You should never post when you’re angry I have been told. But as it turns out, I have been living in a state of constant anger these days. That anger rose to precipitous proportions recently when while anger-scrolling I came across the photo below:
I do not know all the characters presented below but (like you) I do know a few. The host is a brown woman but as I write in my book Against White Feminism, “whiteness” is not a skin color it is a system of race privilege that white adjacent brown people can uphold as well as anyone else. The lassitude of this picture, the over eager faces, the performative mirth all suggest an evening of smug self-satisfaction, of side hugs and back pats and “you’re amazings”. Next time I wonder how feminism lost its fangs…became irrelevant I can have look right here at this tableau of self-satisfaction.
( please leave your own reactions in the comments)
As you I am sorry this is the reality of a large part of the "feminism". Has become a "girls club" instead of a tool for change. Which only helps to perpetuate what I call the "Teflon Road." That is how I explain the fact of having "many amazing women doing fantastic things" which amount to no change or shallow, superficial tweaks with limited if any effect in deconstructing patriarchy.
Don't apologize for your fury. Indira Gandhi in her cynical way would cut them down to size -- "There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who do the work, and those who take the credit. I try to be in the first group. There is much less competition."
I've used her line before, eye to eye, to great effect :-)