Thoughts on #bossbitch and #winemommy, and related hashtags, + modern white feminism these days (according to me: white woman)?

To be fair, who knows? I’m just one bitch-ass white woman (please note diff btw #bossbitch vs #bitchass), who has feelings (don’t we all?). But in my opinion, #bossbitch (rightfully) died with the rise of Black Lives Matter.

#bossbitch was for white women whose struggles had to do with privilege. I was one who thought it was somehow universal/ okay for a minute, but, hopefully, through listening to our Black sisters, we learned there are (catastrophically) bigger things to grieve/ achieve for our sex than the shrinking minutia of the white-women vs. white-men authority gap.  

My personal goal, these days, for feminism in general, is to shut the hell up, and listen to my Black women friends and their struggles and quietly assist them in whatever way they tell me they need from me. Although, arguably, I’m not doing it right now, in this article. So, feedback welcome on that.

 Wine (white) mommy – #winemommy – arose in Covid 2020 and lingered, and I was there, too, for a moment. This was a largely white woman phenomenon, and not healthy for our society or our kids. We were proposing drinking to ease the whelms of actually raising our children, and, at the same time trivializing the struggles of our BIPOC sisters, who were going through larger ordeals, such as #blacklivesmatter and being silenced as Black women throughout history. Oops and yikes, #winemommy.

 So, where are our white feminist missions, these days, if you ask me?

Following my kids’ generation’s example, which is “sus” of extra time spent reinforcing gender norms, like makeup and hair (I spend five to 10 hours/ week, while my husband spends 35 minutes/ week), or the reasoning behind (continued!) disproportionate home duties, when, typically, men and women are working the same 40+ hours (but women still do extra cooking/ cleaning), I would boil it down (sadly?) to a meme I saw.

The meme said:

“The older I get, the more I see how women are described as having gone mad, when what they’ve actually become is knowledgeable and powerful and f*cking furious.” – Sophie Heawood

 I would amend that, in our new feminism, we elevate Black and BIPOC and trans women and their rage, expressing our rage through serving theirs — by asking a BIPOC woman close to us, how we can lift you up? — I bet if you ask, they’re feeling even more burdened than you are.

And, whatever they say, we do it. Stealthily and with purpose.

So, ask them what they need, and make that your/ their/ our Secret Santa gift. Make it a Christmas gift to our whole community, as women, to get a little furious about where we (still) are as women, and continue to make our priority our BIPOC brethren, so to lift us all.

I will await a new hashtag that maybe encompasses our unified community, but let’s let #bossbitch and #winemommy hashtags retire for sure in 2023, and let’s get a little furious for our closest BIPOC girls for a moment. They’ve done it for us throughout history, and it’s our turn to lift them up.