slam it to the left, shake it to the right

“

How can you look at a cultural landscape of institutionalized inequality and not be angry, right? I mean, if you’re a genuine ally and all.

And, if you are, you’ll be glad for that anger, because you know that the opposite of anger, for a progressive, is complacence—and there can be no progress if everyone is perfectly complacent with the way things are.

Progress is dependent on people who get angry, because anger—productive anger, motivating anger, directed anger, rational anger—is the root of all progress.

”

“ As long as women’s natural body hair is called disgusting and inappropriate while men’s isn’t, I am a feminist.
As long as I can’t watch an episode of a popular sitcom without having to sit through multiple sexist comments or “jokes”, I am a feminist.
As long as women have to face the rational fear of being sexually assaulted every time they walk home past dark while men don’t, I am a feminist.
As long as misogyny exists in any country in this world, I am a feminist.
As long as women are being raped, then stoned to death or forced to marry their rapist, I am a feminist.
As long as companies promote men to manager when there are women who are equally as or better qualified, because they find that men look more authoritative, I am a feminist.
As long as women (her choice of clothes, her friendly nature, her weakness, her choice to drink alcohol) get blamed when men rape them, I am a feminist.
As long women’s opinions on online social networks are dismissed with phrases like “tits or gtfo”, “get back to the kitchen”, “are you pms’ing?”, I am a feminist.
As long as dressing like a women is degrading for men and as long as men are insulted with phrases like “you throw like a woman”, clearly implying that being like a woman is shameful, I am a feminist.
As long as both men are women are expected to work, but taking care of children and the household are still largely considered a woman’s job, I am a feminist.
As long as boys and girls are treated differently, expected to act differently, and surrounded by different toys and colours from the day they are born, I am a feminist.
As long as topless women aren’t allowed in public unless they’re on the cover of a men’s magazine, I am a feminist.
As long as women who have sex frequently are generally told they are “sluts”, “lacking self-respect” and “lacking morals” by both men and women, while men who frequently have sex are “just being men” and it’s “natural for them”, I am a feminist.
As long as there are places where women have to pay more for health insurance than men, I am a feminist.
As long as men experience situations with equal gender representation as female-dominated, and don’t consider a group discussion equal unless there are significantly more men then women participants (as has been proven), I am a feminist.
As long as there are men who think it’s their wife or girlfriend’s duty to have sex with him whenever he wants, I am a feminist.
As long as the word feminism (“the movement aimed at equal rights for women”) has a negative connotation, I am a feminist.
As long as misogynist people exist, I am a feminist. ”

“

It’s funny that the people who accuse me of looking for things to get mad about seem only to find hatred and anger in a space so filled with love.

And then there’s this: People do social justice work for a whole lot of reasons, but, generally speaking, it isn’t because they hate the world or the people in it.

When I write a post about, say, the rape culture, cloaked in vibrating anger, it isn’t because I hate the rape culture (although I certainly do); it’s because I really love people, for the most part, and I don’t want anyone, anyone, to be victimized by sexual violence, ever.

Yes, I want to dismantle the rape culture, and if it were a little box placed into my hands, I would throw it to the ground and smash it into a million bits and keep grinding those bits into dust with my fists until I was dragged away. But that is not the thing that motivates me to write about the rape culture, or any other intersecting system of oppression, every day, at no small cost to myself, until I feel sometimes like I’m swimming in a sea of shit that has no shore. What motivates me is love. Love of safety. Love of agency. Love of justice. Love of people.

“Isn’t there anything this woman likes?” ask my incredulous critics.

Yes. More than I can say. It’s there to find, if you’re really looking.

”