Wit & Attitude Quote by Holly Near

There’s a seasoned activist’s impatience in Holly Near’s line: a refusal to let language become the whole battlefield when the real war is about access. Near comes out of the feminist and antiwar music circuits where “visibility” wasn’t an abstract vibe; it meant bodies in rooms where decisions were made, money was allocated, and power was guarded. So when she says, “Once women are not excluded,” she’s naming a precondition. Fix the gatekeeping first, then we can argue about the sign on the gate.

The bluntness of “I don’t think any of us will give a damn” is doing double duty. It’s a pressure release valve for anyone exhausted by purity tests, and it’s a challenge to people who hide behind the safe politics of wording while tolerating structural inequality. Pronouns become a stand-in for a familiar cultural temptation: substituting symbolic tweaks for material change. Near’s “That wasn’t the point” functions like a finger jabbed at the agenda. Don’t confuse the instrument for the song.

The subtext is not anti-pronoun; it’s anti-distraction. She’s betting that when exclusion ends, the anxiety around terminology cools because the stakes shift: language stops being the only lever marginalized people have to pull. Still, the line courts friction in today’s gender politics, where pronouns are tied to safety and recognition. Near’s provocation forces an uncomfortable question: are we fighting over words because words matter, or because they’re easier than dismantling the systems that keep women out?