Thread by @monaeltahawy

I am ending the day with these two events from today my mind, connected and heavy:

- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was brought to lie in state at the Supreme Court.

Her casket was met by 120 people who clerked for her. Only one during her 27 years at SCOTUS was Black.
#RBG

- A grand jury in Kentucky did not charge any of the police officers who murdered Breonna Taylor.

Instead, it indicted a single police officer for shooting into neighboring apartments, not for shooting at the Black woman who was sleeping in her bed in her home.

#BreonnaTaylor

These events say so much about whose lives are celebrated, whose lives matter, who is remembered, who is given an opportunity, whose oppressions are noted, whose success despite oppression is lauded, and who is considered important.

America is fucked up in so many ways.

From the highest court in the US to a court in Kentucky: who is justice for? Who determines what is just? What power does justice uphold? Who can stick a middle finger up to justice? Can justice survive the tentacles of the octopus I call patriarchy?

#RBG #BreonnaTaylorMatters

This too is feminism.

To ask those questions and to demand answers that insist that we see that a Supreme Court justice who is celebrated as a champion of gender equality was not one for racial equality.

Answers that you recognize that Black women’s lives are not important.

For those who are asking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s clerks washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-co…

“Accounting the hiring of all racial minorities since 2005 — including Asian Americans, Native Americans and Latinos — only 12% of Ginsburg clerks were nonwhite. That ranks her much closer to the conservative justices than the progressives...” washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-…

That is the feminist challenge for which I launched FEMINIST GIANT Newsletter. It is my place for asking those questions and demanding we make those connections.

This thread will be an essay that you can read there on Thursday.

Sign up here - it’s free feministgiant.substack.com/p/coming-soon?…

For feminist analysis, for global feminist coverage, and for insisting that you recognize how patriarchy and its oppressions work. feministgiant.substack.com/p/coming-soon

Here’s my essay: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a Supreme Court justice for 27 years - the length of Breonna Taylor’s life. Whose Lives Matter? feministgiant.substack.com/p/whose-lives-…