A white woman who identifies herself as a Mean Lesbian on TikTok criticizes white women on the platform for saying that men of color are “still men,” explaining that this statement fails to consider the impact of racism on the lives of black men in America.
In one video, the author says she sees this kind of message every day.
“It is like every other f***ing day that white women get on this app and say some s*** like, ‘Y’all realize Black men, men of color are still men,'” she explains.
Mean Lesbian references one of the videos where a woman made an example from Congo and Afghanistan and gave two comments.
“Why did I just see a video of this woman being like, ‘Look at Congo, look at Afghanistan’?” she asks. “First side note: Western imperialism, intervention, colonialism. Second side note: nobody’s saying that men can’t be perpetrators of sexual violence. We’re white. We’re white women. I’m f***ing confused.”
Mean Lesbian states that black people in the USA suffer more racism than white women do sexism, even though, as she admits, it is considered inappropriate to compare different kinds of oppression.
“I know that we’re not supposed to rank oppression, but I’m going to because obviously here in America, Black people, in this context, Black boys and men are disproportionately more harmed by their race systemically, structurally, than white women are by gender,” she says.
The creator references the racial wealth gap, redlining, educational and health-care disparities, and mass incarceration.
“Like, I’m confused, like generational wealth gap, redlining, like education, health care disparities,” she says. “Also, I feel like we’re forgetting about mass incarceration here. I’m f***ing confused.”
Mean Lesbian argues that the benefits of masculinity for Black people are smaller than for white men because of the race factor.
“Like, just because you don’t have exposure to like a system of oppression doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist,” she says. “Like, Black boys and men are not; they don’t benefit from their masculinity. It’s racialized.”
She claims that Black men are being criminalized and being perceived as hypersexual beings and describes the justice system as the system that is created in order to imprison them.
“I feel like I say this every other f***ing day, but they’re criminalized. They’re told they’re hypersexual; they need to go away. That’s what the system is, literally designed to incarcerate Black boys and men,” she says. The video starts with the outburst of frustration: “The f***? Like, people are in prison serving out life sentences for weed. White men literally rape and kill everything on this planet, and then they become president. Like, the f***? What?”
She references the history of slavery.
“Why are we blaming Black men for the white man’s patriarchy in America, too? They were kidnapped. They were brought here. They were forced to assimilate into the system,” she says.
Mean Lesbian notes that many of the people commenting on the subject don’t understand intersectionality, which, according to Kimberlé Crenshaw, refers to the phenomenon of overlapping oppression such as racism and sexism in 1989.
“Guys, oh my God, it’s bothering me. You don’t know what intersectionality is,” she exclaims. “Like, whole comment section too is like women trying to say these two systems, like patriarchy and white supremacy, they’re intersecting. They’re interlocking. These systems of oppression are interlocking, and they intersect, and they impact us differently.”
She adds that even though she doesn’t intend to downplay the misogyny that white women experience, they benefit from their race enormously.
“I’m not at all trying to downplay the misogyny that white women experience, but at the same time, we benefit from our whiteness so massively,” she said. “And I feel like if you don’t know that, then you’re going around saying some crazy s***. And never mind the fact that we’re talking about a conversation regarding white women and Black men. Are we being f***ing serious here?”
The creator states that white women weren’t taught the history of lynching in the United States.
“This is something I’ve noticed with white women, because we’re not taught about lynching. It leads you to do and say crazy things. It literally does,” she said. “Like, I think that if you guys read an article or like an archive about what lynching actually was, you would probably f***ing stop saying this s***, because at least like what I was taught in school, I was taught like, I was taught about Emmett Till, and then I was taught that lynching just meant like somebody was hung from a tree.”
Till was a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who was abducted, tortured, and killed in 1955 in Mississippi after a white woman accused him of making advances toward her in a grocery store. He became the symbol of the civil rights movement.
The creator tells about the real horrors of lynching that weren’t mentioned in her education.
“The torture and the barbarity, it’s literally inexplicable. It’s incomprehensible. You guys don’t even understand,” she said. “The white men were castrating Black men. Like, they were doing crazy f***ing s***. Thousands of them, thousands of them. And they’re still doing it today.”
The video ends with the reflection of her own white womanhood.
“And like, look, maybe I’m hyperaware of this, but like, my white womanhood does benefit me,” she said. “However, I want to f***ing dismantle the patriarchy. So I do everything I can to, like, work against it, if that makes sense. Like when I notice it, like, I’m not trying to benefit from it. Like, I don’t know.”
