Dear Fellow White Women,
Something broke in me yesterday that I didn’t know was still there. I am, indeed, white-hot stomach-turning sorrow and rage on behalf of my queer family, my LGBQT family, on behalf of POC, non-white people, on behalf of immigrants and their children, refugees, on behalf of Muslims and other marginalized groups. I am enraged that nearly half our nation voted in validation of abuse and discrimination against these people and now call our disappointment intolerance. Already a surge in violence and hate-crime from elementary schools to bus stops. Trump’s Amerikkka.
But I have felt that rage before. I have felt my blood ready to rip itself from my body at the gleeful mistreatment of our fellow humans that so many cowards are proud to flaunt or worse, somehow imagine as dutiful and obligatory.
No, what broke in me yesterday was something mine. What shattered in my being was nearer my core than any outward-looking gaze. Every compromise, every watering-down of myself, of my femininity, of my sexuality, of my opinion, of my ferocity, of my unacceptable self, of my essential being, flew in my face yesterday like an angry crow. Every fear I had, every adjustment I made, every false admission, every feigned weakness, to avoid the threat of patriarchy.
I have written this hundreds of times before, this thought, but never before has it made itself so real. What broke in me yesterday was something like the last remaining of my fucks to give.
White women, and women of privilege in all cultures, have been selling themselves to patriarchy as surely as any other group for survival. The difference, however, is that no group can so naively ignore their bargaining and certainly none can afford not to as much as we can, in terms of protection via privilege. We are in the unique position of experiencing simultaneous privilege and lack of it. Don’t mistake my distinctions as hierarchical; patriarchy loves no one, including white men, but as far as the reassurance that your body, your cares, your well-being, your life, matters, no group experiences quite the extension into two fundamentally opposing influences as white women. We live a point of extraordinary potential for great harm and great benefit.
The voices of bigotry, racism and sexism are more likely to live in our homes, under our roofs, and sleep in our beds next to us. These voices are with high probability the ones who raised us and taught in our classrooms and our religious gatherings. This is not condemnation, but fact. The structure of patriarchy orbits the heterosexual white male. As children, not challenging these voices is a practical exercise in self- preservation. By the time we are women, it extends beyond even habit and often into concurrence. We have never seen ourselves accepted otherwise and so to resolve our perspective, we adjust from our point of self, and subconsciously or consciously, agree to our inferiority. The threat of rejection, abuse, ostracism, humiliation, violence and ruin may be silent or spoken, by partners or by our community. Often, the story is so old we misread our compliance. Nonetheless, we are paid for our silence (non-distruptive behavior) by everything the patriarchy has to give, that is, more demands for silence and smallness. Other marginalized groups can, and must, forge their own communities. Patriarchy depends on whiteness and as I see it, on white women in particular. Without us it would have no family, no core, no perpetuation. It would shout in the street, and achieve nothing.
Remember, patriarchy is not a person, but a code. It began with ownership, a disqualification of humanity, an entitlement without consent. Marriage was a sale. No thing owned will be recognized for its ideas and opinions, for its pleasures and preferences, except those which are bestowed. No thing owned can, by nature of its essential powerlessness, provide for itself any satisfaction, approval or safety. This story is not a far cry from many households in the United States today, with the main exception that today’s participants are ignorantly and agreeably continuing the tradition.
I have spent this morning angry with the white women who, on November 8th, tried to trade the safety of others for their own. Who agreed, once again, to the lie that protecting privilege is a real protection. Who agreed that compliant subservience, in the structure of patriarchy, is a surer bet for their own comfort than equality for all.
When white women begin to accept that religion refuses to protect them, that their basic pleasure, the thing that guides life to itself, is a threat to safety, that medicine doesn’t know or care to know their bodies, that conditional agreements to safety aren’t safety, that culture outlines conditions under which they deserve rape and murder, that dismissiveness of their wants and needs is not a thing to achieve, that training for goodness in fact asks them to eviscerate entire limbs of their beings, that agreeing to stand under the umbrella of whiteness and patriarchy in exchange for a boat that doesn’t rock has never stopped the boat from tipping anyway, maybe then, MAYBE THEN will we lift our country out of this hateful confusion. I am certain it will not happen before.
White women must remember that we cannot save the men we love from themselves. We cannot adjust ourselves to inferiority in order to maintain stability. The result is internal and societal disaster. In patriarchy and in privilege, healing comes from knowing the sublime power that lives in each and every being, together and independently, and expecting each in their role, to step up.
What broke in me yesterday said, ‘No deal. No deal. I’ll not trade for a lie. I’ll never accept conditions of my worthiness. I’ll never accept the abuse of myself or others as protection. I’ll never apologize or bargain for my self-esteem.’
No deal.
