Roe v Wade, Pride and Racism
I got checked this morning on LinkedIn. It was a soft blow, because no one was around to see it land but me. It was such a lesson though, that I had to post that I had indeed been checked. I was reading a post and someone else commented that the poster should be open to correcting their language if they were truly all about equity work.
The post was about the vitriol being directed at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The person posting, a Black man, at one point talked about women being affected by this decision and having the right to decide if they want to give birth or not. He was challenged by a very insightful repost by Yeong Cheng (they/them) that he had written to challenge the feminism that was reacting to the Supreme Court decision. It read like this:
“Important reminder for today: not all birthing people are women.
Again bc feminists tend to forget when they’re mad:
Not all women have uteruses
Not all people with uteruses are women
Not all people with uteruses give birth
*it’s valid to be angry, upset, depressed, violent; all feelings are valid when your rights are being violated. But transphobia is not.
Feminism that erases trans people is just transphobia”
Yep, here we are folks. It is that real. Did that frighten you, confuse you, anger you, make you think or cheer: yay trans voices are being lifted in this issue?
Not that anything was ever easy before, especially for marginalized communities, but now… it is so REAL.
The conversations we need to have in order to come together and create the kind of loving, safe, equitable and caring world… oooohhh, they are heavy and downright earth shaking for folks.
The truth is, they always have been, but nobody really wants to have them. They will challenge us and I have to say that I am here for it. If this particular Supreme Court decision has you reeling and centering yourself instead of all the folks who are different than you, then I am asking you to take a long hard look at that.
Life is changing, the world is changing and that is in fact what it is supposed to do. If it is bumping up against your beliefs, that’s good because the systems that have shaped our beliefs have also created a great deal of harm. If it is forcing you to listen to those who have been challenging those systems for decades then good, open your ears and listen even more.
What we are seeing is the fight for change that requires much work and asks a lot from all of us. It will require conversation that leads to mass understanding and action. It will require a change in whose stories and truths get told and believed. It will require considering what and who has been ignored. It will require you to enter into the world of I just don’t understand, but I will try because that is what is needed. It will ask something big of each of us and I want you to be ready to respond with a bold, “Yes, I am ready”, whether you fully are or not.
More than ever, we will need ways of communicating that are real enough to share our fears, questions and reflections that also value, respect and incorporate the experiences that others bring to the table. It will not always be pretty and sometimes it will hurt. Let’s face it, we hate to be corrected or challenged. But I believe that it will be both necessary and worth it.
We have access to seeing power and privilege being asserted more publicly, but not more aggressively if you have truly been paying attention.
I appreciate being checked by that post because those were not my initial thoughts. I tend to go to the pain I experience when white women gather so quickly to protest their pain in the name of all heterosexual women when they have ignored so much pain.
I am learning. I am open to the conversations coming, difficult as they may be. By the way, the original poster reflected and then responded with a beautiful post on just how checked he got. It was an awesome admission and a call to all of us to dig deep and come back ready for more growth.
How about you? Are you ready to get checked?
