It's June 2020 and I'm a White Person. What Can I Do?

Everyone I have spoken to over the last few days has said the same thing: News about the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Tony McDade by police—and the resulting national and international protests—have them zig-zagging wildly between devastation/despair and excitement/hope.

I feel the exact same way; I’ve used the term “emotional rollercoaster” before, but I didn’t know what I was talking about. This shit is beyond anything I’ve experienced in my 45 years. But this isn’t about my feelings. It’s about harnessing this energy and seizing the moment that people finally seem to be opening their eyes to the lived reality of being Black in a white supremacist culture.

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I have seen so many posts and comments from white people asking what they should do, and so many posts and comments from people of color begging white people to educate themselves. In the spirit of sparing our Black friends and colleagues their emotional energy (in low reserves right now) I put together a list of actions white people can take today, tomorrow, and every day forever.

White people, I repeat: Please respect that Black people are in mourning right now and do NOT ask them to tell you what to do. If you have questions about how to take action and how to begin addressing your internalized white supremacy (step 1 - acknowledge that you hold white supremacist ideas because we all do) you can ask me. I don’t have all the answers and I can’t speak for Black people, but I can share my experiences and perspectives with you and point you to some resources that really helped me.

This list summarizes some of these resources and other immediate actions you can take.

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If you can protest, protest. There is nothing more powerful a white person can do than put your body between Black people and the police. But be prepared and don’t expect the folks on the ground to supply or train you. Google “preparing to protest.” The first few articles have the info you need.

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If you can’t protest, donate to a bailout fund. I just donated to Atlanta Solidarity Fund. There are similar funds in Minneapolis, Louisville, Brooklyn, etc. You can find a list of funds here.

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Order these books by Layla F. Saad, Ibram X. Kendi, and Robin DiAngelo. I will also add The End Of Policing by Alex Vitel, which is currently available for free. There are many many other great books out there, but these are four every white person must read immediately if you have not already, IMO.

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By all means, follow Black folks who do anti-racism work, but stay out of their DMs and DO NOT ask them to educate you personally. Most of them have resource lists on their websites ore in their stories. Look there or, again, ask me or another white anti-racist. 

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Get your talking points down so you know what to say if another white person in your life starts spewing nonsense about Black protesters having no credibility because they damaged property, blah blah blah.

No explanation needed. This is a turning point and an opportunity. We CAN NOT let this fire die!

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This week, I am participating in Podcast Blackout and have chosen to read a passage from Mikki Kendall’s book Hood Feminism rather than broadcast a regular episode. But if you need talking points, listen to Thursday’s episode (June 11) in which I dive into the basics of the protest politics, the history of policing, why insisting on nonviolence is white supremacy, and an overview of arguments for policing and prison abolition. 

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Finally, commit to being uncomfortable for a long time and remind yourself EVERY DAY that Black people have no choice when it comes to facing racial injustice. White supremacy will persist until white people refuse it. Racism flourishes when we allow ourselves to ignore it. 

That’s a wrap on the listicle. I love you and I welcome your questions. Black lives matter.

Hi. I'm Adrienne, and I'm Sober.

(Note: If you can’t get enough sobriety talk, check out episode one of Season 3, all about feminism and sobriety!)

I’ve put off writing this post for a long time. There are a lot of reasons for my procrastination, one being I’m a champion procrastinator. I’d hate to start behaving too responsibly and risk disappointing myself or my fans. The other reasons are far less quippy. The reasons I’m not racing to tell this story are bound up in the story itself. But it’s time they were aired, along with the rest of it: Why I no longer drink and how I stopped. 

I started drinking like many other American teenagers: In my friend’s parents’ basement. (My parents patrolled their own basement far too closely for me to get away with any deviant behavior in my own home.) I don’t remember what year of high school it was, but I wasn’t scandalously young, nor did anything scandalous happen to me. I do remember that we drank Lynchburg lemonades and I was horribly hungover the next day. I don’t know if my parents knew or not, but I always suspected they did because they made me paint the gutters when I got home, almost causing me to vomit in the bushes from my perch atop a rickety ladder. (Perhaps they’ll read this and answer that question after all these years.) 

This was the 90s, and I had aspirations of being an artsy grungy sort of girl who didn’t GAF. The problem was, I ran in the wrong circles to achieve this status with any level of authenticity. My parents were university professors and my friends were all nerds. The artsy grungy kids had formed their alliances and begun cultivating their grunginess in middle school; they were light years ahead of me in coolness. I knew I’d never catch up, but I always felt I had it in me to be a girl other people looked at with a mixture of judgment and admiration, fear and awe, the way I looked at the art kids at my school. I wasn’t 100 percent sure how to get there, but I was pretty sure drinking had a lot to do with it. 

When I went to college, I really committed. I achieved my dream of being one of the cool kids (whatever that meant at a tiny school in the middle of Iowa also attended exclusively by nerds), and the cool kids got shitfaced and smoked a ton of weed. All the time. Nothing seemed unusual about that. Everyone got shitfaced and smoked, even at my private liberal arts school. We also studied. The college I went to was very rigorous, so if you didn’t study, you quickly paid the price (as was evidenced by my grades the first semester of my sophomore year). 

College was definitely a time when I drank a lot, but I don’t think of it as a key to my story in terms of my difficulties with alcohol. I didn’t perceive myself to have any such difficulties. I loved college (yes, even the learning part). I spent four years in a relatively safe little cocoon. Nothing dangerous or traumatic happened to me. My drinking was (or at least seemed) completely normal within the context of where, when, and with whom it was happening. What was not normal, and came back to haunt me later, was the sense of invincibility this granted me. I developed a strong attachment to my identity as someone who could drink—as a woman who could drink. And who would drink, at any opportunity. Because I was one of the cool kids. 

After college, I figured I would just transplant my party girl identity into a new place and continue on as I had been. This turned out to be easier imagined than done. The post-graduation years were, for me (like for many other privileged young people out on their own for the first time), a rude awakening. I overdrew my bank account constantly. I couldn’t afford a car, and my crappy bikes kept getting stolen. I moved to Oregon and sunk into a depression as I watched the rain fall day after day from my shitty receptionist job (at least I sat in the front where I could look out the window). That fall when Princess Diana died, I was crushed, although I could not articulate why. 

Looking back, this was when I stopped smoking pot and started drinking more. I lost my taste for marijuana; I felt annoyed and mildly disgusted by the obsession with pot that existed around me in Eugene. Any time my friends and I went out, they spent at least 30 minutes getting high before we could leave; sometimes we wouldn’t make it out the door at all. I was starting to feel like everyone around me spent so much time and energy finding, buying, and smoking weed that their own lives were becoming stagnant. I didn’t want to be a receptionist forever. I wanted to be Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. But it was becoming clear that if I wanted my life to move forward, I was going to have to take those steps on my own. 

Over the next few years, I transitioned into social work and took on a series of increasingly demanding and high-stakes jobs. I began socializing almost exclusively with my colleagues. This strained my already-strained relationship with my boyfriend at the time. What I perceived as his indifference to me drove me out of the house. I drank after work almost every day, again in the company of other regular drinkers; our vodka sodas were poured as soon as we darkened the door of our favorite bar. We were all stressed out by being young professionals thrust into emotionally draining jobs. George W. Bush got elected (twice) during this time, and 9/11 happened. The world seemed like an increasingly terrible place. Eugene was dark, my boyfriend never wanted to hang out with me, and my job was grinding away at my soul for $32,000 a year. Fuck it. Let’s drink. 

Eventually, I went to grad school, left my boyfriend, made new friends (including joining a weekly knitting group that still meets!), got a new boyfriend who was much nicer to me, and Obama got elected. I also helped start a roller derby league. Things were looking up. Let’s drink!

It seemed that no matter where I went, I found the drinkers and they found me. It was as if we all excreted the same pheromone. Roller derby, in particular, made it easy to “skate hard and party harder.” But it was during my grad school years that I also met people who enjoyed “a good microbrew” or “a nice glass of wine” (singular? eye-roll!) but who were definitely not getting kicked out of bars or closing down afterparties. They liked me, but they were also amused—and confused—by me. I began to see myself reflected in their eyes. It was the first time I started to realize that my drinking was in any way remarkable (other than remarkably awesome, as evaluated by me).  

This was also a period when I had a few blackouts. This did not happen frequently, but when it happened, it was far from awesome and I definitely heard about it the next day. The aggression, the refusal to cooperate when it came time to leave or get in a cab, the realization I had called or texted people spewing bullshit, posted embarrassing nonsense on social media, or—worst of all—driven.

It was after a particularly nasty blackout when I woke up with no idea how I’d gotten home only to discover that I had (unbeknownst to me) called and berated my boyfriend the night before for absolutely no reason (he wasn’t even in town) that I sought professional help for the first (and only) time. I made an appointment at a local treatment facility and asked to be evaluated. I felt a tremendous sense of relief. I was going to get help and I was going to get out of this spiral. I would get a counselor, go to meetings, do whatever it took. I was going to be myself again. 

That’s not what happened, though, because the woman who did my evaluation informed me that I needed to check myself into residential treatment. I stared at her, dumbfounded. Residential? Like an alcoholic? No fucking way. I had a thesis to write, three part-time jobs, and a roller derby team to co-captain. I was just supposed to scrap my whole life because I needed help learning how to control my drinking?

When I told the intake counselor I was not in a position to seek residential treatment, she basically said there was nothing else she could do for me. Based on how I had answered her questions about my drinking habits (honestly…for the first time ever in a professional’s office), it was her opinion that I was “headed for real trouble” if I didn’t get in-patient treatment; going to a 6-week course of meetings wasn’t going to cut it. I left her office determined to prove her wrong. If she wouldn’t help me, I would do it on my own. 

And I did—for a while. On my own, I succeeded in staying sober for about three months. I finished my thesis, got a full-time job, and graduated with two master’s degrees. The holidays happened. I had some mulled wine at a party and marveled at my ability to drink moderately. Then my birthday happened. A few glasses of wine with friends—so adult! 

You can probably guess where the story goes from here. People who drink like I drank don’t suddenly become good at moderation overnight or in three months—or ever, in most cases. Within six months I had ramped it all the way back up. My boyfriend and I broke up and my roller derby career was waning. I decided the answer to my problems was to move to Portland. Eugene was dragging me down. I knew tons of people in Portland, and it was becoming the hippest city in the country. My work had just opened an office there. Clearly, it was where I belonged. 

I loved living in Portland, but in many ways, that city is where I hit rock bottom. Despite the fact that I did know tons of people there, most of them were married with children or practically married or had friend groups that were impenetrable to me. I was incredibly lonely and, on top of that, I lived in a building at the epicenter of an entertainment district; there were literally 17 bars (I counted) within a two-block radius of my unaffordable apartment.

I was also traveling constantly for my job, which was becoming increasingly stressful and toxic. I spent many nights alone in hotel rooms around the country, drinking overpriced room-service pinot grigio and chatting online with a totally unattainable guy who lived in another country. I did have a boyfriend for about six months while I lived in Portland, but it was crystal clear to me that I could never be myself around him. He was a two-glass-tops kind of guy while I saw no point in ordering wine by the glass at all. At first, his goodness appealed to me; maybe he would be the reason I finally chilled out on the booze. But, ultimately, I knew it would never work between us. He was only interested in a version of me that didn’t exist and, if I’m being honest, I was only interested in being with someone who wasn’t going to limit my drinking (explicitly or implicitly).

After a couple of years in Portland, I decided I had had enough of being broke, hating my job, and getting nowhere in creating the fabulous, fulfilling social life I had envisioned for myself when I moved there. I still miss Portland terribly and feel wistful every time I go back there (I am there now, in fact!). But leaving was probably the best decision I ever made. 

I left Portland feeling hopeful. I took several months off, lived with my sister, took care of my baby niece, did yoga every day, and traveled to India and South Korea. I still drank some, but I wasn’t out of control. I dated. I read. I hung out with my wonderful sisters. Six months later, I moved to Montgomery, Alabama. 

Moving to Montgomery felt like Portland all over again, except without the awesome, artsy metropolitan city full of fun places to hang out and people to date. I was immediately lonely again—although the drinkers were there. I knew who they were, and I found myself pulled into their orbit for a time. But I had made the decision to move to the South for my career, and I knew that getting shitfaced all the time was not going to work out well for me in a small, gossipy town. I pulled back, still drinking, but mostly at home. 

Then, I started dating a man I met at work. Suddenly the things that felt jagged and stressful about my life, and sad and unappealing about myself, just went away. He absorbed them, seemingly effortlessly. I couldn’t get enough of him. He liked to drink, too. We would stay up late, drinking and playing music for each other and talking about how in love we were. It was magical. 

A few months after we started dating, we went to a concert in Birmingham. We prefunked at our Air BnB, then at a local bar, then moved on to the venue. I made friends with one of the bartenders; she started pouring me doubles. The next thing I remember, I woke up back at the Air BnB. My date was in the shower. When he emerged, he wouldn’t look at me.

The realization that I had clearly said or done something awful to the kindest most loving person I had ever met was one of the worst moments of my life. The story isn’t really worth telling, but the short version is I became a megabitch for no reason a la my old blackout days. I wept and begged him for forgiveness, which he immediately gave. 

From that moment on, I was careful. I knew I was way too old for this shit and that I had been dangerously close to fucking things up with the person I had already decided I wanted to marry.  The writing was on the wall, and I knew it. It just seemed so unfair. When my sweet, wonderful boyfriend drank, he just got happier, funnier, and more lovable. What the fuck was wrong with me? 

Over the next few years, I continued to drink. There were a few questionable incidents but, for the most part, I kept it together. Fear of losing my boyfriend (who eventually became my husband) really flipped a switch in me. He looked out for me and found ways to steer me home when it looked like I was headed off a cliff. I wasn’t always happy about it, but I kept it—and us—together. 

Other things changed, too. I found I could no longer tolerate being hungover. Drinking was affecting my sleep and my anxiety levels. It felt increasingly pointless, and I did cut down, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I started to feel desperate. I didn’t drink every day and I wasn’t physically addicted, so why couldn’t I just stop when my relationship with alcohol had clearly run its course? The fact that I kept trying and failing (and looking back at years of trying and failing) made me feel pathetic. 

It is important to acknowledge that part of what held me back from really committing was my own hang-up about how I would explain to other people why I wasn’t drinking. I realize this sounds ridiculous coming from a woman in her 40s, but the fact was (is) that almost all my friends drank, and they all knew me as a drinker. It would be extremely obvious if I just stopped, and the thought that I would have to tell people and be perceived as someone with a drinking problem was intolerable to me.

It is also worth noting that I am someone who has always held intense jobs, worked very hard, and identified as an achiever. I do think drinking held me back to a degree (that’s another blog post), but I certainly never lost a job or got in trouble for not performing due to my alcohol use. I never got a DUI or ended up in the emergency room or experienced any kind of terrible consequence while I was drunk—the kind that might force a person to stop or their loved ones to intervene. (I’m very clear about the fact that my “luck” was due, in part, to the many unearned privileges I carry around becuase I was truly shitty in public many times.) My friendships are strong, I am close with my family, and my life was full. In other words, my rock bottom was not particularly low, but it felt low to me because I knew I was capable of more if I could just get out of this cycle of feeling like shit all the time and, and top of that, feeling even more like shit because I was doing it to myself

As I’m writing, I realize I am going to have to write more blog posts about the sub-stories contained within this story (and about what came after) because I am hardly doing it justice. But for the sake of getting this post DONE rather than making it PERFECT, here is what happened and how I finally stopped the cycle. 

First of all, I began a morning practice that was completely unrelated to drinking or any conscious effort to stop drinking. It is called the Miracle Morning; I heard about it on Instagram, and it is the branded brainchild of a guy named Hal Elrod who is a cis white man and pretty much the epitome of an Internet-based self-help used-car-salesman kind of guy (actually, he began his career as a door-to-door knife salesman—no lie). Anyway, no shade to Hal because he indirectly saved my ass, here, and he does have a very compelling personal story. 

The basic premise of the Miracle Morning (I always called it the Morning Miracle) was that by getting up early and being really intentional about how you start your day, you can increase your happiness and productivity. I found this to be true. The practices themselves are nothing revolutionary (meditate or pray, say some affirmations, visualize your future, exercise, read something inspirational or educational, and write something), but doing them in combination and getting really disciplined about the process totally hooked me. I have never been someone who was good at following through on things, finishing challenges, or committing to daily anything, but I got really into the Miracle Morning and I found myself wanting to get up and do it. It quickly became something I looked forward to and enjoyed. Clearly, I needed it. (It also kept me from drinking as much because I had to get up!)

The second component that, I think, led to my ultimate decision to quit was that, for the reading element of the Miracle Morning, I read exclusively quit lit books. If you are not familiar with quit lit, it is a whole genre of books written by people (the ones I read were mostly by women) who had quit drinking and had a story to tell. (I will list some of my favorites in another post, and there are some listed in the show notes for Season 3, Episode 1 ). 

It turns out if you commit to reading every single day, you get through a LOT of books. I took three main messages away from my massive quit lit-only reading list: 1) Alcohol is toxic bullshit, and our society is in collective denial about how much we drink and what it is really doing to our bodies and our lives. 2) Choosing not to drink doesn’t mean you are weak; it means you are strong—so strong that you’re making a choice that goes against what literally everyone around you is doing. 3) Alcohol dampens our greatness; without it, we are free to become the best versions of ourselves because we will actually have to deal with our lives and our emotions and each other. (Author Annie Grace calls this having a “naked mind,” an image/idea I have come to embrace.)

And, then numbers three and four happened—and it is worth emphasizing that they happened in quick succession within the context of this new era of regular meditation, journaling, getting stronger physically and mentally, indoctrinating myself with anti-alcohol messages, etc.

Three, I started Feminist Hotdog. I won’t go into the origin story, but you can read about it here. Again, I am not someone who usually acts on my creative impulses or follows through on things. But this was different. This was mine, it came out of my brain, it fulfilled something in me, and I was very committed to making it happen. 

Four, I went to a concert to see a band I used to listen to all the time back in my heavy partying day (Ween, if you’re interested). I got hammered and I blacked out. Nothing bad happened, but it took me days to recover from that night (remember, I was hardly drinking at all at this point), days during which my heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I felt like I was on the verge of having a panic attack at any moment. It was terrible. My body had sent me SOS signals for years, but this felt more like my heart and soul were literally pounding the message into me: PLEASE STOP, PLEASE STOP.

That was October 2018, the month I began my recovery. That was not the last time I drank, but unlike the times I had tried to quit in the past and fell off the wagon, the slips I experienced in the subsequent months were just that: slips. They weren’t failures, and they didn’t mean anything about me except that I am human and old habits die hard and that I needed to read some more quit lit. My resolve remained—and remains—in tact.

I have a LOT to say about what life in the last year and a half has been like, but I will save that for another post. The short answer is: It has been awesome, more awesome than I ever could have imagined. And I don’t mean that in a “pink cloud,” Pollyanna way that newly sober people often describe because they are so relieved to be free of their addiction. These last 15 months have also been, at times, terrifying, annoying, and depressing, and I haven’t always handled any of that well. But I am here to tell you that living in the world 100 percent as myself all the time—with no head change, no blanket of brain fog, nothing mediating my experience—is exhilarating.

It is also affirming that life can still be fun. I can meet new people. I can dance at weddings. I can go to concerts and have a blast (and not spend hours in line at the bar or waiting for the bathroom!). And I can wake up the next day and feel great and never ever ever have to worry about what I said or what I may be forgetting. If you’ve ever lain in bed with waves of hangover shame washing over you, you know this is worth some money.

I have a lot of hesitation about putting this story out into the world, but I read something this morning that galvanized my belief that it is time to do it. I am done feeling any kind of shame about this, and who I am now is someone who is safe enough to be honest about the times when she wasn’t good at keeping herself safe.

Here is what I read: 

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of the soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. … When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.  --Clarissa Pinkola Estes

That’s me—a great ship (LOL). But, seriously, isn’t that great? Don’t you want to go unfurl your sail? I do!

There’s so much more to say—especially about how this all relates to feminism, why I am not in AA, etc.—but I will stop there for now. I hope you enjoy the new episode. Please send me a message if any of this resonates with you. I would love to connect. I love you. 

Sneak Preview! Excerpt from the Forthcoming Feminist Hotdog Book

Hey, y’all! As many of you know, I am writing a book based on the first two seasons of Feminist Hotdog. I thought I’d get brave and start sharing some of my writing on the blog. I’d love your feedback!

Excerpt from Chapter 3: What Does it Mean to Lead a Feminist Life?

I recently had dinner with a good friend and her new boyfriend (who I like very much—whew! So awkward when they’re duds). He and I were getting to know each other, and we started talking about the podcast. By way of introduction, I gave him my usual elevator spiel (finding joy through feminism, yadda yadda), but I could tell he wasn’t 100 percent mapping on. 

“So, what is it about?” he asked. “Explain it to a guy like me. I get feminism [here he pumped his fist in the air], but what do you talk about?”

I described some of the guests I had interviewed and told him how we talked about their work and the things they valued and appreciated and about living a feminist life.

And then he asked, “What does it mean to live a feminist life?”

The sincerity with which he posed that question really took me aback. Sitting in that restaurant, I had a small out-of-body experience while his words ricocheted around my brain like a pinball. I was thirty episodes into a podcast about feminism and had looked at this question indirectly from a million different angles but never actually asked it—or tried to answer it. 

The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became—by the question itself and by the million possible answers. There are so many ways to live a feminist life. And feminism is so personal and contextual. Women and gender-nonconforming people have been engaging in all kinds of subversive, norm-busting badassery forever, but they didn’t always call themselves feminists. That concept wouldn’t even have made sense to them depending on when and where they lived. Were they leading feminist lives?

For those of us reading, listening, and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on in the third decade of the 21st Century (you read that correctly) feminism carries all kinds of meaning—and baggage. Remember my (somewhat dubious) camp analogy from earlier in the book? I explained it that way to try and cut through the noise that often distorts dialogue about feminism and get clear on why I think the concept is valuable and necessary. But I also want to be clear that the “camp” I belong to doesn’t have firm property borders and a bunch of rules and a pink uniform and a special song you have to sing every morning. 

We’re not always going to agree on who is a feminist or what feminists think or say or how they should act because there is no one feminist perspective on any issue. This bothers some people BUT IT’S REALLY OK. It would be weird if there was only one way to do feminism. In fact, it would completely undermine the whole concept.

But it’s not the total Wild West. Feminism, as I see it, does makes some basic assumptions:

1) People of all genders are equally valuable, should have equal access to rights and opportunities, and be free to live their lives unbothered. (It sounds so simple. *Sigh*)

2) Right now, real life isn’t working this way. See (non-exhaustive list in no particular order): domestic violence statistics; street harassment; relentless attempts to block access to birth control; women being arrested for having miscarriages; low numbers of women and GNC people holding leadership positions in just about every industry; the pink tax; rape kit backlogs; Gamergate; Harvey Weinstein; the U.S. Women’s Soccer team’s paychecks (and the gender wage gap in general); oh, and electing as president a man who brags about sexually assaulting women.

3) It’s worse if you’re not a cisgender white woman. See (same disclaimer as above): murder rates of black trans women; unsolved murders and disappearances of Indigenous women; lack of media coverage for black women killed by police; black maternal mortality rates; sexual assaults perpetrated against migrant women; welfare queen myths; even less representation in leadership roles; oh, and those wage gaps get way worse. These issues compound further if you have a disability, are an immigrant, are poor, are fat, or—in some parts of the country—are not a Christian.

4) Real life is not working as it should because we live within systems and institutions (schools, courts, banks, sports teams, entertainment, industrial complexes, governments at all levels) that were designed by—and to maintain the power of—white, cisgender, able-bodied, heterosexual males. (Not me theorizing. Entire well-established academic disciplines devoted to this. If institutional misogyny and white supremacy are news to you or you don’t believe they exist, I’m probably not going to convince you here. There are a bunch of resources at the end of the book: Take yourself to school. Or, like, read the U.S. Constitution? It’s all in there.) 

5) We have all been raised up in these intertwined systems. So not only do we have to topple the dudes who are explicitly trying to keep us down, we have to confront the misogyny and white supremacy that lives within us all. See: The number of white women who contributed to the outcome of the 2016 election; fatphobia so ingrained that we spend billions a year trying to get to or stay in single-digit sizes; colorism; the double (triple? quadruple?) standard about who is supposed to have and enjoy sex; and the millions of other ways we subtly and not-so-subtly cram ourselves and our girl-identified children into roles and behaviors that keep us small, quiet, safe, and obedient, particularly if they are black or brown (and often out of necessity or self-preservation). 

6) The vast majority of people (even many people who would deny it) would be a lot happier if real life worked as outlined in Number 1; we should work together to make that happen. (More on this one later in the book.)

Beyond these assumptions, there are a few intellectual, philosophical, and interrogative guideposts about how to do Number 6. These are what differentiate intersectional feminism—feminism focused on emancipation for all—from mainstream feminism, which assumes that changes in policy and culture that benefit white women are sufficient for everybody (ignoring assumption Number 3). Such guideposts might read: Trans Women Are Women, A Threat to Justice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, or Who’s Profiting from This? 

The guideposts are there to remind us not to wander off toward into the quicksand pit of ideas that make us comfortable because they don’t require resistance on our part (e.g., “Not all white women!”) and reinforce beliefs we know are questionable but would really rather not look at too closely (e.g., “I am pro-choice but people on welfare shouldn’t have so many kids”). 

I feel confident saying that these ideas are antithetical to a feminist life. 

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Have you ever looked down and realized you were bleeding from a cut you don’t remember getting? This happened to me this morning. I looked down and saw blood streaming from a scrape on the back of my hand. Only once I saw the blood did I feel the pain. 

The paradox of this intrigued me. How could I not feel something that had obviously harmed me until I observed the physical evidence? 

My mysterious gash got me thinking about other kinds of injuries that sneak up on us when we’re just sitting around, minding our own business (say, eating oatmeal and thinking about what’s going to happen on the next episode of Pose). The non-physical kind. 

For me, this shows up as a feeling of unexplained uneasiness or even nausea. I’m anxious, but I don’t know why. And then the reason slowly reveals itself to me. It’s usually an uncomfortable moment or an unwanted exchange. It almost always something I sleepwalked through at the time, or laughed off, or just tried to get through as quickly as possible.

I’m not afraid to call people out in the moment or to stand up for myself when someone is obviously disrespecting me. But I know I experience enough slights and microaggressions that to stop and address them all would entirely consume my energy. So, my brain finds a way to insulate me—up to a point. 

Eventually, those emotional nicks start to bleed. I get anxious, and that anxiety pisses me off—at the offenders and at myself. Why do I have to deal with this shit? And why didn’t I say something at the time?

It pisses me off for other people, too. I’m a very privileged individual. The number of times someone underestimates or makes an assumption about me or takes liberties with my body or my feelings is a fraction of what many women and nonbinary people feel, particularly people of color. Not to mention, living under our current president is basically a test of how many daily outright attacks on women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants we can endure. Vigilance for some can be the difference between life and death.

You might be expecting me to wrap up this musing with a statement about how important self-care is—and it is—but that’s not where I’m going with this. 

Joy and connection are a matter of spiritual survival for anyone who lives with the daily individual reminders of structural biases and -isms. Death by 1,000 cuts is real. Even if we don’t feel the cuts at the time, that doesn’t mean they don’t harm us.

Sometimes I have trouble convincing myself it’s even worth it to care about the world in its current state of fucked-up-ness. But I do care, and I still believe things will get better and try to make them better. I try because I have a community of people around me who inspire and love me, and the joy they ignite in me helps the cuts heal faster so I can keep trying. 

Without my them, I would not be writing this today. And, if you’re reading this, you are them. Thank you. 

I’m lucky. Not everyone has a strong community or the energy to be a source of joy for other people. But all of us get to make decisions about where to put our energy and time—our most precious resources. For anyone who feels hollow and hopeless, spend these resources seeking out people who have scars of their own but who still have a light inside them that allows them to keep fighting. They know a thing or two about how to stop the bleeding before it’s too late. 

Cultural Survival

Y’all, I am having Kavanaugh flashbacks it’s not OK. If you know the FH origin story, you know this podcast was born of the despair I and many of you felt during and after those hearings last fall. Kay Ivey signing the Alabama abortion bill into law on the tail of so many other hyper-restrictive anti-choice pieces of shit legislation passing has got me down in a SERIOUS way.

I’m also remembering why I started using the term cultural survival. (If someone else coined this phrase please tell me and I will credit you! I started using it organically, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have a predecessor.) No, I am not sick or starving or being beaten or denied sunlight. I am physically surviving just fine right now (knock on wood), and I will be for the foreseeable future (unless the bill is enacted and I have a miscarriage or need an abortion, in which case I might literally die or go to jail, and if I go to jail all those things will absolutely happen to me—they are happening to millions of people right now. Oh, by the way, why aren’t you smiling? You look so much prettier when you SMILE!). But inside, I am having a really fucking hard time swallowing what our country is dishing up. 

Cultural survival is the term I use to capture what qualities/activities/mojo I need in my life to avoid disintegrating into bitterness or paralysis. How can I resist the urge to engage in posturing and infighting on social media? How can I stop the anger storming around in my head that robs me of my joy and, more importantly, the energy I need to be creative about my own resistance and my ability to be there for my friends and for people who are worse off than me?

The answer for me has been community, connection, affirmation (giving and seeking) and putting my energy into this platform and this community. So that’s what I am doing even though I am mad as hell and all I want to do is scroll through Twitter retweeting the angry/snarky/clever comments other people are making. (I have also rewatched the entire first season of Pose and then the pilot again for the third time, which did help.) I let myself do that for a while, but I know that will not sustain me. 

I made this podcast for you, for all of us, to get us through these times. I am sad and sorry and disgusted this is happening. My heart aches for abuse survivors who are having to hear and see the words “rape” and “incest” over and over again every day this remains in the news. But the march toward liberation is unsteady and it continues and it needs you. Let’s continue to lift each other up. And never feel bad about looking for some good news glimmering from between the steaming piles of bad. Remember, they want us tired and divided and not thinking clearly—but that’s not what’s going to happen because we’ve got each other and generations of badasses behind us cheering us on!

I love you.

OMG WTF 😑

I am so grateful for the Feminist Hotdog community this week.

As I’m sure you already know, Alabama passed a near-total abortion ban on Tuesday that “Governor” Kay Ivey immediately signed into law. (She’s governor in title only—trust me.) Those of us who keep an eye on the Alabama Legislature knew this was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier.

There was a part of me that wondered if Ivey might surprise us and veto the bill. She’s unlikely to run again, and maybe common sense and humanity would prevail, right?

Turns out, no. But a girl can dream. And when she wakes up, she’d better be ready to fight—and podcast!

While our state lawmakers were busy confirming their hatred of womb-having people, I just happened to be editing next week’s episode in which my guest Mawiyah Patten (formerly of URGE) and I discuss reproductive justice and abortion access. Hearing her speak reminded me that this is a long game and that there are passionate and knowledgeable leaders at the wheel, driving intersectional movements that I know will ultimately prevail. It didn’t exactly make my heart sing, but it gave me hope.

One thing that did make my feminist heart sing this week (although it was hard to hear over the tooth-gnashing) was seeing the powerful photographs of the Alabama Handmaids splashed all over the landing pages of every news site on Wednesday. What a brilliant stroke of activist/artistic genius. You make us proud, Handmaids. Y’all follow them on Instagram.

I’m sure you’ve seen the calls for how you can support reproductive justice in Alabama, but if not here are a few:

The Yellowhammer Fund provides funding for anyone seeking care at one of Alabama's three abortion clinics and will help with other barriers to access.

The P.O.W.E.R. House provides clinic escorts and space for patients, companions, and kids before, during, and after accessing the Montgomery Reproductive Health Services.

URGE engages young people in creating and leading the way to sexual and reproductive justice for all by providing training, field mobilization, and national leadership for a youth-driven agenda.

I don’t have too much more to say this week other than 1) thank you, 2) please don’t boycott the South, and 3) please interrupt people when they start talking about how backward people are here. The more we isolate and distance ourselves from the places where oppression festers, the stronger it will grow and the faster it will spread.

Love yourself. Love your buns. (They are YOURS!)

Feminist Hotdog

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What Kind of Feminist Am I?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what exactly I mean when I say I am a feminist. 

The other day I participated in my first Feminist Hotdog-related interview where I was the subject, not the one asking the questions. Predictably, the interviewer asked me what feminism means to me. (I say “predictably,” but was I prepared to answer it? Of course not.) My answer was fine, I guess: The belief that people of all genders are equal and deserve equal access to resources and opportunities (or something like that). I followed this up by saying that this belief did not seem particularly radical to me but noted that some women distance themselves from the word feminism, not because they don’t believe in equality, but often because they don’t identify with what their stereotype of what a feminist is, does, or looks like. 

I wish I’d said more, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. There are a couple of things about that answer that I want to expand on.

One, some women who believe in equality and emancipation have very good reasons for not wanting to identify as feminists, and that is because the version of feminism that dominated the women’s movement for many years was neither inclusive nor intersectional. As my guest Lecia pointed out in Episode 5 of Season 1, beginning in the 70s many black women chose to refer to themselves as womanists because white feminism, in many ways, reproduced patterns of oppression and harm toward women of color. I hope that by guarding against white feminism and striving to be intersectional, Feminist Hotdog can support a version of feminism that is genuinely inclusive; but I also recognize that I have blind spots and limitations, and I actively welcome feedback on how to improve in this area. 

Two, often when I get into conversations with people about the term feminism and why people do or don’t embrace it, the phrases “radical lesbians,” “femi-Nazis,” or "man-haters" will come up (i.e., these are stereotypes about feminists that cause women to distance themselves from feminism). I don’t think I have to explain why “femi-Nazi” should be left out of any rational conversation on this topic, but I want to address "man-haters" and "radical lesbians.” 

Being critical of patriarchy and harmful male behavior does not make someone a man hater. I firmly believe that feminism is a good thing for men and people of all genders because it strives to break down rigid gender roles that prevent people from forming the kinds of social and emotional connections human beings need to be healthy. Because women demanding equal rights or being critical of male behavior falls outside those gender norms, it is often perceived as aggressive or entitled or even hateful toward men. But I would argue that, in the vast majority of cases, “man-hater” is a weaponized term used in attempts to discredit women or to silence their positions. 

There are (small) factions of feminists who want to live separately from men and believe that men are beyond redemption. This belief is intellectually grounded in some cases; in others, it is born of trauma so horrific that the desire for distance is hardly a mystery. (You know how reverse racism isn’t a thing? Not wanting to hang around with your oppressor, also not sexist.) I don’t believe that lesbianism or queerness automatically equate to radicalism or vice versa, nor does my feminism rely on distancing myself from radicals or lesbians (that’s just old-fashioned homophobia, y’all!) or radical lesbians or radical feminists or anyone who sincerely believes in the emancipation of anyone not born as a cis man. I may feel curious about or even critical of some of the more radical positions out there, but I can’t buy into a version of feminism that throws other feminists under the bus for living outside of prescribed gender norms. (I do take issue with trans-exclusive feminism, which I will unpack in a forthcoming post.)

When I started this show, I felt it was important to point out that I am not a scholar of feminism. I know a lot about certain figures and key debates, but I would be hard pressed to explain the different waves with much accuracy—and I think that’s OK. Feminist Hotdog was never intended to be a primer. It’s an emotional experience; therapeutic for me and, I hope, for the listeners. At the center of the show is an unwavering belief in the healing power of connection between people of all genders who experience sexism as we find our way through this fucked up time (recognizing that things have always been fucked up for a lot of us). So, while I’m never going to claim that the show is about feminism per se, but I’m also never going stop striving to learn more about what feminism means to other people and to be better at talking about it in inclusive and intersectional ways. Otherwise, there would be no point. 

I meant for this to be a short little post and it turned into a rant; if you’re still with me, thanks for reading. I would love to hear your thoughts/comments. I love you.

Fuck Vision Boards

After trying and failing to keep up with blogging about each episode, I decided to switch gears a little focus instead on posting musings from the mind of Feminist Hotdog. I think this will be a lot more fun for you and for me, and make it a lot more likely that I’ll actually post! Hooray!

Today, I thought I’d tell you about something I just reread in my journal from last fall, right before I decided to start a podcast. I had been feeling low and decided to read a book about “taking control of your life” in which the author instructed me to write down my outlandish, ambitious, over-the-top dream as the first step toward reaching it. 

And…I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t think of ANYTHING. So, instead I just wrote:

“WHAT IS MY DREAM???”

Please imagine the “despair face” emoji here, because that is exactly how I remember feeling when I wrote that.

Talk about self-help gone wrong. In a world where you can’t live your damn life without some coffee mug or Instagram post DEMANDING that you follow your dream, not having one is pretty discouraging. No dream? What a loser!

Well, it’s six months later and guess what? STILL NO DREAM. At least not the “holy grail that drives my every breath/step/heartbeat” kind. And guess what? I’M COMPLETELY FUCKING FINE. I’m better than fine because I stopped trying to force myself into some bestselling prescription for happiness and just focused on the stuff that I already knew made me happy—like talking to my friends and meeting cool women who make the world better. Getting to share it with other people is really the relish on the hotdog. 

Is that an Instagram-approved dream? Does my 7-year-old niece go bed each night asking Jesus to make her the host of an indie podcast? Probably not. But who cares? 

So, yeah. Don’t have a dream? Just focus on the things that make you happy. No vision board required. (Not that there’s anything wrong with vision boards—unless they stress you out. Then fuck vision boards.) Let the little things fill you up; then, if a big dream does come along, you’ll be ready to hop on that unicorn and ride.  

I’ll be dreaming of YOU as I record Season 2 (coming in April!). Until next time!

Love yourself. Love your buns.
Feminist Hotdog