From 60 things every white woman over 60 should know

This lecture will be improved markedly in humorous intent if read in your mind using the auditory prosthesis of the voice of the immortal Mel Blanc, performing his no longer inimitable Daffy Duck if the wikipedia article is anything to go by.

why your feminism likely sucks and what to do about

Let’s start off with you thinking that you’re a feminist

If you don’t want to be the ally of Black women, disabled women, trans women, Indigenous women, sex workers of all presentations, and every distinct racial group that finds itself defined against whiteness, then perhaps this is the time to put the book down, and look off into the distance, as if you’re possibly being made to think.

Then, bust the problem out and ask yourself why.

White women have this really weird, inconsistent response to their own structural praxis of superiority which is like Bunbury. Bunbury’s always sick and always calling you away from whatever it is that you don’t want to be supporting, buuuut Bunbury is er, um, now I hope you’ll understand my difffficultiesh here, folks, but HE AIN’T HERE RIGHT NOW. No matter where you are he’s unfortunately not. (Holds up sign saying Oscar Wilde reference, ain’t I cultured???)

Can’t do anything about disabled women because I’m all about the Indigenous women.  Well sister ….you know of course that a higher percentage of Indigenous women are disabled than white women, so you’ve just shot yourself in the rhetorical ass.

But nooooo, runs the argument. Because it’s better to pay attention to one small aspect of a larger injustice (waves arms wildly, knocks over podium) and have more sway. Or don’t derail my efforts to make a better world with your pickiness about cripples and their parking requirements. (kicks podium away in a huff, folds arms over, panting wild-eyed. Calms down, sighs.)

Shit, you can try that, but it doesn’t often work. That’s weak, and it covers for, (please allow yourself to imagine how Daffy Duck would visually represent the following ideas) “Wheelchairs and crutches and braces and cerebral palsy and communications challenges all freak me out because I’m white and I literally don’t have anybody in my life who’s disabled because that’s how I curate my social ties and family.”

 

 

(eventually bunbury will lead back to the intersections of these points. I will not talk about roads. I will talk about the mind cage of my childhood, the literally actually thing.)

 

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Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

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