The Radical Housewife on white female privilege

I wrote this in one of the thousands on comments on this subject: "As my profile picture shows, I am white. I wish I knew everything about everyone everywhere, but I don't. I also wish I knew why humility is so often confused with weakness, and arrogance is equated with intelligence."

In other words, it helps nobody to deny it. It's not helpful to splutter away in every corner of the interwebs, "BUT BUT BUT...I'm not racist!...I mean, I have all of Sharon Jones's records!!" Acknowledging privilege isn't racist, it's honest. Being born white confers privilege, and unpacking that privilege is a lifelong process.

This goes for you too, whitey. If a person of color has something to say about the matter, shut your mouth, keep your hands off the keyboard and PAY ATTENTION.

For further reading:

"Go After the Privilege, Not the Tits" Racialicious

"Afterthoughts on Alexandra Wallace and White Female Privilege" Feministe

"Stop Denying White Female Privilege" Womanist Musings

Kate Bornstein on privilege

"I can understand men looking baffled when women accuse them of exercising male privilege; it's like many white people who look blank when confronted with their racism....

"I didn't 'lose' my male privilege so much as I made a conscious decision to get rid of it, and I didn't get rid of it all at once; it's an attitude that is insidiously pervasive....It took my becoming a woman to discover my 'male behavior'--that is, exhibiting male privilege.

"Male privilege is woven into all levels of the culture, from unearned higher wages to more opportunities in the workplace, from higher quality, less expensive clothing to better bathroom facilities. Male privilege extends into sexual harassment, rape, and war. Combine male privilege with capitalism (which rewards greed and acquisition) and the mass media (which, owned by capitalists, highlights only the rewards of acquisition and makes invisible its penalties), and you have a juggernaut that needs stopping by any means....

"Male privilege is, in a word, violence."

From Bornstein's 1994 book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us.

It is killing me that this book has been in print for over fifteen years and I'm just reading now. Better late than never, I suppose.

An open letter to Mary Pilcher-Cook, Kansas legislator

Dear Sen. Pilcher-Cook,

Your campaign website states that part of your commitment to women and children includes "listening to women who have had abortions and their resulting experiences," yet you fail to add that you will only be respectful of those whose experiences fit your narrow view.

Tiffany Campbell had an abortion that saved the life of her son, diagnosed with Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, but you called her a "killer." Do you respond to all women with such rudeness? Or does your compassion extend only to "resulting experiences" that are negative? It may surprise you to learn that one in three American women have terminated a pregnancy--safely, legally, and for many, gratefully.

I am not a Kansas resident, so I will not have the pleasure of voting you out of office. I will, however, be making a substantial donation to your opponent.

Sincerely,

The Radical Housewife

SEN. MARY PILCHER-COOK, "PROTECTING" WOMEN BY SHAMING THEM

Her earthly contact info:

http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2011_12/year1/members/sen_pilcher_cook_mary_1/

Panic!

So many reasons to be a Panic Kitteh lately: earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns. Revolutions turning into bloodbaths. The Uterus Police. Unspeakable violence against 11-year-olds and other children. American Muslims on trial for their faith. Double ear infections , TMJ, and peculiar intestinal maladies.

WORLD! Stop being fucked up! Some of us have book proposals to finish, ya know!

What 11-year-olds look like.

This is a picture of my son on his eleventh birthday. He and his sister (and his cousin, not pictured) wore orange so we could identify them in the chaos that is the amusement park inside the Mall of America.

While I of course see my 11-year-old as an unusually beautiful specimen, he is actually pretty typical of the species. While he is marketed to as a "tween," suggesting that he is on the brink of pubescence, he's more child than teen, and nowhere near adult. For his birthday he requested and received a set of emo-skate-punk fashions from the Tony Hawk line at Kohl's, but wearing these did not suddenly transform him into a cast member of Jackass. One look at the roundness of his face tells you that this 11-year-old is absolutely, unmistakably a child.

As a longtime feminist activist, I know about slut-shaming and victim-blaming. But as a mother of an 11-year-old I slumped over and wept when I heard about the now infamous coverage of the 11-year-old Texas gang rape victim in the New York Times.

Residents in the neighborhood....said [the victim] dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys on the playground, some said. "Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?" said Ms. Harrison....

Yes, James C. McKinley Jr. can hide behind the fact that the statements were made by people in the community itself, but he didn't bother to include a counterpoint from a sexual assault counselor, who may have reminded McKinley that a victim's clothing is irrelevant to the horrific crime perpetrated against her. And the child's mother is not responsible for the behavior of 18 rapists. Interestingly, McKinley placed this quote near the beginning of the story:

"It's just destroyed our community," said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. "These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives."

McKinley doesn't provide a voice that muses what the 11-year-old VICTIM will have to live with for the rest of her life. Why? I'm a writer, not a journalist, but even I know that it would only take one phone call to a domestic violence shelter and/or sexual assault hotline to find someone willing to speak up for this 11-year-old child. Hell, McKinley could go to a large mall and find a mother of an 11-year-old willing to go on record. This is what she'd probably say:

My heart is breaking for that little girl. I hope that she gets the support she needs to recover from this terrible crime and that the perpetrators are brought to justice. By "justice" I mean significant jail time and education about rape and its effect on survivors and communities.

Then she'd hold her own 11-year-old and cry.

Petition: Tell the New York Times to Apologize for Blaming a Child for her Gang Rape

Collin Peterson is an embarrassment to Minnesota.

...and that's saying something! At least Michele Bachmann drains resources from folks I wouldn't hang out with anyway. No one from St Paul has the stones to ask me to pay for her loony mailings and ad buys. John Boehner doesn't pester me for cash to support Bachmann as she yanks federal funds and programs away from the rural women who desperately need them.

But guess what? Because Collin Peterson is a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi does.

"LOOK EVERYBODY! I think I found a job in that woman's panties!"

Now that Sarah Jaffe is exposing Peterson's embarrassing politics on a national level, do you think anyone in the DFL will start taking our complaints about him seriously? Or do we have to wait until there really are jobs discovered in the vaginas of the 7th district and beyond?

Meet the HR3 Ten: Collin Peterson, the Original Blue Dog

by Sarah Jaffe, RH Reality Check