Vol 12, Issue 10 ANONYMOUS Lean in. Bossgirl. Bosslady. Mentoring underprivileged youth. Empowerment. Inspiration. Leadership training. He for She. Giving back. Fuck them all and here’s why. Having been on the receiving end of well-meaning mentoring programs and similar charitable initiatives for kids from lower-SES backgrounds, I can tell you, what these programs lack in effectiveness they make up for in making recipients feel like weird charity cases. To come into my public school and brag about your achievements like a spoilt toddler is the height of narcissism. Stop pretending you actually care and go do a charity run or whatever it is that you Beckys do.
Because if you really cared you’d have more to say about funding cuts to domestic violence services, you wouldn’t move to my suburb from Malvern and drive up my rental prices, and you wouldn’t talk down to me like some Gorman-wearing girl-Jesus. If you really cared you would educate yourself. You’d be aware that many of the world’s women and girls have already collected themselves – they’re already doing feminist work. There are Muslim feminists, working class feminists, post-colonial feminists. Your role is not to make yourself the CEO of yet another charity, to don a burqa and write about your experience of oppression, to visit disadvantaged suburbs you have no business in to show them you too have a vagina. No! Your role is to follow! Get in line and support what already exists. You have no place here, you are not the hero of this story. If anything, you’re the oppressor. The best advice I’ve ever gotten came from women who were most voiceless. The Muslim Pakistani caseworker who told me if you want to do community development right in a remote village of some post-colonial country, you need to devote 10 years minimum otherwise you’re doing more harm than good. My mum who never completed high school and yet was the single-biggest advocate of education in my life. Not the hot shot lawyer mentor The Smith Family set me up with, not Hermione-fucking-Granger. My hero is my Centrelink-receiving, public housing-residing mother. Lady – you don’t inspire or empower me, and you have nothing to offer me so please don’t sign up for that mentoring program. What I really needed as a poor girl in my teens and early-20s was money, power, and critical awareness. Because the thing that disadvantaged women need is some of what you have: influence and cash. Your airy-fairy false positivity is precisely what is holding feminism back. Feminism is not about you. It’s about equality. It’s about paying your taxes so I can access crisis accommodation. It’s about lobbying the Labor party to reverse Julia Gillard’s cuts to the single parenting pension back in 2012. It’s about inadequately funded Community Legal Centres and the effect that has on victims of DV. It’s about the women who sew your clothes in Bangladesh, who need allies not saviours, who can’t lean in and who look at Emma Watson and feel alienated AF. This is the work of a JD student
Becky's razor
3/10/2017 01:14:09 pm
Have you ever considered that you might just be jealous?
Myriam AK
4/10/2017 11:10:03 am
Whoever you are, that is such a impulsive and unconsidered response to questions about inequality, femenism and class. Shame on you.
Olympia FW
3/10/2017 04:26:02 pm
This is a badass article, thanks for writing about being an actual human woman I might recognise in the real world.
Standard
3/10/2017 07:43:52 pm
This just reads like a salty rant
Ben Wilson
3/10/2017 08:38:07 pm
Thanks for writing this. There's a lot here that should be written. The desire to be Chic Jesus Uncrucified is a very ugly part of our culture.
dim
3/10/2017 08:45:07 pm
so many jd students
Tired of white guilt activists
3/10/2017 09:03:23 pm
Spot on.
Seatbelt inspector
3/10/2017 09:35:35 pm
So white people will be damned if they do and damned if they don't. If those are the rules then at some point they are just going to stop caring and do what they like.
Mahalia
3/10/2017 11:02:43 pm
Seatbelt Inspector, no one is saying white people are damned if they do. "White guilt" is an entirely different concept to white activism, and it was white guilt that OP was identifying.
Ready to ride
3/10/2017 11:09:48 pm
There's a stark difference between genuine actions to help others and self-serving pseudo-feminism. Ie volunteer at a CLC, don't post a selfie to "raise awareness". Donate time or money to a good cause, don't make yourself CEO of yet another pointless mentoring program to feel good and brag about in job interviews.
Nn
3/10/2017 09:06:49 pm
How are you gonna get that influence and cash though?
The inordinately bloated welfare state
3/10/2017 10:20:38 pm
Easy. Tax 'Becky' out the arse.
Daughter of a centrelink-receiving, public housing-residing mother
3/10/2017 09:27:26 pm
Golden
Sandberg
3/10/2017 09:52:18 pm
The thing I hate most about lean in is that Sheryl Sandberg offers great advice for women who can afford to look for a new job, and she fails to mention that every boss she's ever had has been the exact same ethnicity as her. Funny that.
...
3/10/2017 11:06:06 pm
Antisemitic comments have no place here
Chill out chica
4/10/2017 02:29:06 am
Rich people and people from the ethnic group on top do "charitable" things to make themselves feel good. Sometimes those things feel patronising. Voluntourism is feel-good bullshit. What's new? Is this honestly affecting your life all that much?
Sverre
4/10/2017 10:34:38 am
While you have absolutely nailed the straw man argument in the original article, it so happens that Anonymous has (possibly accidentally) hit a mark. Specifically, there is mounting evidence that mentoring programmes such as the one Anonymous refers to in fact do more harm than good:
Saying 'We're all the same' can silence others
4/10/2017 12:46:27 pm
It sounds good that you want to hear more about other people's experiences.
Good article
4/10/2017 09:14:31 am
I think the favourite word of a lot of rich white JD women is "intersectionality". Intersectionality is actually a pretty useful concept in discourse, but in the context of our course, it's basically just a way for ultra-rich kids to claim disadvantage just on the basic of one factor about their identity (my parents are CEOs and I'm white, but because of intersectionality, I have it bad just because I'm a woman, etc.,)
Taña
4/10/2017 10:16:00 am
You're doing amazing work by calling out the harmful (white) saviour complex so prevalent in Australia. Regardless of any comments that attempt to tone police you, or this piece, there is a rightful place for your criticism and anger, and that place is wherever the f*ck you want!
For your consideration
4/10/2017 11:12:03 am
We get it, you and the author just don't like white people very much. If i might so humbly suggest, maybe you would both just be happier if you relocated to some location in which there are fewer or no white people.
Mahalia
4/10/2017 11:42:06 am
For Your Consideration - it’s astounding to me that we’re doing a degree that requires so much critical thinking, and yet you’re so unwilling to critically engage with the problems that OP and this commenter have identified.
Myriam AK
4/10/2017 11:42:25 am
First, that is revolting. Second, show us the courage of your convictions and post under you real name.
Myriam AK
4/10/2017 11:48:27 am
For clarity, my first comment was directed at 'For your consideration.' Mahalia, you and I must have posted at the same time :)
Missing words
4/10/2017 01:00:18 pm
You forgot Yaaas Queen.
Teina
4/10/2017 07:19:36 pm
Thanks for sharing this. I am another kid who grew up in state housing raised by a single mum on centrelink and the small amount of cash mum got cleaning rich peoples homes. I went to a shitty public school where the careers lady suggested to me to do a cert 2 in retail at tafe as my post school option. I have never felt my class/position in society as much as when I started at MLS. For many of us, those things aren't all of who we are, but they do shape the way we move through and experience the world. If you see this as 'idiotic tribalism' then I think you have missed this point. I also don't think the author is advocating that all charitable type work is bad or that people don't have good intentions. I think it asks us to reflect on our reasons for doing those things and for whom the benefit actually is. And whether we are actually welcome or needed in a particular space or are there already people existing and doing that work. Poor people are not poverty porn resume fillers for a summer project.
Bored Spectator
6/10/2017 08:17:14 pm
I just had my comment deleted, despite its being neither abusive nor defamatory. My comment was a satirical observation on the victimhood culture that has developed among pseudo-intellectual twenty-somethings. I am surprised and disappointed that De Minimis deleted it.
Sverre
6/10/2017 08:43:10 pm
De Minimis is perhaps just honouring Melbourne University's policies of prioritising the right for students not to be offended over the right for academics and students to freedom of speech.
Ugh
10/10/2017 11:46:32 pm
Why does the only vocal alternative to nutty idpol crybabies have to be nutty IPA ideologues.
Teina
11/10/2017 12:20:01 pm
I missed your ragey comment before it was deleted. Apologies. I don't think that stating how your position in society has shaped your experience of the world is crying victimhood. If myself and others like me felt like victims we wouldn't be studying at MLS because we would not survive the challenges thrown at us in life and the degree itself. No claims to pseudo intellectualism from me.
Bored Spectator
12/10/2017 12:59:55 am
This made me laugh. My 'ragey' comment, which you didn't read, but which you still feel confident describing. Your sarcasm, used as a rhetorical device to mask the lack of argument. Your statement that you have 'no claims to pseudo-intellectualism' — well, people generally don't claim to be pseudo-intellectuals, do they?
Justine Block
11/10/2017 03:12:23 pm
Hi Anon. I am interested in your point of view and would appreciate a chat to ensure that our mentor programs are meeting the needs of all students. If you would like to disclose to me confidentially, please don't hesitate to contact me on justine.block@unimelb.edu.au.
amhersain
18/2/2018 08:31:56 pm
As an MMS graduate I wholeheartedly support this article but I'd still like to say a couple of rude things about it. Comments are closed.
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