Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

By Dr. Brittney Cooper

In Eloquent Rage, Dr. Cooper gives me my favorite definition of feminism: loving — really loving — women.

“I give the side eye to any Black woman who doesn’t have other Black women friends, to any woman who is prone to talk about how she relates better to men than to women, to anyone who goes on and on about how she “doesn’t trust females.” If you say fuck the patriarchy but don’t ride for other women, then it might be more true that the patriarchy has fucked you, seducing you with the belief that men care more about your well-being than women do. 

It isn’t true.”

-Dr. Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage

In paragraphs ranging from hilarious to mournful, Dr. Cooper (@professor_crunk) writes a self-declared “homegirl intervention.” She covers ground feminists will recognize in a voice so refreshingly readable you don’t need to be an academic feminist wonk to enjoy. I mean, I read most of the book in my bathtub, totally engrossed until the water got cold. She brings in seriously important intersections of Blackness and Feminism (“capital B, capital F”). While we feminists can talk some SMACK on self-serving Christianity (especially those of us who respect and love Christ consciousness), Dr. Cooper speaks not only of smugly patriarchal ministers, but also of Black respectability-politics-hawking Southern Baptist culture. She counter-proposes her own “theology for grown-ass women”: ie, ain’t no God create you to feel shame for owning your own consensual, adult sexual relationships and expression.

“I love a penis attached to a man who knows how to use it, but I’m uninterested in femme-style battle royales over dick. That’s just so basic. Who has time? … the larger point is that however dope fellatio may be, fellating the patriarchy is no way to win.” 

-Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage

Side note to those newer to the anti-racist revolution: if you aren’t familiar with respectability politics, Eloquent Rage is worth reading for this overview alone. In essence it’s victim-blaming. It is one of the most common arguments racist apologists deploy, both Black and white. It is reductionist, extremely limiting, and dismisses injustice. Anti-racist allies, we need to be able to recognize it.

There were times I recognized discomfort while reading Dr. Cooper’s work. If ya white, you might, too. For example, she calls out the phenomenon of white girl tears: how ardently the patriarchy is aligned to help (and create…) the fainting (white) damsel in distress, and points to the women in consensual (on the woman’s part) but culturally illicit relationships with Black men in the postbellum South, who subsequently cried rape rather than face stigmatization. Given that those tears lead to lynching, we are not talking about powerless white women. We are talking about white women who know damn well their tears have power. (Relevant 2020 case: a white woman calling 911 on Black birder Christian Cooper in Central Park and screaming that she felt like her life was in danger… because he asked her to put her dog on a leash. Given precedent of police shooting Black men for being Black, some people argued there’s a case to be made this was attempted murder.) Some white women absolutely need this call out to stop leveraging our power — especially power that comes from being young, pretty, and thin — to victimize ourselves, and instead use that power to get s*** done.

I felt discomfort because I love and admire the hell out of Black women (yes, white girls can see and appreciate #blackgirlmagic), and the part of me that is forever shy and deferential felt excluded when this obviously badass, funny, smart, admirable Black woman writes “White women do this…” But here’s the thing, and it’s important: part of waking up is being able to let go of the ego that needs to be validated “but I’M not like that.”

Here’s a parallel we feminists who are white can understand:

Me to him: Men don’t realize some of the ways they harm women.

Him to me: Not all men harm women.

Me to him: Feminist rage

Right? We hate that. We hate when our male partners and friends don’t hear what we’re actually expressing when we point to harmful masculinity, which is pain, disenfranchisement, more than likely personally experienced violation, and really freaking hoping they hear we are rooting for them to show up in a way we don’t often see people who also fall into their (male) demographic show up. We’re not dishing on all men, we’re speaking generally because holy Goddess, do they understand how many women have been hurt by men, yes we know, not all men, that isn’t helping right now.

So where could we as feminists, allies, and, yeah, white girls, get off on putting down Dr. Cooper’s book because we want to protest “not all white women”? If we need men to get over saying “not all men”, we need to sit with the discomfort of hearing how some white women really do “place their race over their gender,” as she writes, as in the almost half of white women who voted for T****.

Just learn to love yourself, we are told. But patriarchy is nothing if not the structurally induced hatred of women. If every woman and girl learned to love herself fiercely, the patriarchy would still be intact; it would demand that she be killed for having the audacity to think she was somebody. 

-Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage

Readability: Couldn’t put it down

Relatability: Mind-expanding

Recommended for: feminists looking to better understand intersectionality, all young women, adults seeking to be better anti-racist allies. I don’t feel like it’s my place to advise Black girls on anything, ever, and also, I will say Dr. Cooper has y’all’s back in a real way that may feel really wonderful to read.

Follow Dr. Cooper: Twitter, and hear her speak here.

Riff: Harmless

To commemorate Women’s History Month, the Marines released a 49 second video featuring a collage of contemporary women Marines. The video shows a representative sample of white women and women of color, enlisted and officers, and in perhaps its most progressive consideration shows women of not only femme but also androgynous and butch presentation.  Its imagery showcases women in training, at the range, and in PT, technical, and classroom settings. The video claims, “Women’s history is our history.” 

Representation unquestionably matters. The intention of the clip is clear: the Marine Corps honors and supports its women. It is unclear, however, whether this kind of top-down publicity does anything to address real gender relations issue within the Corps. 

Comments on the video are completely predictable.  While the majority of the Instagram 189 comments (as of March 3, 2020 at 0913) are kind words and emojis along the lines of “Oorah”, this support is littered with bias and sexism.

Two comments criticize women’s skills, one in a live fire training and one putting on face camo (apparently, there is a way to do this incorrectly).  @farrukh122 is the first to ask, “When is men’s history month ?”, a comment with one of the highest number of “likes”, the Instragram equivalent of “I agree with your statement.” @tomas_220_lopez replies “it’s just called history”, while @moistestman claims “If women actually made much history they’d have more than a month.”  

Here’s some I really appreciated from YouTube: “Murican MTG4” snaps, “Glad to see my tax money hard at work. Why can't we drop this BS and just realize the sacrifice anyone who has been in the services has been willing to make?” How dare you honor merely women? “ConcealCarryProtect” claims, “As a Marine you are separated from the rest and trained as one perfect body. Your mind, your spirit, and your body are trained to peak performance to do what Marines do best. Why then are we seperating [sic] these women? They are a part of the Marines. Is that pride not enough?” Well, ConcealCarryProtect, maybe when 80% of female Marines don’t experience sexual harassment and assault from their fellow Marines, maybe we won’t feel separate. Vinicio Brancato says, “So there's a month to congratulate specific marines who mainly have admin roles, but not for the ones who encompass the vast majority of the infantry.” Son, go walk around the mall in Washington, D.C. Combat veterans are so unequivocally held as the standard, we don’t even care about the vast majority of servicemembers who aren’t. Do their lives matter at all? Additionally, American women do die and are horribly mamined in combat while we consider to think of “combat veteran” as, forever and always, a man, so please sir, get right the fuck over it.

This recurring critical theme evokes the old USMC axiom that “There are no female Marines, only Marines.” @bayne6 says “All equal, right??”, @justin_webb91 “Can’t wait till [sic] men’s history month” and @jonathanrburk didn’t trust he got his point across in his first comment, “Females in the Corps are Marines men and women we fight for the Same thing” because he follows with, “I’m tired of this gender inequality bs everybody still talk [sic] about.”

Then we get this special rational for why women Marines matter: David Baer whines, “Why do they get a special thanks? They dont [sic] do any better then the other marines [sic] so why do they get special acknowledgement.” Mike b babe has it figured out: “Shut up thanks to this brave wamen our bois get to see even more uniformed bunnies on insta there for they can stay longer on deployments and carry more ammo for those long patrols.”

Yes. That’s why I dropped out of college and enlisted at 18 to serve my country. To be a fucking uniformed bunny. To have my personal appearance and images be used for your patriotic spank bank. Oh no wait. It was to help YOU carry the ammo.

The incredible harm in this is clear. Much like where we refuse to see race, we don’t see racism, where we don’t see gender, we don’t see sexism. Immediately following @steven.byrd37’s comment “Every month is Marine month. Female/Male. We’re all the same breed,” is the cruelest comment. There it is: the ubiquitous, still-okay, unbelievably sexist joke. @keelan_devogt finds sexual coercion hilarious with the comment “What’s the difference between a zebra and a female MSgt? A zebra doesn’t have to lay down for it’s [sic] stripes”.

If you don’t do well, it’s because you’re a weak woman.  If you do well, it’s because you slept with somebody.  That joker was going for the cheap laugh, but he’s right about one thing — why yes, sexual pressure is indeed real. “Have” to lay down? Does that scream clear consent, to you?

There it is. That is the point.  This is the reality female Marines contend with. DO NOT FUCKING TELL ME WE ARE ALL MARINES WHEN WOMEN MARINES LIVE IN A DIFFERENT REALITY OF CONSTANT SEXUAL PRESSURE precisely because we are women.  In the enlisted Marine Corps, it is okay to talk shit about women, constantly. I had maybe three women leaders, ever. Men groped me, grinned at me, made sexual jokes at me, pulled me in their rooms, wouldn’t leave mine. Leaders told me because I was pretty, the Marines “wouldn’t be as hard for me.” Eventually I was assaulted by a coworker.

No one. NO ONE. Was telling me “We’re all Marines together” then. That’s only when we get thanked, huh? You know what we’re getting thanked for, what we, women Marines know? We have to deal with YOUR toxic masculinity. We have to deal with a world always defaulted to male. So yeah. Give us 49 seconds to take a breath and remember that we have value, worth, power, competence, and fierce beauty. Let us have this. Give us 49 seconds to regroup and keep living in the boy’s club for a while longer.

A pervasive opinion dismisses all trolling as inherently harmless because “it’s the internet, people will say anything.” It is worth noting this is an opinion held largely by those who are not harmed from cyber bullying. If we still doubt the harm to morale and physical safety of female Marines due to online bullying, we need only recall the 2018 Marines United scandal. 

Some Marine online communities openly denigrate women and casually threaten sexual violence against active duty Marines.  The Facebook group calling itself “Just the Tip, of the Spear” posted pictures of female active duty Marines for other active duty Marines to editorialize, with the caption “Smash or pass?”. Katherine Keleher, an OEF veteran who served as a combat correspondent, says in 2014 the group “Posted pictures of me and they were commenting about wanting to rape me.” 

These are your coworkers, gentlemen. Imagine walking to formation knowing your coworkers’ stated desires involve violence against your physical body. Keleher  called the experience, “a nightmare” [1].

According to the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, female Marines have the lowest  reenlistment rates among  service members with between 17 months and 6 years of service. It’s hard to believe being subject to sexualized pressure and criticism isn’t part of that figure, which means fewer women among senior Marine leadership [2].

Finally, this kind of cyber bullying can bar female veterans from feeling welcome in online veteran’s support groups, here defined as any online community that could address the isolationism and depression many veterans report — if women were welcomed.  Where the home site of the Marine Corps features men with arms around each other’s shoulders, both women on the site are pictured surrounded by men. There is no representation of women camaraderie. To be part of the band of brothers, we still imply, we must be as non-female as possible. One of the guys.

Those hung up on the "no female Marines, only Marines" myth are missing the reality that women Marines face toxicity and prejudice men do not. Much like the angry responses to "Black Lives Matter", the parenthetical was not "(Only) Black Lives Matter": It was "Black Lives Matter (Too)." As long as women receive the short end of trust — as long as it is okay for people to respond to videos honoring female Marines with sexual coercion "jokes" — people claiming "no female Marines" are missing something ponderously obvious. 

From dismissing the real need to honor under-honored women, to making women feel threatened or discouraged while active duty to alienating women who have served after they are out, this kind of cyber bullying, active and alive today, is far from harmless. 

[1] Clark, James. “Marine Corps Finds It Tough To Shut Down Sexist Facebook Groups.” NPR, NPR, 23 Nov. 2014, visited 3 March, 2020. www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/11/19/365220051/marine-corps-finds-it-tough-to-shut-down-sexist-facebook-groups, 

[2] Military Leadership Diversity Commission. “Reenlistment Rates Across the Services by Gender and Race/Ethnicity.” Issue Paper #31, Retention. April 2010. Accessed online 03 March 2020.  http://mldc.whs.mil/