Burgeoning digital infrastructure and social media has allowed for a growth in talk about identity, marginalization, and the confluence of the two.

Remember #YesAllWomen? That was a symbol of the rising tide of voices heard from the margins. Also, before that: #CancelColbert? That was one for the Asian-Americans. Fast forward a couple weeks: there was the article written by the Princeton privileged kid, and the snappy rebuttal.

Now, Sierra Mannie, a student at the University of Mississippi, has penned a letter to white gays, telling them to “stop stealing black female culture.”

Mannie’s letter underscores an important, oft-overlooked point about the lives of black women: “A culture of racism is bad enough, but pairing it with patriarchal structures that intend to undermine women’s advancement is like double-fisting bleach and acid rain.” This is something white gay men, as well as society at large, are loath to acknowledge as they appropriate black female culture, which ultimately can create collateral damage for the black women themselves by reinforcing poisonous stereotypes.

Mannie continues in detailing the ways whereby oppression functions for black women—their social existence lies along various axes of identity which systematically work against them. Her writing elucidates the concept of intersectionality, the feminist sociological theory coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw. The word encapsulates the compound oppression that Mannie describes in her letter.

Those who speak out about intersectional oppression, however, are seldom met without some kind of resistance, and rarely are they given a platform like Time.com. Instead, they are met with a number of responses from liberals and conservatives alike, which vary from “you’re being whiny” to “the neoliberals are a national threat.” Regardless, the dissenting voices start to sound the same, and they all intend to achieve one goal, whether knowingly or not—to silence people like Sierra Mannie and thus maintain the status quo.

This is what David Schilling’s Vice article did when he responded to Mannie by essentially saying “let’s stop playing oppression olympics.” In Schilling’s words, “we’ve all got it bad—white, black, Asian, Latino, LGBTQ, etc. The struggle is for everyone to stop asking for special treatment, and stop seeing their pain as more valid than others.”

Schilling’s rhetoric makes him sound like he’s a champion of the masses, rallying for equality. And I believe he truly is all for equality. But at whose expense?

Schilling echoes mainstream liberal politics in its deceptive language. A call for “equality” and “solidarity” often flattens the complexity of intersectionality and reinforces structures of privilege and oppression. His definitive “equality” usually comes at the expense of those like black women and trans women of color who are continually silenced and erased from their own narratives.

And this is not an isolated incident. The language of silence is continually reinvented in new and more insidious ways in order to derail conversations around the marginalized. Schilling used the term “special treatment,” for example, which is the weapon of choice for those against affirmative action. Ultimately, “special treatment” and phrases akin to it are not meant to equalize. Instead, they are meant for maintaining the peace, the status quo, and, as a corollary, the current state of affairs.

Let me be the first to tell you: the current state of affairs is not as pristine as we want it to be.

The bottom line is that we have to think about who is being prioritized in mainstream activism and who is given a voice in dialogues about social justice. And in turn, we have to think who is not being prioritized, as a result of institutionalized systems of white supremacy and patriarchy.

Then, we need to stop procuring ways of excusing ourselves from addressing the stark realities of those who are relegated to the lowest of social positions, even within their own communities.

It is not too “radical” to be thinking about the welfare of black trans women, for example, and it is not too “whiny” of them to speak about their experiences.

If you’re tired of hearing about intersectional oppression, try living it. Try, as Sierra Mannie says, “double-fisting bleach and acid rain.” And then get back to me.