politics | On International Women's Day, profiling Jessica Yee (Reply)

Feb 23Jessica Yee vs Capital F feminism

Activist Jessica Yee started the Native Youth Sexual Health Network five years ago, at age 20. The self-described “multiracial, hip-hop, Two Spirit, feminist, reproductive-justice freedom fighter” is Toronto-based, but her mother’s family is from Akwesasne First Nation, on the St. Lawrence River. As executive director, Yee supervises sex-ed programs in dozens of indigenous communities. She also has a new book,Feminism FOR REAL, and appears next week in the CBC documentary The F Word, discussing gender struggle alongside heavyweights like Germaine Greer and Susan Faludi. And yet, Yee says that “capital F” feminism isn’t exactly her thing.

So what did you think of the finished doc?
I haven’t seen it. They told me I couldn’t see it until the air date. Have you seen it?

Yes.
Am I the only person of colour in it?

Yes. And really you’re only in it for about five minutes.
[Laughs] Yeah, I thought it was so funny that they wanted me to be in it. I could see when they were filming that they were really uncomfortable with some of the things I was saying.

The film puts forth the idea that younger women don’t like using the word “feminism,” even if they consider themselves part of the women’s rights movement. Are you a feminist?
I no longer feel like “feminist” describes me—I feel like I have to put a lot of words before it and after it.On Twitter I say I’m a “multiracial Two Spirit indigenous hip-hop feminist reproductive-justice freedom fighter.” I have a lot of difficulty with what I would call mainstream feminism.

How so?
I don’t buy into the main projections of feminism. Namely, that it’s a white women’s movement, it’s a privileged movement and that it’s very academic. Just because you’re a feminist doesn’t mean that you’re not otherwise racist or oppressive. It’s great that people want to be part of equity-seeking movements, but I think there’s a fear within the movement itself of being not just critical, but honest and truthful. If I’m the only young person, and I’m the only person of colour, in the whole film—I think that’s kind of indicative, and that’s exactly where the movement is. Look at the first wave of feminism and suffragettes, in the early 1900s. There’s a statue of Emily Murphy in Ottawa, with the Famous Five, the group who argued that women were “persons” under the law. What they don’t tell you about the Famous Five is that they were really racist. Emily Murphy published this eugenics book called The Black Candle, which basically talks about how Anglo-Saxon society should rule and anybody who doesn’t belong to the Anglo-Saxon society is dangerous and shouldn’t be trusted. She simultaneously helped pass the Residential School Act and the Indian Act, and I’m supposed to thank her for gender equality? What she wanted was more white people to vote.

MORE