“We Spoke to Lauren Chief Elk, the Woman Behind #GiveYourMoneytoWomen, About the Power of Cold Hard Cash”
“Women were banding together to demand payment for all the emotional work we do that goes completely unpaid — the exhausting work of being a tolerant, gentle, nurturing, listening woman in our relationships with men, at all times. Women put up with a lot of bullshit, and we have a science-backed term for it: Emotional labor. And as with any kind of labor, women are now ready and eager to get paid.
In the words of Jess Zimmerman, “Men like to act as if commanding women’s attention is their birthright, their natural due, and they are rarely contradicted. It’s a radical act to refuse them that attention. It’s even more radical to propose that if they want it so fucking much, they can buy it.” Bitch better have my money, indeed…
Theory and idealism have their place, but #GiveYourMoneyToWomen has inspired women to demand recognition within a broken reality. When you find yourself in a system that profits off of you and has done so for centuries, it’s time to stake your claims…
In terms of this stemming from my ideas of justice, what we have to put up with and deal with [as women] is expensive. Especially in violent situations. Trying to get out of violent situations costs a lot of money: you need transportation, somewhere else to stay, you need to feed yourself, you need medical attention for the abuse you’ve accrued, for your children. You’ve gotta eat. You have to probably quit your job if it hasn’t already been sabotaged. This can accumulate to hundreds of thousands of dollars, very quickly. So to think that financial retribution is some kind of absurd idea of justice is, to me, absurd. This is reasonable. This should be number one.”
Yoooo this is phenomenal! The thing about the racial divide in the response to the hashtag, so interesting. She is my new favorite.
Related:
(my other favorite) Suey Park on a bunch of stuff, including how to read hashtags with nuance even though it was a lady of color who started it (really good)
