*dies of the stupid*

[alixtii]

Oh yes, (systemic) sexism and racism don't exist outside the United States at all, do they? Feminism is simply just a part of some American agenda of cultural imperialism, and everyone knows that Western Europe is a utopia when it comes to gender and race issues. (Apparently everything I've read in the New York Times--not to mention The Guardian--is a big fat lie. Who knew?)

Really, how does one respond to that?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Hi, fellow Brit here.

I've seen the cultural differences thing mentioned a lot as well, and I've used it myself because sometimes it feels as if the differences are more important than the similarities. I think most of the problem comes from, as you say, the overtness of the issue in the U.S. Not sexism so much, but definitely racism. All American discussion of race seems to concentrate on the physical appearance division between black and white and everything that follows from it, whereas in the UK it is all about cultural differences, accent (surprise surprise!) and is tangled up with class issues (surprise, surprise, surprise!) and appearance is only used as an initial visual marker in a few cases where it happens to apply. As such, the analysis of Americans can seem very wrong-headed when I try to apply it to my own world, which leaves me feeling excluded from the discussion. I was driven mad recently by an attempted discussion of racism where all the examples I tried to bring were dismissed because they did not strictly follow the American defined black/white divide, and attempts to renegotiate the terms for discussion were dismissed as racist in themselves. And if I am pushed into losing my temper (which let's face it, can happen in such discussions!) I may well start to dismiss everything a Yank says as based in their own ignorance of our culture. Yet as you say, many of the underlying structures are in fact held in common. For example, in terms of an analysis based on the historical experience of slavery, an American's analysis of how 'whites' feel about 'blacks' is obviously of very little relevance to Europeans, but their analysis of how black people of Caribbean origin feel about 'whites' may well be very pertinent indeed.