Why I Won’t Be Blackening Out My Profile Photo

Blacking our your FB profile picture for a day will not change this rigged world.

“The men” that are supposedly going to care and wonder where we’ve all gone will not change their ways -or this patriarchal world- because our faces aren’t on Facebook.

This is supposedly a “movement” about domestic violence. But how and in what ways does it help, change or fix the actual situations of domestic violence?

Women will participate in this in the same way that everyone posted “hashtag I’m with her” on Election Day. The same women who refused to have actual debates or discussions about politics and real issues because they consider that to be divisive and they don’t like to argue. But they will join in on the movement once they assumed their candidate had won. Or passively change a FB photo when everyone else is doing it. The same women who march when there are tens of thousands for the sake of freedom but take orders on what they are allowed to serve their husbands for dinner.

We do not get our way by hiding. Or disappearing. We do not change the world by secrets and games of fake solidarity. Because where in this “blackout” is the actual coming together? Of ideas. Of hurting hearts. Of broken lives. Of minds to find an actual solution. This does not bring us together. It hides our faces as if we are powerless and in the dark. And it reinforces the idea men have that we play teenager games of secrecy that they aren’t privy to.