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There is no safe space from oppression anywhere. Feminists of color know that when we are not on “toxic Twitter,” there is no other place we can go where we won’t have to deal with the intersecting forces of racism, sexism and capitalism. How can social media exist independently of the dynamics and forces of oppression that structure the world at large? The answer is simple: it does not and cannot. So, the complaint that social media has become “toxic” and is therefore no longer a “safe space” strikes us as ahistorical and strange. The world was and is currently structured by white supremacy, settler colonialism, heterosexism and patriarchy. For the marginalized, the “good old days” are a lie.
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Social media also offers opportunities for some who do not have access to traditional publishing venues nor the resources to travel to share ideas beyond their geographic locales.Īs such, we are deeply suspicious of narratives that claim that there were “good old days” when things were much simpler and nicer. Social media offers the opportunity to expand our platforms to discuss ideas that can encompass thousands of individuals rather than the small and sometimes insular groups of people with whom we work. What has changed through the development of social media is the immediacy of the pushback and its more democratic nature. How can feminists grapple with the limitations inherent in the medium, while exploiting its potential to build support for critical fights? We invited four women-Andrea Smith, Mariame Kaba, Lori Adelman and Roxane Gay-to respond to the piece, and reflect on the role Twitter will and should play as the feminist movement continues to grow. And yet Twitter campaigns have sparked public outcry as ordinary women use it to reach wide audiences with their stories of abortion, sexual assault, racial stereotyping, and more. Many women told Goldberg that Twitter facilitates an ideological policing that borders on bullying and makes candid conversation impossible. Since that piece appeared, the social media platform has played host to ever more outbreaks of organizing, consciousness-raising, and outrage. I have a confession: I’ve done things in quarantine that I hesitate to say aloud.Editor’s Note: Michelle Goldberg’s cover story on the explosive interaction between feminist activism and Twitter kicked up a roiling debate about how social media can empower grassroots feminists and shake up the established feminist agenda-while keeping the movement focused and effective in the fight for gender equality. Last week, it was this: I was so filled with rage that I went out to my car and screamed and beat my hands so hard against my steering wheel that the soft edges of my palms ached for days.
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When I say rage, you know exactly what I mean. I mean the kind that comes for you at 9 a.m. when your youngest is whining about schoolwork and your eldest has already told you no a dozen times that day. when everyone is cranky and wanting dinner and you aren’t sure you have enough food to make it through the week so you pull open the fridge to see what you can stretch. When the dog is barking to go out and no one else will take him, when the laundry is still sitting on the recliner where you left it a week ago, when your partner tosses their clothes on the floor for the hundredth time and is in the mood to fuck and the words well up in you like somebody’s sliced you open and you’re seeping blood: fuck you. This rage is stealth, and there are spikes in it: another person you know gets COVID. Another piece-of-shit racist cop has murdered another Black man. Another politician says the American people have been given enough to make do but corporations deserve more.
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It’s the kind of rage that makes you dig your nails into your steering-wheel-bruised palms until they nearly puncture, the kind that makes you scream into your pillow at night until you want to tear it open with your teeth, the kind that shapes you and sometimes shaves a few pieces off, the kind that forever changes what it shapes. Last month in this column, I wrote about how devastating the pandemic has been on caregivers and about one of the overarching sources of our collective rage: so many people, primarily women, have given up their careers and identities to care for children and disabled folks and the elderly because the government has refused to help. Although the media is covering this, most of the stories they focus on are the stories of white, cis, middle-class women. The caregiver stories we most often miss are those that rarely make it into the archives of the United States because they often fall into the overlooked spaces that whiteness and cisness and wealth force them into because whiteness and cisness and wealth bulldoze everything in their path.