Glennon Doyle Melton's Important Message for White Feminists

It was a proud moment for feminism. Women from all walks of life turned up in staggering numbers at the Women's March on Washington to protest the new administration. The large turnout of white women, in particular, demonstrated the national anxiety over issues such as reproductive rights, equal pay and affordable health care. "Many of us are feeling alone and ignored and threatened and abused," New York Times best-selling author and blogger Glennon Doyle Melton says, taking a moment to specifically address white women during her Super Soul Session. "We're feeling like our bodies are being threatened and that our children's education is at risk and that we could be grabbed at any minute, and that our degradation and our objectification and our discrimination has become normalized and accepted in ways that are chilling."

Still, Glennon cautions white women against forgetting their privilege, and reminds them that these are struggles that many communities in the United States have been facing for generations. "What we need to remember is that this is just a touch of the pain that so many marginalized people in this country have been feeling for ages," Glennon says. "From black people and brown people and trans people and gay people and Muslim people and Native Americans and poor people, right? This is just a touch of what they've been feeling, and what sucks is that it took us being personally affected to finally show up."

Glennon points out that white women feminists have a troubling history of ignoring the repression of the "other." She calls for a movement that's more inclusive of women and all their intersecting identities—including race, social class, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

"And so, we cannot show up for the movement and say, 'Here we are,' until we say, 'We are so damn sorry it took us so long,'" Glennon says. "We better not speak against misogyny if in the same breath we're not also speaking against transphobia and homophobia and racism and classism and poverty in the same breath because this is one fight. It always has been. ... If our white feminism does not become intersectional, then it will be nothing."

Super Soul Sessions will be available to view on the Watch OWN app and on WatchOWN.tv next month.