I also find some of her written posts frustrating, but I found as usual she’s highly articulate in the spoken/video content tonight tbh and I’m completely in agreement with her about this. I especially appreciated her comparison with feminism and how we’ve broadly moved past engaging with clumsy, derailing input from men who don’t have first hand experience or skin in the game. Steph’s comments were inappropriate, rude and racist in this context. The man in question committed a racially motivated crime. Africa is right - it IS a defence of racism to suggest that prison reform is the most pressing matter here and it’s completely fair to state she won’t be discussing it, as she did.
By coincidence I come across this prison reform ‘devils advocate’ argument often in feminist work, so Africa’s comparison rings even more true to me. In advocacy for survivors of male violence, I hear all the time ‘’but the system is broken and prisons don’t help’’ … as if its victims of violence who are the ones who should be willing to take a hit on behalf of systemic failure, or be responsible for making a coherent reform plan.
Ultimately asking a victim of gender or race based violence to justify the legally appropriate consequence of the crime committed is rooted in misogyny and racism respectively.
and mocking the woman for her animal rights activism was completely uncalled for and weird.
