Canadian Writer: Wearing a ‘Nasty Woman’ Shirt ‘Without Harassment’ is White Privilege

ashley.rae | October 25, 2016
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Apparently, being able to publicly express your support for Hillary Clinton without getting “sexually accosted and harassed” is an example of white privilege.

In an article on Canada’s Metro News titled, “Why wearing a ‘nasty woman’ shirt without harassment is a privilege available only to white women,” Vicky Mochama argues the phrase “nasty woman” -- which Clinton supporters have latched on to after Donald Trump used the phrase to describe Clinton during the third presidential debate -- ”hyper-sexualizes and diminishes black women.”

To support her argument, Mochama cites the hit 90s song, “Baby Got Back”:

The word “‘nasty”’ hyper-sexualizes and diminishes black women. It’s a term of contempt. When the Beckys at the top of “Baby Got Back” take the measure of the black woman in their midst, the judgment they arrive at is clear: She’s a nasty girl.

“I mean, her butt, is just so big

I can’t believe it’s just so round, it’s like

Out there, I mean — gross. Look!

She’s just so ... black!”

Mochama also references a personal anecdote to denounce the phrase “nasty woman,” claiming that she doesn’t “know of a single black woman who hasn’t been mistaken for a sex worker”:

When they say “she looks like a total prostitute,” they’re echoing a racist, misogynist trope that’s much more pervasive than you might realize. I don’t know of a single black woman who hasn’t been mistaken for a sex worker. Whether it’s rambunctious white boys driving by to ask “How much?” or the Paris waiter who asked me to sit inside instead of alone on the patio, we’re assumed to be available for purchase.

Allegedly, black women getting mistaken for prostitutes because of what they’re wearing has something to do with the phrase “nasty woman.”

Mochama then gets to the point of her argument and asserts the “freedom” to wear a shirt emblazoned with the phrase “nasty woman” “without being sexually accosted and harassed is a privilege available to white women.”

Wearing a “nasty woman” shirt, apparently, is an example of “white feminism,” which “can be alienating for non-white feminists.”

Mochama explains an example of “white feminism” that excludes black women includes the Seneca Falls convention:

White feminism looks like #LeanIn when black women can’t get job interviews because their names are different. It sounds like Hillary Clinton saying “This all started in Seneca Falls,” a women’s rights convention where no black women were present.

Mochama argues that supporting Clinton makes people “favour our gender over our race” and that the only feminist “requirement” is wearing dresses with pockets:

Black women and other women of colour are routinely told that supporting Hillary is a feminist requirement when surely the only feminist requirement is dresses with pockets. Women of colour are being asked to set aside their valid concerns; we’re being told to favour our gender over our race even when the world defines us by both.

Instead of wearing a shirt to support Clinton, Mochama writes she’ll be wearing a shirt that reads, “I met God. She’s black.”

Mochama is a Toronto-based writer, described as “the voice of Metro News” and their national columnist

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