I'm not a Feminist and Don't Call Me One

i am sooo happy women are stepping forward and calling out their oppressors

i am sooo happy women are action heroes and badasses

i am so happy that women get to be the star of their stories and can save themselves without a man's help....


I'm going to say one thing about the word feminism and then i'm done:

That word and all its trappings belongs to privileged white women and all their passive aggressive fears about self-worth, being heard, being equal to white men (who they need to open up their mouths and put in their goddamn place)...white men do a lot of crae cuz their women don't have a voice. And that is a valid, personal problem and I wholeheartedly support their exploration into that movement sans susan b anthony asking ida b wells to march at the end of the suffragette parade while black men, women and children were being lynched as fast as macdonald's sells happy meals....

Feminism is a movement...

I adhere to movements when they embody the change that I want to see in the world...

The idea that women are equal,
can do whatever a man does,
get paid what a man does,
work for herself and save herself
​is not A NEW FUCKING IDEA for me...
That is the very definition of womanhood

To pretend that that is some sort of movement is to deny who I am,
the women that made me
and the world in which I work when to be a woman IS to be a strong, achieving badass who gives zero fucks abt men and their opinions....

That's a given in my world...

Hence, I don't adopt some privileged white woman's word (that has to do with lack of self-esteem and agency) to signify the life lesson, I'm here to learn...

I'm here to learn what the black women of my world have forgotten:

1. How to be vulnerable: to need others and for that to be more than okay

2. How to be expected to be cared for, cherished and to stop walking around with the mantra that everybody hates black women

3. How to truly love yourself and accept nothing less than kindness, joy and things working out

4. To believe that a man doesn't have to save you, but it sure would be great if somebody could come along and help me raise these two kids without assuming i'm angry or emasculating

5. To expect men and black men in particular to be good, honorable, upstanding, men of their word who cherish black women and the black family, who don't cheat....See, because in my world, I was raised to believe black men cheat, make babies with errybody and that you have to accept that and his drinking and his lack of employment, etc....Where I'm from, little black girls were designed to think that all of the drudgery of living would be theirs alone to bear without any support at all even from their fathers, brothers and husbands

6. Here's the one I love: women running around (esp post black panther) saying "I don't need a man to save me"....of course, that's true, but why shouldn't he save you from whatever and give you some back up.

Women running around saying: "I don't need a man"

Okay then why should anyone date you or fuck with you ever if that's the message you're leading with.

When you're in a relationship, don't you love to be needed, wanted, adored by your partner? What would make you think he would want anything less....to be needed, to be vulnerable and lean on each other and require human touch is what it means to be human....


Now, what happens to a little black girl whose raised this way?

She believes the world is out to get her
She misses all the times, someone was trying to be gentle with her and support her
She beats love away with a bitter hand
She's smarter, badder and harder to reach than pluto
She's successful and alone (and not by choice)

How do I know these things?

Because I bought the bitter pill of my childhood...
I bought into the stories...
I watched black women become single parents,
choose bad men and then blame black manhood for their choices,
I watched black women tolerate philandering baby daddies bec that's the best they ever thought they could get (bec who'd marry a black woman, anyway, right?)
I watched black mothers emasculate their sons by turning them into their husbands or their girlfriends

(yes, I did say that shit...how come 1 out of every 2 gay black men I know were molested by their mother's "boyfriend")

Now, granted, I did come from some fucked up shit, immense, poverty and abuse...I am that poster child, but the lessons I learned about what black feminine strength was supposed to be are similar to so many women running around talking about they don't need no man....

I came to believe the bill of goods sold to me
Because the only other option was to face, accept, embrace my vulnerability:

The need for human touch
The need for someone to volunteer to take care of me even though I may never need to take them up on it
The need to express my fears, my hurts
The need I have that allows me to share my sensitive self with someone without judgement of being called too super - sensitive (guess what, I am and that's fine, it's called being a human being)
The need for a partner, a soul mate, a nurturing, powerful complementary earthy fire to walk this life with...yes, that is a need for me....

It may not be for all women, but it is for me...

Because I've never had ANY of those things,
And I deserve them
I deserve my vulnerability
I deserve to be loved the way I want to be loved
But I'm just figuring out how to do that....

So many women take their vulnerability, femininity, softness for granted....You have no idea what it is to live without it...I do and as a result, I have no idea what it means to live with the gift that is so second nature to you...

To be able to tell people how you feel is the most powerful thing in the world....I've can count on 2 hands the number of people I've told my feelings to in my entire life...

Softening
That's what I'm here to learn.
That's the life lesson.
To care for myself, but not use that independence as a tool to block connection.
To give a play-by-play of my feelings to people I'm intimate with....my feelings are my feminitnity, my gift of vulnerabilty. My opinions and ideas are my masculine self....and she is second nature to me.

There's a huge imbalance in my emotional make up that articulates itself in my physical body. My orthopedist wants me to give the frickin left side of my body a goddamn break. I have numerous broken bones, dislocations, fractures, surgeries all on the left side of my body. Why, because the left side is where I'm weakest. It's the source of my emotions. It never gets any exercise so its super weak and I lean on my intellect to get what I want in the world and ignore the joy of that left brain. That wonder...that softness...

You won't get this at all if you've never had the crisis of vulnerability...

If nurturing and caring come easily to you...

But for those of us who have lived a life bankrupt of all those feelings and experiences...it's like I constantly breath CO2 and finally, I got some oxygen.

Going to Morocco where the definition of manhood and femininity is both traditional, but also defined differently. Alpha male, patriarchy means, if you want to be the badass making all the decisions, you best be taking care of everyone all that time...that's your job....that's what it means to be a man....so that all of your decision making is driven by caring for those you were put here to honor, love and protect.

Taking care of others is the definition of manhood.....

I didn't have to be a badass...I was simply treated well...attended to....cared for...by men and women...but definitely by men...

When you don't have to know, do, or be everything all the time...it's amazing to watch people just show up for you, take the mantle and care for you ...care for you in ways you hadn't even thought about caring for yourself.

I realized that the "strong black woman shit" in my life was keeping me from having the life that I want....

So, feminism...I don't believe in that shit for me....

The definition of who I am is strong and forthright....that's what the word woman means to me....it would not occur to me to not speak up about the man who molested me...or give a shit about shaving my head when i feel bored with extensions, or picking up and travelling to a foreign country alone...

I was raised to believe that's what a dreamer, wandering, woman goddess bitch is supposed to do...plus, my grandmothers all pack pistols....so....no....

Softening...the expectation of good is something many black women have not figured out...and many black men are equally as tired of us "not needing any fuckin body"....I need people...I need a man's love, partnership, caring...not cause I'll die without it, but because I'm not really living my best life without it...

So, when my married friends with their adoring husbands go on and on about how they're sick of rom coms and stories where women always need men...that's your experience...

You don't know if you need one or not, because you've always had one and always EXPECTED to be loved, cherished and supported....you need feminism, I guess to feel like you still have agency.

I see that word as a problem that's held me and mine back...

I don't want a world of pistol packing black women (both physically and emotionally) who don't need nobody....

I've lived it... it's exhausting and it short-changes you...

So, no, I will call you out when you call me a feminist, when you compliment me on being so "strong," because all of that lets you off the hook from seeing, honoring and acknowleging the entirety of me...my softness, the legacy that slavery robbed me of...

No, you don't get to call me a feminist, because you need me to ally with your cause to validate it...that's not my journey....I honor and respect that's it's yours, but the whole concept is so foreign to me that I can't begin to fathom it...

I also judge a word a movement by what it manifests and I'm really turned off by what the word "feminism" manifests....

Women who go on and on about how strong they are, but are totally enmeshed with men and their opinions of them....
Women who will not speak up against white privilege and injustice, but want to trail black women around as their "strong, black woman friend mentor"
Women who let men make thousands of dollars more than them because they're so desperate to work, they'll take anything...that's called slavery..

Women who strut around naked in film/tv while the men are covered and they're being paid to be naked - how is that different from being a ho? Here's the thing: sure, it may feel powerful to be able to take your cloths off, but really, you're doing it to get the job, the press and the notoriety. You're not doing it because you always dreamed of being raped, sodomized or stripped naked and gang raped on film....those were not your dreams when you were a little girl. That wasn't your idea of who you wanted to be, but you accept if from male writers, directors, producers because you feel like you have to to keep working. That's not power, that's prostitution and you don't even see it.

You NEED those men....which is why you allow them to rape your or others and say nothing and still buy their albums and make their movies.

This is what feminism looks like to me.

You give zero fucks about poor women without adequate drinking water, education, healthcare and access to basic human necessities, but you'll work for some white man and let him humiliate you, talk over you or down to you, say racist shit...that's the taste of feminism to me...

That's what I see...

I live my life by what I see....

So, no, don't associate me with that...and don't make "strong black woman = feminist" for your cause...

Ida B Wells was a dainty, upper middle class black socialite at the turn of the century who singlehandedly ran a global antilynching campaign without phones or social media for decades.

Ella Baker, Septima Clark were soft-spoken civil rights activists who initiated entire movements for social change with a soft hand and gentle voice. But they are the pillars upon which the movement was built. Bayard Rustin met MLK because of Ella Baker...there would have been no non violence movement if Ella Baker had not initiated that meeting.

She knew where the movement needed to go to sustain itself...and she made it happen. Not loudly or aggressively....but with a softness, grace and piercing, yet gentle intellect.

We've lost some of that softness....

Ironically, as we got more civil rights, we lost more of some of the most important things that made us powerful:
we've lost trust between black men and women
we've lost the black family's clarity of purpose
we've lost respect for one another

Softening... a redefining of manhood and womanhood are in order...

That's the journey I'm on...

In Africa, King's and Queens shared roles...and still stayed married....

I'm looking for what was lost....

And feminism is certainly not it...not for me...

I don't deny anyone their right to it...
A lot of folk need to be awakened to their voice....



But I do draw the line with folks trying to co-opt me into their movement....
Do not call me a feminist...
I find it offensive on so many levels deep in my bones (not because of what it means to you, but what it means to me)

it dishonors what I'm put here to do, to learn, and it limits me to the "survivor" of slavery, not the one who surpassed that "strong black woman who don't need, care or want nobody" descructive bullshit and became something more vital, sublime, vulnerable and transcendant .....


p.s. i’m not interested in entertaining rage or the feminist agenda at all...we got strong and mad down...that’s the problem...its a defense against our own vulnerability and in a sense having conversations abt how we feel abt the outside world and how we’re perceived is a perfect excuse not to deal w/the inner stuff which we create...

sort of like vegan/vegetarian white gurlz, i had a eating disorder but i got over it, so now its disguised as being vegan or vegetarian...half the world is starving and bec u can’t go inside and get right abt u, u pick up all these movements that have to deal w/how the world has shaped u instead of shaping urself from the inside out

without addressing the personal journey of pathological behavior, u can’t even begin to tackle on political movement...and i ain’t talking abt life coaches abd ayanla vanzant...i’m talking bout complicated pathology that’s embedded in us that u need a really emotionally intelligent, intuitive wise woman doctor w/a medical degree to help u figure it out...

the way the world treats me a mirror image of how i feel abt me...the flaws, the darkness, the fragility and the beauty...not code words and pop psychology that reinforces “strong, angry, feminst” generalized, stereotypical words and ideas...