Leia, Hillary, and Trusting Black Women
By: Heron Greenesmith
Tags: Black Women, Hillary Clinton, White Supremacy, Star Wars, Politics

I hated Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

The Porg are adorable, yet watching this story about power, about mistakes and growth, about in-betweens and passionate advocacy for important causes, I could only see what I saw drenching the 2016 election, and what I have seen throughout 2017.

What I saw were incredible, brilliant, qualified, powerful women and the men who refused to trust them.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

**Spoilers for Last Jedi**

Poe Dameron, demoted for disobeying General Leia Organa’s direct orders during a battle, refuses to believe that the female Admiral Holdo could be making rational, strategic decisions for the resistance forces. And so, in order to protect the lives of the remaining rebels and stop Poe in the act of outright mutiny, General Organa must be roused from a coma to shoot Poe.

Poe is embarrassed and astonished to find that Admiral Holdo, of great military fame, had a plan all along but didn’t share it with him. He, a rebel hero, a famed fighter and resistance darling, created work and chaos for the leaders of the rebellion, resulting in the loss of who knows how many lives, including Admiral Holdo’s, in order to soothe his precious ego.

The fact is: Poe doesn’t trust powerful women.

I’ve read arguments that the Last Jedi is showing us the price of misogyny, the importance of feminism.

But I know the price of misogyny and I know the importance of feminism.

I want to see a universe that already understands the toll of sexism and bigotry, a universe in which powerful women and non-binary people are respected as experts without question. I want to see a universe in which men don’t need to be taught by women that powerful women deserve trust.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

The 2016 election was a farce. Research reveals what we all lived through: pundit after pundit after reporter after campaign correspondent treated Donald Trump’s experience and policy statements as equal to Hillary Clinton’s and questioned her ability to lead the country as frequently as his. Clinton is a former Secretary of State and former Senator, with decades of political experience. Trump is a businessman with dozens of criminal and civil charges, settlements, and bankruptcies.

And who were the men who shaped coverage of the election? Glenn Thrush. Matt Lauer. Bill O’Reilly. Mark Halperin. Charlie Rose. These men created the narrative of a powerful woman who couldn’t possibly be trusted because she used a private email server, because she, like Leia Organa, was related to another powerful person. And they positioned her as an equal to Donald Trump, whose rape and sexual harassment charges were dismissed as merely “boorish or politically incorrect.”

And of course, each of these men has something else in common. They have all been accused of sexual assault and sexual violence by women. Each of these men are misogynists. Their misogyny terrorizes women they worked with and likely colored their coverage of the election. These men view women as objects to play with or ignore. Powerful women threaten that view, refusing to be played with or ignored.

But before these reporters and pundits were stripped of their power by the women whom they terrorize, Donald Trump won the election.

He was voted into power by white, middle class men and women afraid to lose the power granted by white supremacy, affirmed in their decision by men who were invested in supporting another man who preyed on women.

Trump voters and the reporters who abetted them don’t trust powerful women.