Surfing the web and found the above picture here.
My daughter delivered twins. Twin A is a girl and Twin B is a boy. At birth, the girl was a little heavier than the boy and if my daughter had not needed a C-section, the girl would have been born first. Well, actually the doctor removed the girl first, because of her first position. I am assuming there is some way to tell whose first, since the ultrasound technician always referred to the one as Twin A and the other as Twin B.
In the hospital, the girl cried more than the boy. In addition, the girl latched right on for breastfeeding whereas the boy took almost forty-eight hours to do the same. In between attempts to latch on, he was fed formula through a syringe. The babies’ father (may be referred to as BD (baby daddy) or SD (sperm donor) later on) was present for the birth and stayed in the hospital room the entire four days. He only left to eat. (A guest is free to shower and sleep in the window bed, but food is not provided).
Against my advice and an aunt, she asked for the babies to room with her. I told her with a c-section, the nursery nurses could bring the babies to her when the babies need to eat (I suddenly had an urge to say, “Partake in nourishment” LOL, I am reading some old Literature right now). She did not need to have to take care of those babies every need while she was in need of recovery. Because, four days come awfully fast and there will soon be time that she will be faced with taking care of the twins alone. To her credit though, she is quite patient and tender with little babies and having them in her presence seems to calm her anxieties.
Less than 24 hours into this whole ordeal, BD accuses her of not paying enough attention to Twin B, the boy. Now, BD has not been an enemy of mine. If anything, I have been quite tolerant. Meaning, if he is not physically or emotionally abusing her, and she must have him in her life, what am I to do or say? In other words, I have not badmouthed him or openly treated him as an enemy (even though, by default, my eyes are always open).
I got a text about 5:30 in the morning, less than 24 hours after she had the babies. My text is set on speak. A computer voice reads the text aloud, if the words are not misspelled. If the computer does not recognize the words, the voice sort of skips over them and it becomes a series of familiar words, skip, jump, familiar words. Can you believe me when I say, even though it is a computer, I recognized my daughter’s voice the second the text was spoken. “Mother, I am so upset. BD accused me of not loving Twin B.” The phone was on a table five feet away from my bed but it still woke me up. I called her and she was in tears. Because she was not holding Twin B as much as Twin A, he was accusing her of not loving the boy. I explained to her that babies instinctively do what they do. If Twin A is crying more, it is because she needs more, —comforting. If Twin B is sleeping more, it is because he needs more sleep. They are both healthy. We are talking FRESH OUT OF THE WOMB! FOOTW! There has been no time to “spoil” either one. This bastard had the woman confused and worried that she is going to love one of her children more than she is going to love the other.
I asked her how does she think he would act if it was reversed, if the girl was the quiet one and the boy was the screaming one. Would he be concerned that the girl was getting less attention or would he say the girl is being her natural self, demure and quiet?
Then to top it off. Later that day when my mother visited, she went out of her way to offer childcare if needed, for the boy. Yes, she specifically stated, “If you feel overwhelmed, I will take the boy.”
My daughter said it feels like they are pitting her against her children before she even begins. At this point she feels like she will have to give the girl more attention simply to counter all of their shit.
White women always avoid talking about the point, which is a tactic readily available to them since white male supremacy has already deemed them correct, or more correct, than nonwhite women, or women who have the interests of nonwhite women at heart. They don’t have to stick to the topic. White men have already declared whatever topic it is they’ve decided is more salient to be the most relevant topic, far in advance of any specific conversation in which a nonwhite, especially black, woman might make a challenge. So, when a nonwhite, or pro-nonwhite, woman says, for example, that it is racist to whine to a white woman in a situation in which a similar temper-tantrum wouldn’t be brought to a nonwhite woman, the dominant paradigm is already set up in such a way that the white woman being challenged need not address the actual claim being made. She need only leverage the already-established disdain white society has for nonwhite women in order to weasel out of granting the charge its due legitimacy.
So, in this example, instead of answering the assertion that it is racist to tattle on black women to white women when a white woman would never tattle on a black woman to another black woman, the racist white woman can instead say, “Well, I didn’t say anything about race when I acted like a 4-year-old and tattled on that mean black woman.” Now, any literate woman can see that the racist wasn’t being accused of actually saying anything about race in this particular instance. She was only being accused of behaving toward a white woman, against a black woman, in a way that she would never choose to behave toward another black woman, against that black woman.
But it’s so much easier to simply appeal to white men’s rules of engagement, the premises of which are that black people in general are prone to unwarranted complaints, aren’t very smart, and are simply itching for a chance to accuse white people of racism out of laziness, while white people are good by their very nature and would never act in racist ways nearly as often as black people accuse them of such. This, despite the fact that white people are never accused of racism as often as they actually do behave in racist ways, for the very simple reason that black people are well aware that society is biased against the fair appraisal of racism. And, because of the bias, the refusal of white people to address the charges that are actually made (such as, it’s racist to run to a white woman when you’d never run to a black one) simply reaffirms what society already wants to believe about the parties involved. It doesn’t require any sort of re-thinking. It’s comfortable. It’s easy. It’s familiar.
Those women who appeal to white men’s perception of reality, rather than exerting the cognitive effort to see the truth, are simply living out their lives the way white men have intended them to. That is to say that they have fully embraced white men’s lies at the expense of the truth. It’s not surprising, of course. We live in a world in which white men’s lies are always more respectable, and more profitable, than more accurate perceptions. I commend any woman who holds fast to the truth in such circumstances.
What is left out of a discussion is often more important than what is explicitly stated. I’ve noticed that, although black lesbians, disabled lesbians, poor lesbians, and/or fat lesbians generally describe themselves as such, rich white able-bodied thin lesbians simply proclaim themselves to be lesbians. What this obscures, of course, is that rich white able-bodied thin lesbians are rich white able-bodied thin women, with all the privileges and biases this entails. So, when a rich white able-bodied thin lesbian declares a love for “lesbians,” what she’s really doing is declaring a love for other rich white able-bodied thin lesbians, without making explicit that which would expose her as the classist, racist, able-ist, shape-ist bigot rich white able-bodied thin straight women are much more readily recognized as.
I alluded in a comment somewhere to lesbians who leverage their lesbianism in order to perpetuate bigotry that would ordinarily go challenged if promoted by a straight white woman, and this is one of the insidious ways in which they accomplish it. They simply do not make reference to the fact of their own, and their cohorts’, wealth, whiteness, and so on, in order to give the impression that they speak solely from a place of oppression, even as they demonstrate the values and behaviors of the white and wealthy.
It astounds me that some women note the difference in online discourses of oppression and “real-life” discussions of same, and then express a preference for the constraints prohibiting the frank analysis of oppressed people’s lot in “real-life” conversations. It really blows my mind. There are a couple of assumptions underlying such a reactionary stance, and I’d like to examine the mindset necessary to hold such a preference. The first is that the only life that is “real” is the life restricted by the etiquette of white male supremacy. And the second, which follows from this (false) distinction between “real life” and internet discourse, is that facets of oppression and/or analyses of those facets which are not discussed in “real life” simply do not (and should not) matter to anyone, since they are “unreal.”
Now, I, for one, certainly never took the lack of frank discussion in “real life” to be evidence that the online discourse of oppression, especially radical feminist analyses, references a different set of circumstances than “real-life” experiences; that is to say that I don’t find that the distinction between “real life” and online discourse has as its basis anything factual. The insistence upon the (false) distinction relies on the acceptance of male-definitions and male-perceptions of reality as truth – in other words, adherence to the dominant ideology, the dominant ideology being the one that arises out of and perpetuates the dominance of those currently in power. I want to emphasize that adherents to the dominant ideology are not simply choosing their beliefs from among a number of equally possible and equally powerful sets of beliefs. The existence of a dominant ideology automatically implies the suppression of the ideologies of the oppressed.
The internet, then, is a potential site for the encouragement and development of ideologies born out of the acute awareness of our oppression, in opposition to the reigning belief system which obscures it. It provides a forum where the oppressed can enumerate our grievances to the full extent of our capacity to perceive them, and in minute detail, the likes of which is persecuted in men’s world. I mean, should it come as any surprise that oppressed people tend not to point out every single manifestation of white male supremacy while in the physical presence of the white male supremacists who are their bosses and coworkers? It would be nice if those white male supremacists extolling their preference for the niceties and politeness of “real world” interactions with those beneath them in the hierarchy would consider what the “courtesy” and seeming contentment the black women, poor women, and disabled women display in their presence says about their own position of privilege in society, rather than assuming it says anything at all about how satisfied the oppressed are with their lot offline.
Justifying, rationalizing, apologizing for, sympathizing with, —take your pick.
This is utter nonsense. To compare the relationship of a debt collector and debtor with welfare recipient and caseworker is offensive as hell. FYI, most debt is accumulated because of predatory practices, as in pushing credit cards on irresponsible college students, taking advantage of poor people who use credit to live day to day until that credit runs out, which is usually quick as hell because credit limits are never that high for poorer people to begin with, plus, the charges and APR rates make that limit come faster than what is offered to others, and strategically appealing to weak minded egos (like you must have the latest fashion). And yes, I do believe things such as zip code come into play. If a person takes a job as a debt collector, then I have no sympathy for them. There are more rude ones than there are understanding and helpful ones, so that trope of the poor mistreated debt collector is bollocks. My uncle was a debt collector for years and he literally got a hard on when he was able to track down people and squeeze a penny out of them. Dickens did not invent that character type out of thin air. In addition, even if the debt was made simply because someone was greedy and materialistic, (I have met a man who before filing bankruptcy charged all kinds of stuff and only stopped because he could not fit any more in his car. Why? Because as a white male in the right part of town he was given credit limits that his pay did not warrant. At the time if I wanted to do something similar, my total worth of splurging would have not topped $2000 at best, with my zip code and sex I was not allocated a decent limit at all. And, I will add, we had the same job with similar pay) the credit card company wins.
Most welfare recipients are in need. A caseworker has a job, most times a decent job with security and health benefits, particularly because it is usually a county job. Perhaps it does not pay as much as it should be paid, but it is a decent job for the qualifications expected. The welfare recipient does not already have a product that they owe money for. They are in need of a product, you know, like food, shelter and clothing. How in the hell can the two be compared is just unimaginable, and insulting. As a former welfare recipient and as someone who pays my debts and curses out debt collectors (even the ones who are not calling for me, but someone who used to have my number) who have the audacity to call me when the electric bill is not paid, even though it is only two days past the first due date, not the late due date (because you know, some people live and/or have lived paycheck to paycheck), I can say this whole scenario, this so called question feels like a passing ponder of a privilege mentality. What is next? Feeling sorry for those poor saps who have to stand there clapping while the opening bell of the stock market is being rung. Give me a break.
There are a couple of women running around the internet playing the aggrieved victim at my and/or Kitty’s expense and, frankly, I’m sick of it. It really is just juvenile. All of the pouting and whining about how “Oh, no, I don’t think I’d be welcome over there,” and “Boo hoo! I’ve been kicked out of Rad Fem Central!” is so much overwrought theatrics. First of all, it shouldn’t surprise, let alone offend, anyone that non-feminist women wouldn’t be welcome here. Secondly, Kitty and I have never proclaimed our blog the center, top, or bastion of anything at all. The sadomasochism of women pretending they’re the victims of some kind of authority Kitty and I don’t seek, never claimed, and therefore have certainly never wielded gets really, really old. I invite those women who need Kitty and me to play the villains in their sagas to examine exactly why it is they need that.
And another thing I’ve noticed in all of this damsel-in-distress posturing is the misogyny. No one, no one, says of environmentalists, animal rights “activists,” or even Republicans, that they can’t identify in those ways politically unless they’re actually going out in the world tying themselves to trees in the rain forest, adopting old farm or racetrack animals bound for slaughter, or campaigning for their party. It just doesn’t happen. One’s personal beliefs are generally quite sufficient in those cases. But the second a woman says she identifies with separatists, or that her feminism is separatist, or even just agrees with the notion that separatism is the only feminism with the potential to liberate women and therefore the only feminism worth actually advocating, other women start tearing their hair out about their presumptions of what her life is like. It’s pure misogyny.
