I am not the messiah

I’ve noticed recently a bunch of women running around the internet acting like feminism is some kind of social service agency, instead of a movement for the liberation of women. So just to be clear:

1. Women of color do not need white women to save them.
2. Lesbians do not need straight women to save them.
3. Women who do not live in the United States do not need women who do, to save them.
4. Old women do not need young women to save them.
5. Young women do not need old women to save them.
6. Poor women do not need wealthy women to save them.
7. Disabled women do not need able-bodied women to save them.
8. Fat women do not need thin women to save them.
9. Etc.

It’s also not the responsibility of the marginalized to water down our ideology or our behavior so it doesn’t threaten those with loyalties to the status quo. We’re all in this together, as equals, or we have no hope of success. And by that I do not mean that everyone who’s not a white straight middle-class middle-aged upwardly mobile professional in the US should STFU about what’s oppressing us; I mean that those of us who are white, straight, middle-class, middle-aged, US citizens, or reasonable facsimilies thereof, need to get out of the frickin’ way. We either do this collectively, where we trust women to identify and pursue our own liberation to the best of our ability, or we perpetuate the top-down hierarchical savior trope of dominance which will end us right back where we started from.

Filed under: feminism as politics by Amy's Brain Today