Why do you even care? A reaction to Chrissy Teigen's slut shaming hypocrisy.

By now many people have heard through celebrity gossip blogs and news sites that model Chrissy Teigen called MTV's Teen Mom, Farrah Abraham, a "whore." You may have also read that in response Chrissy was called out for "slut-shaming."  I went to look up the words slut and whore and I have come to the conclusion that they basically mean the same thing: loose sexual morals (a highly relative idea, definition and label). The only real difference is that a whore gets paid for what a slut does for free. So with that clarified I will move forward with my reaction to Chrissy's slut-shaming antics.

The first thing I am going to say, is actually a question. Why does Chrissy even care about the actions of another woman who has no influence on her, so much so, to the point to take to Twitter to call this woman out her name and tear her down? That's really what I want to know.  Chrissy Teigan's antics are revealing about herself and how she relates to other women and how patriarchy has influenced her thinking, even if it's just the way she treats women she has deemed a "whore."

When Chrissy was called out for her slut-shaming, she got really defensive and dissed more women, dissed feminism and ultimately acted like a hypocritical bully. I call her a hypocrite because Chrissy herself has many commercial images (pictures she has been paid to take) where she is scantily clad in sexually suggestive poses, which according to the definition I spoke of above makes her just as much of a whore as Farrah. I hate that I feel compelled to even say that because I don't intend to slut-shame Chrissy and I do not AT ALL think that Chrissy is bad or deserving of embarassment for her pictures or profession. However, I have to call out the hypocrisy.

I am not offended by so-called loose sexual morals, especially when they do not affect my life. If you want to be promiscuous or whatever, as long as you don't hurt yourself or others, I'm not going to shame you or call you out or even make a noise about your actions. I just want my fellow woman to be healthy and safe with her sexuality.

I am not angry at Chrissy. I am angry that women's sexuality is a commodity used to degrade women, divide women and therefore oppress women. Had Chrissy dissed the social institution of commercialized sexism, where young women are raised up in a culture that will simultaneously promote loose sexual morals and then degrade you for acting out or manifesting that mindset, she would have made a far wider and much more meaningful impact. But what she really was doing was just hating on Farrah Abraham for whatever her reasons may be.

What Chrissy did was buy into and enforce patriarchal and highly oppressive standards of women's sexuality which in turn divided and misguided women into focusing on reacting to each other instead of reacting to commercialized/institutionalized sexism. I can tell by Chrissy's Twitter responses that she has put up a wall and dug in her heels instead of being open to being educated about the idea of what slut-shaming is and how at the end of the day she too is affected by slut-shaming.

The real shame is that instead of using what Chrissy obviously deemed as her moral superiority to privately reach out to Farrah or even publicly so, in an attempt to guide her away from acting like a "whore" (which would have been the wise thing to do or at least a more uplifting thing to do) she made a choice to degrade Farrah using extremely oppressive language and tactics by trying to publicly humiliate Farrah.

People ask me all the time when I state an opinion, "Why do you care?" And so I pose this same question to Chrissy. Why do you care about what Farrah Abraham does to the point that you took to a public social media forum to degrade her? And when you reflect on why you care so much, I hope that you truly care more about women in general and begin a process of educating yourself on the way in which this world, this country, this culture and this celebrity industry that you profit from is used to keep women oppressed and confused.

Coming from a loving place.

International Workers' Day EVERYDAY: White feminism at the expense of "other" women.

I meant to get this published on May 1st. However, work and parenting or shall I say "doing it all" literally got in my way. So here I am publishing my opinion today, a few days late, but none-the-less, a relevant discussion to be had any day of the year.

International Worker's Day, having just passed, and therefore with the notion of workers' rights in mind,  I want to focus on domestic workers and who they are to feminists.  What I am going to talk about is not just as a feminist acknowledging that domestic work is done in majority by women,  but that it is done mostly by poor women and mostly by poor women of color. I also want to furthermore note that it is not lost on me nor should it be lost on the white women of the women's movement in general that the white feminist movement specifically and the subsequent lifestyle changes it brought to their world (meaning white women in general, feminist identified or otherwise) with it's proclamations of the right to work, right to choose to "do it all," does so most of the time on the back of these same poor women, women of color, these "other" women. Women who usually do not look like their employer, do not live in the same neighborhood (or equivalent) of their employer and women who often do not speak the same native language as their employer. Yet these other women still raise their employers children, clean their employers homes and cook their employers meals usually at the expense of time and attention paid to their own children and homes. Thus while white women go to work, out of choice, the other women have no choice but to work, as their socio-economic location has historically dictated.

White feminism is carried out on the backs of  "other" women and this truth is ignored or at best, down-played.

White feminists fear addressing such a reality because it comes with the expectation that white feminists must acknowledge their ignorance (or lack of empathy) in regard to the lives of these other women in a way that makes them responsible for the lives of these other women.  It is my belief that if you are a feminist, you are working towards the liberation of WOMAN, not some women but WOMAN, the human being and all her manifestations around the globe. And, that a feminists every move is made with a conscious effort to dismantle patriarchy and the many identities and realities it has forced upon people to divide us.

The acknowledgement of this truth, that second wave white feminism failed to address and even engaged in the oppression of women of color and poor women, is crucial to current anti-racist feminism that pushes for the demise of patriarchy. White women acknowledging their privilege is not good enough unless they act and do in a manner that seeks to eradicate white privilege.

So, when I read articles about choosing to work outside the home after becoming a parent and these opinions fail to address the privilege that comes with such a choice and the fact that working mothers working by choice often hire poor women and/or women of color as domestic workers who are working out of necessity, I cringe at the blatant lack of acknowledgement whether purposeful or not. Even the very idea that work is a choice is a mind state informed by a higher cultural context that has been created from a place of privilege.

I'm not sure that I can add anything else to this dialogue at this time, without bringing more women into it this dialouge, other than that the discussion needs to take place and the truth needs to be honored. If white women are to call themselves "feminists" but practice a feminism that does not acknowledge and ACT on the cultural intersections that occur, that confuse, that oppress and that inform other women then they aren't really fighting for equality they are just fighting for themselves. 

Coming from a loving place.

Who is the terrorist? Violence coming home to roost.

If the United States government is going to send it's military out to assault the world there will be consequences, reactions, emotions and responses. It is unrealistic for US citizens, whom elect their leaders, to expect global citizens without such a luxury to not take it personal, and to not hold US citizens personally responsible for the violence they experience at the hands of the United States government and/or it's allies.

It is immoral for the US to enter nations and kill the people that reside within these borders. It is just as immoral for US citizens to condone the actions of our government by continuing to vote for leaders with agendas that include killing other humans.

It is totally appropriate for the global citizenry outside of the United States to look at us with discontent. We have the right to vote, we have the right to impeach. And yet we want to act confused or offended why outsiders would have a problem with the people themselves as opposed to just our government. We are not innocent bystanders. WE VOTE THESE MEN AND WOMEN INTO OFFICE OF OUR OWN FREE WILL;  these politicians who then use their assigned authority to create legislation and programs and WAR to kill other humans across the planet.

Violence of any kind, I really don't approve of it. Some violence of a specific kind, I can see why it occurs. And other types of violence, I see as morally reprehensible. If the good citizens of the United States do not take it upon themselves PERSONALLY to PUBLICLY raise questions, to challenge, to disagree, to decry the nefarious activities of the government we put into office, such as the killing and crippling of unfree peoples across the globe, then DO NOT act shocked when those same people from those communities bring the violence to our door front.

It's not about a political party, it's not about patriotism, it's about a moral standard.

Coming from a loving place.

Feminist in Revolt!

I have changed the name of my blog to better reflect who I am, what I am doing and what I stand for. Revolutionize Yo' Block was a blog started many years ago that reflected my youth and my mind state. I am now a mother of more children, I have much more world experience and my point of view has evolved! As always, I am coming from a loving place. Peace.  With that being said, I am a

FEMINIST IN REVOLT!

Blog name change!

I will be changing the name if my blog! I am very excited about this and I hope that it will better reflect what I am trying to accomplish as revolutionary mother. Stay tuned...

Jen the Pen

Dear Jen the Pen,

It's really annoying that I have to write this letter and school you up on something that I would think you would already know. Being white in Hip Hop is a privilege not a right. Hip Hop, a culture, a way of life borne from the souls of brutally oppressed young people of color, is not a commodity for you to appropriate and capitalize off of. You better check your spot and your privilege. I say this as one white woman to another because I don't think that it's any other person's responsibility except for a white sister's to put you up on game. Black women have enough on their spiritual plate to have to take the time to learn you about some ish you should already know.

Now I can see why you got heated. Another chick telling you your man was creeping! That's painful and would have made me go bad too. But never ever would I say such a thing to my black sister who already has the weight of the world on her shoulders. In fact if I believe that I'm going to get a job over my girl because I am white and she is black, I don't want that job!! The only thing a white woman in Hip Hop should use her whiteness for is to open up doors that will help our black family smash on white supremacy.

That whiteness you bragged on, that fatal system of patriarchal supremacy which will turn on your female ass so quick, that killing system you boasted about, whether in jest or not was stated to degrade a black woman who was trying to give your white ass a leg up in a man's world.

My advice to you Jen is that you apologize over and over until your jaw hurts. My advice to you is that you humble yourself and think about if some white boy told your black son he was about to be looked over because of his skin color. And one day if you and your dude have a black daughter I am positive you will have to comfort her because some ratchet white person told her the same garbage you spit out on your homegirl.

Coming from a loving place.

Krista

(White) Girls and Lena Dunham: Think outside your box.

Last season after watching HBO's and Lena Dunham's show Girls, I declared that feminists should boycott the show for it's lack of diversity and not just to send a message to Lena Dunham, but to punish HBO for failing yet again to have a series that showcased people who are NOT WHITE.  I mean is it really that difficult?

So, after making this announcement, I was challenged by some male peers (my peer group, unlike Lena Dunham's, is racially, nationally and religiously diverse and my female cohorts could care less about the show) to watch again and not be so judgmental. I was told that it's "totally natural" that people of the same race form social groups and rarely have friends or experiences with other races except in public situations. They said I was being unfair and that my true beef should be solely with HBO and it's refusal to seek out shows with starring casts that are NOT WHITE.

So I DVR'd Girls Season premier and last night I watched it. I was disgusted.  The one new Black cast member, Sandy (played by Ronald Glover), is being fucked by Hannah in the first scene. Wow, what a creative stretch Lena! Your first instinct when trying to racially diversify your show is to have a Black man as your lover. In every scene that Ronald Glover is in he is either fucking, talking about his dick, or getting ready to fuck. Awesome! This is how Lena Dunham views people of color: they are either women to be caricatured and laughed at (her sexually harassed co-workers from season one) or to be sexually objectified (her new booty call from this season). 

To see white feminists eating this shit up calling the show great and funny is like watching them take a huge dirty white privilege dagger and driving it into the backs of our Black sisters (and brothers.) Come on white women, this isn't rocket science. Lena Dunham claimed that she was drawing from her own life when she put together the first season, which means, she has very narrow group of peers. Okay, I get that. But then she claimed she was going to be more creative for the second season and include people of color and her first notion is to be fucking them! This speaks VOLUMES to how she relates to other races and in general how white people in Hollywood are willing to accept people of color in Hollywood. Obviously Lena knows what she's doing. She knows that sex sells, even if it isn't sexy. And now she knows her white privilege will earn her awards and accolades to cash in on even if it is to the detriment of other racial groups.

Come new, white feminists! Check your privilege!

For the passive revolutionist! (or if you are busy being a mommy!)

You don't have to be smashing in windows or carrying a picket sign to protest. Just live your life and raise your kids in such a way that everyday you slowly degrade a system meant to degrade you. #betherevolution