2 Dope Queens: Civil Rights Phoebe

I listened to episode 18 of the 2 Dope Queens podcast, "Civil Rights Phoebe." The episode was originally from October. It featured comedians Jackie Kashian and Jacqueline Novak. The podcast is definitely a work of feminism since it unapologetically champions women's voices and stories and offers a place for pro-women comedy and conversation.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the comedians featured on the show, but the part I liked most about this episode was Phoebe and Jessica's banter about time travel. They were discussing how people like to entertain the question "if you could time travel to any period in the past, where would you go" and how that hypothetical really only works for white people, especially men. Basically, what they said was that this question ignores structures of privilege. It would be unpleasant at best and dangerous at worst for a black women to travel back to virtually any period in history because women and people of color never had more rights or freedom at any point than they do now, although the situation is still far from equal, obviously.

This analysis of a seemingly harmless hypothetical seems obvious, but I had never thought about it before. Truthfully, if someone asked me what time in the past I would choose to visit, I also would be stumped. Even as a white women, I have no desire to live in a past decade or especially century. Between workplace discrimination, general lack of respect, and rape culture - even living in the 60s or 70s is not appealing. I can only speak for how hard living in the past would be as a women and not as a person of color so listening to Jessica and Phoebe's take was really worthwhile.