Fernleaf > Recent Status Updates

Chapter 15: Housing

"When we talk about housing and feminism, we must remember that it isn't just the concern of the young woman eager to start her business or find a home for her family. It's a concern for older women, for our elders who rely on the rhythms and the norms of their community to be able to age in place with dignity."

Chapter 14: Education

"Calls for increasing school safety rarely acknowledge how policing affects students of color. There's no safety in being profiled, in being surveilled and harassed in a place that should be about opportunities and not total obedience."

Chapter 13: Race, Poverty, and Politics

"The fact is that the harm-reducing votes of marginalized people will never be enough to outweigh the stupidity of white people who vote for racism at their own expense."

Chapter 12: Fear and Feminism

"It's bad enough that white women won't even vote to protect themselves; what's worse is that as a voting bloc they have enough power to harm others."

"So white feminism is going to have to get comfortable with the idea that until they challenge their racist aunts, parents, cousins and so on, it is definitely all white women who are responsible."

Chapter 11: Missing and Murdered

"This doesn't mean that white women who go missing don't deserve every bit of attention, care and concern from the public, police and the press. It does mean that the same level of concern should be given to all."

Chapter 8: Black Girls don't have Eating Disorders

"We can't afford to keep pretending that mental health issues stop at the boundaries of whiteness."

Chapter 6: How to Write about Black Women

"The emotional labor required to be respectable, to never ruffle anyone's feathers, to not get angry enough to challenge much less confront those who might have harmed you, is incredibly onerous precisely because it is so dehumanizing."

"I know we can come to a place where we embrace differences instead of pretending that freedom comes from erasing them."

Chapter 4: of #fasttailedgirls and freedom

"We have to shift the focus on anti-rape narratives away from what victims can do to prevent it and towards teaching people not to be predators in the first place."

Chapter 3: Hunger

"Attempts to tie access to food programs to labor, to respectability, to anything but being a human in need are ultimately less about solving the problem of hunger and more about shame."

"Increasing access to food should not be a controversial topic, but apparently we live in a culture that begrudges children, elders, unemployed people, and the working poor full, nutritious meals."

Chapter 1: Solidarity is still for white women

"In fact, the most realistic approach to solidarity is one that assumes that sometimes it simply isn't your turn to be the focus of the conversation."

"Sometimes being a good ally is about opening the door for someone instead of insisting that your voice is the only one that matters."