Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Lies about the meaning of the colors of the pussy hats

I wish to address this calumny against the Women's March that the color of the pussy caps is racial in nature. The reasoning goes that white women's skin is really pink so that the color of the hat actually represents "white" women. 

This is going to be awkward, because that name for the private parts was not one I had ever used prior to this march last year.  I grew up with a sense of delicacy about naming private parts.  Only medical terminology was allowed in my house growing up: long, Latin & Greek root words. The word "pussy" and other slang terms were not allowed in my home.  Still, given that 4.2 million people were publicly using that word last year I've been forced to add it to my vocabulary.

Now as to responding the calumny.

First off, the color pink was chosen because traditionally pink has represented baby girls while blue has twisted baby boys. It had nothing to do with skin color. 

Second, skin is not normally pink.  Perhaps if one is over heated or sunburned, skin may be pink or red, or there may be pink patches, such as on the knuckles, but normally it's some shade of beige or brown. 

Now I've got the word "white" up there in quotes, because no one's skin is really white, either, unless perhaps they're dead, or very sick. 

I find the whole concept of people being black or white troublesome.  That's how our thinking is: black and white.  Our skins are generally not those colors. 

I'm including a picture of the skin on my abdomen. I'm not actually going to show the private parts, because I don't allow them to be photographed, but the skin down there is the same color.  Also, these parts of my body tend to be pale as they're never in the sun.


I've also got a white handkerchief and a pink bandana next to my skin, so you can see that I'm neither pink not white. The skin is not a consistent color, but it is predominantly beige.  My hands are a bit more colored, because they're out in the sun more.  But that region of my abdomen between the two handkerchiefs is the  relevant color.
The only parts of my nether regions that are truly pink are the mucous membranes, which are unpigmented. 

Now I have not examined the bodies of other women, but wouldn't they be the same? In other words, wouldn't women of other races have unpigmented, pink areas? 

I tried doing a little searching online but found no relevant images.  Medical images of vaginas that I could find were all of white women.  Apparently my browser is protecting me from something.

The idea that somehow the pink colors in these hats relate to the color of the body was obviously invented by someone who was trying to undermine the Women's March. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were Russian trolls. 

Moreover, there's nothing saying someone couldn't wear some other color hat. Indeed, many of them were plum or purple colored. If a person were identifying with brown or black, there's nothing to say they couldn't wear a brown or black had.  Or people could wear some other hat, or no hat at all.

It's sad to me that those seeking to undermine opposition to Trump by fomenting division amongst his opponents can succeed so easily in driving people of color away from the marches. I wish we could all be smarter than that. 

Still, it was white women who voted Trump in, so perhaps other white women are the best people to change their minds, so we still have to go forward with our marches, despite these calumnies about our motivations.

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