Get a wider lens

If you search “Meryl Streep feminism” on Twitter you will find an absurd controversy in action: people expressing shock and horror that Streep wore, for the cover of Time Out, a t shirt that says

I’D RATHER BE A REBEL THAN A SLAVE

The cover story is about a new movie in which Streep plays Emmeline Pankhurst. The movie is titled Suffragette. It’s about the suffragettes. The slogan was coined by Emmeline Pankhurst.

Tweeters are freaking out because omg Streep is white, that’s appropriation, doesn’t anybody know any history?!

History. Slavery has been a thing throughout human history. It has been used as a metaphor throughout human history. It is not the exclusive property of Americans, not even Americans whose grandparents were slaves. Another widely used and related metaphor is the one about being in chains (Rousseau, Marx); that too is universal, not parochial.

End of morning history lesson.

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