facebook headquarters are
1:15:44getting paid well, but Zuboff would say
1:15:47we are all actually commodities of
1:15:49Facebook by the mere act of our
1:15:51existence. And so to really look at a
1:15:54structure of capitalism and class means
1:15:56we have to look across in the entire
1:15:58means of production. Um where we are
1:16:00generating revenue for um big data every
1:16:05time we walk into a store at this point.
1:16:09Uh
1:16:11Okay, uh now this is a little different.
1:16:14Uh
1:16:15could you say something about the place
1:16:17of white feminism and intersectional
1:16:19feminism in relation to the critical
1:16:22race theory panic today?
1:16:25Yeah. Um you know, it's something you
1:16:27know, um some people have asked, you
1:16:29know, is this book Would you Would you
1:16:31call this book critical race theory? And
1:16:33honestly I I sometimes I have two
1:16:35different answers.
1:16:37You know, one the the like strict
1:16:39academic in me says no, right? Because
1:16:42critical race theory, as I understand
1:16:46it, is a legal, you know, a legal
1:16:49discipline that started by people like
1:16:51Derrick Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw,
1:16:53right? In the early 1990s.
1:16:56Um and I am not a legal scholar.
1:17:00But I don't know that that's the most
1:17:01helpful answer because
1:17:05literally I'm often drawn to literalism,
1:17:08but it's not necessarily the best way to
1:17:09go.
1:17:10Um because at this point critical race
1:17:13theory has come to mean a structural
1:17:15analysis of racism as a productive force
1:17:20in American society.
1:17:22And I've seen many of us put critical
1:17:24race theory on our CVs when we're not
1:17:26actually legal scholars. So academics
1:17:29are also guilty of the spread of this
1:17:32term. And if what people mean by
1:17:35critical race theory is an understanding
1:17:37of race as an active structural
1:17:40um formation and something that's not
1:17:43just and that and that the biggest
1:17:46product of racism is the idea of race
1:17:49itself,
1:17:50then yes, this is part of critical race
1:17:52theory. This is part of a framework that
1:17:55understands the primary work of racism
1:17:58is not in um
1:18:00it's not repressive, it's actually in
1:18:02producing the very structures we live in
1:18:05in society. And feminism has certainly
1:18:08been one of those structures shaped from
1:18:11the ground by the logics and practices
1:18:14of white supremacy and its pushback.
1:18:19How how does your uh research and and
1:18:23your perspective speak to the challenge
1:18:26of contextualizing
1:18:28uh
1:18:28imperfect heroes?
1:18:31Uh this is a obviously this is a
1:18:33question from the audience. Do do we
1:18:35throw out these icons or can we figure
1:18:37out how to better draw on imperfect
1:18:40histories?
1:18:42Yeah, um thank you for that question.
1:18:45Um you know, that this is something that
1:18:48I that I thought about a lot as I was
1:18:51writing because
1:18:54one, I am certainly interested as I said
1:18:57in being able to use this research to
1:18:59help with political dilemmas we're
1:19:01facing today.
1:19:04That said, I am a believer that working
1:19:08positively
1:19:10instead of in a negative frame actually
1:19:13is how change happens on the individual
1:19:15level. And that structural change has to
1:19:18happen at the individual level first. Um
1:19:21and that calling people to something and
1:19:25inspiring people to build something
1:19:29works a lot better um than shaming or um
1:19:34disciplining or punishing. Um so I do I
1:19:39did work hard across this these
1:19:41counterpoints um to not tell a story of
1:19:45heroes and villains but instead talk
1:19:47about complicity and choices and to show
1:19:52how these white women were folks who had
1:19:55the talent and capacity to do otherwise
1:19:57but chose not to.
1:20:00Um and the goal of bringing it down to
1:20:02that individual level is not to say here
1:20:05are the women who should be erased and
1:20:07thrown out but instead to ask how does
1:20:10structural change happen? Like what does
1:20:13it actually look like? Because often we
1:20:15have this fantasy that like oh
1:20:17abolitionists were all on the same page.
1:20:19You know, why are contemporary politics
1:20:21so messy? Why can't we be like Frederick
1:20:24Douglass's day where everyone knew
1:20:25exactly what to do?
1:20:27But it was never the case, right? In the
1:20:29US there were three distinct strands of
1:20:32abolition, one of which was like, we
1:20:34should pay all the enslavers for their
1:20:36loss of property. We wouldn't even call
1:20:38that abolition today. Right. But it was
1:20:41called abolition in 19th century.
1:20:43So I want to bring it down to that messy
1:20:45level, so we get an idea of how
1:20:47structural change happens, but also
1:20:50um there is an implicit argument for a
1:20:52kind of respect and understanding. And
1:20:55the goal again of intersectional
1:20:57feminism about these coalitions and
1:20:59collective action. No one's going to do
1:21:01it alone. No one's going to have pure
1:21:03and perfect politics. No one should ever
1:21:05be expected to. But when we work
1:21:08together,
1:21:09um we can um
1:21:12we can uh
1:21:14collectively work toward our strengths.
1:21:17That's the That's the like
1:21:19ideal anyway.
1:21:21Yeah, that's lovely. Thank you.
1:21:24Uh
1:21:25Uh we're approaching the end of the
1:21:26event, but I think I have time to ask
1:21:28you a couple more questions. If anybody
1:21:30in the audience wants to get one in
1:21:31under the wire, uh now is a good time.
1:21:34Uh let me ask you this. A couple of
1:21:36people want to know something. How do
1:21:38What is the global context around this
1:21:41book? How do you connect it to larger
1:21:44movements outside the US and uh and and
1:21:47where do we look to learn more about
1:21:48that?
1:21:49Yeah.
1:21:51Um I one of the the first place to point
1:21:54to, which isn't so global,
1:21:56but just across the pond uh in the UK,
1:22:00and that I it was especially important
1:22:02to me to have a chapter in this book on
1:22:04trans feminism.
1:22:07Because I think that the work of people
1:22:08like Sandy Stone profiled here
1:22:13in a trans feminism that looks to
1:22:17eradicating the sex binary as a
1:22:19governing principle of our life has
1:22:21really central things to offer to
1:22:24feminism. Um but trans feminism isn't
1:22:27always considered part of feminism for
1:22:30um
1:22:31full stop, right? It's much more likely
1:22:32to be considered part of the LGBT
1:22:34movement, but not necessarily part of
1:22:36feminist theory or feminist activism.
1:22:38And that's especially important in the
1:22:39UK today, where the level of vitriol
1:22:44against trans women as women or having
1:22:47any place in feminism is really dialed
1:22:51up to an a nine or a 10 in the way that
1:22:53in this is no longer true in the United
1:22:55States. Um,
1:22:57so this book makes the argument that
1:22:59anti-trans feminism is white feminism,
1:23:01and I don't really have time to explain
1:23:03that now, but I promised that the
1:23:04chapter if you're interested in in uh
1:23:08looking in into that aspect of the
1:23:10argument. Uh, you know, the ongoing work
1:23:13of empire is often legitimated by
1:23:18um the by saving women you know, outside
1:23:22the United States. And again, I would
1:23:24point to uh Ruby Hamad, Zakaria, um and
1:23:27Against White Feminism as really
1:23:29important recent books on that project.
1:23:33Um, and then and then last, you know, a
1:23:36a global context of climate collapse,
1:23:38you know, increasingly we're going to be
1:23:40understanding climate refugees as a
1:23:43central political category
1:23:47in um in on a global scale. And what
1:23:50Naomi Klein and others are calling
1:23:53you know, um climate fascism or climate
1:23:56barbarism that is taking that logic of
1:24:00biopolitics that only these are chosen
1:24:02to thrive and using it to solidify
1:24:04borders and saying, "No, if you know, if
1:24:07you're not from this nation, then you
1:24:10are due to extraction, and and it
1:24:14doesn't matter if your island is getting
1:24:17swallowed by the sea."
1:24:18Uh, and I think that that intersectional
1:24:20vision that goes beyond even the human
1:24:24and work works toward a collective care
1:24:26politics, right? And again, not a
1:24:28politics of individual liberation or
1:24:31access to equal structures, but a
1:24:35coalitional and collective practice of
1:24:39interdependence and care.
1:24:41That's the only way we're going to get
1:24:42through our next few centuries.
1:24:46Yeah.
1:24:47Yeah.
1:24:48Thank you.
1:24:49Uh this will be the last question and
1:24:51I'm I'm I'm I think I'm just going to
1:24:52read it verbatim because it's it's I
1:24:55couldn't paraphrase it.
1:24:57Uh
1:24:57quote, "So incredible and wonderful, but
1:25:00I despair re the project of reorganizing
1:25:04structural capitalism. So many vicious
1:25:07gatekeepers, protectors, investors to
1:25:09convince. What's your thought about the
1:25:11viability or time frame of this?"
1:25:16Of
1:25:17reorganizing structural
1:25:19project that this book points toward of
1:25:21of of of addressing these structural uh
1:25:25you know, conditions.
1:25:29I I think
1:25:32the realist in me thinks that we're
1:25:33going to continue to see this highly
1:25:36bifurcated world
1:25:39that
1:25:40uh you know, the ever more polarization
1:25:42we've seen in the last 10 years and even
1:25:44in the last year, a place where many
1:25:48leading
1:25:49um even capitalists like Bill Gates are
1:25:52saying the greatest thing we're facing
1:25:55is the the delegitimization of the US
1:25:57government. I think we're going to
1:25:59continue to see these these
1:26:01um
1:26:02polar movements where one world is
1:26:05moving ever closer to fascism Mhm. and
1:26:08another world is moving toward mutual
1:26:10aid, toward interdependence, toward
1:26:13creating like collective structures of
1:26:16care and of racial justice that are
1:26:20trying to undo
1:26:22the work of capitalism, right? And you
1:26:24know, look at something as awful as the
1:26:26lockdowns and
1:26:28um coronavirus and but how many people
1:26:30suddenly discovered pods, right? Um and
1:26:34small-scale modes of living. Um I think
1:26:37that we are going to have um you know,
1:26:40not just two feminisms, but two
1:26:43countries, two planets. And that's not a
1:26:46hope, it's not a prescription.
1:26:49It's a fear as much as anything.
1:26:52Um but I think that the usual uh
1:26:54practice of like starting local,
1:26:57thinking global applies um with an
1:27:00understanding that the basic norms and
1:27:02realities we have taken for granted as
1:27:06people who belong in like in a country
1:27:08with strong institutions,
1:27:10those are starting to slip. And that is
1:27:13both terror and opportunity. Mhm.
1:27:19Yeah.
1:27:20Well, that's
1:27:21And I hope there's another book from you
1:27:23by then that
1:27:24that analyzes that process as it goes
1:27:26along.
1:27:27Um
1:27:28this has been wonderful, Kyra. You have
1:27:30uh not for those who have read the book,
1:27:32you have uh really contextualized it and
1:27:34enriched it. And for those that haven't
1:27:36read the book, you've given them so many
1:27:38reasons to want to go out and get uh The
1:27:40Trouble with White Women. So,
1:27:42uh I know that everybody who tuned in
1:27:44today
1:27:45and everybody who watches the recording
1:27:46will be has been grateful for for all
1:27:49this insight that you've given us today.
1:27:51Uh so, thank you. And thank you to the
1:27:53audience for the great questions. Um
1:27:55everyone who registered for today's
1:27:57event was automatically entered into a
1:27:59drawing to receive one of three signed
1:28:01copies of The Trouble with White Women.
1:28:03And um
1:28:05I'd like to give you the names of the
1:28:07winners. They are
1:28:10Danielle Adair,
1:28:12Francesca Colonna Se, and Jeremy
1:28:15Gilford. We will be in touch with the
1:28:18three of you shortly by email about
1:28:20getting the book to you.
1:28:22So,
1:28:23thank you all for coming back today.
1:28:25Thank you Kyla, former fellow,
1:28:28still a member of our community. Those
1:28:30of you in the audience who are former
1:28:31fellows, thank you for coming back.
1:28:33Please stay in touch with us.
1:28:34Please keep coming back as we create
1:28:36more and more events to gather the
1:28:38community together. Those of you who are
1:28:40members of the general public, you're
1:28:42always welcome here. And we look forward
1:28:44to welcoming you to the center in person
1:28:47this year, we hope, while still reaching
1:28:51everywhere else through a hybrid event
1:28:54experience. We've pretty much made the
1:28:56determination that all of our future
1:28:58events,
1:28:59with rare exceptions, will be at least
1:29:01hybrid. So, when they are in person, we
1:29:03will also broadcast in this way to to
1:29:06the wider world. More events are always
1:29:08being added to the calendar, so please
1:29:10check our website shc.stanford.edu
1:29:13for for the latest updates. So, from all
1:29:16of us here at the center, again, happy
1:29:17New Year. Thank you for joining us and
1:29:19until next time.
1:29:21Thank you so much, everyone.

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