Cis men: instead of just tweeting “happy international women’s day” stop relying on women and femmes to perform emotional labor for you.
Cis men: instead of just tweeting “happy international women’s day” redistribute the wealth and resources you hoard and hit up our PayPals.
Cis men: instead of just tweeting “happy international women’s day” internalize the ways in which you make us feel unsafe on a daily basis. Fix it.
Cis men: instead of just tweeting “happy international women’s day” tell your shitty cis men friends to stop making r/pe jokes.
Cis men: instead of just tweeting “happy international women’s day” stop trying to touch us and speak to us without consent.
Cis men: instead of just tweeting “happy international women’s day” stop interrupting us, stop speaking over us and regurgitating our ideas without attribution.
Cis men: instead of just tweeting “happy international women’s day” stop being terrible in relationships — stop gaslighting, emotionally abusing and using us for our resources and kindness.
Cis men: instead of just tweeting “happy international women’s day”, use your privilege and put yourselves on the line for our rights.
You have what you have because you’ve benefitted from and played a part in oppressing women and femmes.
Platitudes won’t help us, actions will
It may be more apparent to you now more than ever that we aren’t here for your shit anymore. Your basic “pro-equality” stance doesn’t mean much more than that unless you create tangible ways to right all the wrongs.
How often do you work on yourselves to curb toxic behaviors?
How often do you inquire about equal pay (not just compared to white women, but everyone)?
What tangible actions have you taken this year so far to hold yourselves accountable for perpetuating rotten systems?
What have you done for women lately?
These questions should be considered daily. Not a day goes by where non-men have the chance to not think about or feel the weight of patriarchy.
Triple that weight for queer women of color.
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Non-white women have been angry for a long time, and yet that anger was ignored by white feminists. Not only was it ignored, it was silenced, it was mocked, it was dismissed.
It was deemed "too much" for the world in general because it wasn't palatable. It must be said that this recent wave of angry white women who are feminists is great all, but *we* have been angry. For a long time. We have been doing the work & suffering from the consequences.
You chose to dismiss that, gaslight us until *your* anger was important and unavoidable.
Other than men, white women are the biggest barrier to us dismantling patriarchy.
We’ve seen it time and time again how white women want to retain whatever privileges white supremacy affords them, and they’re willing to harm other women in order to retain their “right” to being oppressive towards BIPOC.
White women are effective agents for white supremacy because of the way white womanhood is constructed because white womanhood depends entirely on dehumanizing and hurting BIPOC.
Men who sexually assault someone are given so much nuance, humanity and time.
People will bend over backwards trying to find ways in which they can paint rapists as simply misguided in a moment of poor judgement as opposed to violent, entitled people who give 0 fucks about their victim's autonomy.
Even more annoying: Kavanaugh is openly misogynistic. From his opinions to his professional decisions, it is clear that he weaponizes his hatred for girls and women. You cannot separate sexual assault from his stance as a judge and his perspectives of women.
Can we end the whole "you attract who you are" myth?
There are abusive, terrible and mediocre people who latch on to vulnerable, kind and generous folks.
Another myth to abolish: You don't have to "love yourself" first in order to be worthy of love in return. You are worthy of being loved, of being safe and well-cared for regardless of how you feel about yourself.
As an empathetic, compassionate, kind, resourceful, organized, hard-working, creative, interesting and intelligent person, I have "attracted" leeches, emotional vampires, emotionally and physically abusive people.
I have written a lot about self-care, I've written threads, essays, done interviews and run a series about it. What it has always come down to for me, is that when marginalized people make space for themselves, when we care about ourselves, that is an act of self-care.
For Black, Indigenous women and femmes of color in particular, our self-care is a response to years of internalized social lessons (like putting ourselves last while prioritizing everyone else around us). Self-care for us is breathing our energy back into ourselves.
Self-care can also be making some of the most difficult decisions we will ever have to make, but they are the building blocks of our futures. It also often means that we have to delve deep into ourselves and unlearn years of internalized guilt and pain.
My therapist had a training session with a white doctor who diagnosed a POC with schizophrenia because he told her about a racist micro-aggression he was subjected to.
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So I'm gonna come out and say it: BIPOC need BIPOC therapists who understand the complexities of white supremacy & race.
Given how terrible the medical industry is for BIPOC, especially Black & indigenous ppl, it is literally the safest thing to do for our mental health.