Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's by Tiffany Midge

Author:Tiffany Midge [Midge, Tiffany]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO002000 Biography & Autobiography / Cultural Heritage, BIO028000 Biography & Autobiography / Native Americans, BIO022000 Biography & Autobiography / Women
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books

Why I Don’t Like “Pussy” Hats

I don’t like “pussy” hats for the same reason I don’t like the “s word,” as in “S Valley” or “S Bay,” “S Creek,” “S Peak,” or “Big S Mountain.” Several of these place names have been changed—Isqúulktpe, Umatilla for “throat-slitting place”; Piestewa Peak, named for Lori Ann Piestewa, first known Native American woman to die in combat, first female soldier killed in action in the 2003 Iraq War.

I don’t have the luxury or the class status to use appellatives like “pussy” or “nasty.” They’re not re-claimative terms for someone like me. “Pussy” hats speak liability. “Pussy” hats speak caste system. “Pussy” hats speak privilege. A carefree embrace that lurks without threat.

“Pussy” hats are not transgressive. “Pussy” hats are an emblem, a tool of privilege. When my people march and organize, the cops and paramilitary are deployed. At the Women’s March in Washington the demonstrators were free from authoritarian presence. I don’t enjoy that same carefree, flagrant luxury my white sisters take for granted.

Because I’ve known the “s word.” I’ve heard it spoken and used like a weapon to belittle, to declare supremacy, to make war. I’ve seen it tossed out of car windows, on school playgrounds, in work spaces. Sharpened like obsidian, used to flay open, used to humiliate, to disgrace, to bludgeon, used like an ax.

I’ve seen it used in a thousand different ways. I don’t like “pussy” hats for the same reason I don’t like the “s word.” I don’t like the “s word” for the same reason I reject injustice, ongoing colonialism, racial divide, war, and apartheid.

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