An Open Letter to Radical Women of Color From Amanda Marcotte's Sister

By Gretchen Marcotte-Pinth-Garnell

Quit whining and listen up.

Gretchen Marcotte-Pinth-Garnell

My name is Gretchen Marcotte-Pinth-Garnell, and I am the long-lost Republican sister of "noted" feminist "thinker", blogger and author, Amanda Marcotte. Amanda and I haven't talked much since she got drunk at my wedding and insisted on reciting The Vagina Monologues (from start to finish) while standing on the bridal couple's table at the reception hall, but that doesn't mean I don't love and respect her. Or at least love her. Kind of.

It really pains me (well, actually, it only kind of pains me) to see her being attacked - by other feminists no less - for being racist. It also pains me (somewhat) that many of those same feminists are accusing her of stealing the ideas of other feminists to advance her career as a "noted" feminist. How can feminists do this sort of thing to other feminists? I mean, what's the point of being a feminist if the biggest threat you face in life comes from other feminists? That's what I'd like to know.

I say all this with the greatest respect I can muster for feminism and its importance in the world today. While I'm not a feminist myself, and I'm about as white as you can get, even I understand that feminism is not merely a movement about middle-class white women and their interests. Rather, it's about a movement of middle-class white trying to interest middle-class non-white women in their interests. In that sense, feminism is about black women, brown women, yellow women, queer women, straight women and women like to feel put upon. It is about making the world a better place for middle-class white women, middle-class Radical Women of Color and those middle-class white men who submit to the dictates of middle-class white feminism, and it is a cause that should - in theory - unite all of you guys. Girls. Ladies… Whatever.

Can we at least agree upon that? I mean, that’s basically the rhetoric of inclusion and diversity and whatnot that you like to throw in the faces of those you disagree with, right?

Good. Then please consider the following list of blogs:

Angry African-American Woman
Anxious African-American Woman
Irritated African-American Woman
Annoyed Radical African-American Woman
Exasperated African-American Woman
Pissed-Off African-American Woman
Black, Queer and Angry
Black, Queer and Annoyed and Radical
Angry Nubian Woman
Anxious Nubian Woman
Exasperated Nubian Woman
Angry Black Amazon Radical Woman
Angry Radical Woman of Color
Irritated Woman of Color
Annoyed Woman of Color Who Is Somewhat Radical
Really, Really, Really Pissed Off Woman of Color
The Angry Black Women's Collective
The Even Angrier Black Women's Collective
The First Black Women's Radical Collective
The Real Black Women's Collective
The Angry Radical Women of Color's Collective
The First Angry Radical Women of Color's Collective and Communal Vegetable Garden

I could go on and on, but understand this is a pretty short list largely because I bore more easily than your average feminist. So it’s short — oops, there I go asserting Height Privilege over the vertically-challenged — incomplete list, but already far too inclusive of those Radical Women of Color who choose to blog. And when I say "far too inclusive", I mean way too inclusive… Believe you me.

You only have to spend a few minutes at any of the blogs listed above to come to the understanding of what these Radical Women of Color want to know: How many dedicated Radical Women of Color, who spend their lives fighting oppression by parking their asses in front of a keyboard, have to scream at white grrrls, or take down their blog in a huff, or throw up their hands in disgust and abandon the label “feminist”, or stamp their little feet before dim bulbs like my sister actually take their bitching at face value and LISTEN? And when I say LISTEN, what I mean of course, is humor, patronize and defer to (when convenient). I also mean, of course, get offered their own book deals from Seal Press.

At each of these blogs Women of Color express varying levels of outrage at being ignored, slighted and oppressed by mainstream white feminists like Amanda and their enablers like Seal Press. And despite the bitching, fuming, fussing and whining, white feminists keep claiming that they are neither ignoring, slighting or oppressing anyone. They insist they are victims, too. I mean, that's Amanda's shtick to a "t", isn't it? Being everybody's victim about everything? What exactly is the problem here? Isn't there enough honest-to-goodness racism to go around?

Radical Women of Color have spoken up again and again. About themselves and their interests. But just look at what they haven't spoken up about…

Busy talkin' about guaranteed political participation and universal suffrage for women in Africa and the Middle East?
No.
How about legal, political and institutional reforms to protect women with regards to property rights in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East?
No.
Or legal, political and institutional reforms to protect women from domestic and workplace exploitation and/or violence in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East ?
No.
Or legal, political and institutional reforms to guarantee women's right to reproductive and sexual health in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East?
No.
How about political and cultural reforms in the Middle East to end arranged marriages and child brides?
No.
How about political and cultural reforms in the Middle East and Africa to end female genital mutilation?
No.
Human trafficking in Asia?
Nope.
Rape of non-combatants in Africa?
Nada.

The last time this middle-class white woman checked, those were the sort of real issues confronting millions of Women of Color these days. Or I just too damned white to be allowed to point that out? Is it in too much bad taste to point out that there are probably more Women of Color suffering genital mutilation at this moment then suffering unjust, racist denial of publishing opportunities?

Maybe it's because, unlike my sister, I actually have a life. Maybe it's because I actually have a productive and rewarding career. Or maybe it's just because I'm unable to work up the level of self-absorption that seems endemic in feminist circles, but it would seem to me that if Middle-Class White Feminists are guilty of anything, it's of being just as blinkered, provincial and obsessively self-regarding as Middle-Class Women of Color Feminists. This is the pot calling the kettle white, and nothing more.

Here's another thing: Do any of you really think the idea that immigration (legal and illegal) and immigration policy impacts women (and especially women of color) constitutes an original enough insight to fight over its authorship? If so, why? What would make any grounded human being believe such a thing? Has it ever occurred to any of you that if you locked Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in a room for a weekend they'd probably be able to puzzle that one out for themselves?

And then there's Amanda's book. Have you actually read it? What would make anyone think Seal Press was staffed with competent professionals, given the fact that they published It's A Jungle Out There in the first place? Why would it come as a surprise anyone that they'd screw up the artwork twice? And besides, just what was Seal Press supposed to do in the first place? Set it in Minneapolis and call it It's A Suburb Out There? Would that have made it OK to show a blond bimbo in a dress hitting a non-white person in a pinstripe suit over the head with a briefcase? Or is that too close to the whole Hillary-Barack scenario for comfort?

In closing, if this thoroughly middle-class, thoroughly white and thoroughly unimpressed women is allowed to offer a bit of advice to those Radical Women of Color presently in a snit, it would be this: Get over yourselves. You're sounding way too much like my sister to be taken seriously.

Gretchen Marcotte-Pinth-Garnell

Comments

[PeterUK]

How do feminists recognize each other,is it the dungarees,the tattoos,shaven heads,body piercings,the eye patches,the dueling scars? Perhaps the ability to crush a beer can with their eyelids?
Without some idea of this,we can never know if they attacked Amanda simply because they thought she was a dumb shit.

[jcw]

Gretchen, you got all the looks in the family does that mean Amanduh got all the brains?

[PeterUK]

Sadly no,poor Amanda missed out on both counts.

[richard mcenroe]

Gretchen -- you forgot one: The Large Angry Black Woman with a Small Amount of Authority, found in DMV's, unemployment offices and wherever petty,underqualified, quota-hired bureaucrats are offered. Check your local listings for availability.

[Dennis The Peasant]

Richard-

Sounds to me like you could use some racial sensitivity training. How far is SF from where you are? Perhaps you could sneak into the Seal Press training.

Although you'd probably need to grow a mustache in order to blend in...

[Guesst]

Gretchen, didn't you write a book called The White Grrrl's Guide to Racial Sensitivity?

The cover showed a blonde bimbo riding Seal.

[VDJ of the PDJ]

I saw the pic and I was scared shitless that the band "Nelson" was going on a reunion tour.

[markg8]

I was phonebanking for a local Dem candidate last night trying to discern whether longtime Republicans who took Dem ballots in the Feb primary are going to vote again for Dems in November. I got a 35 year old married woman from one of our more affluent suburbs on the phone and couldn't shut her up.

She was absolutely thrilled to tell me her life philosophy part of which was a diatribe against boomer feminists. She spent her twenties building her career, making money (she knows computers! headhunters call all the time! they want people like her to run their companies!, what recession? no recession for her!, I'm running in a 10K Saturday!, we'll never be in a nursing home so I don't care if they have enough nurses!). As you can probably tell it was a stream of consciousness worthy of Amanda.

But it gets better. She didn't get married until her thirties when she already had investments in Fidelity! Those stupid bitter feminists all got married when they were 21 and now they're divorced and don't know how to make money, don't know about computers, aren't economists like her, can't get a job like she can, and don't know how to invest with companies like Fidelity! She went to "a little school down in Champaign" (um, that would be the U of Illinois, biggest school in the state, a fine Big 10 university but not exactly Northwestern or University of Chicago for local bragging rights).

I use exclamation marks because she really was shouting this stuff. Not angrily, but in a loud sing song, loud enough that staffers 15 feet across the room where listening in, evidently trying to convince me that she, her generation, or at least she and her husband who are better and smarter than their elders had it all figured out, life is great, they have it made and the rest of the world are just a bunch of looooosers.

After informing me that she does volunteer work and black people don't she took a breath and I got a word in edgewise. I let her know that sitting behind me were two black volunteers in their 50's making phonecalls just like me. She may have it made if her investments retain their value but there is no certainty of that because we have a 9 trillion dollar debt. When Jimmy Carter left office it was 1 trillion. She then asked when Jimmy Carter was president. She was impressed that I hadn't been struck speechless by her brilliance but I don't think she even knew who Carter was. Ancient history. For a self professed economist she didn't quite grasp that it took 204 years to run up 1 trillion in debt and what 8 trillion+ more piled on over the last 27 years might do to her phat mutual fund accounts.

I never did get a chance to tell her that when Sandra Day O'Conner, the first female Supreme Court Justice graduated Stanford Law third in her class in 1952 no law firm would hire her as a lawyer. She was offered a job as a legal secretary, and eventually got a job as a deputy county attorney in small town San Mateo, California. Those old feminists she laughs at had a lot less choices prior to the 1970s. The biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action programs are white women because far and away they are the biggest demographic that could be helped by affirmative action. This ditz stands of the shoulders of women who came before her and thinks she's 11' tall.

[Dennis The Peasant]

That's an interesting insight, Mark. One of the things that has struck me about Amanda and her ilk is how little regard or respect they have for anyone other than themselves. Seems to hold true for the ditz you have last night.

[markg8]

Dennis do you think it's like that for most people in their 30s? You and I are both tail end boomers, we had a huge cohort entering the job market just ahead of us unlike most kids a generation behind. I started my own biz in 1982 so I never really had to deal with office politics most of my life.

But I imagine if you enter the job market in a burgeoning field at the right time with the right qualifications and fewer competitors in your graduating class you might wind up thinking you're brilliant when in fact selecting your major was your one good decision and otherwise you've just been lucky.

Sort of like oilmen in Texas in the late 70s - early 80s, dotcommers in the 90s, and real estate investers this decade who thought they'd make money hand over fist forever and it wasn't because they were riding a wave it was because they were geniuses. I'd say it's sort of like the Raj syndrome but I don't think he is still deluded about tapping into a gold vein. He's just trying to keep up appearances these days.

[Dennis The Peasant]

Funny that you mention it, because I really don't have much contact with people in their 30s. Most of my clients are in their 40s or are older. But let's face it, you always have a certain percentage of the middle-class population that are just flat-out convinced their the greatest thing since sliced bread simply because their a little bit higher up on the middle-class totem pole than many others. After all, that's why the 3-series BMW was invented, wasn't it?

[richard mcenroe]

Their kidding themselves about many things, Dennis. Including there grammar, hint, hint...

[Dennis The Peasant]

Hey, I was channeling Amanda. And besides, what's a "their" and a "they're" between friends, eh?

[richard mcenroe]

Theirs no they're there...

[Dennis The Peasant]

Tell me about it.