Thread by @pinkness

I am not personally religious, but I have great respect for most who are. I believe that, like with any other set of beliefs, how your religion manifests in your treatment of others is what's important. Does it call you to service others? Help your neighbors? Bring you peace?

I honestly don’t care what you believe. I care about how your beliefs impact others. I care if you see me as less than for not believing. I care if you try to push/force your beliefs on me and my rights. I care if your beliefs cause blind hate for those not like you.

I love people who are devoutly just about everything. I respect their beliefs and will respect traditions especially if I am in their spaces of worship. I do not believe that any religion is better or worse than others.

I think hijabs are beautiful. I think rituals and religious dress is fascinating. I think modest dress and or head coverings are lovely. In the end, what I think about religious beliefs or practices isn’t important. I believe that freedom to worship or not is vital.

I think that @IlhanMN is a strong and vital voice of my generation. I wish to use my privilege to defend her from truly unacceptable hatred and attacks. She is as American as my white midwestern self. She deserves respect.

I can’t imagine what it is to be Muslim in the post 9/11 America. I cannot imagine what it is to be Jewish at this moment in time either. To be part of a black church as those are being burned to the ground across the south.

Hatred and bigotry is running unchecked post Trump and I want no part of it.

I am a white woman but I am a woman before I’m white. I actively try to be a woman and a human first, loving others first.

I am from colonialism, from slave owners. I come from bigots and racists. I have been bigoted and racist. I still have so much work to do unpacking learned but faulty “truths.” I am not woke.

I’ve used harmful language. I’ve been full of racist thinking. I’ve seen people with skin not like mine and considered them others, cause that’s what I was raised in. I’ve caused harm. The only way to redeem myself in my own eyes is to do better.

Do better with me please.

I’m only still here because of the grace, love and help from women of color. Especially black women & femmes. The only doctors who heard me and found working treatment were black queer femmes. The same women who have held me close through this divorce. Who have taught me strength

The therapists who have helped me the most have been black peoples. My friends who lovingly punked me down as I escaped my cocoon of whiteness. Who did work they should not have had to so that I could be someone I can look in the mirror at.

I owe my everything to people outside my bubble. I will fight for all of you. I will fight alongside. I want to be lead by people of color. I want justice for them. For Native peoples.

I am not wracked with white guilt. I am humbled by the strength of minority folx.

This is a ramble but coming back to life is a messy process. I stand with my neighbors though. I stand with those who are stepped on. Those who face challenges I can only imagine. I love you. The only way we get through this horrific period is to come together and not be divided

I want everyone to live in and be loved for their truth.

I want refugees in my neighborhood, in my home if I had any space. You are welcome, you are safe. I will love and support you.

I welcome their perspective. Their lived experience. People fleeing unspeakable violence and fear. I want them to come to my door. In my living room. I want to love and protect them because that’s what is moral and right.

Because I come from unspeakable violence and fear. Because I was irreparably harmed by evil before I had a chance to be anything more than a collective of traumas.

I want to protect others the way I wish I had been protected. The “other” has never harmed me. You know who has?

White men. Over and over again.

I live in “black Chesapeake” most of my neighbors are part of a huge family that has lived here for generations. Their matriarch is my next door neighbor, she’s the most amazing woman. I’ve opened my house to their kids. What is mine is theirs because that’s how they are to me.

I was crying on my porch last year, just after moving in, devastated by the loss of my family. Next thing I know I have a circle of black women bringing me iced tea and talking shit about men. Blessing me. Praying for me.

They took me to church so I’d know the neighborhood. I don’t know any of my white neighbors, they ignore my existence because I look “weird” and am openly progressive.

”my people” don't welcome me open armed, but ”others” do.

Consistently through my lived experience it has been people who I had been taught to see as less who ever actually stood up to help me, outside of my immediate blood family.

We do unspeakable harm to non-white women. Every minute of everyday. Our maternal death rate for black and brown women is criminal. The amazing harm that exists and is done to communities of color by criminalizing their existing. We should be ashamed. We should be fixing this.

I don't have a huge platform. Across all social media I reach maybe 50k people. Most of you have larger.

We have to stand up together and fight for each other. For Mrs Robin. For @AOC and @IlhanMN and the other women who are risking everything to help their communities.

White men, you have to step aside. Y'all have run things into the ground for long enough. White women, unless you're fighting for all people and raising voices of the disenfranchised, willing to be lead by brown and black folx, sit down and listen.

Still sit down and listen, sorry words got away from me. We all need to shut up, listen to and internalize what everyone none-white is telling us. Without policing their tone. Without minimizing their feelings or knowledge or experience. Learn not everything is about us.

I grew up in such a bubble that I was 12 before I saw someone in person that didn't look like me. Not just white, looked enough like me to look like a cousin of mine. I wasn't fucking safe in that bubble though. I wasn't protected.

All that bubble did was wrap me in ignorance, hate and fear.

Anti-white racism isn't real. None-white people's do not have the institutional power to be harmfully racist against us. This is a fact and not up for debate.

We have to stop targeting non-white people. We have to stop scapegoating. We have to stop seeing ourselves as default. We aren't. We have to stop blaming communities that we've decimated and criminalized for their inability to thrive in the ways we can. We are the problem.

I put every spare dollar I have in the tip jars and cash apps of women of color and femmes of color. I'm studying political science because I want to work for women like @IlhanMN and @staceyabrams and @LaurenUnderwood.

I want to work on reproductive justice policy and with organizations like @SisterSong_WOC and @monicarsimpson who is a literal goddess that I factually love.

I don't want to lead myself, I want to work as hard as I can for as long as I can supporting those strong leaders. Those beautiful strong women.

They don't need to be saved, they save themselves. I want to help. I want to be a co-conspirator. I want to support and help thrive, whatever they tell me they need from me.

I do not want performative allyship. I want to use my privilege to lift others. Trans and nonbinary people of every stripe. My fellow lbgtqa+ folx. Freaks and perverts. Devout Muslims. Indigenous folx who we have so deeply harmed. The descendants of the people we stole.

Terrified women with babes on their hips fleeing violence. The babies we have and are currently stealing. Black girls and their magic. Arab women who are facing unfathomable oppression to advocate for themselves.

There is so much beauty and strength in the world. There are so many people risking everything, every single day, just to exist.

I deeply believe we are all created equal. I deeply believe we can do better. I deeply believe there is space for all of us to be who we are.

I think this is my longest Twitter rant and I'll shut up now but seriously. We can be better than this. We have to be better than this.

Hi, okay, so I'm back because that rant just kinda happened but if it had been an essay I would have cited sources, so I want to do that now cause this is getting more than my usual attention. Ty for that, btw.

Most of my tweetstorm came from reading #blacktwitter but especially @iHartEricka @Karnythia @FeministaJones @AngryBlackLady @BlairImani.

@DirtyLola, @Jimanekia, @sexAbled also and especially

@tdg1978 is directly responsible for me being a less shitty person as well as being one of my oldest and dearest friends. He knew me as a weird as fuck Wisconsinite lost and burning to death in texas, and kept me safe when I could barely exist as a functional human. 💕

So many more that have taught me and made me who I am. Even just by reading their words. Especially just by reading theit words and art. Follow me, I'm pretty neat, but also follow them.

@monaeltahawy has been a huge inspiration to me and her works are foundational to how I see the world.

@black_sexgeek, @Makeupandsin, @TherapizeMeCapn, @Leslie_Muse @PolyRoleModels - he deserves his own tweet and buy his book right now. @Mollena - oh my gosh, all are absolutely incredible.

@GoddessCecilia is amazing. @Adipositivity @Afrosexology @lupespace @BlkPomegranate @BlkGirlManifest @polydallas they all deserve your time and more importantly, money. Pay them all.

Some of these folx I have personal relationships with, many I've only briefly interacted with, a few like @rgay @MsPackyetti @AishaMoodMills @DeeTwoCents @ZerlinaMaxwell @mayawiley @K_JeanPierre who I am too in awe of to speak to. 🥰💓

All of these people and so many more have touched me to my core and helped me expand the richness of my worldview.