We don’t need to make Megyn Kelly our white feminist champion because she stood up to Donald Trump
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes…blood coming out of her wherever.” — Donald Trump, interview with Don Lemon on CNN
I remember my mom calling me the day after that interview aired, even more shocked and upset than I was about Trump’s comments. For many of us (who haven’t seen The Apprentice), this is when Trump commenced being a true ignorant troll in the eye of national television. “How dare he say that about Megyn Kelly?” said my Mom, a former journalist, staunch liberal, and enemy of all things Fox News. “I’ve always respected her. She may be conservative, but I respect her as a woman.” After watching Donald Trump throw sexist jabs at Kelly, I did feel prompted to sympathize with her, and I agreed with my mom that day. But Megyn Kelly is not the feminist hero of my generation, and I refuse to accept her as such.
At surface level, there’s many textbook feminist attributes that Megyn Kelly really nails. She represents the struggle of being female in a male dominated workplace, and deals with questions about her legitimacy on a daily basis. She didn’t hesitate to bring (a limited) feminist narrative into her ongoing feud with Trump, accusing him of participation in the “war on women.” Kelly has even semi-defended Hillary Clinton a few times, calling out her opposing male candidates for their double-standard approach to her both personally and politically. So today, when Megyn Kelly announced that she would be moving from Fox to NBC, why wasn’t I overjoyed? There are a few very obvious reasons.
- Megyn Kelly is pretty racist. On a racism scale of 1–10, 10 being Trump-level racist, she is at least a 6, if not more. Her “Top 5 Most Racist Moments” are literally a Vanity Fair article. She has said that racist emails are not a big deal, that diversifying neighborhoods is unnecessary, and most importantly, that Sandra Bland was responsible for her own death. Sandra Bland was a woman. Interesting that Kelly is willing to comment on the “double standard” when it comes to Hillary Clinton in the debate, but not when it comes to police officers and black people (h/t Vanity Fair).
- Megyn Kelly is pretty conservative. On a conservative scale of 1–10, 10 being Bill O’Reilly, she is at least a 5, it’s not more. So yeah, she came out as an independent in 2015. But she had to COME OUT as an independent, it was a big deal, and she remained the face of Fox News. She said she’s voted for “both Democrats and Republicans,” so let’s do the math — she was born in 1970, which means she was 18 in 1988, which means that out of the Republicans she could have voted for we have Bush Sr., Bush Sr. again, Bob Dole, George W., George W. again, John McCain, or Mitt Romney. If she’s voted for both, she’s voted for at least one of those dudes, probably more. Is that OK with us? Not with me.
- Megyn Kelly makes white feminists look even worse than we already do. She epitomizes our privilege to overlook racism and other ignorance in our role models. On a white feminist scale of 1–10, 10 being Lena Dunham, she is probably an 11, because her venues in which to be ignorant are much more important than Dunham’s, and she doesn’t even post lame apologies for it on Instagram. Honestly, I should have written this entire article about her statements on Sandra Bland, because that should be enough of a reason to cancel Megyn Kelly.
It is important as hell for white women to defend themselves from the patriarchy without throwing every other demographic under the bus. So yeah, Megyn Kelly looks really feminist and “independent” in the dank patriarchal cavern that is Fox News, but hopefully her debut on NBC will be an indicator of how far she has to go — and how far we have to go as white women. Tomi Lahren and Megyn Kelly are not allowed to represent us. You can respect another woman’s hustle without compromising yourself to accept their obvious limitations and serious character flaws.
