Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
She Doesn’t Have to Explain Herself. Her Heart is Pure.
But this is the big dilemma of the white cis, het, Christian middle-class American woman, isn’t it?
She’s found her voice, by way of Cosmo and Gloria Steinem. And by golly, she won’t be cowed. No nuns, teachers or older people will tell her her skirt is too short. No man will tell her her voice is too loud, or that she is “too much,” or that she should smile more.
And that is GREAT. You go girl. Burn that bra.
And so she learns NOT to be a servant, and she learns to be a rebel. That’s progress.
But when she twirls her ‘gypsy’ dress, singing a Stevie Nicks tune, and a Romani woman asks her not to use that word, she pouts, annoyed. And when she talks about her ‘spirit animal,’ and a native elder asks her politely to not appropriate his culture shella irritated. And she gets annoyed when someone talks about ‘birthing people’ — no one will rob her of her intensely female-affirming experience of motherhood. And when a Black person tells her to please not refer to AAVE terms like “no cap” as “Gen Z talk” because it erases Black culture, all she sees is a man telling her, a woman, what to do.
