Dear White Women Again
Dear White Women…Again,
I won’t be striking with you.
I could. I finally have a job with actual Paid Time Off so if I wanted to, I could probably have taken off and participated in your little outing. But I won’t be.
Why? Because your strike isn’t for me. It’s an exercise for you. It’s a performance and I’m not here for it.
Now, before you get all up in your feelings and insist on posting your Social Justice CV, I’ll explain.
(For real though, why do you do that. I don’t care if you participated in the actual marches for Women’s Suffrage. White Feminism TM is for white women. If you don’t like that, get to work changing it.)
If the white women organizing this strike had really wanted to be intersectional they would have supported the Day Without Immigrants. Those of you participating in the strike on the 8th could have supported and participated in that. You could have put yourselves at risk to serve a group that has multiple levels of marginalization. But no. Instead, the people organizing this, and those of you who follow them, decided to wait until the eve of the Day Without Immigrants and start advertising a Day Without Women.
Because that didn’t come off as petty and grasping for attention at all.
And, of course, a not small number of you are lecturing Women of Color, Disabled Women, Trans, and Non-Binary Women about how we need have solidarity.
Really? Really, Becky? This is what your solidarity looks like from over here.
If you try to explain how this is really an image of solidarity I will mock you unashamedly.
Seriously, stop with the solidarity bullshit. I’m unimpressed.
What happened to your solidarity at your last little outing? What happened after?
Let me tell you what happened to me.
Foolishly, I decided that I would give my local Beckies a chance. I went to their after march meeting. I was ready to help. I was interested in the rise of a new group of activists.
I found the same old racism. I found a group of women who honestly thought going to a restaurant and paying to be served was a display of cultural competency and respect. I found a group of women who literally shouted down one of two Black women in a room when that Black woman…me, it was me, when I made it clear that they had to challenge the primary employer in our town to be more overt and aggressive on racial justice issues.
I have heard variations of that story over and over from WoC, trans and disabled women who tried to move the self-centered and congratulatory nature of the Women’s March toward real action.
We all faced racism, ableism, cisexism, and transmisogyny.
Do better. Do better right now and continue doing better. Prove to us that you’re interested in intersectionalism. Support those of us with intersections of marginalization. Stop pretending this is a new movement. We’ve been out here for years doing this work. Find organizations that are led by others and give them your time, energy, and labor.
There is a massive job of work to be done and we’re already doing it. Help us or get the hell out of our way.
We’re busy.
What a Witch 
Once again, you’re on the mark.
oh damn. on point
You know, I hadn’t been on the internet much the past couple of days, so I didn’t know much about the day without women thing. All I know is my voice was going on me on Monday night, on and off Tuesday, then Tuesday night a co-worker called in and couldn’t make it, so I was at work for my shift and hers for over 11 hours. I wouldn’t have minded trying to do that “walk off the job” thing, but when you work in a place that’s mostly female, one’s in surgery, one’s out of town, and I’m not contagious (yet), you can’t shut the place down. I also found myself in a position juggling two different jobs, one I had to give up a shift for for the sake of the less-staffed one. I couldn’t afford to take off and try for the solidarity thing.
Though it’s a nice gesture, that’s ALL it is at this moment. I barely heard about this “day without women,” didn’t hear how that was supposed to work for us, what we were supposed to do and what the point was in the long run. I mean, I can barely put gas in my tank right now–you think I’m gonna duck out of the best payday I’ve had in a year? I can’t do that. Sounded awfully improvised at the last minute, anyway. That kind of social lightning doesn’t strike twice so soon. The women’s march was interesting, and I wanted to be a part of it, but it doesn’t work if you fret over every
You’re right, there’s a total gap in understanding. We might all be women, but we’re sectioned and parceled off and not in the same realm of experience. Just being a woman and talking to another woman isn’t enough. There are over a billion individual stories out there, and we’re not all the same.
Like you, I’m trying to understand this “solidarity” thing–we don’t have it as much as we “want” to, because it’d disrupt the competitive status quo too much. Sorry if I’ve stopped making sense–great post, but my illness is kicking my rear again (grumble, grumble).
Hugs to you guys and keep awesome vibes going strong!