(L) Karen Attiah, photo via karenattiah.com (R) Jimmy Kimmel, photo Andy Kropa/Invision/AP
The first time I was censored was because I had the audacity to write an article on intimate partner violence in Egypt that made reference to research, including numbers, published by a state-funded institute. How dare I use facts and figures the regime had made public! A judge appointed by that same regime banned not just the article but the edition of the newspaper in which it appeared, accusing me of making Egypt look bad.
Silly me, thinking that it was the men beating the fuck out of the women in their homes who made Egypt look bad.
The first time I was called a cunt to my face, I had just had an abortion and had refused my then husband’s offer of a Xanax. Silly me, thinking it was my body and my choice of what to take for it.
The first time I was called a cunt on social media, I had just been arraigned after being arrested and charged with vandalism, possession of a graffiti instrument, and conspiracy to commit graffiti, or some such bullshit, after I had spray painted over a racist, pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian ad paid for and placed in the New York City subway by a right-wing hate group.
And there was cunt again, last week, soon after I published my essay that refused sympathy for the devil that was Charlie Kirk, urging instead a clear-eyed remembrance for the hate he so willingly espoused, and which brought him fame and millions in fortune.
“You sick cunt, enjoy eternity in hell you putrid piece of shit,” came one of the earliest missives.
At first, I thought he was talking about Kirk! And I wished I had written it myself, exactly these words in my own essay about Kirk. And then I realized he was talking about me!
In the upside down white supremacist world that is the United States, those of us who are the object of the hatred of the likes of Kirk et al are further targeted by their acolytes for daring to call them the racist, sexist, bigoted pieces of shit that they are. In the upside down white supremacist world that is the United States, freedom of speech is not about the freedom of those of us most oppressed by racism, sexism, and bigotry, but about the freedom of the racists, sexists, and the bigots to continue to fling hate at us.
In the upside down white supremacist world that is the United States, the Washington Post fired Karen Attiah, the last remaining Black full-time columnist, for telling us the problems that we know plague that upside down white supremacist world that is the United States: “the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence”.
More than 300,000 Black women have been pushed out of the workforce this year, and at least 518,000 never returned to the force after the pandemic.
In the upside down white supremacist world that is the United States, freedom of speech is not about the freedom of those of us most oppressed by racism, sexism, and bigotry, but about the freedom of the racists, sexists, and the bigots to continue to fling hate at us.
Most attention in this upside down white supremacist world that is the United States is going to the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, again for saying what we already know: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
It is outrageous, especially “because it came so quickly after the Federal Communications Commission’s chairman, Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, suggested in unambiguous terms that he could consider punishing the local stations that carried Mr. Kimmel’s shows.”
Just as outrageous as CBS’s announcement that Stephen Colbert’s show would not be renewed after this season.
And you know what else is outrageous as all these white male late-night talk show hosts feel the full brunt of government censorship and overreach? That there has never been a woman at the helm of any of those late night shows.
That too is censorship.
At a time when the Trump regime has so many of us in its crosshairs, it is imperative to understand that we do not stand on a level playing field in this upside down white supremacist world that is the United States.
Freedom of speech and its godparent the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution are meant to protect expression from overreach–by the most powerful, by the State, by those who have the power to harm. In the upside down white supremacist world that is the United States, freedom of speech and the First Amendment are used to protect the powerful from the vulnerable, to make it seem as if censorship and the right to call someone a “cunt” were designed to protect the powerful from the vulnerable.
I began with an example of the (many) ways the Egyptian regime (the State) has censored me, I included the first time I was called a cunt (by my ex husband/the Home), and how easily my detractors call me a cunt (the Street). They are instructive in illustrating what I call the Trifecta of Patriarchy. The State, the Street, and the Home–the Trifecta of Patriarchy–operate together to uphold patriarchy.
That trifecta helps explain why I condemn both the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show and the firing of Karen Attiah and I make a distinction between their silencing.
At a time when the Trump regime has so many of us in its crosshairs, it is imperative to understand that we do not stand on a level playing field in this upside down white supremacist world that is the United States.
In Trump’s upside down white supremacist world, a white man contends most with the State. And in that world, a white man like Charlie Kirk is valued more by that State than a white man like Jimmy Kimmel because the former does the States’s bidding in a way the latter does not.
A Black woman in Trump’s upside down white supremacist world is subjected to the brute force of the entirety of the Trifecta of patriarchy, wherein the State, Street, and Home work together to fuel the gendered racism that a white man– whether pro- or anti- the regime–is free of.
If we are to win the fight against fascism in the United States, our fights must be more than just those of white men against a white supremacist regime.
Of course I oppose the “cancellation,” as Trump celebrated it, of Jimmy Kimmel. I am also aware that the latter belongs to a rarefied world of white privileged men who have been happy to rule over the male dominated empire of late-night television that has kept women out of its top spots. Their rule was a form of gatekeeping for patriarchy—it kept women out.
Karen Attiah is one of the few Black women columnists in this country and she founded the Global Opinion section to bring an array of diverse voices–Black and people of colour, including women (including me here and here) –into the opinion pages of one of the most powerful newspapers in the United States. She opened a gate in her profession to people kept out by many gatekeepers. And now those men of late-night television–Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, et al–are feeling something that has long been alien to them: oppression. They’re on the wrong side of a gate that white supremacist fascist patriarchy erected to keep them out.
If we are to win the fight against fascism in the United States, our fights must be more than just those of white men against a white supremacist regime. If we want to defeat fascism, we must understand the intersectionality of oppressions that the Trifecta of Patriarchy employs–who the State, Street, and Home unite to target–and understand that our collective liberation lies in dismantling that trifecta, and not just in fighting to liberate white men from a white supremacist regime.
When you extoll the merits of freedom of speech, ask whose speech? Because the answer will direct you to the ways power flows. Which in turn, determines who you side with. And that in turn makes clear who thinks they have the right to call me a cunt.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her latest book is an anthology on menopause she edited called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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Brilliant as usual-- and an important redirect to those --brown and black women- who get short shrift even as our attn focuses on what certain white men are doing to other white men.
Looking for a way to remember Home/State/Street, my youth "Home" was on "State Street." Literally