Every unasked opinion deserves another, so here you go!

Folks’ think pieces about how “divisive” Remy Ma’s "ShETHER" is for women in hip hop?

They‘re useless.

If anyone else was going to pick up a pen or open a laptop or swipe their way through a hot take, pause, and don’t. Please. Sit down. Be quiet. And put the pitches away. (For the record: I love Nick. I really do. Like, a lot. That doesn’t change the facts: Remy did not lose.)

There’s this mythical tautology that women and girls are bred to believe, whether they call themselves feminist or not, whether they ascribe to ‘girl power’ or some other form of gendered faux-empowerment ethos, and it goes something like this:

(1) I can't criticize another woman! We have the same body parts!

(2) I can't Criticize another woman! She's a woman!

(3) I can't criticize another woman! I'm a woman!

Bull.???????? Shit.????????

Personally, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for someone to give me a reason to get into this: being a “good feminist” or a woman-supporting-woman is not—repeat, NOT—about sitting silently while some hyper-visible woman leads the masses astray.

(I could get into all the ground zero problems with that last sequence of sentences—like the [wrong] presumption that only women-identified women can identify as feminist or the [wrong] presumption that only cis women can “speak for” feminism or that there is any such thing as “speaking for” any damn thing or the [wrong] presupposition that body parts matter—but that’s a whole ‘nother series.)

Certainly, intersectional feminism ain’t about that life. So there’s no way we can afford not to set trip for at least a few minutes while we try to debunk a few common myths that have long kept women from calling other women on the carpet when they deserved every single snatch and drag. And then we’re going to snatch and drag some women who have needed this for a while.

These terrible misconceptions about what it means to be feminist at best and “ladylike” at worst are precisely why evil prevails in the world. Not doing so — not calling out bad actors when they absolutely positively certainly without a doubt deserve it — is, in fact, the worst kind of enabling practice. It affirms a false sense of gendered infallibility and props up the worst kind of essentialist theorizing. If all I’m here to do is clap and cosign, what kind of accountability is that?

But Remy hath freed me. She hath freed me indeed. Now, let’s commence to ShETHER everything still standing.

Let’s play a quick game of “women supporting women?” or “bigots enabling bigotry?” Shall we?

“How you spendin’ money to support a pedophile?"

This woman’s personal style is (occasionally) lit. But all the boss threads in the world can’t hide the soulless orb creeping just behind this former beauty queen’s pristine pageant smile. She supported her pop’s bid for the Presidency by, not only, swerving left to avoid his year-long racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic onslaught — but by two-stepping and vanilla millie rocking out of the way when his abhorrent record with women and, yes, girls (and, allegedly, even more girls) became relevant.

[photo credit]

She even hand-delivered him an alibi to stay relevant with the wimmenz and squeezed a few votes out of the simple-minded 52% who fall for the faux femininity of a brush script font — but only if it has that dank neo-Nazi scent! Her particular brand of complicity with white supremacist patriarchy is damn near effortless. That is until someone calls her on her convenient bullshit. One reporter did this with her sham of a parental leave plan (I mean, she’s got a book release that’s coming alongside it, for crying out loud), and — surprise, surprise — she couldn’t handle it. She deflected. Even if for a brief moment, the orb was made manifest. She, literally, pre-Spiced Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer:

Well, those are your words, not mine. Those are your words.

[Giphy]

No one’s asking hardly enough, but she hasn’t drained any swamps lately, either. At last check, (that’d be February 2017) ProPublica noted that the first daughter has yet to file paperwork proving full divestment of her business.

Hm.

“Got your ghostwriters back, so you think you lit
Rem Belushi, I’m a Ghostbuster, bitch”

[photo credit]

#FreeMelania still feels necessary. It probably feels all the more real if you’ve seen this:

Or this:

Or this:

You, too, might’ve thought — or even still think: “Poor woman. I’d stay in New York, too.”

But let’s keep it all the way real: FLOTUS, Jr. seems to be looking out for FLOTUS, Jr., too. In any other situation (y’know, any situation where you’re not the First Lady of the United States or a sitting public figure or an adult) I might not come for you as hard. But this Daily Mail lawsuit saga? Dis tew much.

A Maryland court dismissed her case against the UK-based newspaper after a Maryland-based blogger for the publication repeated the claim that she’d been an escort. She says this is 100% false, and I don’t actually care. The part that matters is why she‘s suing the paper:

“The updated filing said the article published in August caused Trump’s brand to lose significant value as well as major business opportunities that were otherwise available to her.”

What major business opportunities has she lost you might ask?

[The] plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model, brand spokesperson and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multimillion-dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.”

Bish, whet?

The entire premise of this case is that, as First Lady, she’d be able to bankroll her role as First Lady. But wait, there’s more!

Enter the lies:

“The First Lady has no intention of using her position for profit and will not do so,” [her attorney, Charles Harder] said in an email. […] "Any statements to the contrary are being misinterpreted.”

Then, there are the runner-ups who deserve a quick CAPS CAPS CAPS.

"You animated like Nickelodeon, you fake, bitch. Only the kids believe in you; you St. Nick"

[photo credit: Gage Skidmore]

And actually, no. No. The kids don’t believe in her. She bears the power of darkness to just plain lie on demand. And I do mean on-demand. She’s more efficient than any DVR service I’ve ever had in my entire life.

"Stop comparin’ yourself to Jay, you not like him. You a motherfuckin’ worker, not a boss like Rem"

[photo credit: Gage Skidmore]

She possesses the kind of evil that attempts (keyword: “attempts”) to hem up a reporter and threaten that reporter with the “dossier” her boss has allegedly been keeping if that reporter doesn’t “ackright” by her own convoluted definition. Girl, bye. Bye! BYE.

Now, if go ye therefore and teach all nations: being a “good feminist” means keeping it ????. These women get zero passes. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Stay stingy with it. Put a counter-hex around your tv, computer, and mobile devices when you sense their presence near. You don’t get to be a fascist who actively enables fascism and walk away unscathed.

JT

Writing since March 2017 · 1 story contributed