The Witches Are Coming

media is so strong. Media overpowers our conscious minds, no matter how hard we try to hang on—our knowledge of what is right, who has an agenda, what we are really worth. Marketing is powerful and beauty culture is powerful and men’s control of the narrative is powerful and a lot of people are making a lot of money teaching us that we live in an u

It was my best shot at success, or at least safety, and I wasn’t sophisticated enough to see that success and safety, bestowed conditionally, aren’t success and safety at all; they are domestication and implied violence.

Eliminating abortion access for poor folks is an instrument of class and racial warfare. When reproductive freedom becomes a class privilege, the human rights of our political body are negated.

Art didn’t invent oppressive gender roles, racial stereotyping, or rape culture, but it reflects, polishes, and sells them back to us every moment of our waking lives. We make art and it makes us, simultaneously. Shouldn’t it follow, then, that we can change ourselves by changing what we make? The movement can’t just disrupt the culture; it has to

There’s a type of person who thinks he’s getting away with something by not believing in anything. But not believing in anything is believing in something. It’s active, not passive. To believe in nothing is to change nothing. It means you’re endorsing the present, and the present is a horror. And why wouldn’t a couple of straight white millionaire

There is no value in willfully ignoring hatred, and the lie that neutrality in the face of oppression is not a political stance is part of how we got here.

“Joan felt so hurt by the world,” Guy told me. “She felt so certain that she didn’t have what it takes to be respected, and she was going to point out everyone else’s inadequacies because she was sure that hers were very evident.”

“Just a joke” is context dependent. Certain topics, such as rape, can be “just a joke” to some, but to others they require a degree of self-negation far beyond any reasonable cost-benefit analysis.

Those who believe that straight white men have a mandate to burn the rest of us as fuel, to sell us for parts, to mow us down and climb up the pile, never truly conceded that war. They have been biding their time, and this is their last great gambit. But I live in the America that won—the America with art and empathy and a free press and fierce pro