This is the first year I haven’t written anything* for #iwd, because, frankly, I am more concerned with the growing fascism/totalism coming out of America, and with all the nonsense spouted by Corporate HR and Marketing ladies on International Women’s Day becoming a big part of that, well, it makes me instantly suspicious.
For the first year in many years, I am not interested, nor wanting to participate in International Women’s Day. I am far more interested in everyone seeing the real threat right now: one that affects everyone and needs to be taken very seriously and with great urgency: the rise of totalitarianism in the United States.
Watching so many apparent-lefties run interference for all of this is deeply, deeply upsetting. Your ‘corporate partnerships’, your ESG buzzwords, your ‘synergy’ and jibber-jabbering on made-up, nothing-concepts that mean nothing and do even less. Surely you’re not actually falling for this? Where the fuck did you go? History is on repeat, and I am watching my supposedly-progressive peers drift into the banality of evil and tell everyone they disagree with to eat cake. This stuff is literally fascism. It’s plain as day. And it is bipartisan. Like, what the fuck.
Oh, that’s right, you’re out of that whole historical materialism thing now. That’s for poor people and teenagers. You’ve matured. You’re wise. You’ve carved a nice little gig for yourself disappearing so far up the arse of the Military-Industrial complex, I can only see your Manolos.
I mean who cares about Blackrock, Raytheon and Vanguard so long as they sponsor your morning tea, fund your ‘research’ and meet ESG targets? Nestlé, the company who said that water should not be a human right and those who think it is are ‘extremists’, has donated free bottled water for your #IWD goody bags. You’re alright, though. You won’t make a call to your mates who work there on behalf of those without clean water, because that might make things uncomfortable at your next brunch.
You definitely won’t conscientiously object yourself. You wouldn’t want to be negative or unprofessional.
Nespresso is B certified. You’ve done your bit. Successful campaign! A job well done.
I don’t know about you, but I could not be less concerned with the plight of the female half of the 1% right now and their sycophants. Especially those who see human suffering as a career opportunity and as fucking “content”.
Lean Out from #iwd. These women who post “what feminism means to me” do not care about you. I care about you. All of you. Even when you kick me in the teeth to make yourself feel better about your role in all of this. But I want you to know, ordinary person doing your best in this shitty system, will always be a mere supporting character in their Instagram Feed. You are a token to be pulled out whenever there is resistance to their egregious acts of exploitation, pollution, manipulation and corruption, so they can make ordinary people think they care about the plight of those icky bag ladies they step over on the street.
They pull you out, ordinary person who does their best, to lie to the younger impressionable women who haven’t figured it out yet. You are a woman whose stories they appropriate and shoulders they step on to further themselves, only to pull the ladder up behind them when they get there. Don’t be their billboard. Be honest with those young women about what truly awaits them. Do them the kindness of figuring it out earlier than you did.
Not sure if you know this, but this year, they are telling young impressionable women, much like they did displaced and confused young men a few years back, to “Learn to Code”. Back then, it was called a ‘linguistic dog whistle‘. Now, four years after #metoo and #timesup where those men were cast as misogynists and racists, they are saying it to the rest of us, whilst our lives and material conditions get exponentially worse.
They’re encouraging young women to go into cybersecurity, where those young women will be taught that they are fighting terrorism and disinformation. Not that they are being used as mules to silence and securitize striking workers, target whistleblowers and journalists, and censor all dissidents and spy on all the everyday people who are just doing their best, lest they step out of line – both domestically and overseas.
I know you know what I am saying is correct, even if you don’t like the way I am saying it. You’re working more hours than ever, with nothing left, you can barely afford electricity or housing, and your kids are still traumatised from the last few years. You’re starting to wonder what the point is, and why you bothered listening to them at all.
You’re watching everyone barely keep it together and can’t tell what is true anymore, after years of gaslighting by a corrupt corporate media that does their bidding. You’re working too much, so you don’t have time to check if what they’re saying is true, and even if you tried, that information is wiped off the internet because of ‘disinformation’. You see all of it, it feels too big, so you switch off, and numb yourself with endless 10-second clips of rich kids dancing. I get it.
I know you know I am right, because I am one of you. A former-working class woman who turned her back on my people because I thought those rich ladies would by my allies if I Learned to Code. Now we can’t even afford the cake they tell us to eat. Learn to Code. Linguistic dogwhistle, indeed.
They will use empty slogans every year to make you think you have a shot and that things might change. I swallowed all that shit too. I ‘learned to code’ in the 90s. I have been ‘coding’ and ‘a woman in tech’ for three decades. At no point was I told that it was also conditional on me shutting up, and going along with their bullshit, until I found out the hard way. It is. I won’t.
Know, though, that they will dangle outliers (who sold their souls and 70% of their business) to tell you that you, too, can ‘have it all’. Many of them even genuinely believe it, because they’re just comfortable enough/not smart enough/compliant enough to not feel the full brunt of institutional power that will come down on any woman like a tonne of bricks for speaking out about real structural issues.
…yet.
To the young working class women who still buy all this crap, I want you to know they will use your goodwill, dreams, hope and kindness as a weapon, but also as a mechanism of control so that you comply just long enough to get to your 50s and see it is all a load of lies. They kick the can down the road until you either run out of fight, are old enough to be invisible, or have enough stuff to lose. Thankfully, for you I have some fight left, nothing to lose, and don’t give a fuck if I am invisible.
Please don’t get distracted by aesthetics. You know that’s what it is. You see it and live it every day. I know you do. Even if you can’t bring yourself to care about others, look at how it is for you, and then think about how hard it is for those who earn less, or don’t have a mortgage, or rely on gig work. Pay attention to the things you are told, and then compare it with what you see and feel.
Look at the poverty and abuse of power around you, whilst everyone pretends some imaginary intangible threat is to blame. Look at the wars, destruction and fear and who benefits. Ignore corporate pinkwashing, Wokewashing, Rainbow-washing and greenwashing. Tell ESG and DEI grifters to go fuck themselves and tell them to donate to (or volunteer at a Food Bank) …or pay their goddamn taxes… or pay a living wage and stop union-busting behind Inclusive veneers one one hand, and distracting everyone from that with anti-Woke outrage on the other.
It’s all lies. You know it.
The United States is descending into fascism. The same pattern as Italy (yes, I said Italy), and at minimum is totalistic. No big deal. People can’t afford a roof, can’t afford food, are dying from diseases of despair… and these same people are pushing us into World War 3. And, none of the #leanin ladies give a crap. If they cared, they’d tell their ESG mates at Blackrock to stop inflating the housing market. If they cared, they would feed people and get them clean water. If they cared, they would tell their mates at Raytheon to knock it off.
They don’t.
They don’t care, and HR are their cops on the beat.
But if you must get your IWD fix, you can read last year’s post. I have more important crap to focus on.
#paytheprice
*Oh look I did write something for #iwd2023. I meant in advance.