Inappropriate

I know she's just trying to keep me safe but OH MY GOD

Dear Writer,

It’s funny, because when I go through my personal Substack feed, I see all these appropriate headlines, with appropriate language written by appropriate people being all appropriate and shit…

… and then I see mine.

I have been told throughout my life that it’s not “ladylike” or “classy” or “workplace appropriate” to use curse words, but the older I get, the fewer fucks I give about being ladylike or classy or workplace appropriate.

I’m self-employed. Fuck it.

But still… the deepest part of my lizard brain that desperately wants to keep me safe activates when I behave this way in public. She’s this voice in my head, constantly evaluating everything I say, looking for potential threat.

I call her Liz.

---

LIZ: Stop swearing so much. You don’t need to swear that much. It pushes people away.

ME: I think most of the people who follow me are okay with the word fuck. If they’re not, they’ll stop following me right quick.

LIZ: But then they won’t like us. And they’ll just be out there. In the world. NOT LIKING US.

ME: That’s okay.

LIZ: It’s not okay. It’s never okay. Everyone must like us. All the time.

ME: Or what?

LIZ: What do you mean?

ME: What is the great consequence of people not liking us?

LIZ: They… they won’t like us. That’s the consequence. The not liking us… did you take a whack to the head or something?

ME: No. I just thought our therapy was more effective than this.

LIZ: Well, it wasn’t.

---

Liz hears me cursing or talking about white supremacy or patriarchy or homophobia or anti-fat bias in public and she gets so fucking tense.

In my head, Liz is played by a very stressed-out Rachael Harris.

---

LIZ: Delete that. Delete that. DELETE THAT.

ME: What?

LIZ: You mentioned white supremacy. They hate it when you talk about white supremacy and white women. Most of your audience is white women. Do you want them to hate us?

ME: Well, we all kind of hate ourselves, that’s classic white woman, so at least it’s on brand.

LIZ: You’re not funny. I know you think you’re funny, but you’re really not.

---

What I’ve come to realize is that these concepts—ladylike, classy, inappropriate—are just respectability politics used as weapons in a power war designed to prevent white women from telling, or sometimes even acknowledging, the truth. It’s a similar tactic to how the “angry Black person” stereotype is used to silence and police the behavior of Black people. The difference with white women is that the call is coming very much from inside the house; we live with the people making that call, and we are groomed to become the people making the call, essentially doing our abusers’ work for them. We are so close to that sweet power of white supremacy that somewhere in our subconscious lizard brains we think that if we can just keep our white men—remember, these are our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons—happy by being ladylike and classy and appropriate as instructed, we can finally feel safe…

…and they might give us a taste of that white supremacy power, allowing us to pass the abuse on down the line to our sisters, cousins, friends, and daughters.

It’s not pretty and many of us do not consciously understand that we’re participating in any of this, but fuck if it it ain’t true.

---

LIZ: Ugh. You’re not being honest. You just use that as an excuse for your potty mouth.

ME: Did you just say “potty mouth”?

LIZ: You think you’re so much better than everyone else.

ME: I absolutely do not. But I know things, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t know things just to keep us comfortable when maybe we shouldn’t be that comfortable.

LIZ: Fine. Know the things, but do you have to talk about them all the time?

ME: I hardly talk about them at all, what are you even…? Look, if we watch an episode of “Gilmore girls” later, will that make you happy?

LIZ: Why bother? You’re just going to criticize every single life choice Rory makes, anyway.

ME: Only because they’re all fucking terrible.

LIZ: Oh, god, here we go…

ME: I mean what the FUCK was that whole thing with Logan?

---

I’m reading a book now that I absolutely love¹ called Never Meant to Meet You by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans. It’s about a Black woman named Marjette who likes to mind her own business (i.e., keep white people out of hers). Through the course of the story, Marjette accidentally befriends her recently-widowed Jewish neighbor Noa and subsequently sets off sexy sparks with Noa’s hot brother, Max.

The story movements are fairly typical of a women’s fiction novel with romantic elements, which is my genre of choice, but the delightful surprise is in the moment-to-moment writing. Marjette is honest about not trusting white people. She’s honest about Black culture, and how it differs from white culture. When Noa comes over for dinner and tastes her cooking from the pot, Marjette’s response of I don’t know, I guess white people think that’s okay? is delightful, as is the outright shock of her Black friend who is like, What the actual fuck? It’s like if all the anger and shame took a backseat for a while, and people were just allowed to admit that we’ve been separated for a long damn time, and some of what comes out of that is funny.

---

LIZ: OH MY GOD. You said Black. You said Jewish.

ME: That’s… what the characters are.

LIZ: Now you’re going to talk about gender, race AND religion? Why can’t you just tell a story about how your cat is weird?

ME:

LIZ: People like cats.

---

The funny thing is that, through the course of the friendship, Noa expresses that she's not white; she’s Jewish, and persecuted like Marjette. That’s why they’re able to be friends, because they understand each other’s experiences to a degree. Not in specificity, maybe, but in impact… sure.

And this reflects the truth that whiteness is basically made up. Jewish women can certainly pass as white but the eye of White Sauron can also land on them at any moment and take that whiteness away to devastating effect. I mean, this is all in a women’s fiction novel about a woman lusting after her friend’s hot brother. It’s not lecturing. It’s not a seminar on race or gender or whatever; it’s just openly speaking the truth of the situation, while also being funny and loving and and joyful and heartbreaking.

I love this book. But what I love the most about Marjette is that she speaks without restraint, the way a Black woman speaks when she feels safe, which isn't something we white women get to experience often; a Black person feeling safe in our presence. I’ve had this experience with some Black friends, but only after a long trust-building process, and even then, typically we only speak openly when there aren't other white people around unless my friend feels safe with them. To hear Marjette talk openly about not trusting white people without anticipating some bullshit reverse racism² pushback feels like taking off a bone corset you've been wearing your whole life and finally being able to take a full breath.

This is because the text presumes we all know the truth and are on her side. It doesn’t explain anything because it is working on the presumption that it doesn’t have to.

American texts don’t typically do that, especially not ones that are also fluffy, fun, sexy women’s fiction.

I fucking love it.

---

LIZ: Stop telling people about your Black friends.

ME: Should I pretend I don’t have Black friends?

LIZ: No, just don’t mention it. You sound braggy.

ME: It’s not bragging, it’s just the fact of my experience, but you know what fear of bragging, being conceited, or being full of ourselves is, right?

LIZ: So help me god, if you say it’s a function of white supremacy…

ME: The fear was instilled in us from jump so we would play small, shut up, and go along, which serves to uphold the power structures that keep us down. Do you want to uphold the power structures that keep us down?

LIZ:

ME: Well do you?

LIZ: … no.

ME: All right, then. This is how we stop doing that.

---

When I talk to my friends who are marginalized, we speak pretty honestly about things, but with my white women friends… it’s dicey territory. We’re trained to be “nice,” which is inherently dishonest, and we end up pretending everything’s okay when it’s not. This is why white women do so much damage without meaning to. We are trained, from jump, to live in the realm of The Unspoken, this space where reality is actively distorted by the pressure to be ladylike, classy, and appropriate.

Oh, and correct. Remember last week’s post on perfectionism? I didn't get to the part where they’ve got us so afraid of saying anything even remotely wrong (read: imperfect) that we don’t say anything at all… which is exactly what they want.

Perfectionism is a function of white supremacy.

Holy fucking shit, right?

---

LIZ: That’s not what you’re even talking about.

ME: I went slightly off-topic for two seconds, calm down.

LIZ: You’re lecturing.

ME: I do that sometimes. I think it’s part of my charm.

LIZ:

ME: Right? Part of my charm?

LIZ: I was raised to believe that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

ME: You know that ‘niceness’ is also a function of white suprem—

LIZ: I swear I’m going to slap you dead in the face.

---

And the funny thing is… we don't even get anything out of living to these rules of respectability that apply only to us. All we get is not slapped in that moment. Power reaps the benefit of our silence; we do not. We let power control us and have us doing its dirty work and most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re doing it because we’re just so goddamn distracted by the terror of doing anything wrong that we can’t see how fucked up it all is.

My job as a writer, and as a person, is to tell the truth, but when I do, every instinct I have tells me to shut up. Liz is all worked up right now, shouting at me to stop talking about race, stop making people uncomfortable, stop saying these things because it’s impolite, why can’t I just talk about my cat? But there’s a part of that hesitation that most often is effective in my self-silencing: What if I’m wrong about something? I’m still learning. There are loads of things I don’t know. What if I get it wrong? The consequences of getting anything wrong—anything—for white women is most often social ostracization. Did you think mean girls happen by accident? If you do anything “wrong”—and this includes not just what you say, but who you are, i.e., awkward, neurodivergent, fat, lgbtqia+, different from the “norm” in any way—you’re out.

Ostracized.

Alone.

Shamed.

This starts early. Elementary school.

Wear pink on Wednesdays and don’t ask why, or you’re fucked.

---

LIZ: I’m not a mean girl.

ME: That’s not what I’m saying.

LIZ: I’m just trying to keep us safe.

ME: I know, baby.

---

What I love the most about Never Meant to Meet You is that it’s not a story about dismantling white supremacy or doing anti-racist work. There’s no Black trauma on display. It’s just a Black woman living her life and having a crush on her Jewish friend’s hot brother and apologizing for nothing. It’s not written for a white or Black audience; it’s just written for people, and it finds spaces of connection where we discard the bone corset and just speak the simple truth… which is that, when it comes down to it, we’re all just people tasting someone’s cooking while it’s still on the stove and trying to get with our friend’s hot brother.

We’re getting closer, not farther apart, and that’s why the ground is shaking.

Because that’s how you fuck up the power structures. You bond together, look out for each other, lock arms and barrel forward.

Together.

Everything,

L

1. I’m done yet, but I don’t care, even if they don’t land the ending of the story, I'm recommending it anyway.

2. Reverse racism isn’t real. The very idea of “reverse” racism presumes that anti-Black racism is the “natural” direction of racism, so in order for white people to experience racism, it must be “reversed.” Also, racism is systemic and built to preserve existing power structures, so the powerful group by design cannot experience it. Liz is telling me to shut up and stop lecturing now. But if you were curious… these are the footnotes.