I posted this in response to a short thread on Feminism and Women’s Rights but I want more people to see it. I want to have my say, even if I’m late to the conversation, and even if most people don’t care. I don’t expect many replies but maybe I’ll make some people think about what I’m saying.
I guess none of you are black. It’s the only way you can go out of your way to highlight this man’s ’virtues’. I don’t believe anyone is born bad or is irredeemably bad, I guess that’s my Christian upbringing, but I also don’t understand the deification of this man and the need for many people on this website to paint him in the best possible light. He’s not the first public figure to be shot and killed, even this year. If those deaths were even mentioned on Mumsnet, they certainly weren’t given much attention.
I’d never heard of Charlie Kirk before he was shot and his death had little impact on me. I have serious issues in my own life, people are shot and killed in America every day and there is a lot of suffering going on around the world, a lot of atrocities committed. It didn’t seem to be an incident that affected me in any significant way, even when I discovered his position on transgender ideology. I share essentially the same position on transgender ideology with many people I don’t want to be associated with.
Then I read his comments about black people. I can’t wax lyrical about how Charlie Kirk was ‘decent’ and ‘respectful’. How, ‘Isn’t it nice he gave his political opponents a platform’. And I can’t feel any kind of kinship with people who, knowing what he’s said about black people, still feel compelled to highlight his good qualities.
Let me be clear: I don’t believe he should have been killed. I don’t even support the death penalty in any circumstance, so I can hardly support Charlie Kirk being killed. But I am learning, not for the first time, that Mumsnetters in general, and users of this subforum (FWR) tend to ignore black people and our concerns, until we are useful. Whether that is taking cases to court when much is made of the claimant’s ethnic heritage (why?) or the perennial ‘transgenderism is womanface, it’s offensive like blackface’.
You have no idea and I think it is possible you will never understand just how much slights about my ethnic heritage cut deep. Slights to my womanhood are pretty trivial in comparison. I think this is something white women will never understand. So, you go on singing the virtues of Charlie Kirk. We’ll be here the next time you need to exploit us for your own purposes.