Guest post: It isn’t superheroes who win equal rights

Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on Spiked says solidarity is the work of the devil.

That is, equality was won by was won by ordinary women standing up for themselves one at a time and separately and without conferring or joining forces in any way whatsoever. Yeah! No need for solidarity, no need to organize, no need for campaigns, just each woman square her shoulders and be as great as she can be.

This is the story conservative America tells itself over and over again about how equal rights were fought for.

I grew up hearing that Rosa Parks was really tired one day after a hard day’s work, so she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person.

–Wait, Rosa Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP? She had marched for civil rights and workers’ rights? She’d attended activist training? She wasn’t the first black person to be arrested for resisting bus segregation, but her case was chosen for the lawsuit challenging it?

What a disappointment. Rights are supposed to be won by individualistic individual heroes who are so strong and brave and good they vanquish the meanies and win over the public by virtue of their individual awesomeness. Anything else would be people organizing and fighting together against the powerful, and we can’t have that. That’s communism, and collectivism, and being contemptible helpless creatures.

Funny how libertarian/conservative types run down Hollywood while clinging to the most hackneyed and unrealistic star-vehicle narratives. It isn’t superheroes who win equal rights, Whelan.

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