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there’s this weird thing where people think feminism means every thing every woman is on or about or believes in must be feminist by virtue of being a woman
there’s multiple feminisms issa feminism for everyone you get a feminism and you get a feminism and you get... y’all that’s ahistorical pluralism without drawing on necessary and collectively determined values something something the failures of identity politics blah blah blah first of all auntie bell hooks taught us patriarchy knows no gender (read bell hooks for the feminist wire) hell, it’s thriving in our own thoughts and actions but we don’t want to talk much about that it’s a little easier to externalize and smash the patriarchy than ask ourselves hard questions about what we carry in us further, there should be no room at the inn for feminisms that subjugate women and others just because a politic is “strongly held” by someone who happens to be a woman but let’s be clear we can pontificate about what is or isn’t feminist all we want to but what we don’t get to do is personally and arbitrarily decide the parameters of feminism we shape feminism as it shapes us, but we are not its sole authors or owners however, when we take on feminism and its weight and the political consciousness it affords, we might find ourselves challenged on what we think we know about feminist politics by other feminists and rightly so nothing quite like getting all the way snatched up by someone who cares enough to do it for your benefit, or alternatively, is all out of fucks to give and we thankfully become the beneficiary of the very last gracious one perhaps feminism is a lifelong practice of doing better with what we know better, or rather, embracing humility when ego begs attention and takes up far too much space just as we are ever-becoming persons, feminism is an evolving framework that asks us to interrogate and uproot gendered power so our world can be better for all people, not just women (read yasmin nair for current affairs) feminism is a framework that sharpens us and our understanding of the world around us and how we move through it feminism is a framework that (re)connects us to others as we’ve always been but we're communally conditioned to forget and granted generational power to erase our interconnectedness over time in exchange for violent domination best part about all these constant and changing and connecting and colliding parts is feminism is a framework that doesn’t require us to like or be liked by all women we should check one another on our shit because the politic demands the kind of love that both supersedes and gives substance to our often temperamental affect for one another we can and should earn and learn from an L when our proclaimed politics and actual behavior don’t align and we fail to fully see and value our selves and others we have a precedented opportunity to gain a feminist principle here from a woman like Cardi B “on sight” is a love language among black women, feminist or not, because what is love without accountability accountability, an urgent and timely matter that might just find us at any given moment, venue is hardly or entirely a concern time and space and decorum are social constructions any damn way sis i love you and because i love us for real you can and will catch these proverbial and physical hands on today, right here and now imagine that this is what a feminist looks like
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