Face to Race

Contemporary Intersections of Race and Gender

11    A particularly informative investigation into the historical intertwining constructions of gender and race underlying the establishment of modern-day patriarchy was carried out by Pauline Schloesser. She discusses how early constructions of gender in US society were inextricably linked to constructions of race, making white women a key site through which both patriarchal and racial conventions were established and maintained. Drawing on previous research into the patriarchal subordination of women in the early American Republic, Schloesser extends this to show how white women as signatories to sexual and marriage "contracts" became simultaneously privileged and oppressed. By conforming to the rules stipulated by patriarchy, white women were dually positioned as racially privileged via their association with white men, in return for a subordinate gender position. Schloesser defines this as a structure of racial patriarchy; "a pecking order among persons that came into being in the early period of U.S history[. . .][which] takes into account race as well as gender as organizing principles" (14). This dual positioning of white women was found in various "fair sex" ideologies circulating at the time, an ideology encompassing both the "dangerous sexuality" of females to be controlled and contained by white men, alongside notions of the "weaker" more feminine sex, but also referring to "light skin tone, civilized beauty, and moral purity" (Schloesser 54). The term "fair sex" was generally deployed to describe white women, effectively excluding non-white women from the category of universal womanliness, and consequently from identifying as civilized beings. "Racial patriarchy" thus describes an interaction between racial and gender systems of oppression, and the effective positioning of people of different gender, race, culture and class in a hierarchy "seen to be indicative of political worth or value" (13).

12    Schloesser's notion of "racial patriarchy" can also be seen to be at play within aspects of the contemporary feminist movement, and within the actions and discourses of both men and women living in Western societies today. In regards to the former, Moreton-Robinson (amongst other non-white feminists) have argued that feminist advances have been based on knowledge about oppressive factors in the lives of white middle-class women, and that these have been projected as the universal norm of challenges faced by all women. This focus solely on gender has failed entirely to consider racial or other oppressive factors that affect the lives of non-white, non-middle-class women, and to a large extent limits the benefits incurred from the feminist movement to white, middle-class women. Moreton-Robinson discusses this in relation to the sexual dichotomy between white and Indigenous Australian women, which has resulted in the two groups of women struggling for different forms of sexual agency. While many white women, for example, continue fighting for sexual freedom outside of marriage without being stigmatised as "whores," Indigenous women continue to struggle with the traditional stereotype of the sexually promiscuous black woman, which automatically leaves them open to unwanted sexual attention to which they have no right to refuse.

13    Examples such as these clearly demonstrate how ineffectual a single feminist movement, based primarily on knowledge about white middle-class women's lives, is in addressing the inequalities faced by women in differing subject positions, as crosscut by race, class and sexuality. The invisibility of whiteness as a racial category, and the imagined homogeneity of white women as representing the category "woman" results in a norm to which the salient differences of marginalised racial groups are measured against (Frankenberg). By viewing white middle-class women as the "universal woman," culturally or racially marginalised women are simultaneously silenced and marked as the "other". Similarly, "other" ethic groups are frequently treated as homogenous and come to be represented by men, rather than being viewed as cross-cut by gender and class (Moreton-Robinson). The intersectional relationship between race, class and gender is evident in various discursive justifications, such as the way in which the oppressed positioning of women (in relation to men) and of non-white ethnic groups is frequently "naturalised" by their class and economic position, whereby discourses around biological difference (such as the female role of child-bearer and mother) and of cultural difference (such as stereotypes of the "idle" black worker) are used to naturalise these class differences (Anthias & Yuval-Davis). On the other hand, Blauner suggests that as prejudicial class attitudes are generally more acceptable, racist attitudes are sometimes disguised as class-based criticisms. This is particularly damaging as non-white individuals are disproportionately clustered within the lower classes. (Fenton) The use of "tokenism," whereby successful non-white individuals who have "made it" are pointed to as examples of societal equality and opportunity, is similarly used as justification of race and/or class oppression (Russell).

14    These interacting identity positions of oppression and/or privilege are not merely additive, but work together to create particular subject locations within different cultural settings, which in Western societies ultimately appear to privilege "whiteness". (Dugger; Riggs) It is therefore important to examine how multiple concurrent discourses position women in a range of ways in a relation to particular social norms. Whilst it is indeed important to continually interrogate how gender norms oppress women in Western societies, it is also important to examine differences amongst women, and how women themselves use these differences to their own advantage or to legitimate their social position. In particular, the following analysis places a central focus on the way in which "white" patriarchal norms are enforced through intersecting raced and gendered discourses in the Big Brother house.

"Girls being girls" in Celebrity Big Brother

15    The Big Brother phenomenon, which first originated in 1999 in the Netherlands, is part of a plethora of "reality" shows sweeping televised networks in recent years. Despite the potential issues associated with deconstructing human behaviour in such artificial environments, shows such as Big Brother provide considerable opportunities for the critical study of social interaction and the role of language and discourse in constructing particular identities, which are frequently implicated in inequitable power relations.