feminism means. When Schwyzer admitted on Twitter that he had spent years alternating between abusing students and spouses and targeting women of color, the response from feminist outlets that had published him was to distance themselves. Many white, mainstream feminists claimed not to have known what he was doing; one of the reasons that argument didn’t hold up was the years of blog posts, emails, and articles written by him for their publications where he gleefully detailed his history. It was a redemption narrative that required no actual change or even accountability for prior behavior. Not only was the emperor naked, so was everyone else in his court. What happens to us first will eventually happen to white women, so enabling abusers like Schwyzer can only lead in one direction, yet unchecked racism often renders women who should be allies as complicit in the abuse until they are targets too.
Fast-forward slightly to Gamergate, a loosely connected campaign of misogyny, racism, and harassment. Zo? Quinn was the first target, but the men who went after her, who churned up the rage and stoked the hate, practiced their craft on Black women first. Because Black women are seen as having no selves to defend, it was us standing with each other while mainstream, white feminism looked the other way. By the time the threats were aimed at big-name white feminists like Sady Doyle, Jessica Valenti, and Amanda Marcotte, the question shouldn’t have been “How did this happen?” It should have been “Why didn’t we do more to stop it sooner?”
Many white feminist pundits were shocked in 2016 when Trump was elected, and it became clear that despite his abominable record on women’s issues, race, class, gender, and education, the majority of white women voters (some 53 percent) voted for a man who promised to mistreat them. One who made jokes about grabbing their pussies because he was certain his fame would sway them into accepting his atrocious behavior. Trump wasn’t offering a bright, shiny future with equality for all. In fact, most of his campaign promises centered on the idea that the real problem was immigration. He promised a future with lower competition levels, where white women who live in fear of a mythical Black or Muslim man could feel that their fears were justified, that their racism was justified. Instead of appealing to women on the basis of equality, he appealed on the basis of fear, and for many white feminists, they were shocked to discover that the solidarity they had never offered wasn’t available to them either.
The shock that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump was sadly hilarious. It turned out that even among white women, solidarity was only for some of them. For women of color, especially Black women, it wasn’t a surprise. It was the same racism we had always seen masked as feminism playing out in real time. Feminism that could ignore police brutality killing women of color, that could ignore the steady disenfranchisement and abuse in local and national politics of some women based on race and religion, wasn’t about equality or equity for all women; it was about benefiting white women at the expense of all others. There was a sense that when the targets of oppression weren’t white, it was fine to vote based on “economic distress” and not solidarity with other women. Only it turned out that the policies that followed have so far served to increase that distress, disadvantaging everyone who isn’t a rich white male.
When I first met the writer Gail Simone, I made her gluten-free triple-chocolate cupcakes as a gift. While we were talking that day, she asked if I was interested in writing comics. The comics industry is a white, male-dominated space, and Gail could have treated the niche she has carved out for herself as something to defend from other women. Instead when I said yes, she went out of her way to help me get into the industry. I’ve since learned that she does this pretty often. She knows she has power and privilege and she uses it to help others whenever she can. Sometimes being a good ally is about opening the door for someone instead of insisting that your voice is the only one that matters.
Gail’s a great writer and editor. She pushed back against a misogynistic trope of killing women in comics to further the stories of