Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

by Phoebe Robinson

  Even now, two years later, I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe a piece of me didn’t want to miss a part of history. Maybe I want to be able to tell my niece when she gets older that I was there and didn’t just sit in my feelings because white feminism wasn’t as good as it should be. Perhaps another part of me just wanted to be with thousands of other people who were also devastated about Trump. Whatever the case may be, once I decided to go, I was all in. Not wearing pussy hats all in, because those were goofy-looking as hell. I was all in in other ways.

  I booked my train ticket to Washington, DC, and shared an Airbnb with a friend. I encouraged others to speak up on sosh meeds; Ilana and I hosted a comedy show at the march and raised as much money as possible and donated all of it to the ACLU, in addition to my own private donation; I armed myself with as much knowledge as possible about what we could potentially be up against with a number 45 administration; I used my podcast Sooo Many White Guys as a way of having tough conversations with folks I didn’t agree with on a plethora of issues, not just politics; as well as getting educated by the likes of political satirist Bassem Youssef and blerd* superhero Melissa Harris-Perry, who helped me see America and the rest of the world clearer. All these actions were lifting me out of despair, and I knew that going to the march was a key factor in feeling hope again.

  IDK about anyone else who attended, but the march itself felt like a high school reunion minus the competition, a family reunion, and a spiritual rejuvenation. Listening to speeches by brilliant women ranging from politicians, activists, actresses, poets, etc. felt like earning a four-year degree in women’s studies in one day without the sad Sylvia Plath parts. Seeing men there with their daughters and, more importantly, their sons, as if to say, “Boys, what’s happening ain’t a lady problem. It’s an everybody situation.” Watching folks get a kick out of each other’s signs and sharing snacks touched me. All these displays of humanity were saying something. What was mine saying?

  This may be cheesy, but I believed my presence said to feminism, “Even though you don’t always or even sometimes show up for me, I’m showing up for you.” I hoped my chanting alongside other women conveyed the message of, “My feminism isn’t conditional, because if it is, then how am I any different than those I have gripes with?” I needed my comedy and donations to say, “See how I’m fighting with you? Let that be an example that you can fight with me and for me and all the others you’ve forgotten about.”

  I’m sure some queer women and WOCs who didn’t go to the march are probably rolling their eyes at these hopes and dreams of mine. Before I address that, let me just write this: I know that before, during, and following the Women’s March, I saw white women online express their disappointment at the disgruntlement within the feminist community, claiming that those women of color and women in the LGBTQIA+ community were being divisive. Here’s the deal: If you spill milk all over the floor, you can’t then expect the milk to only go where you want it to go.* Meaning, feminism cannot be deeply flawed and exclusive yet expect everyone to show up and support it. Them’s the breaks, kiddo. You can’t have it both ways. So for those who are less than satisfied with feminism or don’t even identify as feminists as a result of its tendency to exclude, they are absolutely justified in not going to the Women’s March. They are justified in expressing their displeasure. And they deserve to be heard. So listen to them and listen without speaking. Now, with that PSA out of the way, lemme return back to my being a damn Pollyanna.

  I’m a relatively optimistic person, but even I’m shocked at how pie in the sky I’m sounding about my participation in the Women’s March. After all, I cannot trust the preparers at Chop’t to put dressing on my salad because I don’t think any of them know how to not overdress my rabbit food, yet there I was praying that my moving in unison “Rhythm Nation” style with some feminists for two miles was enough to undo a lifetime of being okay with WW and society as a whole not caring about non-white feminists. That is a tall order, and my being there probably did none of what my daydreams would have liked it to have done. Or maybe it changed a couple of minds. I’ll never know, and it’s probably not my business to know. What was my business was how my relationship with feminism was changing. After being at the march, if I couldn’t reconcile my mixed feelings about feminism, I could at least spend time figuring out what my relationship was going to be with the movement.

  You know how sometimes when you’re casually dating someone and you ask them to DTR aka define the relationship? That conversation usually goes one of two ways: (A) the person basically changes their name to “Boo, Your” on their driver’s license, which is impractical but touching, or (B) the person drops a ninja smoke bomb and disappears, and while that hurts your feelings, you’re also impressed because the old-school way of saying, “I gotta go,” and then struggling to put on your pre-tied New Balances because they are tied too tight, is not the jam. Well, thankfully, when I asked feminism if it was going to step up and be there for me in the future, it responded, “Sure! And to help prove it, do you want to meet one of the movement’s OGs, Gloria Steinem?” To which I responded, “Yaaas times infinity!!!”

  “Great,” feminism said. “Now go ahead and moderate a discussion with Steinem at the Massachusetts Conference for Women.” OMG!

  It goes without saying that nothing can prepare you for meeting an icon who has meant so much to so many people. So I did the best I could. I heavily researched her life, her writing, and her on-the-ground experiences as she, alongside powerful luminaries—such as bell hooks; Angela Davis; Dorothy Pitman Hughes, the cofounder of Ms. magazine (the other one being Gloria); Native American activist Wilma Mankiller, and many more—led the movement. And also, duh, I made sure I looked cute when I first met her by rocking a floor-length black dress with floral embroidery all over it that, if the front could talk, it would’ve said, “I make candles from scratch just because,” while in the back, because the dress was backless, was like, “I’m a sexy-ass doula, so get out of the way so I can serve face while delivering your baby.”

  In a nutshell, my conversation with her was nothing short of amazing. She let me call her Glo-Glo, rolled with it when I said the word “peen,” and she was dropping so many Tampax with pearls of wisdom—#PunNotWorthIt—that it seemed every five minutes there was an applause break. Hands down, my favorite part of our chat was when I brought up my mixed feelings about feminism, which are the result of its lack of inclusion. I could sense all the non-white women were like “Finally!” à la CeCe Peniston,* while it seemed there was a wave of white women in the audience giving off the vibe of “Oh no. Here we go again.” There was a shift in the air, but I didn’t care. The answers I was seeking were far more important than some strangers’ discomfort.

  Gloria immediately expressed her frustration with feminism being considered a white movement for a couple of reasons. First, black women have routinely lead the charge in fighting for all women. While acknowledging that #MeToo, which was created by Tarana Burke, existed long before white actresses such as Alyssa Milano got on board and became the leading voices of it, Glo-Glo went on to break down the origin of the term “sexual harassment.” It was coined by feminists at Cornell University in 1975 and then a few years later, Catharine MacKinnon, a lawyer and feminist activist, figured out how to legally argue that sexual harassment was not only a violation of rights but a prime example of discrimination.

  With this framework, three black women filed high-profile and successful lawsuits. Paulette Barnes and Diane Williams took on the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Justice Department, respectively, while Mechelle Vinson sued Meritor Savings Bank after she was raped by her boss in a bank vault. Her case made history, as it was the first of its kind to go all the way to the Supreme Court, where the unanimous decision ruled that sexual harassment violated federal laws and that employers could be held accountable for the sexual misconduct of their employees.

  “All three of these
women were black,” Gloria began. “And these black women now symbolize the fact that [sexual harassment] is certainly more likely to happen to people with less power in society than to people with more power.”* She then stated that statistically speaking, black women are twice as likely to identify as feminist than their white counterparts.

  Gloria also brought up the national poll Ms. magazine conducted in 1970, in which 60 percent of black women identified as feminist and supported the movement while only 30 percent of white women did. Then she continued by saying that considering that 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump during the 2016 election (91 percent of black women voted for Clinton), this was an example of how white women were still behind. What was notable about that moment was not Gloria presenting the receipts, although that was appreciated, but how the audience reacted. The women of color clapped loudly and proudly as did a few white women, but this truth bomb was not met with the rapturous applause that frequented earlier parts of our talk. Even when their icon, a woman they unanimously admire, speaks a truth they don’t want to hear, there is discomfort. Gloria acknowledging that giving black women props for our historical contributions is long overdue—whether it’s #MeToo or those landmark lawsuits or turning up for Hillary Clinton (despite inflammatory articles like the one published in the New York Times with the heading “Black Turnout Soft in Early Voting,” which was shady because we all know who the fuck did and didn’t turn out)—was met with resistence.

  So what are we going to do? How are we going to deal with the instinct to ignore the contributions of black feminists (as well as contributions from other WOC and LGTBQIA+ feminists) being alive and as strong as ever? How can we quell the desire to be agitated by the truth as well as the tendency to blame WOCs and queer feminists for the failures of feminism even though it has been proven time and time again that some white feminists will go against their best interests as women in order to maintain their class and race status? I mean, those are the million-dollar questions feminism has to be asking itself during these growing pains, and maybe part of the reason these growing pains aren’t entirely apparent to all feminists is because they’re being hidden underneath feel-good decorations the way I’d cover a wine stain on a couch cushion by using my Nicki Minaj “Miley, what’s good?” throw pillow. Time-out because we have to talk about that question and how it was one of the greatest questions uttered in history next to Nicolas Cage’s query in Con Air: “Why couldn’t you put the bunny back in the box?”

  Like many pop stars before her, Miley Cyrus constantly reinvents her image. Her current incarnation includes her singing chill love songs with a country-ish vibe while posing in meadows straight out of Allegra-D allergy commercials. It’s all very innocent and quiet and well . . . white. This is in stark contrast to the Cyrus from a few years ago, who was wearing gold-plated grillz, twerking, hanging out with “thug-looking” black dudes and rappers aka using lazy and shallow stereotypes of black culture all to show that she was not a little girl anymore. This obvious cultural appropriation was hailed by mainstream media as cool and edgy behavior when we all knew that if she were black, this behavior would be considered nothing but ratchet. This fact seemed to haunt Cyrus during that period, but she was never forced to confront the truth until she and Minaj butted heads.

  It all began when the 2015 MTV VMA nominations were announced. Nicki Minaj’s highly popular and sexual video for “Anaconda” was not nominated for Video of the Year, so she cried foul by tweeting: “When the ‘other’ girls drop a video that breaks records and impacts culture they get that nomination.” Taylor Swift assumed this comment was directed at her because her vid “Bad Blood” got several noms, Minaj assured her it wasn’t, but implored her to speak on the issue of artists of color not being recognized. Then, Cyrus, who was completely not involved but decided to create some beef, ran to the New York Times (which has got to be the WHITEST THING TO DO IN A BEEF as I don’t recall Tupac being like, “Lemme hit up The Atlantic so I can read Biggie Smalls to filth”) and immediately reduced Minaj’s comments to starting a cat fight. Right. Because the intelligent thing to do as a white woman when faced with valid criticism about what your privilege allows is to drag out the angry-black-woman trope. Not. Smart. The interview went viral leading up to her stint hosting the 2015 MTV VMAs.

  Minaj took her moment to address the nonsense in the Minaj-iest of ways. She won Best Hip-Hop Video for “Anaconda” and closed her acceptance speech by addressing Cyrus with something black people often say—“what’s good?”—which is used as a greeting or to send the message of “We’re not going to have a problem are we because if so, I might have to hand your ass to you.” Everyone in the room, as well as the viewers at home, knew that based on the amount of stank Minaj put on “Miley, what’s good?” this question fell into the latter category. And in that moment, we all saw Cyrus dropping her “street” persona and going full cul-de-sac. Y’all, her lip quivered like she was on Days of Our Lives, she stuttered out some congratulations to Minaj and said the media twisted her words, and let out a deep-ass sigh like “Golly-gee, this casserole is not going to be done in time for the Frasier marathon my friends and I are about to watch.” Who knew that a simple and intense “Yo, what’s good?” is the verbal version of “Bitch, you white” smelling salts that gets white ladies to cut their cultural-appropriating bullshit? I certainly didn’t, but I’m going on a “What’s good?” smelling salt spree to all the hair salons where stylists are putting Battlefield Earth dreadlocks on white girls. Okay. Back to our regularly scheduled programming of discussing why feminism’s growing pains aren’t self-evident to all feminists.

  Simply put, there are too many things distracting us. The pussy hats. Feminist T-shirts. Think pieces. Books. Pop stars ranging from Taylor Swift to Beyoncé publicly identifiying as feminists (who can forget the moment when Bey closed the 2014 MTV VMAs by standing in front of a giant, ten-foot-high lit-up screen that had “FEMINIST” on it?). There’s no denying that feminism has been commercialized as a brand in a way it never has before. It’s trendy to be a feminist, and that label serves as a catchall the way that “influencer” does for popular people on sosh meeds. Plenty of people, myself included, are thrilled that more and more people are identifying as a feminist because we need to keep building this army so we can make equality a reality. But much like when you’re hosting a house party and the clock strikes midnight and you start looking around at the party crashers you don’t recognize and mutter to yourself, “Who are all these heauxes and how did they get in here?,” I’m a tad suspicious of some of these FPCs aka feminism party crashers who are claiming to be feminists.

  Not that I’m the arbiter on who does and who doesn’t get to be a feminist, but I have some questions about some of the behavior I’m seeing. I think a huge part of the reason questionable choices and comments are being made is because there is no one, correct, strict way to be a feminist. And sometimes, despite our best intentions, we all often fail to live up to what feminism should be and do for all women. Heck, celebrated author Roxane Gay even wrote a book called Bad Feminist in which she documented the complexities and complications with being a feminist, such as liking unsavory things in pop culture. I know I’m not the only one demanding that women not be seen as shrill, argumentative, and catty, yet I will watch trash reality TV featuring women who play up this stereotype. I know I have to grow and stop making thoughtless choices like consuming toxic content. I’m working on it. But not everyone is. Not all feminists are willing to get better or hold themselves accountable, not by trying to be perfect but by being conscious during their decision-making process, from the little things like bad television to the weightier sociopolitical issues. In fact, there are some pretenders out there, y’all. They might be hard to identify and there are several types, but these are the ones I’ve seen most frequently that I believe pose an actual threat to an inclusive feminism:

  (A) FAUXMINISTS

  Have you ever
hung out with a woman and she, apropro of nothing, says something to the effect of, “Most of my friends are guys; I just don’t get along with women, which is crazy, but I guess some women can’t handle other women’s success”? And you have to sit there with your face frozen in an uncomfortable smile like you just got some Bobo aka Botox? This is a typical fauxminist, or fake feminist, comment. I mean, sure, women get jealous, but so do men. Jealousy isn’t gender specific. Also, when a statement like this is made, there’s always an air of “I’m one of the exceptional women who can fit in with men,” which is gross.

  But what is really troubling about fauxminists is that their feminism is not only conditional (meaning they’re for it unless what is being asked of them threatens their way of thinking and living), but it’s also infused with patriarchal toxicity, so their big takeaway from feminism is not about equality and rights for all but that women should finally be allowed to behave as badly as men have for centuries. Hell no! I have no interest in having my turn to take a dump on progress. I want to elevate a room when I walk in it, not just keep it the same as it’s always been. I want the world to be fundamentally different than the one my mom grew up in. So I refuse to get mine, so to speak, by reinforcing the patriarchy to my advantage. There is no point in perpetuating the same bullshit because it is somehow going to taste better going down because it’s coming from a woman. Poison is poison no matter who serves it to you.

  (B) FEMINISTS WHO ARE ALL ABOUT THAT MERCH

  These are the ones who, inspired by the Swifts and the Beyoncés and any other public figure, get pumped. They’ll go to concerts and wear the shirts and watch female-helmed and female-led movies and TV shows because that’s the fun and easy work. However, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty work, they’re nowhere to be found. This is kinda like when I was in my twenties and was all hyped for my friends moving to a new apartment, so I sent them links to Target or West Elm products, but when they sent a text like, “I’m moving next Saturday at noon, can you help me?” I’d immediately think Nope, but didn’t want to seem like a jerk, so I’d wait until 6:57 P.M. on that Saturday and write the classic lie of, “OMG! I just saw this text. Sorry! How did the move go?” Sorry to spill the beans, but no one misses texts. People see every single one the way I have seen every Step Up movie. So if you ask for a favor and your friend doesn’t respond, they are treating your request like spam emails from LivingSocial.