I’m in my 30s. I was an adolescent in the 90s, reading The Color Purple by Alice Walker, listening to “Keep Ya Head Up” by Tupac and "U.N.I.T.Y.“ by Queen Latifah and learning about womanism. I was already living at the intersection of race, gender and class oppression, dealing with intraracial sexism and misogynoir being called "god’s will” in the church I was required to attend and dealing with street harassment anytime I was not at school. I dealt with a few racist teachers in middle school and high school, and watched my parents struggle financially as I was growing up. I would have fun with my friends at school though there were endless issues of sexism, misogynoir, colourism, and fat shaming among the students. I dealt with boys making jokes about “virginity” and being sexually harassed both in the church (yep) and via street harassment. I dealt with learning hegemonic racist fuckery in my pre-IB and dual enrollment high school courses in middle school and AP courses and dual enrollment college courses in high school, all while enduring the microaggressions here and there from teachers who showed favor towards Whites, primarily the wealthy White Jewish students at my elite magnet high school. This is only a snippet of what was going on in my coming of age years in the 90s, long before social media existed as it exists now.

So when some little asshole of a 21 year old or so wants to decide that Tumblr, a site founded in 2007, is what made me a womanist or that I am a “Tumblr social justice warrior” or “Tumblr feminist” there are not enough 90s Timberland or Lugz boots that I can gather to plant square into their face. How can people be this ignorant? How does this work? The question is rhetorical of course as I most certainly know how from the experiences I’ve had before this site existed. Are people really this ignorant though? There’s a long history of public discourses about anti-oppression theories, whether it was Frederick Douglass’ papers in the mid 19th century or Sojourner Truth’s unforgettable speech, or Black writers during The Harlem Renaissance, or small Black-owned papers throughout the 20th century, to leaflets that Black people wouldn’t want to ever get caught with in the South during Jim Crow, to the incredible spoken and written words during The Civil Rights Movement to Black women turning the Black feminist/womanist and fiction literary world on its head in the 70s through the 90s to Black people using social media today, creating movements and having an impact.

Now naturally, teeny tiny ahistorical White feewings get hurt when White supremacy seems like it is being challenged in any space. But these ahistorical little tyrants have got to learn that Google is their friend and Google Scholar is their very best friend. Research before making nonsensical labels that completely eschew history and embarrasses them.

Now I do talk about about the problems with White supremacy, racism, White privilege and mainstream feminism and make names for those particular problems. I and other people have made names such as: 1% feminism. White supremacist feminism. American exceptionalist feminism. Biological determinist feminism (i.e. TERFs). Mean Girls feminism. “Funny" feminism. Lean In feminism. Mrs. White feminism. I’ve said that I cannot take Jezebel seriously. They’re Pollution Feminism. Ubiquitous and problematic. April Fools Day Feminism. Beyond anti-intersectional. I call the appropriators and plagiarists PACMAN feminists as they consume (ahem…bell hooks ”Eating The Other“) what Black women create without a second thought to our work, lives, feelings or anything except a ”brand.“ I’ve called it Mayonnaise Feminism. Use Black Women’s Backs As Bridges Feminism. No Identity For Themselves Feminism because of their actions such as cheering on Lily Allen, Miley Cyrus and Lena Dunham, all White women clearly harmful to Black women and proliferating cultural appropriation, racism and misogynoir. But all of these labels are about oppression, not confining White feminists to particular platform and critiquing these problems based on platform alone. Further, I have no White or class privilege to confine White women anywhere. They, not me, have the feminist blog or mainstream columns by age 22 and are panelists and board members by age 30. And no, I don’t want a seat at their table. Feminism is not solely about sitting at tables but dismantling walls and building bridges; about challenging the structures that make those tables so exclusive in the first place.

Now of course people can learn (by their own doing; not demanding others teach them) on any platform where ideas and information are available and exchanged. Tumblr is a place for that. Twitter is. People say Facebook is but since I hate that site I reject that premise, but I am sure it actually is in some parts. These are just platforms though. They do not shape who people are. And just as much ignorance abounds in these platforms as any others. There were feminists in 2006 yet I don’t recall them being called "Myspace feminists.” I don’t know any other place (except Twitter now, but for the longest it seemed like only Tumblr) where people associate something as complex as Black feminism or womanism or even mainstream feminism solely with the platform by which the ideas were spread. I mean…would the Combahee River Collective be “Yellow Pages, landline phone and published book feminism?” People cannot continue to be this ignorant.

Despite the fact that some of the most insightful, intricate, intersectional and revolutionary stuff is coming from blogs on platforms like Tumblr (hence literally every woman of colour that I know who has a blog here is regularly plagiarized), people throw around “Tumblr feminist” as a way to delegitimize those of us who are not welcome in the mainstream or had to fight tooth and nail to appear there. There’s definitely a hint of classism and credentialism involved in disregarding someone’s work based on what space it appears in, behavior that people’s favorite White Knight Tim Wise engaged in as well, which would be antithetical to actually being an ally.

I’m interested in the most ignored, the most plagiarized and the most marginalized having a voice, wherever that occurs, in tweets or blogs that are simultaneously disrespected as they are consumed and plagiarized. Nobody is a “Tumblr feminist."