Be the Heroine of your Life, Not the Victim
When I was in the 8th grade, we were studying the feminist movement of the 1950s and 1960s and one day, our teacher announced an exercise: we were going to be married off to other kids in the class and we would work out the points of marriage so to speak, our budget, our jobs, and our kids. I remember what I was wearing to this day, a white soccer league shirt I got at a volunteer event (I did not play soccer), flared Abercrombie jeans I wore until I was 20 when I finally grew out of them, and gray running shoes. My teacher married me to a boy, who was the object of affection™️ of my best friend at this time since he was tall and floppy-haired and ~edgy (for an 8th grader in the nerd class anyways), and I thought he was cute, not that I understood what that even signified back then.
In any case, we argued during the entire exercise, unable to agree about a single item on the list of items we were supposed to negotiate. I wanted to work outside the home, he wanted me to stay home with the kids, to which I was like “WHAT KIDS?” We became the only “couple” in the class to get divorced and I don’t think I had a legitimate conversation with him again after that assignment since our social circles ended up being tangential but disparate. That being said, senior year of high school when I missed a lot of school for a number of health reasons (and almost didn’t graduate even after committing to Cornell), he told everybody to leave me alone and shut up about me, and since he was very popular, they listened. I didn’t expect him to do that for me, I’m not sure why he did it because I was never particularly nice to him, even if I was never mean, but I’m extremely grateful that he did, and from the bottom of my heart, I hope he’s doing well today.
Fun fact though: I don’t generally call myself a feminist anymore, at least not without adding the ™️ to it. Gun to head, if I had to pick, I’m a radical feminist (trans-inclusionary of course) but on the whole, I strongly believe that in the last 20 or so years, feminism has been hardcore commodified and it’s no longer remotely about women’s liberation and equal opportunity for women, but instead about getting women even more Stockholm Syndromed into the patriarchy than we already are. Like no, it’s not feminist to be conventionally hot, and the sooner we stop pretending weaponized femininity is a sustainable means of female empowerment, the better! Moreover, I don’t believe in empowerment to begin with, I believe that women are just as powerful as men are, and I don’t understand why I need to be empowered, like I’m equal to every man on this planet and that’s the bottom line.
I think a lot about how anything written by women is held to an impossible standard in comparison to any other marginalized group and I just get angry. I think that so much of third-wave feminism has been about driving a cudgel between women as a class to prevent us from achieving solidarity and unity in our fight against the patriarchy. I’m not saying racism or homophobia or transmisogyny aren’t issues within the feminist movement but I am saying that while liberal white women may stick their feet in the mouth when talking about racism, “woke” men of color who’ve read Karl Marx and Bell Hooks will constantly shit on women (of color) and still get lauded as social justice activist types while the white women get labeled the most evil creatures to have ever existed. As the header of this newsletter indicates, I’d much rather have Gloria Steinem in my corner than a man of color who calls me a “white liberal’s wet dream” but still strongly believes he’s a better person than me because he voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary (which I did as well for the record). Also, like this post by Tumblr user unverifiedmessiah says:
An unparalleled and untenable burden of omniscience falls on feminists and feminism as a discipline: no blemishes, no shortfalls of perspective can exist if a work, or a whole school or era of work, is to be considered valuable and constructive, or considered whatsoever—and echoed as a sentiment between movements’ detractors and diehards, a single shared principle of Manichaean futility can be conceded.
For instance, I really respect the scholarship of Andrea Dworkin but I can still disagree with her views on some things since I am a human being who can simultaneously hold contradictory ideals. That makes sense right?
Also, white women in left-liberal circles do this thing where they go to bat for hypothetical men of color by throwing women under the bus and conveniently forgetting that women of color are in fact women and I’m completely over it. I’ve felt in danger from white men and men of color and obviously the white men are more privileged on a societal level than men of color but both groups are more privileged than me, a woman of color. And I have that enduring solidarity with white women in being oppressed under the patriarchy the way I don’t with men of color who will call me a Karen for pointing out that men of color also abuse women albeit sometimes in different ways than white men do. In the United States, I’m impacted by racialized misogyny but in India where I am not victimized by racism (colorism is different), I’m still victimized by the patriarchy. I’m still getting yelled at for wearing a tank top or shorts in public, I’m still getting unprompted comments on my skin tone and my unmarried status, I’m still getting stared at by men on the street who leave me alone solely because I have a male family member right next to me. In other words, as my longtime online friend crush, erstwhile Tumblr user kendallroy wrote:
Additionally, the widespread acceptance of intersectionality should have been a unilaterally good thing, but I think the unhinged telephone game of social media activism degraded it into a really shallow interpretation of Crenshaw’s original work, and that did a lot of damage to the concept that women can and should strive for solidarity as a class. Instead of a framework for understanding how women’s oppression under patriarchy is reinforced by other forms of structural oppression, intersectionality has been turned into a rubric to decide which women are acceptable targets for the misogyny they experience.
I say sometimes that my feminist awakening was when I was 8 years old and I read that Henry VIII had Anne Boleyn’s head chopped off and in response, I cried. I cried at the fact a man could murder his wife and face no consequences for his actions. I cried that Anne Boleyn was intelligent and powerful, a queen, and still was the victim of her husband’s whims, and I cried that she never saw her daughter, Elizabeth, grow up to be queen. When I was 8, I decided the fate of Anne Boleyn was the plight of all women, white and Black and brown, rich and poor and middle class, what we are born with and what we must endure, and now, almost 20 years later, I stand by it.
In 1996, Nora Ephron gave the commencement speech at Wellesley College, the alma mater of one Hillary Rodham Clinton (whose campaign poster has the place of honor on my wall), and she said:
“Don’t underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don’t take it personally, but listen hard to what’s going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Understand: Every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you. Underneath almost all those attacks are the words: Get back, get back to where you once belonged. When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn’t serious about her career, that is an attack on you. The acquittal of O.J. Simpson is an attack on you. Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you—whether or not you believe in abortion. The fact that Clarence Thomas is sitting on the Supreme Court today is an attack on you. Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. Because you don’t have the alibi my class had—this is one of the great achievements and mixed blessings you inherit: Unlike us, you can’t say nobody told you there were other options. Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. Twenty-five years from now, you won’t have as easy a time making excuses as my class did. You won’t be able to blame the deans, or the culture, or anyone else: you will have no one to blame but yourselves. Whoa.”
I listen to the women who came before me because without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I’m talking women like Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer and Catharine MacKinnon, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, Mary Wollstonecraft and Sojourner Truth, and yes, Hillary Clinton, who I call my honorary grandma because she’s about the same age as my own grandmother and I really think they’d vibe. But maybe I’m just being schmaltzy, YMMV.