By Aparna Rae and Ruchika Tulshyan

It’s International Women’s Day, which means corporations, governments, and nonprofits are amplifying the few women leaders they have on social media, complete with inspirational quotes like “she believed she could, so she did.” Everywhere you look, there’s a general celebration of how far women have come (as well as the inevitable tone-deaf or entirely hollow brand marketing stunts). Cutesy hashtags like #PressForProgress are being used liberally and in cities across America, organizations are hosting power breakfasts, lunches, and happy hours to celebrate the power of women.

The irony of this day is that, in reality, the picture couldn’t be bleaker. While organizations are honoring the women in their ranks with social media posts, they are simultaneously fighting against progressive pay equity legislation and pushing back on a call to transparency with respect to hiring practices. We are still not being paid equally for equal work, abortion rights are still under constant attack, and on the whole, millennial women are worse off than their mothers and grandmothers on a number of measures.

To be sure, recent movements to bring light to the issue of gender equity has created shifts for one group; there is one set of women who have progressed significantly in the past decade — white women. And it’s often to celebrate their progress that days like this one and “Equal Pay Day” were created.

There is one set of women who have progressed significantly in the past decade — white women.

White women have long relied on — and sometimes even forced — women of color to comply with their rising status. We have long been responsible for getting white women to this place of (semi-)equity with men: We washed your clothes and cleaned your homes, and even when we made it into corporate careers, we took the lion’s share of “office housework,” like making coffee and ordering lunch, so you could head to the corner office. And while white women nationally have experienced slow but steady gains — making on average 80 cents on $1 — African American, Latinx, and Native women have seen steady declines in pay equity.

So on International Women’s Day in the year 2018, during the #MeToo and #TimesUp moments, we can’t help but call out the gross inequity experienced by women of color. This does not take away from the various strides (some) women have made, but we are weary from watching women of color in our professional lives get sidelined, struggle to see their education and experience convert to professional gains, and work harder than their white peers — only to still ultimately come out on the losing end. We encounter too many well-intentioned gatekeepers who are downright frightened by the reality of diversity — where women of color, queer women, trans women, nonbinary people, and women with disabilities all have a seat at the table.

We are the invisible women, kept on the sidelines by our supposed allies — white women.

How Equal Pay Day Excludes Women Of Color

And you, our cis white women and allies, you are in a powerful position to speak up and disrupt the status quo. You can and should lend your voice, your credibility, and your power to women around you. Stop being bystanders, refuse to take the easy path of stepping back and waiting for the first domino to fall before taking action.

Allure’s Hailey McMillian says it best:

“For those of us who count ourselves as feminists, this also means not telling women of color to hold on, to not rock the boat, to not agitate too loudly, to sublimate ‘racial concerns’ and unify as a single one-size-fits-all (read: white) feminist movement, to wait for the eventual coming of an eventual better day.”

In the name of gender justice, we have come to bat alongside you at every step of the way. Last year, women of color helped save Alabama from electing a known racist pedophile, not to mention voted in the highest percentages against Trump. For decades, we’ve done the labor for you and now it’s your turn to be an ally to us in the gender and racial justice movements.

You, our cis white women and allies, you are in a powerful position to speak up and disrupt the status quo.

Here’s how you can step up as allies to invisible women this International Women’s Day — and every day going forward.

1. Recognize your bias.

Do away with loaded/stereotypical descriptions of women of color. Here’s a list of 15 things you should never say to a person of color. Recognize that you benefit daily from white supremacy; it’s time to do the hard work of looking at your biases, discomfort, and issues that have been informed by your white privilege. Recognize that women of color are not “angry,” “timid,” “brash,” or “aggressive” — like you, we have different personalities and styles.

2. Look at your community. Do you and your family have any friends of color?

Here’s where we find the opportunity for the most change — and the most resistance to it. A whopping 75% of white people have no non-white friends. We aren’t volunteering ourselves or any other person of color to be your token friend. But if this is your reality, and yet you are applauding yourself on “International Women’s Day” after you marched in the Women’s March, your feminism is irrelevant; true equality can only be realized through an intersectional lens.

Why The White Feminism Of The Women’s March Is Still On My Mind

3. Assess where women of color are in your organization.

Women of color don’t aspire to lesser roles; in fact, women of color are equally skilled and more interested in leadership role than their white peers. If you see a woman of color in your organization, ask yourself: Are they in a senior or decision-making role?

Collectively, we have experience in the media, finance, academic, government, nonprofit, and startup communities. In every sector we have found ourselves in, we’ve met the intelligent, eager woman of color ready to assume leadership roles — who were too quickly dismissed by their white counterparts. Even in the countries we have worked in that operate largely outside of the U.S. — expat white men and women hold decision-making, leadership positions. Women of color are few and far between, relegated to the lowest of roles: janitorial, entry-level, administrative.

In every sector we have found ourselves in, we’ve met the intelligent, eager woman of color ready to assume leadership roles — who were too quickly dismissed by their white counterparts.

4. Invite women of color to the stage.

Does your event have any women of color? If you are serving non-white groups, it is your responsibility to ensure equitable representation on panels. Here in Seattle, we are invited to hundreds of events where organizers consider themselves “woke” because white women are on their panels — what more could they possibly do? Until women of color are seen as thought-leaders and experts on equal footing with white women, we have not made real progress.

5. Finally, mentor, support, and connect with women of color in your community.

As you grow in your own lives and leadership, you have the opportunity to say “yes!” or “no, not so much” to another woman finding her own way. Think about how you introduce her with an extra word of support, include her in an interesting conversation, connect her to another awesome woman. Think about how you may have whizzed through the day choosing not to do these little things. Instead, choose, always, to help advance women who don’t look like you.

Social Media Has Its Pitfalls But You Can Use It For Positive Change — Here’s How

Together, we can build the future we need.

Unsplash/Jonathan Denney

By Alaina Leary

Originally published on Everyday Feminism.

I t’s easy to think that social media is a force for negativity — that it’s bad for our mental health to be constantly exposed to a stream of news and avenues for comparing ourselves to others. But social media can also be a platform for creating and sustaining positive social change, and it’s something that we can all be a part of.

Hashtag movements like #MeToo, which was started by activist Tarana Burke and later amplified online, have lasting consequences. RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) reported a 21 percent increase in calls to anti-sexual assault helplines after Harvey Weinstein allegations and #MeToo exploded, showing that online conversations can persuade people to seek help offline.

The 2014 hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks launched a nonprofit of the same name that now offers internship grants, mentorships, awards for authors and booksellers, and an app called OurStory that helps connect people with vetted diverse books. And Marley Dias’s #1000BlackGirlBooks has helped continue that conversation while proving that young people can become activists and create change.

These are only a few examples of how movements like #BlackLivesMatter use social media alongside grassroots organizing as a catalyst for activism. It’s worth noting that many current policy changes — like the recent repealing of net neutrality — are particularly tough on marginalized people who rely heavily on the Internet for agency, education, and activism.

One of my earliest experiences with activism was when I started using an LGBTQIA+ youth forum in middle school to spread information about safe and consensual sex with our international online community, and later became a moderator for the group.

If you’re interested in using social media as an agent for positive change but you’re not sure where to start, here are some tips that may help:

1. Take advantage of interactive activism opportunities in online communities.

Research shows that people are more likely to participate in causes with social or interactive aspects that have a personal feel. This was what helped the ALS Association Ice Bucket Challenge go viral.

If your friends and family see you posting about a cause — whether it’s a call for donations or a simple action they can take — they’ll be more likely to participate because you’re a part of their personal social network. It also helps if it’s interactive in some way like the Ice Bucket Challenge was.

Last year, a friend of mine organized a call-to-action for people to write to representatives about the Affordable Care Act. She used social media to get the word out and designated a specific date for people to do it. She then invited local folks to her home to write out postcards for mailing and encouraged people to join in virtually via social media if they weren’t able to attend.

If your friends and family see you posting about a cause, they’ll be more likely to participate because you’re a part of their personal social network.

Many people might be informed about causes like affordable health care or net neutrality, but they don’t know what they can do. Since social media is social and somewhat intimate by nature (depending on how many people you connect with), it’s a great platform to spread awareness and get other people excited about a cause.

2. Make sure your activism is accessible and inclusive

The best thing about social media activism is how accessible it can be. Actions like organizing, going door-to-door for a campaign, or showing up for an in-person protest can be expensive and dangerous — especially for people of color and other marginalized people. They can also be downright inaccessible for people with disabilities.

A successful campaign for change is accessible to everyone, like the creation of the Disability March website as an online counterpart for the Women’s March. It’s also tied to offline change; not everyone can physically attend a march, but everyone can voice their concerns about the political administration with the chance to be heard. There is more than one way to get involved, so it’s inclusive of a wide range of people. The Disability March website offers examples of how people can organize online as part of their activism.

How Do You Keep Social Media From Destroying Your Mental Health?

The Women’s March was a great example of how social media helped organize an event, and disability activist Mia Ives-Rublee spearheaded the effort to make the event more accessible and inclusive to the disability community. Online efforts like Women’s March on Washington — Disability Caucus and #CripTheVote aim to sustain this momentum through finding accessible ways to get disabled people politically engaged.

No matter what your cause, there are ways to tie simple actions to real change — like encouraging people to take next steps to protect and restore net neutrality, or sharing information about how people can get registered to vote in an upcoming local election.

3. Remember that small steps are critical to getting the work done

Particularly with our constant access to information, it can be easy to lose sight of how small pieces of the puzzle are crucial to effecting larger, long-lasting change.

But small steps — like voting in local and state elections, calling your representatives, or creating a community group for political education — have a major impact. According to Harvard Business Review, easy-to-replicate, low-risk tactics are the most likely to succeed.

Small steps have a major impact.

It’s powerful if you share with your community that you’re going to get registered and make voting in the next local election a group effort, and you all get together to achieve that goal. It might seem like a small action, but state and local elections matter — they often help decide things that will have an impact on your life and the lives of those in your community. And because local elections typically have lower voter turnouts, every vote counts.

Don’t discount local protests or smaller national protests because you’re not seeing the turnout that the Women’s March had. Get invested in grassroots organizing online: What issues are communities talking about? Is there a call-to-action that you can participate in? Especially if these are communities that are typically ignored in politics and the media, it’s time to listen and get involved.

4. Share the work that other activists are doing

If you’re feeling a little lost or defeated — or you just need some time for self-care — that’s okay, too. Remember that you can’t do everything, be a part of every cause, and commit to every possible social or political action.

Amplify the work that you see other activists doing, even if you can’t take part personally. Maybe there’s someone you know who’d love to donate to a fundraiser, or maybe you can connect with someone who needs help calling their Republican Congress member.

Whether it’s showing up for a local community workshop, volunteering for a nonprofit, or retweeting activism-related information to your online network, there are so many ways to use your social platform for good.

I’m An Activist — Am I Allowed To Unplug From The Internet?

Sometimes I’ll see fantastic work that I know I can’t physically be a part of, like the Climate March in Washington, D.C., and I share the work of activists who were involved in organizing or attending. I know that I’m an individual person and as much as I contribute to causes that I care about, I can’t feasibly do everything, but what I can’t do, I can amplify.

There’s something positive and empowering about sharing our collective wins with the community, too. When you see an effort that’s affecting positive change — especially if it’s a cause that’s not often reported in mainstream media — share it with your social networks and friends. Tell them about some of the best activism victories you’ve witnessed or been a part of in 2017 — you never know, it may just encourage someone to get involved.

Social media activism is great for so many reasons: It is more widely accessible, it gets conversations started, it sustains momentum, and it helps empower people who may have never thought of themselves as activists.

As a multiply marginalized person, I always wondered what I could actually do to create real change — to work on issues like disability rights, marginalized voices in the media and publishing, accessible health care, sexual assault and consent education, or LGBTQIA+ rights.

Through online communities, I’ve gained access to invaluable resources, like learning how to distribute safe sex and consent education on campus with Great American Condom Campaign, help get college students registered to vote with Rock the Vote or report on accessibility in public transit.

Some of my activism work is fully online while other aspects have an offline component. But, regardless, there’s one thread of connection: Every time I speak up and share about these issues on social media, people reach out to me. They let me know that they feel empowered to share their own story, or that they’ve connected with a nonprofit I recommended to donate or do volunteer work.

Together, we can sustain all this momentum and build the future we need.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/im-an-activist-am-i-allowed-to-unplug-from-the-internet-2829fcff6330/ Sun, 12 Nov 2017 18:46:57 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=3060 Read more]]>

Connectedness leaves us feeling exhausted and, for activists, can lead to quicker burnout.

By Alaina Leary

Originally published on Everyday Feminism.

A s activists, we often feel like we need to be “on” at all times.

We have to be informed about any injustice that’s going on so we can help fight it. We need to be a part of the action. We feel called to be doing something that will have positive effects.

Because we live in an Internet age, that can come with a feeling of responsibility: that we should never back away from social media. That we need to always be online. FOMO — or “fear of missing out” — is ever-present.

But research suggests that, as humans, we aren’t prepared for what often amounts to an onslaught of 24/7 global news aided by the Internet age. This connectedness leaves us feeling exhausted and, for activists, can lead to quicker burnout.

When I first heard the news about Kevin Spacey coming out after being accused of sexual violence last week as I was doing my daily email and social media check for work, I panicked.

On Spacey, Weinstein, Milo, And The Weaponization Of Identity

A lot of my activism is centered on LGBTQIA+ rights and rape culture, and this conversation is right at the intersection of the two. There was plenty of activism work I could do, but I also knew that I had a lot of work to do because it’s Monday and I’ve got several ongoing projects at hand.

There’s already plenty on my plate, and I really only had time to read about the situation and amplify a few voices online.

We need to remember that we’re absolutely allowed to unplug from the Internet and take a step (or five) back from social media — and not just during times when we’re already feeling fatigue and burnout creep in, but on a regular basis to maintain our mental and physical health.

Getting away from social media is actually an important and necessary part of self-care. Here are some reasons why, as activists, we do need to unplug from the Internet and tips on how we can (realistically) do that:

1. We can’t do the work if we’re exhausted or overwhelmed

Between Facebook’s push for users to get more of their news on the platform and people’s tendency to share things that make them outraged, consuming the news is a big part of the online experience in today’s society.

Many people I’m connected with on social media are also invested in similar causes — disability rights, anti-racism, universal health care, environmental protection.

It’s fairly common for me to be using social media as a leisure tool and come across upsetting news, petitions, protests, and long articles or videos on important topics like sub-minimum wages for disabled workers or the effects of climate change on the bee population.

It’s easy to feel burnt out after just a few minutes online. So much on social media has a call-to-action attached, and it’s not possible for us to do anything effectively if we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves to do everything.

Why Should You Become An Establishment Member For $5 A Month?

To avoid this, we need to prioritize self-care. It’s easy to feel guilty for spending even an hour — never mind an entire weekend, week, or longer — away from social media and from activism work, because there will always be more we can do.

But we need to remember that taking time to recharge regularly helps us come back to activism with fresh enthusiasm, ideas, and the mental capacity to handle challenges.

I try to take social media breaks for several hours daily, although I do usually check in at least once a day on the current news cycle to keep informed.

There are times I dedicate to self-care and recharging, often an entire weekend or longer, where I commit to not checking social media or reading the news (or my email!).

I usually find that I come back to the cause feeling even more ready to do the work that needs to be done, whether it’s organizing, educating, or attending an in-person protest or rally.

2. We can’t fight every single battle all the time

My family and friend circles are full of activists who tackle a variety of issues, from local politics and environmental activism to anti-racism and domestic violence. Because I’m so involved in the activist community, I know people who are involved in what seems like almost every issue.

I’m often surrounded by other activists and reading about what they’re working on, and I think about the things I’ll never have time to be a part of. I often find myself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of what I can’t accomplish as a single individual.

We need to remember to be realistic in what we can accomplish, and this is a huge part of learning to unplug.

I often find myself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of what I can’t accomplish.

I’m not advocating for being completely naïve and uninterested in causes that don’t personally affect us. What I am suggesting is that we try to stick to a few different niches and remember that there are folks doing the work that we can’t.

They may even be better prepared through lived experience and education than we are. Instead of feeling fatigued that we aren’t able to fight for every cause we believe in, we can amplify the work that people are doing and focus on our own strengths.

Most of my activism work revolves around disability and LGBTQIA+ rights, which are both communities that I’m a part of. I also do a lot of work on diversity in publishing and media, so I’m constantly paying attention to conversations about the #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement and the fight to diversify publishing staff.

How To Help The Cause When You Need Help Yourself

There are, however, many causes that I believe in but know I don’t have the time, energy, or resources to fight for, so I spend my time amplifying people and organizations that are leading the way.

In my day job as a writer, editor, and social media manager, I am often in a position to shed light on issues and potential solutions, distributing information about activist causes to key influencers who I know will help get the word out.

Even if you don’t have access to these outlets, you can amplify other activists and causes on your own social media channels and by word-of-mouth locally.

3. Activists are frequent targets for online harassment

Particularly if you are marginalized or multiply marginalized and in any type of visible position, being an activist also comes with targeting online. If you’re speaking up for a cause, chances are high that there will be trolls and other folks online who disagree.

“Disagreement” may mean a comment here or there, but it can also escalate into things like being harassed, doxxed, and threatened.

If this happens, make sure to practice immediate self-care in the moment, but also use it as a reason to regularly recharge and step back from the Internet and social media. Build these breaks into your routine.

Depending on how often you engage online, you might take a 15-minute break for every hour spent online or take 2 full days per week to go off the grid. Check in with your own mental and physical health, and your energy levels, to see if these breaks are working for you.

Being an activist also comes with targeting online.

I started taking planned social media breaks about two years ago. I was already working at least part-time in a social media capacity for organizations, as well as using the web as a resource for my freelance and volunteer work, which is frequently activism-based.

At the time, I was exhausted and had no idea how to navigate this. After my “official” work hours ended, was I expected to be online at all times in case I came across a political story I could pitch it to an editor?

Should I be there retweeting hashtags as soon as they started, before they were even viral? If I didn’t know about the latest news in disability rights and health care, how could I put together an action plan?

Planning daily and weekly breaks into my work week became absolutely critical to remaining healthy and engaged.

You might also want to consider checking in with your community to see if there’s a way other people can support you so that you’re able to take breaks when you need to.

If you’re managing social media for a nonprofit or organization — or as a public figure yourself — you might see if there are other moderators who can step in at least a few times a week so you’re not the only one doing the work.

A Brief History Of Behind-The-Scenes Activism With A Big Impact

Asking for help can be difficult, but support from your community can be really beneficial when you’re trying to recharge, particularly if you’ve been subject to harassment.

When activism is a big part of your work (and possibly even your identity), it can be hard to separate yourself. You might feel like you need to be engaged at all times.

For example, I often feel the pressure if I see a call for pitches from an online magazine looking to publish a themed issue on consent and I don’t send in options related to the causes I care about, such as campus sexual violence, inclusive sex and consent education, or rape culture.

I need to remember that I won’t do effective, good work if I’m constantly exhausted because I’m pushing myself to be involved 24/7 in so many things. Like anyone else, I need time off and breaks from the constant flow of work, whether it’s paid or volunteer.

When activism is a big part of your work (and possibly even your identity), it can be hard to separate yourself.

I need to prioritize self-care. I need to know when to step back (which can be tough, especially if you are being harassed or threatened) and when to ask for help.

I recommend resources like The Self Care Project, Rest for Resistance, Everyday Feminism, Wear Your Voice Magazine, The Establishment, and these self-care options for days when the world feels terrible.

These are lessons we all need to take seriously, especially as the Internet and social media become more advanced.

We may have constant access to a vast amount of information, but we can’t do anything about it if we aren’t strategic — especially in how we build self-care into our priority lists for daily life.

Alaina Leary is an Everyday Feminism Reporting Fellow. She is a Bostonian currently studying for her MA in publishing at Emerson College. She’s a disabled, queer activist and is on the social media team at We Need Diverse Books. She can often be found re-reading her favorite books and covering everything in glitter. You can find her at her website or on Instagram and Twitter @alainaskeys. Read her articles here.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/what-can-laughter-do-for-social-justice-4875b260311c/ Fri, 22 Sep 2017 21:47:10 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=3093 Read more]]> Basic human biology makes humor an effective tool to fight oppression.

The feminist scholar bell hooks wrote a passage on laughter that I still think about regularly. The paragraph is from her 2004 book The Will to Change. In it, she tells the story of standing up in front of an audience and using the phrase “white-supremacist imperialist capitalist patriarchy” to describe our social system. Her listeners burst into laughter. It would be easy to take their reaction as a gesture of mockery, but bell hooks doesn’t. Instead, she observes, “No one ever explained what about the phrase was funny…I choose to interpret their laughter as a sign of discomfort.”

According to scientific research, she’s right. Studies show that “endorphins secreted by laughter can help when people are uncomfortable.” Because laughter is a social lubricant that strengthens human bonds — an evolutionary advantage our primate ancestors developed 10–16 million years ago — Homo sapiens are especially likely to laugh when they sense a threat to their social order. Of course, as bell hooks points out, our current social order grants more power to white people, wealthy people, and men. By naming these phenomena for what they are — examples of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy — hooks distances herself from these social structures and suggests a division between caucasians and people of color, the wealthy and the poor, the male and the female. The easiest way to smooth over potential ruptures in the audience as a result of this statement? Laughing.

Why It’s Important To Admit That Being Trans Can Be Funny

The irony is that in attempting to laugh off distress, humans often become complicit in the social inequalities that create friction in the first place. The philosopher Henri Bergson considered laughter a social corrective, one that people use when they sense someone deviating from communal norms. For instance, if a communal norm is for men to wear pants, and one man walks outside in a skirt, laughing spectators just might drive that man back inside to change into his jeans. Nobody likes the humiliation of unwanted attention. And so, by laughing at “deviants,” people with influence can corral straying group members back into “acceptable” boundaries. This kind of social policing gives “deviant” community members a choice: Obey the rules, or become the group laughingstock. In this way, laughter works to uphold norms that harm the marginalized.

But while laughter can be used as a tool by the powerful to keep the powerless in line, it can also be used inversely: as a way for the marginalized to reclaim power, while engendering a crucial dialogue around social justice. Two comedians of color — Aziz Ansari and Jessica Williams — have been particularly deft at using laughter to communicate thorny messages about racism, sexism, and all the other -isms — and the way they’ve done it is rooted in basic human psychology.

Take the “First Date” episode of Ansari’s Netflix series Master of None, in which his character Dev, a New Yorker of Indian descent in his thirties, meets a white woman on a dating app. They end up back in her bedroom, where she asks him to get a condom from the ceramic jar on her night table. He turns around to find that the jar is fashioned as a cartoonish-looking black woman in a red dress and white apron: a racist image of the black “Mammy.” The camera zooms into the jar in a series of exaggerated close-ups, with dramatic non-diegetic sound effects. The cinematic flair makes Dev’s predicament obvious. As viewers, we laugh to relieve our own sense of uneasiness with the scene.

A few cuts later, Dev explains to his date that the jar is offensive. “Isn’t it a little racist?” he asks. “You can’t use that shade of black to depict African-American people.” When she protests that nobody else has ever been offended by the jar, he wants to know if any black people have seen it. She says no. Dev raises his eyebrows. “So, I’m the person with the darkest skin tone that’s seen it, and I’m the most offended. Don’t you see a correlation there?” It’s a hard moment to swallow, but Aziz Ansari had preempted his viewers’ discomfort. We’ve already laughed out our tension. And now we can truly hear his point about racist paraphernalia.

Our increased receptivity post-laughter has a biological explanation. Laughter decreases cortisol levels and other stress-producing hormones. As a result, humans become more amicable and less confrontational after some chuckles. According to Psychology Today, “laughter seems to be produced via a circuit that runs through many regions of the brain,” including those involved in phenomena like friendship, love, and affection. All of this softens our fight-or-flight instinct and lubricates otherwise strained interactions. If only Dev’s partner observed the scene from the TV viewer’s perspective, she might have been more open to his criticism.

Jessica Williams pulls off something similar in Jessica’s Feminized Atmosphere. The video is a 2014 parody on street harassment, based on a Fox newscaster’s claim that America’s “feminized atmosphere” is demonizing men. In the video, Williams prances by Manhattan construction workers while singing You’re a Grand Old Flag, trying to ward off their inevitable catcalling. She gushes sarcastically that her commute is like “competing in a beauty pageant every day!” Her satirical portrayal of catcalling shows how irritating and even frightening this harassment can be for women on the streets.

I laughed aloud watching Williams’ video. I could relate to it all. Her jokes were empowering for me, because they gave me permission to laugh at a daily frustration. Although there was a screen between us, I also felt a bond with the women Williams interviewed in the skit. We had similar trials, and we were laughing about them together. As evolution would have it, my social bonds felt stronger.

Philosophers studying laughter might have attributed my feelings to superiority theory. This theory states that when somebody laughs at another person, they feel superior to the party who’s the butt of the joke. In cases where the people laughing are more oppressed than those they’re laughing at, the solidarity can bring with it a sense of power. As Jazmine Hughes wrote in The New Republic, “By making fun of white people, people of color can, in a small way, push back against stereotypes, opposing racial humor by inverting it.” Hughes gives an example: “If you are a black person in the 1800s, and there’s a white man who owns you, beats you, and tears your family apart, then it’s totally fine to crack a joke about his waistcoat to your friends.” If you’re a woman, you’re allowed to make fun of the men whose stares creep you out as you’re walking home. The women in Jessica’s Feminized Atmosphere are inverting sexist humor, comically rebuffing the male newscasters who think sexism is overhyped.

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In cases where the people laughing are more oppressed than those they’re laughing at, solidarity can bring with it a sense of power.
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There are real emotional benefits to group laughter, as well. Laughing with friends for 15 minutes can raise pain tolerance levels by 10%. Whether it’s women like me laughing at Fox News commentators with Jessica Williams, or people of color cracking up with Aziz Ansari at white people’s ignorance, the opportunity to make fun of an oppressive force is cathartic. Considering how many people feel oppressed by Trump’s presidency, it’s no surprise that viewers are finding ablution through the late-night skewering of Donald Trump by Samantha Bee and Stephen Colbert, two comedians whose ratings have surged since Inauguration Day.

When bell hooks lectured on our “white supremacist capitalist imperialist patriarchy,” I suspect she was sincerely naming the hierarchies that organize American society. But on some level, I wonder if she knew her string of multi-syllabic words would get some laughs. Trying to label our flawed social system only emphasizes exactly how flawed it is. It takes 17 syllables just to name the problem. The power imbalances are so great, that describing them sounds unintentionally hyperbolic. In a reality so ridiculous, there’s hardly any room for exaggeration — and even the most liberal audience could find that funny, in a self-deprecating, shared misery kind of way.

Perhaps this laughter was something bell hooks intended. Just like comedians set the stage for earnest discussions, so bell hooks might have been breaking her students’ apathy by giving them an easy access point. Laughter doesn’t necessarily lead to understanding, but if some giggles help students open their ears, it’s a step in the right direction.

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Everything short of racial justice is white supremacy. Everything.

Credit: Vlad Tchompalov/Unsplash

I’m going to say something about race that may seem to fly in the face of everything we’ve been taught about how to handle complicated and divisive adult issues—but, as unproductive as it may sound, it’s the truth: There is no compromise.

There is no compromise to be had, none whatsoever, when it comes to racial justice. There are no baby steps that are acceptable. There is no middle to meet in.

Everything short of racial justice is white supremacy. Everything.

There is no compromise to be had, none whatsoever, when it comes to racial justice.

If this sounds harsh or unreasonable to you, I really need you to understand why it is not. If this last election and the torrent of narratives against “identity politics” has you thinking that maybe, just maybe, some middle ground between white supremacists and anti-racists must be found, I need you to understand the danger this belief puts us in. Because the desire to make racial equality a topic which is up for debate, or racial justice a goal that we can ease ourselves into, is what has sustained the system of violent white supremacy for hundreds of years. I need you to understand, because I need you to understand what those who say that we are “pushing too hard” or “asking for too much” or “moving too fast” are really saying.

The average American will easily agree that they believe that freedom, justice, and equality are basic rights, rights we are born with. These ideas are woven throughout the entire narrative of our democracy. But in practice, very few people actually believe that freedom, justice, and equality are rights that every American deserves. When you enjoy your freedoms, and you tell those who want their freedoms that they have to wait, that they have to go slowly, that they have to give you time to make uncomfortable adjustments to the amount of privilege that their inequality has afforded you, what you are saying is, “You were not born with these rights. You were not born as deserving as me. I have the power and privilege to determine when it is time for you to receive freedom and equality, and my approval is conditioned on how comfortable and safe you make me feel about how that freedom and equality will impact the privileges I enjoy.”

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What is the compromise between justice and oppression? What grey area between inequality and equality exists? There is none. You cannot have a little injustice and call it justice. You cannot have a little inequality and call it equality. And whenever you decide that you have the power to slow or stop justice and equality for others — you are immediately ensuring the continuation of injustice and inequality by placing yourself above those seeking justice and equality. There is a claim of superiority inherent in believing that you have the right to slow racial justice. It is a claim of superiority that white supremacy has granted you, and that you cannot accept without becoming a willing proponent of this white supremacist system.

You cannot have a little injustice and call it justice. You cannot have a little inequality and call it equality.

Lives are ruined while we “wait our turn.” Children are expelled from school, young adults are locked away in prison. As people of color in this country we receive substandard health care, we are denied job interviews, we are denied bank loans, we are paid less, our neighborhoods are denied investment and infrastructure, we are locked in poverty, we are erased from history books and movie screens, we are harassed by police, we are murdered by the state. There is no amount of discomfort on behalf of white America that would make the continuation of this white supremacist system anything other than inhumanely cruel.

Those who want to uphold white supremacy, or even delay its destruction, are denying the humanity of people of color in this country. There is no nice way to ask for our freedom that will lead to it being granted. Believe me, we’ve tried. Even having to ask is an act of oppression in itself.

Your Calls For Unity Are Divisive As F*ck

We live in a country where people will try to convince you that if you do not prove to white America that you are worthy of freedom, justice, and equality — if you do not ask nicely, wait patiently, prove your worth with respectability and good deeds — that it is right that it would be denied you. We live in a country where people will try to convince you that you do not have freedom, justice, and equality because you have not done enough for those things.

We live in a country where people will try to convince you that pushing for freedom, justice, and equality in a way which white America has not pre-approved will only lead to more oppression, injustice, and inequality. We live in a country where people will try to tell you that white America is not at all responsible for the white supremacy it upholds, that their hands are forced by your refusal to make the prospect of your freedom, justice, and equality more comfortable for them.

Those who want to uphold white supremacy, or even delay its destruction, are denying the humanity of people of color in this country.

There is no compromise to be had. There is nothing between oppression and freedom that doesn’t guarantee our continued subjugation. We cannot trade away our humanity to those who claim to be allies in the hopes that what they will build in our name will be anything more than our oppression. We cannot ally ourselves to those who would be turned away by our demands and ever expect those demands to be met. So if there is no compromise, what can we do?

We keep pushing. We keep fighting. We check ourselves for the internalized white supremacy that tells us that we have to take it slow, that we have to settle for less. We check our allies for the internalized white supremacy that tells them that they are not required by their belief in justice and equality to fight white supremacy, no matter how uncomfortable it may make them. We show people how their words do not match their actions. We do not for one moment let white supremacy feel comfortable in our presence.

So You Want To Fight White Supremacy

We raise our kids with this same, uncompromising belief in our rights. We challenge any attempts to normalize our oppression. We continuously bring to light the racism that others would prefer live in the dark. We celebrate every victory and always know that it is not enough. We fight not for the hearts and minds of individual racists, but for the freedom, justice, and equality that we are overdue to receive and that they have no right to withhold. We push past our own individual liberation and comfort and fight for every last one of us. We comfort each other, hold each other, and make space for grief and despair and exhaustion. But we don’t give up. We don’t compromise our neighbors, our children, our humanity.

Do not let anyone tell you that your time has not come.

Do not let anyone tell you that you ask for too much.

Do not let anyone tell you that you should have to ask at all.

We don’t compromise our neighbors, our children, our humanity.

I do not know what freedom, justice, and equality will look like for us — I have never seen it with my own eyes. But I do know what our oppression looks like, and right now, it looks like the compromises of our souls that we are being asked to make every day in the hopes that it will somehow lead to our liberation.

We are worth more than this. We are worth the fight. We were born worthy.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/being-labeled-a-bad-survivor-showed-me-that-callout-culture-needs-to-change-4c64add350f0/ Tue, 29 Aug 2017 21:29:52 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=3543 Read more]]>

Callouts are often misused to attack marginalized people — most often trans women.

Credit: Flickr/Gene Han

By Erika Haberman

Last summer I was sexually assaulted by one of my closest friends. I was dealing with a lot of trauma at the time, and they volunteered to come take care of me. But they showed up drunk, and in my fragile emotional state I was unable to stand up for myself. They did things to me without ever asking consent, using me for their own pleasure and ignoring my needs. For a host of reasons related to trauma and our victim-blaming culture, I wasn’t immediately aware that my boundaries had been crossed, so I didn’t think much of it afterwards and I continued being their close friend. It wasn’t until months later after I started talking to other people who had had similar experiences with them that I came to understand what had happened to me as assault.

As I began to come forward with what had happened — with the hopes of raising awareness about my assailant’s violence as a means of protecting others — I quickly found myself exiled from my community. Despite my efforts to protect others, according to some people in the social justice and activist spaces I was a part of, I’d not gone far enough; for not wanting to ruin my assailant’s life by exacting violence against them or running them out of town, I was quickly labeled a “bad survivor.”

What happened to me painfully illustrates the harm that can be caused under the guise of “callout culture.”

The vast majority of the radical and queer communities — myself included — do not believe in the prison system. We understand that the criminal “justice” system is really just a racist profit machine that has no intention of rehabilitating offenders. Further, my assailant is transgender. As a transgender woman who’s already experienced firsthand the kind of violence that trans people face in jail, I was unwilling to involve the police in the wake of my assault.

As a result, I sought to enter into a transformative justice process with my assailant. I understood that they were raised in an extremely conservative Christian homeschooling setting and had never received any kind of affirmative-consent-based education — they likely had no clue of the ways in which they were being violent. I knew that if they could come to understand the ways in which their behavior was harmful, then they could do the work necessary to hold themselves accountable and become a better person. However, after two months of attempting to get in touch with my assailant, I was ultimately unsuccessful in getting them to meet with me, and so I eventually gave up and took a different approach.

For not wanting to ruin my assailant’s life by exacting violence against them or running them out of town, I was quickly labeled a “bad survivor.”

I wrote a long private Facebook post naming them and detailing what they had done to me. I needed to be able to tell my story and speak my truth — and that is what I did. However, I did not want my story to turn into a witch-hunt against a trans-femme person, and I said so explicitly. I didn’t need or want for them to be run out of town or for physical harm to come to them. The only things I needed and asked for were for people to hear my story and to not invite both of us to the same event. I had said my piece and was ready to move on. However, that was not to be.

Less than an hour after I told my story, a prominent member of the local queer community — with whom I was Facebook friends but barely knew — hijacked my story and made their own public callout of my assailant. In it they called for people to beat up my assailant, going against all of my explicitly stated wishes. Their goal was to run my assailant out of town. This was theoretically to keep them from hurting more people, but the more I spoke to the person who’d posted the callout, the more I realized that they simply wanted to shove my assailant somewhere else so that their behavior wouldn’t be our community’s problem anymore. This person even went so far as to say to the world that I was being morally and tactically reprehensible for refusing to condone violence.

The Dangerous Exclusivity Of Spaces For ‘Women’ Sexual Assault Survivors

A few weeks later, the poster of this callout messaged me with a plot to cause physical harm to my assailant, and condemned me when I told them I was not at all OK with this. They told me that I was being unfair to them by burdening them with my refusal to allow violence to be done. It was through my refusal to condone violence against my assailant that I came to feel like a pariah in my own town. I was given cold stares when I was seen in public and made to feel unwelcome at local events.

The pushback I received — all for being a “bad survivor” — was ultimately one of the major factors that contributed to me deciding to move away. In the end, I came to be much more traumatized by the way the so-called radical queer community — with all their rhetoric about supporting survivors — treated me for how I chose to be a survivor than I ever was from my actual assault.

My experience is just one example of what is a much wider problem — the way in which queer and radical communities over-rely on callout culture. Callout culture is the prominent way in which social media is utilized to publicly name and shame people who are abusive or otherwise dangerous.

Callouts are not in and of themselves a bad thing. For example, in the wake of the fascist rally in Charlottesville that led to the murder of of counter-protester Heather Heyer, Twitter user @YesYoureRacist publicly identified and doxxed the Neo-Nazis who attended — causing them public humiliation and real-world consequences for their abominable actions. This kind of callout is clearly justified; fascists should — and indeed must—be publicly named so that people can know to avoid them and ensure their bigotry doesn’t go unpunished. This piece is not a blanket condemnation of publicly speaking out against dangerous people; I merely wish to critique the way in which callouts are utilized as the first and only means for dealing with interpersonal conflict.

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I am sure that there are certainly many people in queer and radical communities reading this right now who are angry at me for daring to criticize callout culture — it has become a third rail in large parts of these communities. I have seen people who do what I am doing now get viciously attacked and publicly condemned for speaking out; when someone I knew was anonymously soliciting submissions for a zine critiquing callout culture, there was even a public campaign to figure out who they were in order to dox them. In fact, my fear of a coordinated violent backlash in response to me writing this has made me feel unsafe attaching my name to this article; I am publishing this under a pseudonym.

The ugly reality is that callouts are often misused to attack marginalized people — most often trans women. Such toxic callouts often offer little to no explanation of what exactly the person being called out did beyond “this person is abusive and if you associate with them you are too.”

Further, the demands made in order for the person being accused of abuse to be held “accountable” are also often incredibly unreasonable. In just the past year alone, I have seen a demand that an accused abuser never reach out to anyone for support. I have seen coordinated efforts demanding that a poor trans woman accused of abuse leave their state and not go to any of six other specific states — which just happened to most of the states where it’s even marginally safe to be a trans woman. I’ve seen groups demand that no one associate with anyone who is even just acquaintances with a person vaguely being accused of abusive. In one instance I have even seen the specific demand that a trans woman accused of abuse commit suicide. Beyond just having abhorrent demands, these callouts replicate the same logic of exile and isolation that underlies the prison-industrial complex that the communities that engage in callouts claim to be opposed to.

The ugly reality is that callouts are often misused to attack marginalized people — most often trans women.

The result of these toxic callouts is a culture of fear; people are scared to refute a callout or even associate with anyone who has been called out for fear of being labeled an abuse apologist — or even an abuser themselves. Thus many trans women — who are already abandoned by society writ large — come to find themselves also exiled from the queer community on the word of rumors.

To be sure, mainstream society has a serious problem with not believing survivors, so it’s completely understandable that radical and queer communities center themselves on believing those who said they’ve been abused or assaulted. I myself am grateful for the ways in which the abuse I’ve survived has been validated by these communities. Yet these issues are deeply nuanced, and we must keep in mind that not all claims of abuse are true. As Porpentine Charity Heartscape writes in her influential article “Hot Allostatic Load,” “escaping from abuse is the most certain way to become painted as an abuser, and being an abuser is the most sure way to be believed.”

Letters From Trans And Nonbinary Survivors To Their Body Parts

The truth is that some abusive people within queer and radical communities will make false claims of abuse against their victims; they bastardize the motto of “believe survivors” for their own sinister ends. Until we invite a nuanced understanding of this toxic dynamic, we will continue to play into the hands of abusers and cause further harm to the true survivors. This is the danger inherent in the way that callout culture has become the first and only means of dealing with interpersonal conflict within queer and radical communities. The fact is that callouts — even genuine and detailed ones—aren’t always necessary, as I experienced firsthand.

Before I moved away from the town where I was traumatized, I reached out to my assailant one last time to attempt to have the conversation I wanted to have originally. As time had passed since I initially reached out to try to talk to them — allowing for them to be able to do their own self-reflection — this time they were receptive and willing to meet up. I walked into the meeting planning on explaining the ways in which their behaviors harmed people and what I needed of them to finally begin an accountability process. Yet before I could even utter those words, they confessed that they recognized the ways in which their behavior had been harmful; they had already done all of the things that I was going to ask them to do in order to hold themselves accountable — in fact they had done even more than I was going to ask of them.

The result of these toxic callouts is a culture of fear.

They had truly become a different person—one who was open to my words and reacted positively to me talking about how they had hurt me. As a result, we were able to address the harm that had been caused and heal together. I can honestly say that I forgive them for the ways in which they hurt me.

By contrast, using callout culture against my assailant didn’t bring anyone any sort of healing or closure — it merely ushered in more pain and isolation. It was only by waiting the time required for a transformative justice framework to be successful that my assailant could improve themselves as a person, I could heal myself as a survivor, and further harm against other people could be prevented.

Obviously my story and solution are unique and will not work for everyone. But if there’s a chance a survivor is able to communicate their truth and their perpetrator is willing to hold themselves accountable, then my experience provides a blueprint for a better way to deal with abuse. There are certainly many other ways out there to deal with interpersonal violence, but until we stop viewing callouts as the only way to handle harm we will never find these paths. And that just causes everyone to suffer more than they need to.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/how-white-feminists-fail-as-native-allies-in-the-trump-era-d353d87b8059/ Tue, 23 May 2017 21:52:09 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=4141 Read more]]> When will those supposedly committed to equality started caring about and listening to Native Women?

Ihave been trying to write about what it means to be a Native Woman in white, colonized, feminist spaces before this election cycle even began. Since Trump was awarded the presidency, this task has only become more challenging.

Trying to find the words to describe such complexities as colonization and its connection to the fabric of American (or as I call it, ameriKKKan) “rights” that the feminist movement fights for is difficult. How do I accurately describe my reality to white women who often don’t even realize my people are still here and are struggling for not just our legal rights, but for the right to literally live?

How do I properly describe to white women that their values are killing us?

Since November’s election, the discourse surrounding women’s rights, feminism, and oppression has reached meteoric heights. The nationwide women’s marches broke records for protester turnout, political petitions and campaigns abound, and more major Hollywood stars are getting involved in activism than ever. One might think, in light of this new era of political action and awareness, that those who are supposedly committed to justice and equality would have started caring about and listening to Native Women. In reality, however, while many white women have been reawakened by Trump to their plight, they’re no more racially woke now than before. Despite the lip service paid to racial justice, their behavior reeks of arrogance and colonizer privilege.

How do I properly describe to white women that their values are killing us?
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At the women’s march in DC, Madonna proclaimed — after being introduced by the notoriously racist Amy Schumer — that “It took us this uniquely dark moment to wake the fuck up.” But this is not a uniquely dark moment in ameriKKKa, and many of us were already woke. This nation was built upon, and maintains itself upon, the genocide of Native People. And while Native Women bear the brunt of this abuse, white feminists — our so-called allies — continue not only to erase and appropriate us, but to be outright condescending and aggressive.

The Failure Of ‘Feminism’

I once strongly identified as a feminist, but the hypocrisy of the feminist movement has pushed me away. My people, the Tsalagi, never needed feminism before white, christian men invaded our lands. We were matrilineal and matriarchal. Our women had power, safety, and love. It is only as a result of white invasion that feminism is supposedly needed; that is, ameriKKKan feminism is merely one more way in which the white settlers have forced themselves upon us. Native Women no more need feminism than we need colonialism and christianity.

Moreover, white feminists seem only to remember us when they want to appropriate and misconstrue our pre-colonizer ways — which placed balance between the genders and instilled respect for our women — for their own ends. Or, when white women want to feel like a special snowflake, they make false claims to our tribes, as Blake Lively and Senator Warren have done.

Trump, Warren, And The Dehumanization Of Native Women

At the same time, these same white feminists expect us to be eternally thankful that they signed a petition or took valuable resources away from us by sitting on their privileged asses at the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) resistance camps.

Far too many white women think that having worn a white pant suit to vote for Hillary abstains them from being destructive to other women. In reality, however, it proves that they place their rights above those of Indigenous and other marginalized women. Some white women even go so far as to condescendingly tell those of us who knew Hillary was our enemy that we were to blame for Trump’s victory.

The unique horrors and marginalization that Native Women face — from the highest rates of violence and incarceration within the colonized borders of the U.S., to lack of access to healthcare or legal means to pursue justice — make such condescension and lack of allyship even more unconscionable.

Violations And Violence

Settler colonialism has brought innumerable ills to Turtle Island. Because we are the bringers of life, our women have been targeted for centuries by the white man in order to kill us off. This dynamic has not ceased since the 15th century, as painfully discussed by Tami Truett Jerue, Director of the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center, at a congressional briefing in February. She relayed at the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s (NIWRC) panel that Alaskan Natives comprised only 16% of the total state population, yet Alaskan Native Women make up 28% of the total murders in Alaska.

Jerue spoke of how the women in her family would sit at the kitchen table discussing the missing and murdered women they knew. This is an all too common conversation among Indigenous Women — and one I’ve never experienced with white women.

Settler colonialism has brought innumerable ills to Turtle Island.
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Further, resource extraction not only pollutes our lands and bodies, but also brings more white men to our lands to abuse us, as well as drugs that eat at the fabric of our communities. Jade Begay, Diné and Tesuque Pueblo, of the Indigenous Environmental Network, told me during a recent meeting that due to the fracking, coal, and mining projects on Diné land, many of her cousins and family members are unable to run or exercise outside by themselves given the high threat of abuse: They’re afraid of being assaulted or going missing.

And these are not isolated issues. Native Women suffer the highest rates of violence of any racial group in the U.S., with about 56.1% of Native experiencing sexual assault in their lifetime.

Moreover, due to the ruling in the SCOTUS case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, we are unable to prosecute non-Natives who commit crimes on our land, and as such, we cannot protect ourselves from white invaders. And despite the Department of Justice acknowledging that crime rates experienced by Native communities are two and half times greater than the general population’s, the federal government often fails to investigate any crimes reported. This is in part due to systemic bias, and in part due to Public Law 280, which placed some tribal nations under state law enforcement control.

On top of this, states do not receive federal funds to police tribal lands, and so they rarely give additional law enforcement coverage to reservations. And when such law enforcement coverage is provided, the abuse these officers have perpetuated against Native People over the years has prevented any kind of trust that justice will be served — not to mention that crimes committed against Native Women are rarely investigated.

These and other jurisdictional issues unjustly created by the federal government have led to a complicated bureaucratic fiasco, which many of us fear will worsen in the age of Trump. Not only has he restarted construction on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, but his signing of HJ Resolution 44 — which places the control of federal lands back into the hands of states, cutting down decision-making time concerning the use of federal lands — further threatens Native land and autonomy.

The violence Native People face is not new — and it didn’t take Trump to make us woke and fight back. We’ve been fighting for the rights of all women since 1492. However, the same can’t be said for white women.

The Glaring Absence Of White ‘Allyship’

While white women are quick to rally against the injustices in rape cases where they’ve been or can see themselves being abused and experiencing institutional oppression — such as Brock Turner’s — they go silent when it comes to the violation of Native Women. When I’ve repeatedly raised the issue of the horrifically high rates of violence against Native Women I have either been ignored by the mainstream feminist organizations, such as Ultraviolet and the National Organization of Women, or have been told that we are somehow responsible for our assaults. A colonizer/“feminist” tweeted to me that if the abuse on our reservations were so high, why didn’t we just leave? This statement is ignorant and insulting. As if we should give up what’s left of our lands. As if the abuse we suffer is in our control, and as such, our fault. By this logic white women should stop attending college so they’re less likely to be raped.

We’ve been fighting for the rights of all women since 1492. However, the same can’t be said for white women.
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Her statement also overlooked that the overwhelming majority of us are urban-based thanks to the U.S. government’s termination and relocation policies. Such policies stole even more of our lands and culture, and lowered our numbers in the eyes of the government so they had “less responsibility” to financially maintain our programs, honor treaties, and properly manage our trusts and lands, pushing us into urban poverty.

Not to mention that urban-based Native Women still experience devastating rates of violence at the hands of white men and the state. My home of Oklahoma, for instance, was once known as Indian Territory. We were removed by the ameriKKKan military from our ancestral homeland to Indian Territory in the 1800s. Today, it has the second-highest Native population in the U.S. — and yet, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, my nation, doesn’t have a reservation. Despite my not living on a reservation, I’ve been raped several times by white men. And sexual assault-related resources are yet another area where Native Women face massive obstacles.

We are also the most likely racial group denied post-rape care in the U.S. There are 17,000 rape crisis centers in the U.S. and less than five that serve Native Women. The Indian Health Services (IHS) is often the only health care we have access to, and there is rarely anyone on staff who can perform a rape exam with the necessary rape kit. And if a rape kit is performed, then it’s almost never processed.

America’s Conversation On Sexual Assault Is A Failure If It Ignores Native Women

As white feminist organizations have dissected various iterations of the AHCA for its many failings on women’s health, they have yet to highlight the impact it will have on Native communities. The Indian Healthcare Improvement Act (IHIA) has a continual renewal process under the American Care Act (ACA). If the ACA is repealed, all the life-saving funds the IHIA gives to the Indian Health Service (IHS) could be lost. The IHS hospital in Eaglebutte, South Dakota, which serves the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation, has already been hit with a $4.1 billion cut from the federal government. This will hurt our women even more and quite possibly lead to higher rates of death, but, again, this doesn’t seem to be a concern for white feminists.

Unique Threats In The Era Of Trump

I spend — and have for a long time spent — much of my time reminding white feminists that they are blanketed in privilege not only as white people, but as settlers. I expend a great deal of my finite energy being expected to educate these privileged darlings — for free no less — on how to be “whole people” as they infer that we’re “primitive” and have no right to call them out on their racism.

And despite this new era of “resistance,” political awakening, and feminism, nothing has changed. In fact, this toxic dynamic was perhaps no more pointedly on display than in the heart of the feminist resistance: at the Women’s March in D.C. On that day, groups of Indigenous Women gathered to have our collective voices heard. The Indigenous Women Rise contingent had only Native speakers and prayers to our ancestors; we marched together for representation and visibility — or, at least, we attempted to have our own space. One white woman after another pushed her way through our group, repeatedly ignoring our cries that we were marching together. I, as did many other Native Women, lost the larger group.

Despite Trump’s even higher threat to our survival, white women wouldn’t even allow us space for one day on our own land.

On top of that, the comments that many of us received from these feminists were as vile as the hate that Trump himself spews. One Muskogee Creek Woman from Oklahoma took to Twitter to describe her experience of white women at the D.C. Women’s March claiming they were “an Indian today” or that we “did not look like Indians” and were “pretending” — the very words that Trump used to described the Mashantucket Pequots when attempting to steal their economic livelihood in 1993. After describing this experience she was inundated with racist, colonizing replies from white feminists.

The comments that many of us received from these feminists were as vile as the hate that Trump himself spews.
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The New York Times review of the Women’s March was no more enlightening. Emma-Kate Symons’ article proved that, once again, white women simply don’t get it — nor do they care to: “Can’t we rise above the sniping about ‘privilege,’ ‘white feminism,’ ‘intersectionality,’ and hierarchies of grievance in the face of Trump and the dangers he poses to the American and international liberal world order and women everywhere?”

To be frank with you, Emma-Kate, no we can’t. Yes, Trump is dangerous to all women, but the Democrats are also dangerous to us and have already inflicted great harm. They support resource extraction and the prison industrial complex, and have no understanding nor concern for Native sovereignty. Furthermore, many wouldn’t even stand by Native Women in Standing Rock as we were being assaulted by the primarily white men law enforcement officers and Energy Transfer Partners hired goons. DAPL, and many other resource extraction projects, began under the Obama administration.

The ‘Birth Of The Americas’ Runs Red With The Blood Of My People

Where were all these white women while we were being maced, tear gassed, hosed down in subzero temperatures, shot, maimed, mutilated, and sexually assaulted in the jails? Did this abuse mean less because a Democrat was in the White House? Did it mean less because it’s just us Indians and we’re all “pretending” anyway?

Even when white women attempt to show allyship with women of color, they still get it wrong. Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance was a perfect example of this. Her performance of the Woody Guthrie song, “This Land is Your Land,” was unacceptable. The fact that white people believe they have any right to decide who comes onto this land, Indigenous land, is settler colonialism. The fact that this performance was at an NFL event — an organization that has profited off the racist characterization of Native People — only makes it more despicable.

Did this abuse mean less because a Democrat was in the White House?
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Now that white women are truly feeling the wrath of the ameriKKKan government, they care about women’s rights. Now that it’s their pussies being grabbed, they care about women’s rights. Now that they see the majority of leaders as a threat to their lives, they care. The problem is that they only care about a small segment of women: They only care about the most privileged of women, and will obtain their rights at the expense of the rest of us.

The activism they pursue — while ignoring all critiques and pleas from Native Women and other marginalized communities — makes it very clear what feminism is to them. Crushing colonialism and standing with Native Women are clearly still not on their agenda.

The hunger to justify underdog grammar details—beloved Oxford comma included—has an ugly side. It can hurt people.

By Sarah Bronson

A punctuation mark has a fandom. As an editor, I should be giddy. A nuance of language is having its day! But my gut has drawn itself down.

I’m talking, of course, about the Oxford comma and those wild sentences that prove the universe will lose its bearings without it. Like, “We invited the alpacas, my mom and my dad,” in which the absence of a comma after “mom” suggests that the person speaking is ‪the offspring of mountain camels. Or, “His tour included encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector,” which leaves open the possibility that Mandela led a literally magical existence.

The same zeitgeist drives the recent popularity of the “grammar vigilante” of Bristol, England. This hooded figure has been committing vandalism to purge errant apostrophes from storefronts, claiming that incorrect possessives are the real crime. Sticklers around the world have cheered his efforts. A number of editors, however, could not bring themselves to support his signage-disrupting wrist-slapping.

And it’s not just the Bristol bloke who speaks of grammar in terms of wrongdoing. The Weird Al song “Word Crimes” goes off on a litany of language peeves and was well-received by his fans and word nerds alike, although it was criticized by several language professionals. The idea that not just good words but meticulously good words in English make you a good person has been around a few centuries. In Word by Word, lexicographer Kory Stamper traces it back to early English grammar guides:

“. . . literacy (particularly formal education) was booming in the eighteenth century, and it wasn’t too long before ‘good grammar’ became the dividing line between the educated, well poised, polite, and morally upright and the ignorant, vulgar, and morally compromised.”

This view more or less remains the philosophy of holdout pedants and well-meaning book lovers. Despite the protestations of editors and linguists, it’s still mainstream to believe that the strict enforcement of standardized squiggles in English is a linchpin not only of communication but also of virtue.

So I’m here to hammer it in: That belief is wrong. It’s technically wrong, because the fetishization of specific uses of punctuation marks does not actually improve communication. Worse, it’s an unfair judgment of people who, through no fault of their own, don’t have the background and resources needed to produce what’s widely seen as good English. I’d like to wrap those resources into one idea here: language privilege.

It’s still mainstream to believe that the strict enforcement of standardized squiggles in English is a linchpin not only of communication but also of virtue.
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I so get that it can be delicious to watch an utterance dramatically transform according to the orientation of a tiny piece of itself. But that hunger for the justification of those underdog details has an ugly side. It can hurt people.

First off, the Oxford comma is not a grammar issue but a decision made and stood by for the sake of consistency — a matter of what editors call style or usage. A sentence without the Oxford comma is not wrong the way a sentence without subject-verb agreement is wrong. That’s why the goofy misinterpretations blamed on the missing comma look wrong only if you force yourself to ignore common sense. Most of the time, the absence of the Oxford comma presents no stumbling block at all: “red, white and blue.” Otherwise, all the news stories written according to the Associated Press Stylebook would have sown chaos by now.

There do exist situations that favor one style decision over another to avoid confusion. Grammar news followers will point to a recent court decision that hinged on the lack of an Oxford comma in a law. But the lesson to draw from that story, and examples like it, is not that we should all unthinkingly hew to a specific style choice or else risk humiliation and ruin. What it does show is the importance of awareness. A careful legislator would have used the comma not because the comma is inherently clarifying, but because its use would have served that specific sentence. Plus, the back-and-forth of the case lends itself to a richer analysis of the implications of small language choices. Parallelism! Asyndeton! No need to cram the tale into the old mold when there’s more to it.

Other points of style evoke similar tensions for similarly suspect reasons. If you’re told that it’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition or to start a sentence with a conjunction, be aware that no credible authority on grammar has the right to punish you for those choices, unless a style guide you are required to follow forbids them. A lot of these usage rules are less about practicality than about gatekeeping.

As for actual grammar problems, grammatical Standard English is the result of a confluence of privileges, not virtues. I edit papers for immigrant cancer doctors, and I can’t imagine berating them just for messing up a word. Not knowing English as your native language is neither a choice nor a reflection on character, yet that starting point can be a barrier to professional success as well as basic respect in the United States. This friction can linger for much of a lifetime. My mother spoke Tagalog before she became fluent in English, and she is not always sure her English words have the connotations she intends, which can sometimes make her hesitate to express opinions. These barriers aren’t insurmountable — my mom points out that two of our Filipina relatives have authored books in English — but they aren’t inconsequential.

There’s also nothing inherently wrong with speaking a dialect other than Standard English, such as African American Vernacular English, another frequent target of judgment. Adherence to Standard English doesn’t predict your worth, but it does have a lot to do with nationality, culture, and race.

Grammatical Standard English also requires education, and the more the better. The ability to not only use Standard English but dance your way through a well-placed “whom” takes practice, and duration and quality of education reinforce those skills. But not everyone can afford to go to college or live in a neighborhood with good schools. In this way, grammar can serve as a surrogate for class, too.

Another factor that contributes to grammatical English is time. It takes free time to write coherent Facebook rants with understandable pronoun antecedents. It takes time to treat yourself to the language workout of a to-read pile. Having enough time for grammar oversight also translates into having enough hands on deck at a publication, which, considering the copy editor layoffs of the past few years, is not always the case for smaller but still-valuable media outlets.

As someone managing mental illness, I also want to account for the variable conditions inside our heads that can stand between having an idea and making a grammatical sentence. A number of language disorders, like dyslexia, or aphasia from a stroke, impair the ability to write or speak. Some mental illnesses worsen communication skills: Schizophrenia may be accompanied by language dysfunction, and depression can at times make it impossible to express yourself.

Even people without these disorders deal with worries — described by the proposed theory of mental burden — that momentarily put them in a disordered state of mind that could easily botch the execution of grammatical utterances. Heck, fatigue can make us less articulate and pain can make us less articulate, yet no less deserving to be heard.

On top of all this, the parameters of successful communication are incredibly sensitive to social context. English speakers can and should eschew so-called good grammar when speaking in certain registers, such as the casual way of talking you fall into among friends — loosely structured, laden with in-jokes. It’s also okay to bend the rules when pushing the boundaries of language in banter or in art.

Even within the bounds of Standard English and in accordance with a strict style, precepts can clash, forcing you to choose between them. Editors strive to impart clarity and concision, but sometimes the clearest way of saying something is not the most concise. The beloved Oxford comma should be set aside if its presence does harm by, for example, creating an appositive phrase, as editor Tom Freeman points out. Reworking a popular example, Freeman shows that the sentence “This book is dedicated to my mother, Ayn Rand, and God,” becomes easier to understand as “This book is dedicated to my mother, Ayn Rand and God.”

Don’t get me wrong — I know that mutually agreed-on standards are the bedrock of language. But standards go only as far as the purpose and context they are designed for, and language is more than resilient enough to withstand departures from the center line. That’s how it grows.

One of my favorite bits in Word by Word is this: “Everyone knows that adverbs answer the questions ‘who?’ ‘what?’ ‘when?’ ‘where?’ ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ but few people realize that conjunctions and prepositions can do the same thing.” I don’t mean the insight. It’s the usage I love. That there is a list, in a book that dissects words down to their guts, and there aren’t any commas. Nor would you want there to be any.

Good communication is a constantly moving target and a cultural construction. Let’s not freeze our expectations in a place that puts marginalized people at another undeserved disadvantage.

I felt a lot of things after hearing that Jeff Sessions had abandoned transgender students in his first act as Attorney General: axing legal protections for trans students from discrimination. Surprise wasn’t on the list.

Sessions, once widely considered to be among the Senate’s most hardline conservatives, has a long anti-queer history: as Alabama’s Attorney General, he vigorously attempted to block an LGBT conference at the University of Alabama; opposed the expansion of hate-crime legislation to include sexual orientation; co-sponsored the odious First Amendment Defense Act, a thinly-veiled license for discrimination that arose from anti-trans bathroom bills around the country; and so on. Trans people have known for months that we were first on his list.

When I sat down to write this article, though, it wasn’t with the intention of spelling out how the DOJ’s withdrawal from State of Texas v. United States of America will hurt trans kids. That’s a line of thinking which has already been argued ad infinitum. Instead, I intended to write about the deafening silence I heard from the Left, which claims to support trans rights, but so rarely takes any visible action to prove it. I wrote recently that, in the wake of the Women’s March, cis women needed to prove they had trans people’s backs to the extent that we had theirs; though hopeful, I was hardly optimistic.

But when I checked the morning news on Wednesday, my hot take had already cooled off. The official Women’s March Twitter account, much to my surprise, had sent out several messages strongly supporting the rights of trans students. On top of that, more than 780 parents of trans children submitted an open letter to Trump demanding he stand by his campaign promises to protect trans rights, and a telephone campaign asking Betsy DeVos to keep Title IX protections for trans students left the incoming Secretary of Education’s voicemail inbox completely clogged.

Trans people have known for months that we were first on his list.
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To put it bluntly: This is the most action I’ve seen cisgender people take in support of trans rights since I started coming out in 2015. That’s a pretty low bar, to be sure, but it signals a willingness to get involved that wasn’t there before; whereas liberals pre-election were content to sit around retweeting each other’s #LoveIsLove platitudes, this increasingly active Left is showing up on a scale that’s legitimately encouraging.

Having said that, I hope all the trans allies reading this will understand where I’m coming from when I say that this is not enough. The Trump cabinet has been collectively rooted in anti-transness from its inception, and while the handful of actions taken so far have made me more optimistic about our allies than I was before, it’s unrealistic to think that DeVos — whose father was a co-founder of the anti-trans Family Research Council and who served as vice president of the conservative Edgar and Elsa Price Foundation for 17 years — will suddenly abandon her base because of some phone calls.

Far be it for me to demand concrete action without defining what is needed, though. Here are a few things that the Left can do to keep trans kids safe in Trump and Sessions’ America.

Name the problem.

As much as I respect Teen Vogue’s recent shift toward progressive advocacy, their article about Sessions’ withdrawal from the Obama DOJ’s petition had one glaring error. Their headline proclaimed that Trump “Just Made His First Action Against LGBTQ People,” which is technically accurate but not at all specific. And to be sure, this was a decision made specifically against transgender people, and should be discussed as such. Think of it like the recent push to stop normalizing fascists by calling them “alt-right”; call fascists and Nazis what they are, and call transphobia what it is. And speaking of which:

Stop giving platforms to bigotry.

Against my better judgment, let me talk about literal Nazi Milo Yiannopolous for a second. Yiannopoulous will appear on tonight’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, with Maher defending the booking by saying,“If Mr. Yiannopolous is indeed [a] monster…nothing could serve the liberal cause better than having him exposed on Friday night.”

I’m not going to rehash the arguments about why attempting to debate fascists is historically unhelpful. Rather, I want to point out that Milo uses public appearances to intentionally and directly harm people. At an infamous University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee event, he outed a trans student and accused her of being a man weaseling into the women’s locker rooms, invoking rhetoric repeatedly used to justify violence against trans women. The student, Adelaide Kramer, later told Broadly that she was — justifiably — afraid that her fellow students, who laughed along with Yiannopolous’ bigotry, would recognize and attack her.

What Liberals Don’t Get About Free Speech In The Age Of Trump

The fact that Maher wants to provide a larger platform for Milo to promote his personal brand of targeted harassment is ludicrous enough. But the ACLU has also said they support his right to appear and spew hate, citing the First Amendment. This is an organization that has characterized its legal defense of trans student Gavin Grimm as an “agenda to treat all people with respect,” yet it won’t defend Gavin’s peers against the transphobic equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.

If you’re an event planner for an institution or organization, don’t include transphobes; if you’re in a community where a transphobe is scheduled to speak, coordinate efforts to cancel or shut down the event. UC Berkeley did it to Milo, and so can you.

Teachers, school faculty, and school board members have a responsibility to step up and ensure that trans kids can access the facilities they need.
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Physically protect trans children and students.

Teachers, school faculty, and school board members have a responsibility to step up and ensure that trans kids can access the facilities they need. Gym teachers in particular can make a difference by personally ensuring proper locker room access. If students report feeling unwelcome or harassed in public bathrooms, take steps to identify the bad actors, and offer alternate accommodations (like a key to a staff bathroom) when possible. Board members, push for a trans-friendly bathroom policy; parents, make sure you know your district’s policy, and be ready to put pressure on the board if it isn’t up to snuff. Find out which businesses in your area don’t allow trans people to use the right restrooms and picket them. Taking actions like this may constitute civil disobedience in some areas, like North Carolina — but the alternative is letting vulnerable students come to harm.

Talk to your kids about gender.

Cis adults often take their children’s genders for granted, but if you’re a parent, it’s entirely possible that you’re raising a trans kid without either of you knowing it. It’s extremely common that trans people don’t even know transitioning is an option until long after puberty, so make sure that’s not the case for your kids. Check in with how they’re feeling. Read up on the signs of gender dysphoria and affirm the ways in which your child wants to present. If they consistently express a trans identity up to the point of adolescence, talk to your pediatrician about puberty blockers and starting HRT. Support and send money to The Trevor Project. More than anything, make sure your trans kids know they’re loved — and teach your cis kids to love their trans classmates.

Some may call me an idealist, but the past few days have demonstrated to me that the Left really does want to help trans people. And now you know how.

Please don’t let us down.

The other day on Twitter, a man posted a picture of my coloring book he’d given his daughter for Christmas. He was excited to give her a coloring book full of badass intersectional feminists. He wanted to thank me for creating it.

“I don’t know,” chimed in a random stranger (because Twitter), “Sounds like identity politics to me.”

Hell yeah it does.

“Identity Politics” is now thrown about as an insult at many progressive activists. Critics say that Identity Politics make everything about gender, everything about sexuality, and everything about race. And to this I say: yes, yes, and hell yes.

Call it what you want. I don’t care. Complain that we’re making shit about race — you know what? We are. Complain that we’re keeping the left from focusing only on class — yup, and proudly so. Complain all you want because I am not and will never be ashamed of focusing on the politics of identity. I will not feel a moment’s guilt for slowing this whole train down to make sure that everyone can get on and we’re on the right track. I will proudly own up to making shit hard for you.

Thank god for Identity Politics.

I will proudly own up to making shit hard for you.
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You know why? Because you know what we had before Identity Politics? I’ll tell you.

We had White Dudes.

We had white dudes as the pinnacles of power. We had white dudes on all our TV screens, we had white dudes reporting all our news, we had white dudes writing all our books. Sometimes they were accompanied by attractive white ladies (as all the white dudes were straight). But mostly, we had white dudes.

And if you were not a white dude? You didn’t exist. Laws were not written for you, infrastructure was not built for you, history was not written about you. You did not exist in film, television, or novels. You were not a part of the American dream.

And do you know what has been changing all of that? Do you know what has been saving this country from the monotony and tyranny of white, cis, heterosexual dudes? Identity Politics.

Identity Politics are everything that its critics fear. Identity Politics are decentralizing whiteness, straightness, cis-ness, and maleness. Identity Politics brought you equal marriage, the voting rights act, and abortion access.

Identity Politics has got people believing that black is beautiful, that disability is nothing to be ashamed of, that fat people deserve respect, that a woman can say no. Identity politics are forcing the world to consider what it has spent hundreds of years ignoring — everyone else.

Without Identity Politics, we wouldn’t all get along better, we’d just cease to exist. And know, that is primarily what those who decry Identity Politics want. They want the world of the past, where we existed in the shadows, where they never had to consider race or gender, because everything was only about their race and gender. They want a world where nobody raised a hand and said “what about me,” because the only people allowed in the room were those whose needs had already been meet. They want the simplicity and power that comes with being the default.

Identity Politics has got people believing that black is beautiful, that disability is nothing to be ashamed of, that fat people deserve respect, that a woman can say no.
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So yes, Identity Politics are the threat to both the right and the left that its enemies are making it out to be. Because our system is still mostly white dudes, on both sides of the aisle. Their fear isn’t wrong; Identity Politics do threaten their way of life and their idea of progress and unity. Identity Politics will tear down everything they have built because everything they have built is oppressive and exclusionary and wrong.

We are not going back to a time where we were overlooked, dismissed, invalidated, and discounted. We are not going back to not existing. Our Identity Politics are here to stay.

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