The following is an op-ed from Katie Alice Greer of the overtly political D.C. rock band Priests, whose first full-length, Nothing Feels Natural, is out this week.
Every single day is another opportunity to punch a neo-Nazi in the face, carpe diem to you on this Monday.
The way your attention, your time, and your dollars are directed can all be part of resistance to the normalization authoritarianism. Almost 50 creative laborers donated their platform and craft to raise $12,000 for Washington, D.C. organizations ONE DC (fighting displacement) and Casa Ruby (an LGBTQ shelter and resource center) at Friday’s sold-out NO THANKS show at the Black Cat. Asking creative laborers to work for free goes against my politics (performers who incurred undue cost to play this show, don’t forget to invoice us, please), but I did it anyway because from now on we have to think in terms of how capable we already are to fight for each other, and how essential these capabilities are to our struggle.
Casa Ruby founder Ruby Corado spoke at Friday night’s event about her vision for the future and the power of dreaming in the fight for humanity and survival: “Dreaming kept me alive. When I arrived in D.C. in 1986 I would sit […] and dream of putting purple satin sheets on shelter beds. Two years ago I opened the first hypothermia shelter for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.”
At last week’s Creating Change conference in Philadelphia, Corado saw a Nigerian woman who recently moved to America speak about sustaining a movement with an initial $18 she invested in selling peanut butter. “There were a lot of queer and trans people in the room,” Corado said, “and we looked at each other and said, ’Damn, we have a lot more than peanut butter.’”
“I say dreaming [kept me alive] because the reality I was living was fucked up,” Corado explained of living as a young immigrant trans woman and being refused employment from 11 jobs. Corado spoke frankly about sex work and how so many women sustain livelihood through “selling flesh.” This was particularly apropos after last week’s debate over Janet Mock’s line“…and we stand in solidarity with sex workers’ rights movements” within the Women’s March Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles. Economic justice for all women and fighting to protect women from violence means standing in solidarity with sex workers—feminism cannot be built on leaving them behind.
Now that it’s Monday, can I respectfully request no more pussy talk, please? I saw about a zillion signs featuring the word “pussy” at Saturday’s Women’s March on the National Mall, and a hell of a lot less about how many trans women are left for dead (literally or legislatively) every single day in this country. Feminism has to be for everyone—especially women who spend every day fighting alone, like so many trans women and women of color do.
Feminism is a fight for all of our mothers and our sisters (and our proverbial siblings who identify as non-binary), especially the ones who do not have the privilege our culture affords wealthy, white, cisgender women. It is actually a fight for our dads and brothers, too. It means building a vision of family that goes to the mat for people we don’t even know. Feminism is less dependent on how often we use the word “intersectional” in social media posts (though that can be useful), and more dependent on building relationships with women who look and live differently than us. Feminism is holding up signs (literally and figuratively) that say “I am here for YOU, and I will fight with all I have for us to be able to share the future together,” every single day.
Inclusivity includes those pink hats with cat ears, too. Can we stop shit-talking them? No one is making you wear one. I read the Pussyhat Project’s mission statement, and they aren’t a bunch of TERFs making vagina hats for the revolution. They are pink because “pink is considered a very female color representing care, compassion and love— all qualities that have been derided as weak but are actually STRONG,” the mission statement reads. “Women, whether transgender or cisgender, are mistreated in this society. In order to get fair treatment, […] the answer is not to deny our femaleness and femininity, the answer is to demand fair treatment.”
My 70-year-old aunt texted me about making these hats with her knitting circle in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. “Don’t think I’m nuts, but we laughed so hard at knitting,” she said. I know how much regular meetings with other women mean to her in a state that went to Trump during the election, a state run by a negligent water-poisoning governor. “Knitting and crocheting are sometimes scoffed at as ‘frivolous gossiping circles,’ when really these circles are powerful gatherings... a place where women support women.” My aunt worked in a bank and has been fighting patriarchal bullshit her whole life. I want to build a feminism that recognizes all kinds of solidarity gestures and contributions from people who can’t march or don’t live in a city.
At about 1:45 p.m. before the march started, I got nervous for a few minutes standing in a sea of stagnant bodies. We were in the middle of Jefferson Street NW near the Hirshhorn Museum, nobody could move or see much of anything, and people were getting frustrated. In my immediate surroundings, people had heard that nobody could march because so many people had shown up, making it literally impossible for anyone to move. I spotted a woman on a tall landing with a poster that read “TO HEAR: 2026268888” and enjoyed the last few minutes of speakers. A few confused people started chanting “start the march,” seemingly unaware that people were still speaking and that this was unlikely to inspire movement at all. At one point we all had to back up to make way for an ambulance, which appeared to be for a woman suffering from claustrophobia.
Now that it’s Monday, we know that there are millions of us yearning for action, fueled by vivid dreams for tomorrow. There are so many different kinds of people here, in the metaphysical space of an idea, ready to engage. Movement itself is going to be a challenge. Do not lose hope because of the slow pace required. I ask everyone who was a part of Saturday’s marches around the world (in body or spirit) to think ecologically in times of impatience. We may only see the trees in our immediate line of vision, but we can know that the view from above proves we are a vibrant forest of powerful possibility. We need strategies for how we will fight for survival, each other, and a better world.
If you’re wondering about the hold up, it might be a good time to remember that 53 percent of America’s voting white women voted against feminism, against their non-white sisters, on election day. If you’re a white woman who knows any of these white women, it might be a good time to take on the responsibility of engaging with them. Ask what they’re doing now to protect those who their vote endangered. (And if you're a white man, you should already know how much work you have to do.) If you’re a white woman who didn’t vote for Trump and you're upset about the number of signs at the march that reminded people of this startling statistic, unpack those feelings with other white people rather than demanding emotional labor from women of color. There’s no room for respectability politics and tone-policing in the fight against fascism. Think critically about whether a weekend of peaceful protests with lots of nice white people smiling at cops will destroy the violent racism of our culture.
All kinds of women are left behind every day by the twin crushing machines of racist capitalism and toxic masculinity. We need to fight for all of us together, so we’ll have a lot of ground to cover. Things will likely start late and run off schedule. Life is, after all, an odd construction of planned action and extemporaneous reaction. Think on your feet. Communicate with your neighbors. Dream of the future; stay alive. Keep in mind that we are always marching together.