Feminism Sunday: Feckless C-Word
So last week, comedienne Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a "feckless c**t" when discussion her apparent inability or unwillingness to exert any influence on her father on the issue of separating children from their parents on the border. Bee took a lot of heat for that comment, with some equating it to Roseanne Barr's racist tweet that got her show cancelled. There were calls to cancel Bee's show. Let's talk about why that's bullshit. This is Feminism Sunday.
In a way, I could point to my posts about how It's Not About The Sisterhood, and about intersectionality and just... waive. Like, go read those. But I do want to address the specifics of the case, and talk about the differences between kicking up and kicking down, as well as how intersectionality is very relevant to those specifics.
With an intersectional view of the world in general and comedy in particular, it is vital to kick up, rather than down. Which means that if someone has less privilege than you, especially on multiple axes, you shouldn't make fun of them. Particularly and especially about the very aspects where they have less privilege.
When Roseanne compared a black woman to an ape, what she was doing was leveraging years of racism equating people of African descent to apes. It's racist shorthand.
Sam Bee has a lot of privilege. She's a rich cishet white woman with her own show on TV. But Ivanka Trump is the adult daughter of the President of the United States. There is no axis on which Sam Bee has more privilege than Ivanka Trump. Few people on earth have the power and influence the elder Trump daughter has. Now, I mentioned that she's an adult. This is an important part here. There is a profound difference between going after a child (the worst), going after a teen (bad), and going after an adult (fair game).
Now, should she have used that language? Probably not. Because instead of punctuating her point about policy, the word became the point. Bee herself apologized on twitter, and elsehwere:
45 has called for the Bee to be fired. Now, if you've been on the internet for 5 minutes, you know folks on the right often decry their free speech being impeded. Which is usually bullshit. Free speech has a clear definition. Let's get some help from XKCD:
But it's different when the US President does it. When the president speaks - or tweets - those words have the power of the federal government. And that, my friends, is an attempt as censorship. Is 45 aware of that? Who knows. Should he be aware of that, after so many months in office? Hell yeah.
And while the show has not been cancelled, the episode has been made to disappear. I wanted to embed the relevant video from the Full Frontal youtube channel, only to discover, as others have before me, that it is no longer there. It has been removed. I watch Full Frontal on Youtube, so I can tell you it was there on the night it aired.
If you look for it, you'll find a CNN clip where they call the comment "disgusting." Which, you know, it's certainly not the best. They don't use that word to describe the policy Bee was talking about, of course.
Related posts:
Allyship Sunday: Crooked Media Is Doing It Right
Feminism Sunday: Male Feminist Predators
Allyship Sunday: Intent Isn't Magic
Feminism Sunday: Talkin' bout a Women's Revolution
Allyship Sunday: Representation Matters
Feminism Sunday: Male Savior Thoughts Following A Comics Contest
Allyship Sunday: Allyship Is Not Conditional
Feminism Sunday: It's Not About The Sisterhood
Allyship Sunday: Ally Is A Verb
Feminism Sunday: Splaining
Allyship Sunday: Stay In Your Lane
Feminism Sunday Redux
Feminism Sunday: Should It Continue?
Feminism Sunday: Feminists on the Blockchain
Feminism Sunday: Feminism 101, With GIFs!
On White Feminism
I Don't Want Ally Cookies
You Are Not An Alpha
Let's talk intersectionality
Boom.
Punching up vs punching down is a totally vital consideration. Sad that one word choice derailed the point, but do I disagree that Ivanka Trump is being useless and awful? Not a whit.
Thanks for this. The difference between punching up and down is, indeed, crucial. I think it's also important that Bee was calling out an individual using a word that many of us would like to reclaim. It is particularly important that she is a woman using this word. Would be wholly different in my mind if a man said it. Roseanne, on the other hand, was insulting a whole race by using that terminology. I know she was also talking about a particular person, but I see that kind of language as insulting a whole race. Again important she is not part of the marginalized group using that language. And of course no one is trying to reclaim such nasty languaging. Anyway. Hope that makes sense. Thanks for the post.
This is amazing and so clear. You nail it with:
Great post, really appreciated reading this.