From Lindy West. 

With straight white men—even ones that I adore and who are much better people than I’ll ever be—our conversations have a stopping point. This applies to gay and queer white male friends too. 

I’m tired of having to explain that feminism (even SUPER WHITE SECOND WAVE FEMINISM) is a *thing* that exists and is legitimate (simply even le-gi-ti-mate) to straight white men, and I’m tired of them rolling their eyes when I say “straight white men.” I’m tired of being a Chinese woman inhabiting mostly hetero white spaces and having my invisible illnesses be all the more invisible because they aren’t registered as readily applicable to me. I’m especially tired of every time I think of me, or me being confessional, I ultimately repent with guilt-drenched hours where I repeat sorry, sorry sorry everywhere. Sorry so sorry, was that too much? I can’t stop, I’m so sorry.

For those that have attacked me for using toooooo many words, It Hurts My Feelings when you delegitimize my use of the one thing I’ve relied on as possibly sometimes being in my court. And props for derailing a conversation about race for other means because you don’t think I could possibly know as much as you. Elaine Castillo writes, “If you are a person of color and/or a working-class person, do you also feel the dilemma of always either being too literate, or not literate enough?” 

Finally, I feel like a complete idiot that when I meet wildly intelligent white male writers—these days in New York and elsewhere—how surprising it has been to comprehend what complete dickheads they are, and how much they perform under false consciousness. To those that claim feminism as a special ground from which to carve their identity: please. 

Seven has brought me to tears, which lead to accusations of eight.

You are being stupid though, as West says, and I wish someone could make you believe that even for a brief moment.