men: stfu about greta
this has been driving me nuts for months, and i have a particularly agitated anger-zone right now. so i’ve decided to explain why i need men — especially white men — to shut the fuck up about greta. i know that publishing this will bring further bullshit, but i will at least have a link to post back the next time this crap comes around — maybe it’ll help reduce further emotional labour for others, too.
funnily enough, it’s about the ‘conspiracy’ of greta’s manufacture — the number one response to every damn positive post about greta/the youth climate strike movement which is ‘helpfully’ shared by men.
note 1 — we don’t need your help when all that ‘help’ does is cut down an inspiring young autistic woman who is reaching audiences that no one else managed to reach. you are silencing her, and by connection, us. we — women, girls, and autistics — do not need any more silencing, thank you very much.
note 2 — your insistence that greta has been manufactured reveals your astonishing ignorance to the fact that — newsflash — WE HAVE ALL BEEN MANUFACTURED. every single last one of us is an output of some form of social conditioning, enabled by some form of economic support. show me one single human who ever did anything substantial in total isolation, who was 100% perfect, or without some form of unethical funding stream or dodgy dealing somewhere on their accounts.
note 2a — if your concern was genuinely about the alleged powerbrokers you believe to be pulling greta’s strings, THEN FUCKING SHOUT AT THEM. but you don’t do that, do you? no, it’s easier to pick on a little autistic girl than to call out the old, white, male, wealthy operators who pathologically believe they rule the world. maybe have a think about why that is. we do, we think about that a lot. (spoiler: it might be because you look like those men, even if that makes you feel a bit sick to think about. that sickness is a useful thing — it teaches you something’s wrong. try listening to it sometime).
note 3 — it’s a distraction. you’re taking energy from a positive, connecting, hopeful thing, and you’re turning it into a ‘well nothing’s going to change and you’re all being hoodwinked, and i’m so much cleverer than you because I see the truth and you don’t’ thing. is it more clever, or less clever, to take energy from a positive and boost it wherever you feel that energy can best help yourself and others? and is it more clever, or less clever, to take energy from a positive and piss on its bonfire, spoiling it for everyone? hmm. let me think.
note 4 — pretty much every one of the men i have seen shout this shit aren’t activists, don’t vote, don’t believe in community or cooperation or collaboration or any of the awesome things that happen when groups of people who give a shit get together and make good things. so, frankly, wtf are you even doing in this conversation? oh, that’s right, you’re telling us — women, girls, autistics — that our silly little ideas about empathy and love and compassion don’t mean anything in your manmanmanly world. yeah, well fuck you.
note 5 — stop being so fucking patronising. given we’re having this dialogue on the internet, it’s safe to assume that, like, i have access to the internet. and given you’re likely fully aware i do believe activism is important, then you can be reasonably sure i’ve probably seen the article you’re so obsessed by. and i probably know it was written by a woman (Sir Cleverness does know that some women have also been manufactured to believe that other women are bad too, right?). and if any of that wasn’t abundantly clear on its own, maybe the fact that the last time i posted about greta — or what’s been happening globally thanks to the epic rise of the youth climate strike movement — you did exactly the same thing. so not-very-clever-me happens to be able to remember that we already had this dance. Sir Clever, on the other hand…?
note 6 — when we ask you to stop — for fuck’s sake — just fucking stop. if it’s your feed, fine, i’m outta there (chances are I’d know your view and would rather save my own emotional labour than even go there). but if it’s my feed, and i’ve already told you to take your bullshit elsewhere — and explained why — then why are you still talking? do you not see how ridiculous you look? the collective women’s eyeroll is aching with overuse. just fucking stop.
now, men, i know you’re not all bad, and not all of you do the above. many of you have done the work: looked at the world with the clearest eyes you can muster, felt the discomfort of what’s happening, noted your accidental compliance within it, and have not simply turned away, locked down that pain into alcohol or drugs or spewing that inevitable self-hatred onto others. instead you have started observing patterns, questioning norms, and ensuring that you’re actually on the path to being the best you that you can be. many of you are admirably strong at acknowledging your own vulnerabilities, your struggles to fit in, your empathy for others. many of you even call out the bullshit at the right targets. please you lot: don’t shut the fuck up at all. please continue. we might not always shower you with medals for being a good person, but we do see you. and we all need good allies.
this is collective grief. we’re all finally beginning to see the truth — that the system is not broken, it was designed to do precisely what it’s doing. that, by following the rules set before us, we’ve ended up in a right old bloody mess, with less than 12 years to fix it, and too-many, too-much, already sacrificed. no one has the new answers we now need to survive this, yet every single one of us can be part of the solution. every one of us can help each other, but not by tearing each other down. and certainly not by tearing down the people who do not deserve your vitriol. and categorically not by hearing any more fucking white men talk shit. haven’t you noticed that’s what got us here in the first place? if not then maybe you need to sit with that for a moment. it hurts, yes, a lot. but the only way out is through. i implore you to go through.
personally i believe that step one of any solution is to look inside ourselves and do the internal work that tells us who we’ve become and who we actually might want to be. that’s long, exhausting, painful work… and honestly?… it never ends (sorry about that).
step two is to surround yourself with allies — people who get it, who know the importance of the work, and are already at least some way through doing their own. there you’ll find empathy, compassion and love, all happily coexisting without the sneers of the patriarchy to bring down the mood.
step three is to take action with those allies. find the courage, in company, to share your ideas, or collaborate with others on theirs, or simply be enriched and recharged being around good people doing good work.
step four is to then get even more brave and reach outside that bubble, i think. though i haven’t exactly worked out what the steps beyond that are, yet. i guess i haven’t walked that far in this particular journey, yet. but given many of us are still stuck behind the curtain, believing that there really is a Wizard keeping us all safe, or a handsome white knight on his trusty white steed coming to rescue us…
yeah, maybe it’s OK to focus on those four steps for a while.
which, you might notice, is what greta does really bloody well.
let’s help her do that, eh?
