Why privileged white women need to speak up

I am the living embodiment of a white, middle class, privileged woman. I live on Sydney’s leafy (and conservative) North Shore. I have an Arts degree majoring in English Literature. I dye my hair blonde and do pilates twice a week. At first glance, I am a walking cliché.

Indeed, for many people, on both the right and the left of the political spectrum, my external circumstances, the privilege and class into which I was born mean I have little right to speak. Or, at the very least, my privilege can be used as a weapon to dismiss or belittle anything I have to say.

Tragically, whether you believe I have earned the right or not, I am constitutionally incapable of not speaking up. If I see something that I think is wrong, unfair or unjust, I will say so. I don’t just say so at nice, North Shore dinner parties either (indeed, I don’t get invited to very many of those anymore). I do so into microphones, on television, on the radio, in articles, books, columns and – all the bloody time – via social media. And, as is perfectly reasonable and only to be expected, I cop a lot of push-back. Some criticism is of the substance of what I say and that is the kind I respect. It is the criticism of who I am that I have less patience with.

Interestingly, when my critics come from the right, it is my defence of the importance, primacy and excellence of public education that invites the most sneering use of my privileged existence to try and shut me up. The argument there seems to be that the only people allowed to argue for the disadvantaged must be disadvantaged themselves. A rather neat way of shutting up any protest, if you think about it, as the disadvantaged are often - at least in part - at the bottom of the pile because they lack the space, energy and, yes, confidence and connections, to speak up and advocate effectively on their own behalf. Frankly, they are often too busy just surviving.

From the left, it is usually my feminism that invites ire. What would I know about anything given my life experience? What right do I have to complain? This is a better argument, and I would never claim to know what it is like to be disabled, poor or a woman of colour but that doesn’t relieve me of the obligation to speak up when I see injustice.

Want more? Try: This is what it feels like to live in the closet.

In fact, I would argue just the opposite. I have a greater obligation to speak out than others because my very privilege makes it safer for me to do so. I am lost in admiration for the courage of Muslim women who speak up against the growing and terrifying hatred aimed at their community. They courageously – whether they wear the veil or not - make themselves targets of bigotry every day by doing so. Young feminists often cop vile sexualized abuse when they dare to speak up on behalf of their gender. If they live alone, they must have real moments of terror when they receive such horrible threats. Game designer Anita Sarkeesian has had to move house and accept constant police security in the face of threats to her life by the gamers who object to her attempts to make computer games less sexually brutal and violent. These women are brave, I am not, but surely it is the least I can do to join my voice to theirs?

My age also protects me. I don’t know why young women cop so much worse abuse than older women do, but they do. Maybe its because some men cannot bear that a woman they find sexually attractive should hold an opinion or have a personality they cannot ignore. They react rather the way I imagine they might if their blow up doll (I assume they all have one) suddenly sat up and gave them a good talking to.

What’s the worst thing that has happened to me as a result of my outspoken nature? I may have missed out on a job or two and there is no doubt I missed out on promotions as a young woman unfairly. But was that because I spoke up, or simply because I had the wrong genital arrangement? I suspect the latter. My more compliant female colleagues didn’t get the promotions either.

Nobody ever threatens to rape me. The worst I get is either about my middle class privilege, which appears to mean I must also be stupid, blind and self-indulgent. Or I am told that my age makes me ugly and so irrelevant. I am often called variations on a bitter, twisted, ugly old hag or – just last week – that I should shut up because I am ageing badly! I respond as follows;

“You mean you don’t find me sexually attractive? What a sweet relief that is!”

Yes, I am lucky. Yes, I am privileged. My fight is to spread that luck and privilege as far as I am able. To do otherwise, frankly, is to waste it.

Jane Caro gave a speech on the same topic at the All About Women festival this year. Watch it below: