“Everyone wants to save the Muslim woman. Some want to put the hijab on me and save me; some want to take hijab off me and save me; some want to bomb us and save me. Just give me a break man! I can save myself! I don’t need Western imperialism to save me or Western feminism riding on the coattails of Western imperialism to save me. I can save myself. ”
—Uzma Shakir (Activist)“All white women in this nation know that their status is different from that of black women/women of color. They know this from the time they are little girls watching television and seeing only their images. They know that the only reason nonwhites are absent/invisible is because they are not white. All white women in this nation know that whiteness is a privileged category. The fact that white females may choose to repress or deny this knowledge does not mean they are ignorant: it means that they are in denial.”
—bell hooksreminder that not all hate between girls is </3girl hate</3 and while yeah hating a girl for being a “slut” is fucked up a woman is entitled to hate another woman for being racist or transphobic or even just a general butthole. solidarity is conditional and you can’t go around crying internalized misogyny every time a female doesn’t want to be your friend.
“I’m more interested in a feminism that ends discrimination for all people. It’s not just about a woman becoming the CEO of a company or something. It’s connected to racism and classism and gender issues that go beyond the binary. It can’t be pulled apart from those issues. There is definite overlap in many people’s lives, so you can’t just be like, ‘This is my only issue, this one kind of feminism about having more women CEOs or more women in Congress.’ Even though that’s important. It’s more about [the] intersection.”
—Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill/Le Tigre in a recent interview with the A.V. Club
“I am a lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly because I work in a university. If their full belies make me fail to recognize my commonality with a woman of Color whose children do not eat because she cannot find work, or who has no children because her insides are rotted from home abortions and sterilization; if I fail to recognize the lesbian who chooses not to have children, the woman who remains closeted because her homophobic community is her only life support, the woman who chooses silence instead of another death, the woman who is terrified lest my anger trigger the explosion of hers; if I fail to recognize them as other faces of myself, then I am contributing not only to each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the anger which stands between us then must be used for clarity and mutual empowerment, not for evasion by guilt or further separation. I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you. ”
—Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” [1980] 1984.
“Just because you have privilege does not automatically make you a bad person, but denying it and actively harming others through your words and actions might. Being an intersectional feminist can be really easy once you consider that we are not all simply just social activists. We all come from different backgrounds. We come from all around the world, have had different experiences, and have different identities. Not everybody is concerned about contraceptives; some social activists are worried about that their sexual orientation or gender will become illegal and ultimately fatal; others that their race and ethnicity will automatically set them back in life statistically.”
—Race is a feminist issue; Shavon L. McKinstry
Shavon (vonnivicevivace) did such an amazing job on this. Love you girl!
