- possible answer #1: because sexism isn't a serious problem? Just ask Nancy Pelosi: Michelle should find she gets a tremendous upside from being a woman. So just don't worry about sexist comments.
- possible answer #2: because we're too busy still being flogged ourselves* to have time to rescue anyone else?
The goal of this game is to get white women to beg forgiveness for being so selfish as to focus on issues of gender (and their own issues even! eeewww!) when everyone agrees that race is sooooo much more important.
Like Cinderella, we can focus on what we want - but not until all of the housework of the world is finished, and that means every last scrap of racial injustice is taken care of (which can never happen, because the past will continue to live on, impossible to undo, impossible to correct....).
Curtis starts with a short historic tour of how white women have failed black women. She talks of her "educated" mother, who had to work for a white woman. As if that weren't demeaning enough, the wealthy white woman didn't see her mother as equal**. Curtis complains that the movement represents the wrong issues, and she criticizes Gloria Steinem for not being 'inclusive' enough***.
Then come the demands. We need to stop being "suspicious". This appears to be some sort of complaint about how we're resisting assimilation or something. Whatever. The cure for our "suspiciousness" appears to involve embracing Obama Unity.
We must immediately join in "solidarity". "Solidarity" is much easier to define - it means we should suck it up, the way Curtis herself sucked it up when that hideously over-white Steinem came around all those decades ago. In the same spirit of sacrifice, we must all now shut up, can our own (selfish!) concerns, stop having unauthorized opinions, do as we're told, and above all: vote the way we goddamned tell you to!
Our motives are, of course, attributed entirely to racism - we just can't stand that someone of that race beat someone of our sex.
Then she pulls out the Rosa Parks card. We are apparently not to speak of being second-class citizens or using metaphors about being sent to the back of the bus****. We are dishonoring the real sufferings of black people by pretending that our own experiences count as suffering, too. We are dishonoring Rosa by not remembering her enough.
Curtis ends, rather triumphantly, with a command: white women should just get over it.
The argument that started out being about sexism ends with women being told to shut up, stop making waves and being ill-behaved, and get into place. (Although, to be fair, I imagine the whole world will crumble if we continue to "act out"....)
The beautiful touch is how, right there at the end, she admits that she is just starting to feel a little peeved. Up until now, she has been patient - saintly, really, given how infantile and racist we've been. She has been patient and neutral. But now, she is near the point where she can no longer tolerate our misbehavior. It is time for us to stop throwing our tantrum. It is time to be good, obedient little children, because the grownup has been so good about indulging us but now we are pushing even this saint too far:
No room here for the real source of anger - crooked politics, dirty tactics, rigged elections. Just us being infantile and petty and jealous. Our own inability to rejoice for the winner, because we're petty and small.Yet when an African American made a different kind of history, it seems that feminists can't share in the triumph.
They don't have to vote for the husband to defend the wife.
Okay, I get it: Your candidate lost. You're angry.
But frankly, I'm getting a little peeved myself.
And this is supposed to be an article about sexism. It's hard to say whether it has actually crossed the line into parody.
It's a shameless (and less than honest) attempt at manipulation, obviously motivated by the need to discredit That Which Shall Not Be Named.
Hope those of you who identify as PUMA appreciate the compliment buried in there for what it is.
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* See Salon - Rebecca Traister (link provided above) for the latest round of rude words used to describe unpleasant, unwanted, un-listened to, un-respected old white women.
** If it weren't for racism, I'm sure that wealthy women would cheerfully accept their housecleaning ladies as social equals.
*** wrong issues = representing the issues of those who show up. Sort of like how it's wrong to count the votes of the voters who actually show up at the polls, when anyone fair-minded knows you should worry more about how the people who didn't vote would have voted, if they had voted, which they didn't.
In the same way, social movements always seem to represent the issues of those who show up, rather than reflecting the concerns of those who would show up, except that they're presumably too oppressed to be able to get to the meeting.
Curtis apparently feels that the women's movement owed it to women of color to address their issues first, because mind reading is what white women do best (or ought to).
This reflects the belief that good people should always address issues according to social importance, rather than mere proximity. This is of course why feminist journalists now invariably put the needs of abused sex workers in Thailand over the less significant needs of people like, say, black Presidential candidates' wives here in the USA. Notice how Curtis herself ignores her own demographic (affluent black women) and instead focuses on those sex workers in Thailand. Isn't she great to be so selfless?
Ok, snark aside, Curtis apparently does not realize that democracy means it's your job to represent your own interests - not someone elses' job to represent your interests.
This is why the alliance that was the Democratic party has failed. Some constituencies have long lost sight of the fact that they are expected to give as well as take.
The real dividing line down the Democratic party is right here. Obama's side gets the three groups that are so full of their own sense of entitlement, that they genuinely believe other groups ought to serve their interests "just because". Just because we'll call you "Republican!" if you don't. Just because you owe us. Just because we're better than you.
Spoiled college kids, uber-liberals with fiery visions of how their own ideas should take precedence over everyone elses', and the "angry black" community, are all so sure that they alone are deserving, that they do not feel they should have to offer anything in return for what they want. You should just serve my cause because you owe, you owe, you owe.
Meanwhile, women, Latinos, gays, the Rust Belt and Appalachia, and the working class (that is, the groups that went for Clinton), are getting tired of being treated as political ATM machines. We want something back. Why does the Democratic party treat that as inherently absurd?
I am beginning to get really annoyed at the way some people assume that white women, apparently alone out of all God's creatures, were put on this earth to entirely for the purpose of serving others. We aren't supposed to have our own interests - we are supposed to be completely absorbed in making everyone elses' dreams come true & problems go away. We should be spending every spare moment, dollar, and drop of energy in making the world a better place for anyone and everyone else. If you have a problem, white women are the ones to address that problem.
Why? I don't know - perhaps it's because we've got nothing better to do?
What I do know is this - I'm pretty tired of the double standard.
**** but what about under the bus?
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