I hurt. I hurt everyday. My heart aches, my chest tightens, my breath quickens until I’m breathing so loudly people begin to stare. I want to say this is a rare occurrence. That I don’t feel like this over ten times a day. But I cannot. This sorrow consumes me—it destroys me. Let me walk you through it.
This is a time to radicalize. To (un)learn. To document. To resist. To demand liberation. To and for freedom. Let’s take the time necessary for revolution and justice to manifest.
Reckoning. Apocalypse. World-Ending Prophecy. Capitalist Failure. Conspiracy. Propaganda. Coronavirus. Covid-19. To name the struggle takes a recognition of it. To recognize the struggle we must name it. What then comes first?
“Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you are well.”
—Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters
In this sphere of polarization and the rise of comfortable/mainstream activism where people want tangible change without giving up their privileges—regardless if this is even possible—we must be critical and vigilant when there are these heavy endorsements of Greta and her forms of advocacy by world leaders, celebrities, and mass media; for it has become increasingly easy to equalize advocacy with action, and white saviours with activists. So, I ask you a simple question, whose answer may be immensely convoluted: why Greta? Why is Greta Thunberg the face of climate change activism today?
What is feminist theory? How does it relate to our geopolitical space? To race? To class? To able-bodiedness? To fat versus thin dichotomies? To sexuality? How do we relate feminism, and its multiple branches, to our day-to-day lives? This toolkit provides you with an introduction to theoretical contentions and debates within feminism, and provides a lens to begin looking at the politics of contemporary feminist theory and subsequent critiques.