minoanmiss | In US politics, who gets to be angry?

minoanmiss

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/03/double-standard-biden-nominees-women.html

Surprise! Not women of color!

Current Mood: angry

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

gingicat

Thank you for sharing.

From:

dialecticdreamer

a) that the problem is with the "WOMEN" rather than "women of color" double standard. Women have to fit a certain standard from oh, two hundred years ago, in order to be mostly acceptable in public. (Crap, but the lingering misogyny is hard to oust.)

and

b) We should hold up examples of the double standard EVERY time they happen, until the press and the politicians BOTH think twice before they construct and ad hominem attack, in particular. Men get away with those almost entirely, and the few who are called out hide behind "freedom of speech." Women who rightfully point out that a political appointee (especially a male one) was accused of serious criminal behavior, are silenced with words like 'bigot' and worse.

I'm sorry to see women playing the appease-the-powerful-men strategy, again, but I can understand some of it. The question is, when is enough more than enough?

From:

china_shop

I think they're fine with women's anger if it's the white women on Fox News, aren't they? And there was Sarah Palin, and I didn't follow the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing, but...

I'm very much on the outside, coming from another country, but I don't think the answer is, "Maybe the GOP are only being sexist, not racist." Intersectionality is a thing, you know?

From:

dialecticdreamer

I live intersectionality every day. The point that I was trying to make is that we haven't made nearly enough progress toward gender equality for there to be a STEP between "women" and "women of color" in terms of what's socially acceptable. Instead, it's a freaking cliff.

From:

china_shop

Yeah, obviously I don't know you and I don't know what your intersectionalities are. The point that I am trying to make is that Black women have said over and over that that STEP is real and significant and problematic/hurtful, and I believe them.

(And you know, I question whether

minoanmiss's journal is the place to question that...)

From:

dialecticdreamer

I'm not questioning it. What I'm trying repeatedly to say is that if enough women refuse to stand for the double standard, it can be changed. But it can't just rely on women of color, and THAT is also being overlooked.

From:

minoanmiss

In that women of color can't bear the whole burden of trying to change this, yeah.

In fact I may write an essay about how fixing a bigotry really ought not to be laid at the door of the victims but of the perpetrators, but that's another essay.

Anyway.

From:

dialecticdreamer

Exactly!

From:

china_shop

What I'm trying repeatedly to say is (my emphasis)

That's not what you were saying, though. Like, do you still stand by your original comment (in particular, part (a) of it) and your first reply to me above? I can't tell.

From:

minoanmiss

that the problem is with the "WOMEN" rather than "women of color" double standard.

*smiles sadly* Do you want my honest answer, as a Black woman?

From:

dialecticdreamer

You're probably right.

We've still got so far to go to get even close to gender parity in key areas of social responsibility that it's depressing.

I honesty hoped that it's not worse for women of color, and I apologize if my comment wasn't explained thoroughly enough.

From:

minoanmiss

It really is depressing. But/and, alas, it is even worse for WOC, not least because often when we have an inconveniently strong opinion we get told we're being Loud and Rude and Awful by both White men AND White women. For instance when I worked in a hospital I can't count the times I've seen the White nurses yell at people in ways I know the Black nurses couldn't get away with. It was about four times that I saw one of the Black nurses snap and yell, and each time they got scolded on the nursing floor where a lowly secretary like me could see. It's not that no White nurse ever got scolded in public either, but the difference was still stark.

There's also what people are yelling about. Marjorie Taylor Greene thundering about Antifa gets applause from the same conservatives now grilling the ladies Biden has put forward as candidates. I've seen the saem thing happen in miniature, as it were, in personal settings.

(There's also how Black and Latino men especially have to be very careful about being visibly angry, and the ways in which "women don't get to be angry" and "these ethnic groups don't get to be angry" multiply against each other for women of color, but what I'm trying to describe in a few words is how the effect goes even further than that.)

Anyway. Thank you for listening to me.

From:

dialecticdreamer

Thank you for letting me fail at Englsih, LOL.

You're right about the differences, but I'm tired of the fact that a hundred years after voting rights, women are still being punished for being "loud" and "opinionated." Does anyone have any better ideas of how to shift the larger culture?

I

From:

lemonsharks

OK, so.

White women get grief for being "loud" and "opinionated".

Black women get grief, and their children taken away, and arrested, and jailed, and killed, for being "loud" and "opinionated" and "angry" and "scary" and "disrespectful" and "suspicious" and "lazy" and "volatile" for saying the exact same words in the exact same tone as white women.

I have observed this, as a white woman, in my life and in the news, for the last decade+.

From:

dialecticdreamer

I am not disputing that. I am trying to say that making the solution EXCLUSIVELY the job of women of color is ridiculous.

From:

lemonsharks

OK, and, throughout the thread the meaning your words carry is the opposite of what you intend.

that the problem is with the "WOMEN" rather than "women of color" double standard. Women have to fit a certain standard from oh, two hundred years ago, in order to be mostly acceptable in public. (Crap, but the lingering misogyny is hard to oust.)

This statement in particular is a verbatim second wave feminist argument, used to admonish women of color for failing to abandon and reject men of color in the name of women's liberation. (And, further, to admonish women of color for failing to defer to white feminist leaders/people in charge.)

From:

princessofgeeks

So many double standards. It's infuriating.

From:

minoanmiss

It just amazes me that people don't see it. On further thinking about that... I think it's about what is seen as appropriate. From what I've seen, a lot of people, including but not limited to a plurality of White men, see anger as appropriate for White men to express but as dangerous and frightening from many men of color and as inappropriate and unfitting for women of color. From watching my white male classmate curse and no one says anything and then cursing myself ten minutes later and getting shocked gasps and a dressing-down and demerit from the teacher onwards.

Ah, life.