I so despise hot takes that come from absolute spitefulness, like this tweet.
It sounded so much like this.
It sounded like this.
Here's why I am really hot about this.
My deceased mother was a subject of a smear campaign.
I was a subject of a smear campaign.
I witnessed smear campaigns, especially towards Black, Brown, Red, and AAPI women.
Smear campaigns with a hint of misogynoir were meant to be cruel; the message is for Black women or women of color to "know their place".
Most of what they have said sold publications, gained clicks and likes, gave television ratings, made them viral on social media, and, sadly yes, made money.
The sad part of this is even though misogynoir was made a word by a Black woman, the history of this treatment existed before misogynoir became a word.
Here's the evidence.
Sarah Baartman was the "Hottentot Venus".
Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia about Sarah Baartman.
Sarah Baartman (Afrikaans: [ˈsɑːra ˈbɑːrtman]; also spelled Sara, sometimes in the diminutive form Saartje ([ˈsɑːrtʃi]), or Saartjie and Bartman, Bartmann; c.1775 – 29 December 1815)[1][2]:184 was the best known of at least two[3] South African Khoikhoi women who, due to the European objectification of their buttocks, were exhibited as freak show attractions in 19th-century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus—"Hottentot" was the name for the Khoi people, now considered an offensive term,[4] and "Venus" referred to the Roman goddess of love and fertility.
Her buttocks, hips and thighs were grotesquely overdrawn.
She was exploited, underclothed, groped, and made a human sideshow for money.
She died in 1815; her remains were returned to her homeland in 2002.
Here's an excerpt from the bbc.com article for more context.
Two centuries ago Sarah Baartman died after years spent in European "freak shows". Now rumours over a possible Hollywood film about Baartman's life have sparked controversy.
Sarah Baartman died on 29 December 1815, but her exhibition continued.
Her brain, skeleton and sexual organs remained on display in a Paris museum until 1974. Her remains weren't repatriated and buried until 2002.
It saddens me how inhumanely she was treated in life and after death.
Anther example of misogynoir in history is how Black women and concubinage was explained in history books.
Here's an excerpt from that Slate article.
The rape of slave women and their resistance also figured prominently in some of the most momentous legal and political battles over slavery in the decade leading up to the Civil War.
The 1855 case of Celia, an 18-year-old slave woman in Missouri who was tried and executed for killing her master after years of rape, raised the question of a slave woman’s right to defend herself against sexual violence. Despite popular belief that black women were sexually lascivious and could not be raped, Celia insisted on her right to withhold consent and defend herself.7 Celia could not speak on her own behalf because Missouri law prevented blacks from testifying against white people. Nonetheless, Celia’s defense argued that Missouri rape laws, which made it a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to be defiled,” applied to Celia, a slave woman.
Here's another excerpt about colorism and concubinage from Wikipedia.
Because of the power relationships at work, slave women in the United States were at high risk for rape and sexual abuse.[198][199] Their children were repeatedly taken away from them and sold as farm animals; usually they never saw each other again. Many slaves fought back against sexual attacks, and some died resisting. Others carried psychological and physical scars from the attacks.[200] Sexual abuse of slaves was partially rooted in a patriarchal Southern culture which treated black women as property or chattel.[199] Southern culture strongly policed against sexual relations between white women and black men on the purported grounds of racial purity but, by the late 18th century, the many mixed-race slaves and slave children showed that white men had often taken advantage of slave women.[199] Wealthy planter widowers, notably such as John Wayles and his son-in-law Thomas Jefferson, took slave women as concubines; each had six children with his partner: Elizabeth Hemings and her daughter Sally Hemings (the half-sister of Jefferson's late wife), respectively. Both Mary Chesnut and Fanny Kemble, wives of planters, wrote about this issue in the antebellum South in the decades before the Civil War. Sometimes planters used mixed-race slaves as house servants or favored artisans because they were their children or other relatives.[201] As a result of centuries of slavery and such relationships, DNA studies have shown that the vast majority of African Americans also have historic European ancestry, generally through paternal lines.[202][203]
Going back to the Bethenny Frankel tweet, Wendy Williams comment, and the Roseanne Barr tweet, I would like to believe if these women knew the horrific history of misogynoir, I would like to believe what was on Twitter or what came out of the mouth wouldn't have happened.
Since that didn't happen, I wish them well at the same time I won't beg them to do better.
I just won't invest in their products.