Transcript | Ep. 87: How to Not Be a Karen

[Stinger]

Mikki Kendall: If you're someone who says, I want to be a CEO and I want to pay my workers less than $15 an hour to maximize my profits, you're not going to like me very much. If you're someone who really thinks that the most important thing in feminism is whether or not women change their last names or if they wear lipstick or they shave their underarms, we're not going to get along.

[Theme music]

Cristen: Caroline, we’ve done an episode about maiden names, two episodes about makeup, a three-parter on body hair, and when our guest Mikki Kendall said that, I did have a moment of thinking, “is she talking about US?”

Caroline: Well I don’t know if you needed to worry about asking because if you know anything about Mikki, you know that she will not hesitate to let white feminists know when we’re missing the point

Cristen: I do get it — Mikki is an outspoken feminist who’s always looking at the bigger, structural issues. Like, wear all the lipstick you want, or don’t! Can we just talk about affordable housing and food insecurity please??

Caroline: Cristen, I’ve been following Mikki on Twitter for years, and so when I heard she had written a book about mainstream feminism’s blind spots when it comes to race I couldn’t WAIT to get my hands on it. The book is titled Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot, and as a white woman who makes a living talking about feminist issues, I’m hyper aware that I have plenty of my own blind spots I need to work on

Cristen: Same. And our convo with Mikki couldn’t come at a more crucial moment. We interviewed her for this episode over a month ago, when most folks were sheltering in place because of COVID. And now, as you and I are recording this, we’re a week into the mass protests incited by the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, as well as the murder of Ahmaud Arbery here in Georgia. We and a lot of our fellow white unladies are asking ourselves how we can show up and do better.

Caroline: And as we’re talking about with Mikki today, that includes dismantling white feminism

Mikki: White supremacy runs through feminism as we currently describe it from its inception, but it's never really been challenged consistently by the people who need to challenge it. Yes, women of color have been challenging it. Communities of color have always challenged it. White women are not challenging each other enough.

Caroline: The white-supremacy-laced feminism that Mikki’s talking about is also known as white feminism. It's when feminists who are white — and often middle-class — prioritize our comfort and concerns while speaking on behalf of “all” women.

Cristen: This means that the mainstream feminist conversation often doesn’t address issues that could improve the quality of life for all women — issues like poverty and healthcare, gun control and immigration.

Caroline: The notion that white women need to step up and hold each other accountable might sound sort of no, duh to a lot of folks in 2020. Entitled, ignorant white ladies have become so recognizable they’ve literally became a meme named Karen, yknow?

Cristen: But in 2013, when Mikki’s name first popped up in my Twitter feed, she had called Karen on white feminists, and it practically broke the feminist internet. A hashtag she started — #solidarityisforwhitewomen — had gone viral, and it basically called for a reckoning on racism within white-lady, mainstream feminism. And while it immediately garnered her a reputation as a fearless truth-teller to some, she was labeled a divisive troublemaker by others.

Caroline: In Hood Feminism, Mikki writes, “I am perhaps best known for my anger, the way I wield it, and the way it has been framed as too dangerous." And this episode, we’re talking to Mikki about why her anger is necessary for inciting activism, how we can uproot racism within feminism, and why she doesn’t care whether the Karens like her or not.

Cristen: All to find out, how do you solve a problem like white feminism?

[Stinger]

Mikki: My name is Mikki Kendall. I live in Chicago, Illinois, on the South Side. And I am a writer. And sometimes people call me an activist, but I think I'm just a loud mouth on the Internet and other places.

Caroline: The internet and other places, Cristen, I’m pretty sure that covers everything. But as for her loud mouth … Mikki uses it specifically to fight for a bigger, better feminism, one that goes beyond girlbossing to take experiences like hers into account.

Cristen: So quick backstory — Mikki graduated from high school at 16. She didn’t feel ready for college and wasn’t interested in working a shitty job, so she joined the Army. She fell in love with another soldier, they got married, and not long after, they became parents.

Caroline: But that first husband was violently abusive, and by age 25, Mikki was a divorced, single Mom living in public housing, relying on food stamps and other safety-net programs while juggling classes at the University of Illinois. At the time, she found herself thinking..

Mikki: I just don't have time to worry about whether or not my feminism is going to get me a job as a CEO, whether or not my lipstick color, hair length, any of those things that we, you know, have kind of associated more recently with narratives around feminism. All of my focus is on things like affording to be alive. But I'm in college and I'm reading feminist texts, and some of the black feminist texts speak to me. But a lot of the white feminist texts are about being able to get a job. Being able to be respected in the workplace as someone who works. Being able to be promoted to CEO or director or whatever. And it's not that promotions and things don't matter. It's that I can't even fathom that world at that point, because all of the feminism that I see, all of the day-to-day stuff that I see is my neighbor who watches my kid when I have court or I have a test, and the woman across the way says, “Well send the baby over here so you can study,” things like that. These are the feminisms that I see in action, right? I don't see I want to be a CEO feminism. I want to be, you know, a boss. Girl boss doesn't take care of babies. Girl boss doesn't take care of elders, girl boss doesn’t take care of anyone but herself.

Cristen: Girl boss often doesn't even give maternity leave

Mikki: Exactly. Girl boss doesn't make sure that child care is affordable. Right. Girl power sounds great. But what does the school look like? What does it look like to get more than a $1.67 per meal? From food stamps while you're in school and I'm going to public aid offices, I'm going I'm on welfare, right? No bones about it. I have very nice white women telling me I should drop out of school and get a job. I don't have a right to go to school and get food stamps. But if I drop out of school, I'm still going to need the food stamps because I'm not going to make enough. Right. The math is the math.

Cristen: When Mikki was putting herself through college, federal and state minimum wage was just over $5 an hour.

Mikki: I still got to pay for child care. Child care is $600 a month. Rent is $500. My pretax income is just around twelve hundred a month. So I'm doing all of this fighting to stay alive, and I'm going to class. I'm, you know, psychology of sexual harassment and women's studies classes, you know, sociology classes, and all of these academic theories are about people like me, but they're not written by people like me. They're not talking to people like me. They're talking to other people like them about people like me. And they're wrong, often. And then I started to figure out the problem wasn't that feminism had nothing to say, but that the thesis of feminism were deliberately ignoring what was happening to a huge chunk of the population, despite saying that they spoke for all of us.

Cristen: The thesis being that feminism for all has actually meant empowerment for white women and equality with white men — and that ALL women must be striving for that power, too.

Caroline: Mikki’s frustration with entitled, oblivious white feminism boiled over in 2013.

Cristen: It started that August when a former gender studies professor named Hugo Schwyzer essentially had a breakdown on Twitter. He’d made a name for himself as, like, The Male Feminist Who Gets It, and his writing was regularly featured on sites like Jezebel and the Good Men Project.

Caroline: But in a series of confessional tweets, Schwyzer admitted that he had slept with former students, faked his feminist credentials and — mostly importantly to Mikki — had used his influential position within feminist circles to harass and silence black feminists, including one of Mikki’s good friends

Mikki: So he's having his moment where he confesses all of his sins on Twitter, and white feminists started to tell him to stop talking, to get off the Internet. They tried to make him insulate himself from consequences. And then when I challenge someone on these tweets and on the lack of support, she said, I needed to stand in solidarity with my community so I couldn't do anything about the way he was treating you and these other women who he's named. And I said solidarity is for white women, I guess. And then what happened is I got mad. And I started tweeting.

Cristen: Mikki’s first tweet read, “#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen when the mental health & future prospects for @hugoschwyzer are more important than the damage he did.”

Caroline: And people started tweeting back. A lot of people.

Mikki: Something like 7 million in 11 countries at one point, also felt the same way. They felt shut down, locked out. Dismissed, demeaned. They had plenty of examples. There were notes from the women that the movement forgot, which is the subtitle of my book, all over the Internet with the hashtag solidarityisforwhitewomen.

Cristen: Even though the Hugo Schwyzer debacle incited Mikki’s original tweet, the hashtag really wasn’t about him. Folks around the world were using it to highlight racist double standards within feminism and culture at large … So Caroline, let's read a sampling of some of the tweets:
“#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen means Rihanna has a responsibility but Miley is just experimenting.”

Caroline: “'#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen when it takes a white woman going to prison for us to start the convo about women in prison #orangeisthenewblack”

Cristen: “#solidarityisforwhitewomen who talk glass ceiling without making sure everyone is in the building first.”

Caroline: And as powerful as this particular tweetstorm was … like, not everyone agreed with Mikki’s approach.

Cristen: Right. Some black feminists objected to Mikki’s approach, even while agreeing with the substance of her argument. But it was really the white feminists who were getting called out who took personal offense to the hashtag.

Mikki: White women, especially well-off white women started to say I was being divisive and that this was harmful, and how can I call these things out in this way? And this was, you know, this isn't the time. This isn't the place.

Caroline: Mikki’s critics were tweeting things like, “What exactly did #solidarityisforwhitewomen achieve in terms of unity of women? Silencing [white women] who speak out about injustice? No thanks.”

Cristen: Or “Society is yet again divided by race, we all have to unite for the same goal. It’s not easier for white women. #solidarityisforwhitewomen” … In fact, Caroline, “unity” was a big theme among the offended responses, along with “um, shouldn’t we be smashing the patriarchy instead of fighting with each other, ladies??”

Caroline: These kinds of responses are missing the point. We’re going to get more into that after the break, but first we need to bang our heads against the nearest wall.

Cristen: And up next, a Feminist Twitter War is declared, and we unpack some white feminist claptrap. Don’t go away … especially if you’re an uncomfortable white listener!!

[Stinger]

Mikki: Feminism says, well, we're supposed to fight the patriarchy. The patriarchy isn't calling the cops on barbecues. The patriarchy isn't calling the cops on kids in parks and getting them shot. That's white patriarchal influences, and sometimes it's white women doing that specifically.

Caroline: We’re back with Mikki Kendall, author of Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women the Movement Forgot.

Mikki: White male patriarchy isn't just walking around forcing white women to enact white supremacist tactics upon communities of color. So then don't come into a conversation with other women from other backgrounds and say, “Well, we have to fight the patriarchy together.” What happens if we fight the patriarchy together so that you get equality with the patriarchy and then you just use that the way you've been using it, which is to weaponize it and turn it on communities of color.

Cristen: To me, Caroline, watching the #solidarityisforwhitewomen Twitter debate unfold in 2013 felt like one of the first times that white millennial feminists, including myself, really had to reckon with racism within our own ranks — which as I’m saying that, I know, that is my white privilege! — Also, full disclosure — I was called out by name during this because I had interviewed that gender studies professor for a blog series I'd written on masculinity

Caroline: Yeah, I actually do remember that. How did you react to getting called out?

Cristen: Realtalk, my kneejerk, internal reaction was defensiveness because of course it doesn’t feel great. But I also knew that it was on me. The thing I didn’t gut check myself on before asking him for an interview was the way he seemed to present himself as a reformed creep. I kinda just went for it anyway. And even though I had no idea about him harassing black women, that doesn’t excuse anything. Like, the lesson I took away from it was hey, maybe if I’d been following and reading more feminists of color, I would’ve steered clear of him.

Caroline: Oh, totally. One huge thing that I’ve learned alongside you all these years we’ve worked together is that I can’t grow as a feminist if I don’t listen. Like, I definitely know what it feels like to get called out for something I’ve said — and you’re right, it doesn’t feel great! But people have a right to be upset and call me out. It’s on me to act like a grown up, take a breath and honestly change my own behavior so I don’t react out of a defensive place. Otherwise Cristen, you might as well call me Karen.

Cristen: Honestly I would call you Karenline because I like a pun. But in 2013, unfortunately, a number of white feminists did not take a breath and instead declared that a Feminist Twitter War had erupted, Mikki had started it, and the whole brouhaha was an existential threat to the entire feminist movement.

Mikki: And there's a whole thing. I end up written up in an article about toxic Twitter, someone calls me the mean girl of the Internet, like it's a whole thing that goes on for a couple years

Caroline: But #solidarityisforwhitewomen also had intersectional ripple effects, inspiring other hashtag movements like #NotYourNarrative to call out Muslim women’s media portrayals. And #NotYourAsianSidekick, putting Asian stereotyping and fetishization on notice. And while the original "Feminist Twitter War" quieted down, the core conversation Mikki started never stopped ... even if it took a few more years for more white feminists to start catching up to it

Mikki: And then the 2016 election happens. And a lot of people who had previously said that these things weren't a problem got a 53 percent surprise. And a fun fact about that 53 percent surprise is that a couple of years before that I had been invited just to have a conversation with a group that was eventually going to go on to back Hillary Clinton. And I brought up racism at that meeting, and we didn't want to hear it then either. And I brought up the damage that had already been done and the problem with expecting to ignore the racism, not just the way that it would impact votes by women of color, but if you're not addressing racism internally within feminism and other bigotry, I don't think you understand that these are folks who may not vote based on gender because they're going to vote based on racism.

Caroline: What Mikki had tapped into with her hashtag was that racism and white supremacy aren’t exclusive to white conservatives, and white fragility has always been the dirty underbelly of mainstream feminism.

Cristen: Another thing Mikki tapped into was the historical legacy of black women confronting white feminist leaders on racism. In her book Reclaiming Our Space, Feminista Jones compared Mikki starting #solidarityisforwhitewomen to quote “the tradition of women like Sojourner Truth and Amy Garvey, who made it a point to call into question the women’s rights movements led by white women that excluded black women.”

Caroline: And Mikki herself has compared it to the work of one of our favorite unladies from history, journalist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells.

Cristen: In the late 1800s, Ida B. Wells literally risked life and limb to advocate for racial and gender equality. And she understandably had a major bone to pick with the leading white suffragists of her day who were very riled up about the 15th Amendment — NOT the 19th Amendment, which we typically associate with suffrage.

Caroline: Right. In 1870, the passage of the 15th Amendment granted voting rights to black men, and it incited a massive schism within the women’s suffrage movement. A number of white suffragists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton were outraged that black men — whom they considered to be less intelligent and politically savvy — would be allowed to vote before white women.

Cristen: You also had Frances Willard who was a who's who within the suffrage movement and president of the influential Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She was also a bone-chilling racist who openly opposed the 15th Amendment and just didn't understand what was so wrong with lynching.

Caroline: In the press, Willard said that white women and girls in the South needed protecting from Black men and resisted calls from black women within the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to take a stand against lynching.

Cristen: Ida B Wells, meanwhile, was like what the actual fuck, Francis Willard? And she confronted Willard both in the press and in a speech, which enraged both Willard and her fellow white-lady racists, who then turned around and attacked Wells for attacking them … until the pressure was glaring enough that the organization's white leadership finally relented a few YEARS later and passed anti-lynching resolutions. Caroline, is this sounding familiar?

Caroline: Yeah, and I mean that was hardly the last time Ida B. Wells witnessed firsthand how #solidarityisforwhitewomen. So years later, in 1913, Alice Paul — who originally authored the Equal Rights Amendment — organized a suffrage march. And in doing so, she pulled a classic white feminist move of prioritizing white ladies' comfort.

Cristen: Yeah, ol' Alice decided that it would be a bad idea to integrate black women in the march, thinking that it would keep racist white lady suffragists, particularly from the South, from joining. So she told the black women to march at the back of parade.

Caroline: Once again, Ida B Wells was having none of it. She demanded to march under the Illinois banner, with the white ladies of the Illinois delegation. And she wasn't going to wait for permission. So during the parade, Ida stepped out of the crowd and claimed her space at the front of the Illinois group as they passed by.

Cristen: Now, if we surf ahead to the late 60s and 70s, second-wave feminism was also rife with racial tension. A lot of feminist activism came directly from the Civil Rights movement, yet many white feminists insisted that gender oppression was worse than racial oppression, and that was the thing they had to fight for

Caroline: Yeah they basically said that what we call intersectionality today is a distraction from the goal of achieving “women’s rights.”

Cristen: Also, Caroline, here’s the thing. The feminist movement has never been a conflict-free paradise of universal sisterhood. White feminists have disagreed with each other about queer rights, trans inclusion, sex work, and marriage … like feminists have kind of always fought with each other. But it’s whenever race is the central conflict that white feminists cannot handle it and call it divisive.

Caroline: In other words, #solidarityisforwhitewomen … ?

Cristen:. YUPP. We’re going to take a quick break, and when we come back, Mikki breaks down how her hood feminism is an antidote to white feminism

Caroline: Stick around!

[Stinger]

Caroline: As grown-up Mikki, what is the most unladylike thing about you?

Mikki: I like to shoot. I like to go to the range and shoot. Like, if I could be an old Western dame, I would be the old western dame. Right? Who rode, who didn't ride side straddle what was always like galloping away and shooting at something, that would be me. Or in space like whatever.

Caroline: Space cowgirl. I love it.

Mikki: Yes. Space cowgirl would be my aesthetic.

Cristen: We’re back with space cowgirl and hood feminist Mikki Kendall, whose approach to fighting for a broader, more flexible movement has gotten her labeled as both fiercely feminist … and incredibly toxic.

Mikki: So my feminism tends to center on people who have the least and need the most as opposed to people who have the most and want more. So if you're someone who's worried about food or housing, about poverty, that kind of thing, then we're talking about the same issues, right? we're talking about you being safe. You being capable of weathering something like this pandemic comfortably, if not well. And so when I argue for us to focus on things that matter to more people, that can sometimes be seen as divisive and upsetting because people would really like to talk about girl boss and girl power when they talk about feminism. And that's nice. But if the girl boss is a bad boss, then she's not necessarily feminist just because she showed up and she uses “she.” She's still absolutely an oppressive person in this space. And so when I get called toxic sometimes because I'm not nice about it, I'm not going to pretend to anyone that I'm particularly polite or sweet or concerned about the emotions of someone who says, “Well, what about my needs? I need a second nanny,” or whatever. Right. I don't care about your feelings. I'm sure you have them. I'm sure they matter to someone. But my job is not to take care of them. I want to make sure that the person who works for you is being paid enough and has health insurance and has reasonable hours. Those are things that matter to me.

Caroline: So more Hood Feminism instead of Lean-In Feminism?

Mikki: Yes, absolutely. I have very little use for the narrative that we can all be CEOs. First of all, we can't all be CEOs. Second of all, I'm not really clear on why just having power is the goal if you're not going to use that power wisely or well.

Cristen: OK Caroline, let’s play that one for time for the folks in the back …

Mikki: I'm not really clear on why just having power is the goal if you're not going to use that power wisely or well. Let's put it that way. Let's go with Maslow's hierarchy of needs and define it as people who understand that if basic needs are met, housing safety, food security, health care, education, that kind of thing, then we can all have a better world. But if the playing field isn't level, if we're still rebuilding the same oppressive structures and slapping new names on them, then we're not getting anywhere. So hood feminism is about actually leveling that playing field.

Cristen: Well, and this is echoing to me the point in the book, I believe it's in the hunger chapter where you write about like urging white feminists in particular to fight for hunger and housing insecurity and all of these issues, as hard as you would fight for abortion rights and equal pay.

Mikki: Right. I'm asking for you to be willing to hear that that is not someone else's problem to solve. It is - even if it doesn't affect you, it is also your problem to solve. So other person, unnamed other person over there who does housing insecurity work yes, there. They should keep doing the work. But you, person who identifies as feminists and really benefits from the trappings of feminism, from equal pay and all of these things or from white privilege. Right. Stack the deck however you want. You should also probably either put some money in the hat or ask them what which politicians are better or push your politicians to vote yes on that bill. You're not going to have to do much more than you're already doing with the various send a text to your Senator yadayada emails, letters, all of that, but you should put at least a minimal amount. Right. One, two hours a week of that energy that you devote to feminist causes, to making sure that housing and hunger and other things are addressed. Because if you were all doing then one or two hours a week, that's a lot of energy. It's a lot that could change because this work is already being done, even if it's just. I mean, every time I think about it, I'm going to put 20 bucks in the Greater Chicago Food Depository, the Greater Atlanta Food Bank, whatever. There are things you could do that are relatively small individual letter - level, but that would add up very quickly.

Caroline: So when it comes to housing, hunger, gun violence, how can these issues be more aligned under feminism, in your view?

Mikki: So my thing is that feminism claims to speak up for all women and we see things like the women's march we organize. Right. That's a huge, multi-state all of these things, ongoing annual event. What would it look like if those faces turned up at school board meetings, at the Black Lives Matter marches? If they were voting, if they were talking back to the mayor and all of these things. There's a guy who goes to protests in a suit and a tie and he walks between the line of police. This is a white man. He walks within a line of police and protesters and he just stands there. He doesn't do anything, but his privilege means the cops hesitate to hit the people who are protesting. Right. Sometimes all feminism would need to do is show up. I'm not saying lead the way. I'm not saying do all of the work. I'm saying quite literally put in the effort to put out a call and spread the word. Hey, if the women's march, or whatever marches, you know, we also can do these things. All of those pink hat voters probably should have turned up for downstate races, for down ticket races. But the content of what they're calling for often doesn't require anyone else to get anything. And maybe we have to start calling for politicians, random people, right? Hey, here's me paying back the support you give so that women who have the right to vote are voting for things that are good. We could be having all of our feminist teach-ins, meetings, web conversations currently whatever, bring up maybe housing, maybe hunger before it's a crisis.

Caroline: I'm curious. There's a lot of talk, you know, about civility. I even had my white dermatologist at one point tell me that she couldn't stand how angry everybody was. So, you know, when your dermatologist is talking about it, that a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of being “uncivil.” And I'm curious what role you think that like respectability and civility have in feminism and how they influence feminist discussions.

Mikki: So with feminism, it's well, if you were nicer, if you were, you know, gentler, my feelings, all of these things. That that's a mammy problem. Right. You you watch too much Gone with the Wind. You want someone to hold your hand and tell you it's gonna be OK and quietly urge you to do the right thing. But that already happened and you didn't do the right thing. You shouldn't need anyone to be nice to you for you to do the right thing. I'm not really clear from the perspective of a black woman, because our feelings are never anyone's primary concern, who told white women that their feelings were everyone else's primary concern? But no one has time to kiss your behind to get you to do the right thing cause they're too busy trying to survive. So sure, you can be upset that people aren't nicer. You know what's not nice? Racism. You know what's not nice? Having your rights violated. So you can do something about the problem. And I bet people would be nicer if they weren't in fear for their life. Or you can stand there and whine and let people keep getting hurt.

Cristen: That leads to our next question of wondering how how you balance having not-nice conversations that are really direct and could potentially risk people shutting you down, shutting you out vs. approaching people and getting them to actually listen and absorb, or is that ultimately not the point?

Mikki: No one has ever gotten their rights from asking nicely. I'm going to tell you what's wrong. I'm going to be very blunt. You're going to get mad at me or whatever, if that's your ministry. And while you're upset with me, you're going to go tell someone else how I hurt your feelings and why. And if you pick the right people, which frankly a lot of folks have been, they go ask another feminist. They go ask someone they think is nicer. And then they'll listen to their friend who has told them 300 times before this, wearing the headdress to Coachella is racist and rude. Blackface isn't funny. Like they've been told these things. They've been told, hey, calling the cops because you don't like your neighbor's music could get your neighbor hurt by other people. They just didn't listen to them

Caroline: Cristen, this role Mikki’s talking about is one that white feminists — ourselves included! — need to be playing more often. It’s on us to proactively call in white friends and family members who don’t get it and initiate those uncomfortable conversations. And as I can tell you from personal experience, sometimes they won’t want to hear it.

Cristen: Yep. I was once preemptively disinvited from Thanksgiving certain family members of mine did not want to hear it! And it fucking hurt, it did! But I’ve also learned that these are NOT one-n-done conversations. And as you and I ALSO know from experience, learning our history and coming with the context can really help start a dialogue and shift the focus away from our hurt feelings and toward the pain that our white fragility inflicts on communities of color.

Mikki: I'm not telling you, go out and empty your retirement accounts and give all your money to the first black person you see. What I'm asking you to do is some help build healthier communities that will ultimately benefit you as well as everyone else. That's all I'm asking for. We shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel over and over again. Movements that say they're for progressive politics, movements that say they want equality and equity should actually be working toward those things. Feminism was never really supposed to be about how to be a CEO. It was supposed to be about equality. Well, let's do that. Let's hold it up to its name. Let's hold it up to its purpose, its stated purpose, not the actual execution until this point.

Cristen: Well Caroline, at the top of the show, we asked how do you solve a problem like white feminism? But we haven’t arrived at a tidy solution.

Caroline: Nope. We’ve identified plenty of ways that we as white feminists can deactivate white feminism, but the messy truth is that practicing intersectional feminism and feeling our way through fuck-ups and conflicts is an ongoing work in progress.

Cristen: It is! And to all of our fellow white unladies listening, just one final bit of advice Caroline and I always offer folks on not becoming a Karen is just start getting comfortable with getting uncomfortable. Challenge yourself to first listen, so that you can then go take action where you’re actually needed.

Caroline: A great first step is to pick up a copy of Mikki’s book, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot. We’ll have links to black-owned bookstores where you can buy it. … OK unladies …what are your thoughts on white feminism? You can email us at hello@unladylike.co, find us on social @unladylikemedia or join our private facebook group and jump into the thread for this episode.

Cristen: Visit unladylike.co to find this episode’s sources, transcripts, and our weekly Unladylike newsletter.

Caroline: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford. Executive producers are Chris Bannon, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Cristen: This podcast was created by your hosts, Cristen Conger

Caroline: And Caroline Ervin of Unladylike Media.

Cristen: Next week…

Mattie Rogers: Once you you really like put your body to use in whatever it is. It could be a sport. It could be if you just like doing something that takes some sort of physical energy. I think committing it committing yourself to to something like that kind of will change how you think of your body. And it's not just like, what can I look like? It's like what can I do and what can this body do for me?

Caroline: We’re talking to Olympic weightlifter Mattie Rogers about how to lift heavy shit. Plus, Casey Johnston from VICE is unpacking some weightlifting claptrap with us.

Cristen: Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get unladylike.