"WOMANISM IS TO FEMINISM as PURPLE IS TO LAVENDER" -Alice Walker

IN SOLIDARITY WE CANNOT COMPLETELY TRUST

WOMANISM, A DEFINITION

Womanism is a feminist term coined by Alice Walker.

It is a reaction to the realization that “feminism” does not encompass the perspectives Black women.

It is a feminism that is “stronger in color”, nearly identical to “Black Feminism”. However, Womanism does not need to be prefaced by the word “Black”, the word automatically concerns black women.

A Womanist is a woman who loves women and appreciates women’s culture and power as something that is incorporated into the world as a whole. Womanism addresses the racist and classist aspects of white feminism and actively opposes separatist ideologies. It includes the word “man”, recognizing that Black men are an integral part of Black women’s lives as their children, lovers, and family members.

Womanism accounts for the ways in which black women support and empower black men, and serves as a tool for understanding the Black woman’s relationship to men as different from the white woman’s. It seeks to acnowledge and praise the sexual power of Black women while recognizing a history of sexual violence.

This perspective is often used as a means for analyzing Black Women’s literature, as it marks the place where race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect. Womanism is unique because it does not necessarily imply any political position or value system other than the honoring of Black women’s strength and experiences. Because it recognizes that women are survivors in a world that is oppressive on multiple platforms, it seeks to celebrate the ways in which women negotiate these oppressions in their individual lives.

https://afeministtheorydictionary.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/womanism/
CONCLUSION: WE HAVE TO HAVE A WHOLE SELF BEFORE WE CAN BE JOINED TO ANOTHER. Every adult woman should know this. A knowing of self, reducing self-abnegation to comparable levels with your partner, and wholeness are ultra important when a woman decides to join with another person, a man, in marriage. And all of these things are equally important when a womanist decides to join forces with white feminists in opposing a similar (but not the same) oppressions.