to be alive is power

historyisrelevant:

Land of the FREE?

(via brazilianveganfeminist)

radicalrebellion:

acceber74:

ladylarkin:

sugahwaatah:

daniellemertina:

creativeconflagration:

whitefeministcollectionagency:

White Feminism privilege denying FLOTUS edition.

The above are screen caps of tweeets made by CodePink and their cofounder Medea Benjamin after Michelle Obama was confronted by a protester named Ellen Sturtz from the pro- LGBT group Get EQUAL. 

After the incident was reported to happen, tweets like the above started to be made playing into racist tropes by framing FLOTUS as an “angry black woman” and telling her how she should have responded plays into respectability politics.

Your white privilege is showing feminists. Just stop and think what would have happened if Laura Bush did the same thing. Yeah that’s what I thought. 

“She came right down in my face,” Sturtz told the Washington Post. “I was taken aback.”

Haha! GOOD! It’s good that she was taken aback, it’s good that the First Lady took no shit. 

This is all very typical for racist white feminists. Basically, they don’t believe that a black woman has any boundaries or any right to defend or assert herself.

Clearly, that protester was out of line and under any other circumstances that would be pretty much ubiquitously understood. But because FLOTUS is a black woman they re-frame the story to make it seem as if she was overly aggressive to a “gently” spoken, non-threatening white woman and that SHE was the one out of line. 

I always notice how white feminists cry on and on about how they don’t want to be seen as delicate flowers. And they have books like Lean In encouraging them to “take their power” as women and whatever else but as SOON as white supremacy gives them the opportunity they revert to the familiar “I’m a delicate, precious white woman” trope to justify the abuse of black women.

hm. 

“ellen didn’t scream, she talked gently” I bet all the money i will ever make Mrs Obama didn’t speak scream but a Black woman doing as much as breathing is aggression to the white chick 

I don’t know what this has to do with her race. The person was interrupting her to yell about same sex marriage.
Honestly the heckler didn’t even deserve acknowledgment, but Mrs. Obamas response was perfectly acceptable, maybe even generous with her response.
I think that those who are upset are more focused on the perceived disregard of LGBT rights by dismissing the person. Which is absurd because one, the speech had nothing to do with gay marriage and two because the Michelle Obama does support gay rights. And thirdly she was Way out of line to even be interrupting her in the first place. It has to do with respect than race if you ask me.
I’m just really not sure where you’re coming from with the whole white feminist thing, and I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about them.
I don’t think it was racist to interrupt the flotus, but it was definitely rude. These particular people tweeting negative shit are just butthurt that she wasn’t going to take their crap.
I’m just confused as to why a white female gay rights advocate heckling the First Lady, some how translates to a generality about other feminists.
Shit I’m not gonna deny that most articles and tweets on this topic are full of racist slurs an stereotypes but that says nothing about the two people involved.

Because there’s a certain level of inherent disrespect for women of color, especially black women in these so-called “feminist” (who seem to forget there are non-white women) or “gay” (who seem to forget there are non-white gay people) organizations.  These same people will support the Onion calling a 9 year old black girl a c*nt, or blame Beyonce for sex trafficking, or tell us to laugh at a joke about Chris Brown murdering Rihanna.  They blame black people for Prop 8 passing, while ignoring the white organizations and churches that actively wrote, initiated, and supported passing the bill (Mormon church spent a helluva lot money to get that bill passed, but you don’t see HRC condemning them like they do the “black community”, do you)?  

So sorry, if you can’t see.  Maybe it’s not meant for you to see.  But, anytime some white woman feels the need to police what a woman of color is doing or saying, that’s smacks of them viewing said woman as less than: less intelligent, less entitled to assert herself, less of a human being.  

Mrs. Obama owes them absolutely nothing.  They’re fortunate that Mrs. Obama doesn’t suffer fools and handled it with more grace and class than that heckler deserved. 

Boom!

(via sexistfacebookdudes)

mypubliclands:

In today’s society, it’s easy to forget the historic accomplishments of those who broke down barriers  for women to enter the field of natural resources management.  Thank you Hallie!

“One of the most untiring and enthusiastic applicants which I have for the position is Miss Hallie Morse Daggett, a wide-awake woman of 30 years, who knows and has traversed every trail on the Salmon River watershed, and is thoroughly familiar with every foot of the District.” M. H. McCarthy, Assistant Fire Ranger for the Salmon River District of the Klamath National Forest

Miss Hallie Morse Daggett was born in 1878 in Liberty, CA. She grew up at the Klamath Mine, also known as Black Bear Mine, very near to where she later worked as a lookout. Her childhood years were spent exploring every inch of the Salmon River drainage with her brothers, which undoubtedly influenced her desire to do her part to protect the forest as an adult.

In describing her life as a lookout, Hallie said: “I grew up with a fierce hatred of the devastating fires and welcomed the Forest Service force which arrived to combat them. But not until the lookout stations were installed did there come an opportunity to join what had up till then been a man’s fight; although my sister and I had frequently been able to help on the small things, such as extinguishing spreading campfires or carrying supplies to the firing line.” Because of the times, Hallie was not allowed to be in the line of work that she truly desired, but through her persistence and the liberal-mindedness of the District Ranger, she was hired. She was the first woman ever employed as a “Forest Guard” by the US Forest Service. Her first day on the job was June 1, 1913, just over 100 years ago.

Hallie was a pioneer in natural resource employment for women who, at the time of her employment, had only just started to vote. Some of the men predicted that after a few days of life on the peak she would telephone them to say that she was frightened by the loneliness and danger of staffing the lookout. To their surprise she was full of “pluck and high spirit”. She grew more and more in love with the work. She didn’t lose heart even when the telephone wires were broken and she was cut off from communication with the world below for weeks at a time. She performed the duties of the position with all of the skill that trained men could have shown in hopes of being reappointed for the 1914 fire season.

Hallie worked 15 seasons at the Eddy Gulch Lookout atop Klamath Peak on the Klamath National Forest. During her first season she spotted 40 fires, keeping the total acres burned to less than 5. In her later years (around 1951) residents of Hallie’s home town in Etna, California, banded together to build her a cabin on Main Street next to her sister Leslie’s home. She lived in this house until her death in 1964. The cabin was donated to the City of Etna by the Rosemary Holsinger family in 1993. Through efforts by the volunteer citizen’s committee, the City of Etna moved the cabin to the city park and developed a historical interpretive site that was completed in 1996. This project was identified as a priority in the Etna community action plan and was funded by Forest Service grants from President Clinton’s Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative and the Ore-Cal Resource Conservation Development Area. The project was also sponsored by the Native Daughters of the American West. The site continues to honor Hallie’s legacy today.

-Story courtesy of the Klamath National Forest.

(via lipstick-feminists)