Yesterday I was running errands in Portland and made a stop at Oblation, a cozy, gorgeous print shop in the Pearl District. I was looking for some Christmas cards in order to tip some of the kind and beautiful service workers I interact with on a near-daily basis. I came across a cheeky card which read, “All I want for Christmas is books, socks, and the global rise of the matriarchy.” I chuckled and immediately pulled out my phone to take a picture.
As I was fishing in the back pocket of my overalls, I was questioning my perspective on this sentiment. While I found it funny and smart, I wasn’t sure if I fully agreed. Do we - those us who consider ourselves feminists, womanists, and similar - really want to repeat the patriarchy with different people in charge? How was a photocopy going to be meaningfully different from the original?
Christmas card in a display which has two little holly leaf bunches and reads “All I want for Christmas is books, socks, and the global rise of the martriarchy”
Almost as soon as I’d asked myself those questions I completely forgot them. I put my phone away and continued searching for cards.
In an absolutely iconic role, Daveed Diggs playing Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton sings Newton’s third law of motion: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. (The Hamilton soundtrack was on so often in our home that as I watched Diggs’ performance as Frederick Douglass in Good Lord Bird, I had to continually remind myself that the person he was playing was NOT Jefferson. The voice just throws me off.) While Newtonian physics had nothing (or everything?) to do with the advent of the first two political parties in the US, I often “try on” the theories and laws we know about the physical world as a way to orient and inform my own personal ethics.
What is an equal and opposite reaction to racism, sexism, transphobia? If this were the lens we brought to bear in the fight for liberation, would this exercise reduce harm or increase it? In the interest of ideological consistency, how is the matriarchy less destructive than the patriarchy? A concerning number of white Americans seem convinced that the only alternative to white supremacy is Black supremacy.
Equal and opposite reactions, huh?
When (usually white cis) men advocate for “sitting down and having a respectful conversation” about subjects like “Why do Black people exist?” or “what if trans people actually don’t deserve rights?”, I generally reply with, “I will not debate my humanity.”
In less professional contexts, I hyperbolically retort, “Given the harm that white men have caused in this country and globally, wouldn’t the world be a better safer place without them?”
On a moral level, I think these questions are harmful. And I strongly believe the data also shows they’re harmful. I don’t ask myself these questions because I am advocating for the mass enslavement of white Americans. Nor do I believe in the rights of women to brutalize men to whatever limited extent those events could even occur. There is no reason to “thought-experiment” our way through “What if women started sexually preying on men” first because we do not need to imagine a world MORE violence and because there is no applicable inversion. As Amanda Montell writes in her brilliant book Wordslut, there is no opposite to the word “bitch.” Why is that?
Why, for example, is there no anti-white slur corollary to the n-word that Black and nonwhite people can deploy against white people to bring them shame and dehumanization from the time they are in preschool? So many of the white people I’ve interacted with online and in person sincerely don’t seem to understand why they aren’t allowed to say it.
But the context must be considered. What was the anti-white slur that Black people screamed at the white people they were lynching, while the cops just stood around and watched or pretended not to see what was occurring? What was the slur that reinforced the racial hierarchy to remind white people on a daily basis that they were never going to be fully human, much less franchised citizens of the country?
There is no corollary to the n-word because centuries of spontaneous, unmitigated anti-white terrorism committed by Black people never happened. As I frequently remind white people on Twitter, once there has been a slur used against the white people strung up in trees by Black vigilantes (for several centuries) then you will absolutely be permitted to say the n-word. Until then, take several seats.
Equal and opposite doesn’t serve us as a helpful reference point in building a world built on liberation. Equal and opposite is revenge, not restitution. Equal and opposite is the multiplication of destruction, harm, violence, trauma. We are not advocating for or pursuing revenge. Where would that leave us anyway?As the (perhaps apocryphal) Gandhi quote claims, An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
So rather than doing a thought experiment in Black revenge or “reverse racism”, we’re going to do a thought experiment in liberation.
This summer I drove out from Portland across the Columbia River to Washougal, Washington to visit one of my dearest friends. We clicked from the moment we met and almost 15 years later we still have the sweetest rapport.
He was born in Vancouver, Washington but was raised in the south. His parents both worked with disabled and high needs children in the local school district and were the 1970s version of white antiracists in the south. Because of this unique positioning in the world, he was both the tall popular football star and the defender of the bullied Black and queer kids in his mostly white high school. He never wavered in his commitment to advocating for vulnerable people and using his privilege to protect those with less.
Despite knowing all this, I was caught off guard when my friend started recounting his frustration with white men as a cohort and their inability (or mere refusal) to understand that the process of creating equity in the world was not going to look or feel like fairness. “C’mon guys, you’ve pulled the pendulum so far in your direction that of course it’s not going to feel just if we overcorrect by putting women [+ anyone not a cis man] in charge of everything. It’s going to feel like harm.”
My personal ethic is predicated on harm reduction as the simplest metric for determining the way forward from white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. I feel like I am constantly yelling about how essential it is to triage when we are doing this work. Because the devastation is vast and overwhelming, but “start where you are” is not always the most effective or worthwhile course of action. Before you can start treating the victims, you have to subdue the shooter.
The man with the gun is not going to feel good when they are thrown to the ground and disarmed.
The billionaire hoarding wealth is not going to feel good when most of what they have accumulated goes into the community in order to end homelessness and hunger.
The parent abusing their children is not going to feel good when they are restrained so their children can be protected.
The politician taking bribes is not going to feel good when they are required to work retail in order to protect their constituents from their greed.
To the people who benefit from and enjoy the harm, exploitation, and havoc they commit, being constrained is going to feel very bad. It is going to feel like oppression.
To the powerful people who benefit from the economy’s structural exploitation of Black, brown, poor, and undocumented workers, being required to earn the same wages they suppressed is going to feel like punishment.
To the white people whose family and ancestors stole homes, land, wages, property, having to return those assets is going to feel like an extreme injustice, because they didn’t actually commit the theft.
They merely benefited from what was taken long before they were born.
The end of patriarchy is going to feel like matriarchy.
A post-America built on the equity and liberation of all people is at first going to feel like reverse racism to those with privilege.
But you are not being harmed when advantages gained through violence are removed from you by force.
Liberation is going to feel very bad to people who benefit from inequality. Do you want to know why? Because your nervous system codes privilege as safety. A hard lesson but one worth learning.
So yes, your body is going to be telling you that the loss of privilege you are experiencing is not the creation of equity but in the infliction of harm.
The good news is that feelings are information, not instructions.
And, I am told, facts don’t care about your feelings anyway.
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