This one’s specifically for you if you’re cisgender and middle class. I need you to read a few things from a fellow white woman who’s lived in or near poverty most of her life.

You’ve got so many privileges in the “West” and you’re not using them at all. So use this post as a mirror to see what these privileges are and how you can use them. It saddens me that you’ll probably take me more seriously than most Black women and other marginalised women who don’t look like you. But here we are, so let’s go. Oh and since this goes out to the privileged, you’ll have to pay to get access. You can stay and support me or cancel right after if you think what I’m writing is bullshit. Your choice.

Here’s an interesting observation from when I was looking for a featured photo to use: When I searched “white women”, only pictures with a mix of women with different skin tones popped up. Subliminally telling me I’m racist or them desperately trying not to be? When I then only looked for “women”, most pictures were exclusively white women. Oh, so Canva is racist. Surprise. The above picture turned up when I was looking for “mature women” which has, to their credit, a whole range of women from what seems to be loads of diverse backgrounds, ages and skin tones. Not shapes, though, no no. We won’t go that far. Because what pops up when you type in fat women is the most fatphobic shit. Don’t you worry, they’ll get an email from me. About both the racism and fatphobia. I may even start a petition.

Background

Being in spaces where there are not only people like me, who fit into a whole intersection of different marginalisations, but also white, mostly straight sized, middleclass women like you has given me an insight into your humanness. Big shoutout to Keri Jarvis for making her workshops and study groups accessible to people like me (who is also a white woman with the accompanying privileges, don’t forget or discount that; this is not a race to innocence, this is me calling you in).

Now, I’m not a monster, I KNOW you are human. But since you’re still oblivious to my suffering and the suffering of SO MANY PEOPLE in the world, I’m good with ignoring your humanness sometimes and just shouting at you. Particularly on social media. Because you have decades to catch up on. Centuries.

Your praise kink needs to be checked at the door

So, from the start: Don’t expect praise from marginalised people that you’ve done one thing right. Don’t expect validation. What you’re doing is the bare minimum. And if you’re older than me, let me also ask you: Why haven’t you changed the world already – if you care as much as you say – so I didn’t even have to grow up like I did and I don’t have to encounter all the discrimination I am still encountering today as a fat, disabled, poor woman? Where were you? What have you been doing? Enjoying your privileges, that’s what.

Another thing, because I can already feel you getting defensive: Having privileges doesn’t mean that you didn’t have it hard. That you’ve always just been happy. Or that you didn’t work hard for what you’ve got. It just means you had it infinitely less difficult than, say, a Black trans woman. Let that sink in for a second and sit with those feelings. It is also NOT the job of marginalised people to care for your guilt and shame. You have to deal with that yourself, in your privileged spaces and communities, and pronto. The world needs you to step up.

Privilege: a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available
only to a particular person or group

Oxford Languages English Dictionary (Google)

Your privileges are glaringly obvious to anyone but you

Granted, cis white men may be a little more oblivious, but that’s about it. And they want you to stay oblivious and make you think that you’re somehow special, better than “those” people who are scroungers at best.

Everyone else sees it. We see how you’re “girlbossing” it to win capitalism. Not to liberate all of us, just to liberate you and your peers. That seemed to work for a while but it no longer does. You’re waking up and that is a good thing. You’re experiencing a LOT of discomfort; that, too, is a good thing.

What are all those privileges exactly? In the most extreme case, if you were in a dispute with someone more marginalised than you – particularly if they’re Brown or Black – and the police got involved, they would believe you over the other person. You would get away with a word of warning, if that. They may be arrested for the same kind of thing. Their future forever impacted.

You are being favoured in job interviews, getting the better and higher paid jobs. You live in a richer area with less crime and more choice when it comes to food, transportation and healthcare. You are taken seriously in the doctor’s office and are treated like a human being. Nobody will suggest weight loss to you if you break a bone or come in with a stomach ache. You pay the prescription fee at the pharmacy, no problem, and pay for those supplements your doctor advised you to get over the counter, too. You are more likely to have a higher education degree. You will – consciously or subconsciously – think you are better than others because of your physical features, your education or your access to things. That gives you more confidence. You don’t even have to think about accessing buildings for events or just a meal out. You won’t ever have to call ahead to make sure they cater to your needs in the main space as well as in the bathrooms. You don’t need assistance doing your daily life. You don’t have to ask in groups of your peers if it is safe to visit a certain country or city or event or venue. You get to go out and do things for fun, because you have the money and no physical barriers to access them. I could go on for hours. You get the gist.

If you need more ways in which you don’t see the systems around and inside of us, I highly recommend my post on how to continue life. It may open your eyes even wider.

What I see you do

On way more than one occasion, I have seen and heard people make highly inappropriate jokes. And I’m not even talking about the horribly fatphobic jokes that just keep being funny to you. Even though they’re part of your very own oppression by the patriarchy.

I am talking about making fun of living in poverty, in destitution even. What the actual FUCK?! “Ah, it’s been a tough year financially, I basically need to avoid slipping into destitution, haha! Better cut out the takeaways!” I hear you say whilst you’re running around the house you own. You know how absolutely insulting that is? You have a responsibility to not be an arsehole and I need you to take that very seriously. Both on social media, in front of the world, and in smaller spaces – on Zoom, on Discord, in your local community groups.

I know what you think about poor people like me. I have heard and read it so many times, it may as well be tattoed on my forehead for me to see it in the mirror every day. Here are some tropes:

• We are all unintelligent, especially when we use swear words. Did you know that intelligent people are more likely to swear? Fancy that.
• We are uneducated. Even more so, when we’re foreigners and don’t always have the right words for things handy or have the “right” accents. (By the way, commenting on someone’s accent and asking where they’re from based on that is rude as fuck; and racist if it’s someone Black you’re asking. Even more racist when you keep insisting on “where are you REALLY from”. Just stop it already.)
• You pity us, but are sure the system is taking care of us. So, you chuck some money at charities. Money which we’ll never get to see. Money we would need because the government and its systems are negligent at best. We cannot live on that kind of money and it is not because we are worse than you at budgeting. I bet you cannot live on £100 per month for food. Or £75. Or even less. Or figure out how to get free food and then pay for supplements (or steal them…), because you’re malnourished due that diet being very low on anything nutritious; even more so when it comes from a foodbank.

Don’t tell me you’ve never thought those things. Even I have. Often. So don’t come into my comments telling me otherwise or justifying your behaviour. Instead, get familiar with the thresholds for poverty and destitution in your area and start doing something about them; about poverty in general because nobody has to live like that. Here are the thresholds for London to give you a starting point.

What I hear you say

“Oh, I don’t know enough, I can’t possibly speak up!” What a fucking bullshit excuse. Even if the issue is complicated (which it usually isn’t, no matter how much people claim it is; see the Palestine genocide), you have all the resources you need to educate yourself. Get the books, book yourself onto those courses – preferably the ones run by Black women – and fucking learn. What is your problem??? Then there is the fear to lose your status, which I know dearly. Your status in society is so close to the one straight sized white cis men hold and therefore comes with so much power that you don’t want to give that up. You may not even realise this process is happening when you’re hesitant to speak up or take action, but I promise you it is there and it sits DEEP.

“I don’t want to/intend to oppress anyone in those moments, I just want to have a peaceful time.” You will feel defensive now because you have said it at one point or another. I have heard this sentence in many variations one too many times. It is not unique to you. You are not a better white woman just for not intending to oppress anyone. That would be the bare minimum again. What you need to do is to not actually oppress people. THAT would be a change. And that means cutting through the bullshit which is your own bias. Your anti Black bias, your anti fat bias, your ableism, your anti trans bias and your anti poverty bias.

“I have this pay what you can/discounted option for my services but people don’t take me up on it!” You probably follow that up with how you don’t want people to think you’re just doing it for charity or because you pity them because you really don’t, hand on heart. Yeah, try that again. If you fear that will happen, it probably already has and we can smell it from 10 miles away. Do some soul searching to figure out why it all makes you feel awkward, why you feel ashamed of your privilege. All my readings, calls and circles come with a blanket 50% discount for marginalised folks. I made the list deliberately big to a) acknowledge those marginalisations and b) to make people like you more aware of who is suffering in our societies. I daresay that 80% of clients take me up on that offer. I’d go even further and say that it would be 95% but the top 15% actually have economic privilege over me and realise that, so they pay up because they can. Not because they have to. If you show up in integrity, so will your community. AND make it ridiculously easy to access, i.e. automate the whole thing if you can. Because nothing is more daunting than telling a stranger on the internet that you can’t afford their thing that you really want to do or have.

Practical tips

Because I love you – on a very basic, human level – I’ll be concluding this article with a few practical tips. Things to do and things not to do. If you have more ideas or generally want to brainstorm, let’s talk in the comments. I’d also love to hear what is holding you back to fully commit to social justice and drop the barriers between us. Let’s have a discussion. We only get to abolish the systems by breaking the barriers within ourselves and between us. As much as I like shouting at the world, at some point we need to sit at the proverbial table together and have a conversation; as humans.

What not to do

• call yourself a womanist – that term is not for you, it’s for Black women; call yourself an intersectional feminist instead if you need a label and then act like one
• write womxn or womyn – this used to be thought to be more inclusive but turned out to be more ostracising for trans women, just call them women already
• uphold oppressive systems in your daily life: not captioning your content on social media, seeing inequality and injustice and not speaking up etc.
• give your money to charities; this one’s hard because some of them are absolutely life saving to people – if you feel like you have to go down this route make it go to grassroots organisations that are doing actual work in the communities
• make jokes about getting older, fatter or being poor; massively bad taste, embarrassing, in fact.
• buy fast fashion; you DO have the money to buy elsewhere and to no longer support working conditions that equal enslavement as well as shipments of discarded clothes in TONNES to the coasts of Africa
• buy a new phone, unless it’s a Fairphone; I mean it and I say this as an AVID Apple user

What to do instead

• centre the most marginalised; share their content. Found it on a meme account or from a repost? Find the original creator (that’s generally good advice) and share their post, credit them properly.
• organise locally to support your community, your neighbourhood
• educate yourself on ALL the big issues; that includes every last genocide happening, which should go without saying, really
• find ways to opt out; boycott things, find new ways to resource yourself, including money, especially if you’re working for an unethical large corporation
• give up your privileges and at the very least use them; no, I’m not asking you to give up your home and all your money, I’m asking you to dismantle systems of oppression in your daily life wherever you can, even if that means you’ll be out of that particular job or you have to find less convenient but way more ethical ways to buy stuff and get places
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Resources

Let’s throw in some resources because why the fuck not?! Remember: The books below are the resources. The people who wrote them and have a platform on social media aren’t. They are actual human beings. Time to treat them like that and NOT go to their profiles demanding more free education. Pay up.

Consumed by Aja Barber

It’s not that radical by Mikaela Loach

Fattily ever after by Stephanie Yeboah

Do better by Rachel Ricketts

The links to the books are bookshop.org links and are NOT affiliate links. Please start boycotting Amazon today and stop buying from them. Bookshop.org is a fantastic alternative. Or go to/email your (most) local bookshop to buy or order the book in. It’s gonna sit on your shelf for a while anyway, so it’s okay if it doesn’t arrive tomorrow. Many independent bookshops now also have a webshop. Sometimes it is so easy not to invest in companies run by arseholes. If you need a recommendation for a great bookshop to support on bookshop.org, my money goes to Afrori Books who have a tremendous selection of books by Black authors.

What now?

That’s up to you. You can stay here, read on and get into the comments to talk to me and other people. You can go away and never think of any of this ever again, but then please also leave all my spaces because I do not have the capacity to manage your ignorance and entitlement. You can join my Discord server Pluto in Aquarius that is hard launching on 21 January with a Grief & Rage Circle – for paid members. There’s a huuuge free section as well, so have a nosy if you like. And make sure you go through the PiA Community highlight on my Instagram.

Stay magnificent. Stay witchy.