You're just ignorant. "Womanism" would not be a thing if women of color didn't feel like mainstream feminism is often equivalent to white feminism. Read up.

I guess I don't know who's "condemning" Penn for this. (I know plenty of people who condemn him for his history of violence against women.) I mean, he's been criticized, and I think it was racist, even though he plainly intended it as a joke. I don't think white people really get to make jokes like that, to be honest.

Are you really in here defending Sean Penn announcing Alejandro González Iñárritu's Best Picture Oscar by saying "Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?"

Well, it's a convoluted tangle of words that you're quoting. My fault, and let me be clearer.

If anything, I should probably let the work I need to do stop me before it's midnight. But thanks!

I might criticize if I thought they were wrong on the substance, but when it's a question of how exercised to get about something that's legitimately excluding/hurtful, I am simply not going to question anything within broadly reasonable bounds. (So death threats, if that was the response, would be outside reasonable…

I think it's a problem when it happens to people who don't have the resources, education, or background to get it right. Arquette doesn't have those excuses, so I don't think it's a problem to call her out.

In the interests of amplifying, and for those who are interested: the article links to a roundup of reactions (rather than the reactions themselves) and gives Arquette's responses, which is fine, whatever.

Just fine, as they are. But a lot of people in this thread are declining to seek those voices out, so as I said: I'm amplifying. Commenters here want to lazily assert that of course white feminism is looking out for the interests of women of color (and so whyyyy would anyone read Arquette as having anything other than…

I just haven't done any of the mind reading you're claiming. This shit can hurt and can tie into longstanding grievances that women of color and LGBT women have against mainstream feminism regardless of Arquette's intent. And when you find yourself on the wrong side of something like this because of something you said…

I never claimed to. I am amplifying the arguments of those who have criticized her.

Do you understand the coordinating conjunction "and"?

I mean, are you also going to enjoy that the people who are calling her out on it elsewhere—like in major media organizations and on Twitter—are mainly women of color?

"You literally can't imply something unless you intend to. It's inherent to the word."

Except that she said that women had "fought for" those other two groups, then implied that it was their turn, and their obligation, to fight for women. She didn't include them—she implicitly placed them in a non-supportive role (thus implying that women of color and LGBT women are failing to support themselves), and…

I'm not personally angry about it, but then, I'm literally one of the least affected people (white, straight, male, affluent).

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that being treated like a child or like the property of husband or father was a benefit. What I'm trying to convey is that white people's fear is deadly to people of color, and white women's fear is especially so.

You do get that it was Arquette's decision to specifically silo off people of color and LGBT people, and then call on them to put their issues aside to focus on the gender gap in wages, that caused the anger, right? Like, if she had just said "everyone needs to make this their fight, even if it doesn't affect you…

She should recognize where the broader response is coming from (because no one is trying to hide that), and apologize for phrasing her remarks in a way that feeds into this idea that white feminists are the leaders/most important people in the feminist movement.

I think LGBT people and people of color would do just fine without anyone "mentioning" them in the context of implying that they are not pulling their weight in the fight for the rights of more privileged people.