On “Pussy Hats”

    After the November election that put the Pussy Grabbin’ Donald Trump in office planning began for a women’s march in D.C. for his inauguration.  This became one of the largest and most peaceful demonstrations in history.  The “pussy hat” design was an inspired way of making a symbol for women to show they were part of the protest, even if they couldn’t be there (excellent story about the hats here).  By and large these hats are pink (usually a hot pink but also the kind of pale pink used stereotypically for female babies’ clothes and rooms) and feature a pair of cat ears.  They were originally knit but can now be found as straw hats with a variety of sized brims and can be purchased in many colors, including black, brown, white, and patterns.

    There is a wonderfully snarky brilliance to these hats that exists on many levels.  The stereotypical pink color, for instance, traditionally indicates weakness and a delicate state but on the heads of hundreds of thousands of marching women that color becomes a statement of strength and solidarity.  The wonderful double entendre of the word pussy refers not only to the crude word for vagina (crude enough you can’t call a vagina a pussy on the radio or television, for instance) but the ageless stereotype that women are cat-like (she’s being catty, they had a cat fight), thus the kitty ears.  The hats are an in-your-face rebuke of the patriarchy and anyone offended by equal rights for women.  At the anniversary march this January the pussy hats were everywhere and their statement was obvious.

    Well… obvious to most.  I have become aware there’s a movement of sorts among some trans women and women of color claiming these hats are offensive… to them!  Supposedly the pussy part of the name is offensive to trans women and the pink part is offensive to women of color.  This, ladies and gentlemen (and non-cis gendered people who don’t understand the term “ladies and gentlemen” refers to everyone but get their underwear in a wad over everything), is why the left is always going to get its ass beaten by the right:  They don’t destroy themselves trying to be more correct than everyone else in their group.  A tiny cadre of disgruntled people looking so hard for any new thing they can find to be outraged by turns on perhaps the single largest group of people who are on their side because they’ve managed to blindly and humorlessly pick at this symbol to find something to piss them off.  You’d think they’d have their hands full protesting the GOP and “men’s rights advocates” but no, they’re going to go after the most prominent symbol of the fight for women’s rights (which apparently everyone but this protesting minority understands means all women’s rights regardless of color or birth) over what are simply bullshit reasons.

    Let’s look at the “it’s offensive to trans women” argument first.  Because of the word pussy they are offended because… vagina?  First of all there is no vagina on that hat.  As I indicate above the word is a play on a vulgarity, but the actual object that vulgarity refers to is not on the hat.  The only way the name of the hat is exclusionary is if a trans woman decides she’s excluded by it, she’s not wearing a vagina on her heard if she wears it she’s wearing a pink hat with cat ears.  If she wears the damned thing she’s part of the movement, if she’s mortally offended by it then she is not part of the movement.  I think that’s pretty simple but apparently inventing reasons to be offended is extremely important to this tiny subset of a tiny group of trans women, but as is so often the case, the biggest assholes have the biggest mouths and, not wanting to offend anyone many people will not argue that their view is misguided at best and truly stupid at worse.

    How about the women of color argument?  That comes down to basically “because it’s pink I’m excluded.”  First of all, many women of color do have pink genitalia, and even those who do not have pink visible externally are pink inside, so there’s that, and if you strip the skin off any of us we’re fairly pink colored.  But more importantly if your vagina is the color pink most of those hats are you need to go to a doctor immediately, you’ve got some kind of serious inflammation going on.  Even if the hat is that powdery pink of a baby’s bedroom that is still not a real skin color and you should go get that looked at.  I don’t remember women of color losing their shit over the pink ribbons for breast cancer which were pink for exactly the same reason the pussy hats are pink:  it’s stereotypically feminine.  Again this seems to be the case of an extremely small number of very loud assholes making a weak case to support their need to be outraged by everything, consequences be damned.  Look at pictures of the Women’s March closely, there are an enormous number of women of color proudly wearing their hats.  Odd that they’re not outraged like this tiny bunch of sour spoilsports.

    The danger that lies in this kind of pointless division is the way it weakens and dilutes the entire women’s movement by causing internal friction over the most visible and unifying symbol the movement has ever had.  As long as there are people claiming they’re being excluded because of a hat they will exclude themselves, weakening the entire movement over petty nonsense.  The hats are funny, they’re immediately recognizable, the knit ones are warm and the straw ones shield the skin from the sun, and when hundreds of thousands of women take to the streets wearing them it is an incredibly powerful and inclusive statement.  It takes a very short sighted and self centered person to feel that a hat’s name and color excludes them.