Facebook Publication Date: 1/25/2018 21:01

I have spent most of my time this evening in a forum of progressive leaders and thinkers.

This is a response I offered to a woman who insisted that her needs came before woc, and inferred that she could not not simultaneously stand up for oppressed and fully self care and self advocate.

This position is not new. But I’ve never seen it pushed so baldly and so relentlessly.

My response below. I really really would appreciate feedback on this.

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Hear this. Hear it well. There is nothing, repeat, nothing, repeat, *nothing* that has had benefit for woc that has not had faster and greater positive impact for white women. From affirmative action, Title IV on down. Nothing.

Economic justice? White women have benefited, by an order of magnitude more.

Reproductive freedom? Check.

Housing laws both de jure and de facto? check.

Sexual abuse/domestic violence? Check.

Which is why it is irritating to the point of galling when you keep having to insert your caveat about standing with us and supporting us.

You need to sit with this. When you stand for those more marginalized than you, *you also stand for yourself*. Really. Really. It’s not an either or. When I stand for severely mentally ill, I stand for my own high functioning depression.

When I stand for health care access for those without, I enhance my own healthcare.

When I stand for renter’s rights, I am buttressing my own position.

So I am not worried about if I center others I am selling myself short. I am aware of both my oppression and my privilege and the intersections of them both, and i navigate as such, and I use my pain, which is considerable, not as a stalling tactic, but as jet fuel.

Sit with this hard. See how painful it has been to see you make all of your provisional, conditional statements, but still want credit for being an ally and a sojourner.

I cannot imagine doing that to anyone. You really need to really get how violent that is to those you say you stand with. Or you need to stop pretending to stand with us.

Your protestations show us that you are not and will not be reliable in the clench, in the crunch, because we do not have the luxury of your doing the mental calculations of whether or not your own position will be enhanced.

There are some scriptures I could use to buttress my point, but this is a secular forum. You could always go back to New Covenant scripture. Because your insisting on centering yourself makes a mockery of ‘last will be first’. Among other text.

Really do this work. And then do better.

and because this work is really work:

paypal.me/mennolacie

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