Elle Beau ❇︎
2 min readMar 23, 2024

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I don't have time to educate you on how privilege is intersectional and often co-exists with oppression as well. Read this for more about that:

“Importantly, privilege, like oppression, is intersectional. Intersectionality refers to the ways aspects of identity intersect to create specific experiences, needs, privileges, and oppressions. This means that one person can experience both privilege and oppression (for example, they may experience racial privilege for being white, but class oppression for being working class). Privilege and oppression can also intersect with one another to create unique experiences of a specific aspect of their identity. For example, a trans woman who is very affluent has a very different experience of transphobia and cissexism than a transwoman who is very poor. She would, for instance, have better access to resources, medical care, and a safe place to live compared to a transwoman who is working class. While both women experience oppression for being trans, their experiences of that oppression are very different due to the presence or absence of class privilege.”

Imagining that white women don't really face any hardships or oppression is intentionally hiding your head in the sand. You need to do better on that front, because ignorance is not an excuse. Here are just 2 stories that clearly demonstrate how even wealthy, well educated white women are still treated today — but there are hundreds I could cite.

You are absolutely correct that Black women face much more and that Black men face plenty of oppression and discrimination - but that doesn't erase what all women have to deal with from early childhood on at the hands of a patriarchal culture and at the hands of men who are steeped in masculine norms that encourage domination and control of women as a show of masculinity. Every woman you know has suffered to at least some degree because of that and most still do on a regular basis. Complaining that you don't want to hear how they don't like it is tone deaf and fragile.

Get this through your head - all men benefit from sexism and misogyny, even if they don't want to just like all whites benefit from racism, even if they don't want to. Because of that, unless you are actively challenging the status quo, you are propping it up and allowing it to perpetuate - something which benefits you. You are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. I urge you to continue to educate yourself around this and to put more of your efforts into actively being a part of the solution rather than wasting your breath complaining about women. "I didn't do anything" is a huge part of the problem. Stop victim blaming and start doing things that improve the culture - because that will help men too.

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Elle Beau ❇︎
Elle Beau ❇︎

Written by Elle Beau ❇︎

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed. I'm your hell, I'm your dream, I'm nothing in between.

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