A Black Feminist Conversation

I thought that the conversation that Paula Giddings and Beverly Guy-Sheftall had was amazing. I learned a lot from it, especially about Ida B Wells. However, one of the things that struck me the most was when they were asked to define feminism, and later, womanism. It was Beverly Guy-Sheftalls definition that I thought was the most interesting. I liked how she described feminism as being "the politics," not the beliefs about equal rights for all people. Or, as she put is, "the politics that say we will not tolerate any oppression." Instead of just saying oppression, she described it as racism, sexism, and any othter sorts of isms that can oppress people. I completely agreed with her, especially when she continued that it was also a "commitment to eradicating" all oppressions. They then both agreed that men can be feminists, and that womanism is a part of feminism, but also something that can be potentially used to get black women to disassociate from feminism. Their discussions about feminism and Ida B Wells were very interesting and made me think about the "F-Word" papers that we wrote earlier in the semester, and how their definitions of feminism compared to the ones that I wrote about in my paper. The other part of their discussion of feminism that really caught my attention was when Guy-Sheftall was explaining how she identifies herseflf. She said that she doesn't call herself a womanist, but a feminist, and if pressed, she will sometimes call herself a black feminist. I thought that this was also very interesting because of the title of the discussion, which had black feminism in it. Overall though, I thought it was a fabulous discussion and they were incredibly fascinating women.