The Witches are Coming

by Lindy West

Is there such a thing as a likable woman? Can you think of one? And if she exists, could she be anything but the ultimate manifestation of everything we hate about the water we swim in, everything we’re forced to be? Likability in a sexist, racist culture is not objective—it’s compulsory femininity, the gender binary, invisible labor, whiteness, smallness, sweetness. It’s letting them do it.

Art didn’t invent oppressive gender roles, racial stereotyping, or rape culture, but it reflects, polishes, and sells them back to us every moment of our waking lives. We make art and it makes us, simultaneously. Shouldn’t it follow, then, that we can change ourselves by changing what we make? The movement can’t just disrupt the culture; it has to become the culture.

America’s original sin, our fundamental delusion: the bootstrap ethos, the notion that the comfortable deserve their place, that capitalism is an opportunity for the exploited to prove themselves, that success is a proportional reflection of hard work, that the rich are rich because they are good and smart.

One of the subtlest and most pervasive is social ostracism: coding empathy as the fun killer, consideration for others as an embarrassing weakness, and dissenting voices as out-of-touch,

Is there a woman who has lost her temper in public and didn’t face ridicule, temporary ruin, or both?

Not only are women expected to weather sexual violence, intimate partner violence, workplace discrimination, institutional subordination, the expectation of free domestic labor, the blame for our own victimization, and all the subtler, invisible cuts that undermine us daily, we are not even allowed to be angry about it.

I don’t know, call me a total causehead, but I kind of feel like it’s progress that we live in a world where dumping raw meat on a peaceful vegan protest and “[installing] speed bumps on the handicapped ramps” (real PCU plot points!) are no longer considered good jokes. Just my 1.636 cents (to a man’s two)!

The problem with America is that we refuse to look at the problem with America.