There is an amazing post about rape and colonization up at Tiger Beatdown regarding Strauss-Kahn and feminist solidarity.

This ties in with Sasha’s post about calling the poor “weak”, even if it’s with good intentions. Since I’m a structuralist, I look at what happens when you erase one aspect of oppression in order to bring light on another aspect. In the case of “we are all chambermaids” it is erasing the major problems of both class and race. Those kind of erasures are why there is both feminism and womanism*, two philosophies with the same basic goals (crushing the patriarchy) but one is often a top down, white, middle class or better view while the other is a bottom up, intersectional view of gender, race, class, etc.

The benefit to existing structures that this kind erasure provides should be obvious. Obfuscation is one of the kyriarchy’s best tricks. It’s why the main issues talked about in feminism are the wage gap (which is bigger for well educated women than for less educated women), abortion (with minimal attention paid to the decision to parent instead of to not parent), and rape. Often ignored are things like the mommy gap,