Originally published on Medium and republished here with permission.

More than two months after the January 21 Women’s March on Washington, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to unpack my thoughts on the ripple effect of the march. And, although there is a litany of elucidating articles and posts on social media written on the women’s march and what white feminism is (some of which I hyperlink), I’m hoping that adding my words will be like adding another coat of nail polish, letting the tomato sauce simmer for just a little longer, or rewatching your favorite TV series to discover all the subtext and foreshadowing you never noticed before. This redundancy is power, demonstrating strength in numbers, and in the best case will gently introduce latecomers to the concept of white feminism. I went to the Women’s March even though I knew it was going to be a march peopled predominantly by cishet, able-bodied white women. A series of missteps in organizing the march very publicly communicated this was a demonstration that would sideline people of color, queer, trans, and sex worker-related feminist issues and appeal directly to mainstream liberal feminists (read: white), whether intentionally or unintentionally. I believe it was unintentional, but negligently so – the lack of self-awareness was apparent from the original naming of the march as “One Million Woman” and its subsequent renaming as the “Women’s March on Washington.” Both names of the march appropriate the names of marches that are remarkable milestones in Black American history. This lack of self-awareness flowed into the hasty tacking-on of intersectionality as a core value of the march and the inclusion of accomplished women of color activists as lead organizers. Although those remedial steps were taken, the slight of being treated as an afterthought (and perhaps with what could’ve been perceived as a shallow attempt at inclusivity) was significantly offensive as to discourage women of color from supporting or participating in the march. The Women’s March was the first one many white women participated in, to the anguish of those who have long fought against oppression before the election of our current president galvanized activism and made it trendy. It is this inattentive ignorance by proxy of not previously participating in activism that we mean when we say white feminism. (By the way, I don’t exclude people of color from being capable of embodying the traits of white feminism – I’ve definitely been guilty of it before.) But, while I had expected the majority of march-goers to be white women, what I didn’t anticipate was how I would feel inhabiting such a white feminist space. Four things stood out to me. 1. White Feminism Was Visibly Jarring It was immediately noticeable from the moment my friends and I stepped into a DC metro train to get to the National Mall. The stops on the Red Line are in neighborhoods demographically not white enough to have populated the train with so many pussy-hatted women. The garbage cans were filled with Starbucks cups, “a clear marker of the whiteness of the march,” quipped my Chinese-American friend, who was, adorably, more shocked than I was at the stark lack of diversity. My two friends and I met up with a couple more Asian-Americans at the march. I immediately felt like we had become a monolith and yearned to somehow downplay our physically obvious Asianness. My individuality felt robbed of me simply because of the lack of diversity. These are not observations meant to shame white women – the overall march atmosphere was one of optimism, excitement, and solidarity. These are just observations meant to make visible what being a visible minority feels like. 2. White Feminism Affected the Language Many of the signs on reproductive rights, the pussy hats, even my own sweatshirt (I realized this in retrospect and apologize for contributing), and the popular “the future is female” slogan led to an atmosphere where the message was that capital-f Feminism cares about genitalia more than it does about womanhood. (It was a play on the slogan “Yellow Peril for Black Power.” Nevertheless, it centered pussies and vaginas.)

I heard second-wavey chants like, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” led by enthusiastic and inspired middle-aged white women. Although at first study, it seems like a cutesy way to insinuate that women don’t take shit and women rise up in the face of oppression, it’s actually pretty sexist and contributes to the trope that femme expressions of emotion are illogical overreactions. This is a stereotype that once enabled doctors to diagnose women with “female hysteria.” Even what Madonna said during her performance, “Donald Trump, suck a dick,” harkens back to a less enlightened feminism than the one we are capable of fostering – one that isn’t anti-sex positivity and homophobic. And I also saw more than one white person carry a sign with “Let’s get in formation,” a lyric from Beyoncé’s song “Formation” from the seminal album Lemonade celebrating and illuminating the struggles of Black womanhood. Sigh. 3. White Feminism Reflected the Lack of Internalization of Intersectionality The inability to think and act from an intersectional standpoint allows for counter-concepts and false equivalencies like #AllLivesMatter and #NotAllMen to exist. Before the march began, I remember calling out an elderly white woman who expressed impatience for the march to begin while Janelle Monae et al. were remembering victims of police brutality (#SayHisName, #SayHerName) with mothers of some of the victims on stage. I’m not particularly proud of of this moment, though it marked a significant moment for me as a generally docile and conflict-avoidant person in my everyday life. Her disrespect for those lives unjustly lost overrode my ability to see her as a woman in her eighties tired of standing. At another moment, I remember being shocked at the amount of noise made by the crowd as Angela Davis spoke, a time during which true deference should’ve been conferred to someone who has brilliantly spent a lifetime in various liberation struggles in the US and abroad. “Do they not know who Angela Davis is?” I asked my friend Frankie in mock exasperation. “White. Women,” she replied. I want to believe that the majority of such moments are a result of not paying close enough attention to the issues and not fully understanding intersectionality the way someone whose life depends on it might understand it. I get that so many of the Women’s March participants are newly mindful of politics as something that affects them personally. But this type of ignorance, as offensive as it may feel, can be remedied via education, if the recipient is willing. The truth is many people are comfortable with a sugarcoated feminism that unites people by choosing to ignore our differences. Many people are more comfortable with performative allyship than with having to face the, sometimes painfully, truthful feminism that lies in exploring our conflicts. But truthful, conflict-responsive feminism has potential to drive transformative, at-the-roots kind of radical, change. What is most insulting to women of color, queer, and trans women is that whenever this homogenization of feminism occurs, white women respond reactively and label us as hateful and divisive dampeners of their joy in feeling a sense of solidarity, however manufactured. A more appropriate response would be to prioritize the voices of women of color, queer, and trans women and seek advice about why prematurely lumping us all together is not only disingenuous but constitutes erasure. This defensiveness to critiques of homogenous feminism is equivalent to the reactionary response of cis-men to any countenance of the existence of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and misogyny. But when one is reacting defensively, one is generally not that open to listening. 4. White Feminism Affected the Modus Operandi of the Day What most startled me was the glorification of decorum and the self-satisfied attitude about civility and nonviolence. Praise was showered on the march afterwards for how safe and nonviolent it was. What makes these characteristics praiseworthy, in this context, is something we ought to engage in further reflection. Manners, themselves, are a matter of social convention that require trust in bona fide – in good faith – interactions where the prerequisite is that inherent humanity is mutually respected. White women expected niceties of each other and of people of color that are unreasonable. I don’t feel obligated to be courteous about white supremacy when time and again, we’ve been shown our humanity is disrespected. In itself, decency is obviously not a bad thing, but when it’s also held as a moral requirement for equality, it’s the primary force of the holier-than-thou grip that white feminism uses to tone police women of color and devalue our concerns. And when perceived rudeness or “hate” is used as an excuse to not fight for equality, it generally says much more about the species of allyship employed – an insincere one – than it does about the “rude” individual. I also don’t understand it as an indicator of the success of a protest when it seems to me that disruption is necessary for change and disruption generally offends. It seems like the privilege of someone who generally gets results from asking nicely and neglects to notice that this isn’t the norm for marginalized populations.