I listened to this on audiobook and really enjoyed it. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?
Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title.
All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. They have less power than they think, than anyone realizes, but like any small predator, they manage to be flashy enough to be seen.Today’s feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. And if you get enough of them in one place, they can prevent any real progress from occurring while they reap the benefits of straddling white supremacy and being woke. They’re oppression tourists, virtue-signaling volunteers who are really just here to get what they can and block the way, so no others can pass without meeting whatever arbitrary standards they create. They are obstacles to freedom who feel no remorse, who provide no valuable insight, because ultimately, they are content to get in the way. They insist that they know best what should be done when attempting to battle and defeat bias, but in actuality they’re just happy to be useless. They replicate the manners of Jim Crow America, demanding deference and obedience they want the polite facade instead of disruption. Polite white people who respond to calls for respect, for getting boots off necks with demand for decorum, aren’t interested in resistance or disruption. “Politeness as filtered through fragility and supremacy isn’t about manners it’s about a methodology of controlling the conversation.
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