Justin Timberlake Gave Me A Crash Course in White Feminism

This isn't really about Justin Timberlake, but it also is

This isn’t really about Justin Timberlake exactly. I mean, it is in that he was the catalyst for a very important lesson about white women, white feminism and white fragility. But it goes so far beyond him.

Let’s take it back to February 2018. JT is headlining the Super Bowl HalfTime Show to coincide with the release of his album Man of the Woods. My Facebook feed is full of my white women friends, the same ones who donned pink cat-eared hats in January 2017 and hadn’t stopped talking about “social justice” and misogyny and whatever buzzword du jour was fashionable at the moment, bitching and moaning about Justin being the headliner. It all read as performative to me, but I generally just scrolled through and enjoyed the hell out of his performance.

Later that night, my bestie (who just happened to be my boss at Scary Mommy) and I were talking about what we had both seen on our respective feeds. Some of it came from mutual friends, but we also saw it from people we knew separately too. On her orders, I wrote one of my most “controversial” essays during my time there. 

“Listen, this is coming from a place of love, but I’m sick of your bullshit. So, as much as I love you, I’m gonna have to tell you about yourselves.”

If you want to read it in full, go for it. Tell me what you think, or don’t. I truly don’t care either way. I will say that it’s literally been 20 years since Janet Jackson headlined the HalfTime Show. If you’re still mad about what happened, I beg you to move on, just like everyone involved did. Janet’s career was never in any serious danger; she was celebrating 20 years as a solo artist the year it all happened. Last time I checked, she was about to go on tour this year and headline a throwback festival. She said in her documentary (which you can watch on Hulu) that her and Justin are friends and they been put that shit in the past. She’s still a fucking legend, and if you’ve noticed, she stays quiet and minds her own because she doesn’t need or want white women to insert themselves into what she has to say.

Anyways. After that essay went live, I shared it and went on about my life. People praised it, people were mad about it, which is what happens. Some people saw themselves a little too closely in it, and apparently that made them have some big feelings. Granted, they kept those big feelings from me, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t find out about them eventually.

Apparently, two of my fellow staff writers at Scary Mommy, both white women, took my words a little too personally and couldn’t seem to separate my very broad reaching words from their own feelings. They went to our editor Sam, the same person who commissioned me to write the essay in the first place, and demanded some revisions. My words were apparently too harsh for their delicate sensibilities, and they wanted Sam to take it down, but would have settled with me toning it down. Sam told them whatever issues they had were on them, and she was absolutely not going to tell a Black woman to tone herself down to protect the feelings of white women.

That wasn’t the response they were looking for. After a day or two, they told her that they no longer felt “safe” around me, and within days of each other they both resigned from their staff writer positions. Mind you, these aren’t women who were merely my colleagues — we had become friends in the year we had worked alongside each other. We shared successes, personal stories. I had wrapped them up in warm hugs and sat cuddled in bed together during a group trip. I cried reading their writing. I cheered for their kids. They had made sure that I had enough to give my son a good Christmas mere months before. But as soon as I said something that made them remotely uncomfortable, I was no longer “safe” to be around. It hurt in a really profound way. I don’t regret the stance I took at all, but it’s still hard.

And that’s the thing. A white woman like that will be your friend until you say something she disagrees with. Or until you call them out (even indirectly) and they are forced to confront their discomfort. The story with one of these women doesn’t end here, but that’s a different story for a different post.

Beth explained something to me once, and it made a lot of sense. White women want justice. As a group, they operate from a place of indignation, and as a result, they want justice. But not the same kind of justice that Black women want. When I say I want justice, I want equity, I want acceptance, I want accountability, I want freedom. White women may think they want those things, but often what it is that they want is to be right and have their behavior justified. They seek vindication for their indignation. 

Contrary to popular belief, Britney Spears doesn’t need defending. She’s a grown woman who lives in a mansion and has a staff and is sitting on a good pile of money, especially after the sale of her book. She told her story, and people took from that what they will. Honestly, I don’t begrudge her her right to do so. But I will say some of the things she mentioned about her relationship with Justin were petty and she did it to try and cut him down to size. Like the Ginuwine story or going out of her way to call *NSYNC urban vs. calling the Backstreet Boys the good little white boys. It’s fucking ironic given that she also benefitted from and profited off of that “urban” sound. Listen to like all of her albums after she started dating Justin, basically from Britney on, they all have a Black sound. She worked with mostly Black producers and songwriters. How many collabs/remixes has she done with white artists besides “Me Against the Music”? 

Look, I do not know the intimate details of Britney and Justin’s relationship. We only know what she told us. She’s allowed to be mad. But she absolutely knows what kind of power she has over the public discourse and her fan base. So like, she knows what she’s doing. I just think she needs to take some of the scorched earth mentality she’s throwing at him at her fucking family who has been abusing her and bleeding her dry since she was a little kid. 

But you know what? This is all totally on brand for a white woman. She’s indignant because he didn’t apologize the way she wanted (or at all) and now, she wants justice. I don’t think she’s gonna get it, but good luck to her.

So, I’d like to say thanks to Justin Timberlake for merely existing, just so that I could learn a very important lesson.