I’m not going to address the ‘white girls get it too omg’ bullshit because they do, but it’s always different. I’m writing this as a woman of color who’s experienced street harassment more times than I can count.
First off, I think people need to realize that this isn’t just basic misogyny when it comes to women of color. It’s misogyny and whiteness showing both their ugly faces simultaneously. Because misogyny treats white women completely differently.
But whiteness tells US (WOC) some whole other shit, mainly two things:
1. Black and brown women are sexually undesirable (unless of course, they’re light)
2. Black and brown are always sexually availableand that combination of ideas is what’s really so dangerous about street harassment. Because if you believe both, then you believe that Black and brown women SHOULD BE HAPPY when you harass them on the street. You’re not even desirable, you should be fucking flattered. Men who perpetrate street harassment are under the impression that I owe them my time and that their harassment should be taken as a complement because I have brown skin. And that is what makes street harassment genuinely dangerous- the sense of entitlement to ME.
I had a guy tell me once when he scared the shit out of me by following me into a corner store (I was 15) because I freaked and didn’t give him my name, ‘Man I ain’t finna take this shit from no bitch.’
What he meant was, you’re brown. Be happy I just harassed you. Street harassment isn’t just misogyny at work- it’s whiteness telling men how to treat Black and brown women.
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» CeCe McDonald, the Girl Who Lived (And Why There is No Justice for Transgender Women of Color)
In November of last year, while awaiting trial, CeCe wrote:
I am truly sorry for the loss of a person who also was involved in the incident, but how would my mom and family feel if she heard that I was killed by a group of racist, homophobic/transphobic people only for walking to the store and being at the wrong place at the wrong time, which luckily I wasn’t by myself. Or even looking at it in different aspects, would the situation have been the same? Would they have taken the same lengths to prosecute him if he had killed me? Or would they have even cared if it were a black on black crime?
Given the magnitude of the violence perpetrated against transgender women of color, CeCe’s question demands a thoughtful answer. Had CeCe been alone, it’s entirely possible that she might not have survived this encounter; as it is, she has pled guilty to a crime in spite of her assertions that she was acting in self-defense, and will serve time simply because she managed to survive a violent attack. (No one else has been arrested or charged in the incident.)
Transgender women of color are at the highest risk of hate-based violence of any group, unsurprising for a group of people surviving under three oppressive yokes — racism, sexism, and transphobia — all at the same time. According to a 2011 report, 70 percent of LGBT murder victims were people of color. 44 percent were specifically women of color.
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"What counts as activism? Why didn’t the kind of emotional self-care me and my girls were doing—talking to each other about all the fucked-up shit we were going through as brown girls—count? Why didn’t my best friend driving her elderly East African mother to the doctor and renegotiating her way through the layers of the racist, sexist, condescending bullshit medical system count as activism? Did staying alive count as activism? Did re-learning Tamil, one of my Sri Lankan family’s languages, count? Did cooking good Sri Lankan food and learning how to cook those recipes I didn’t have female family members around to teach me count? As a South Asian femme immigrant who was having a shitty week, did shopping at the MAC counter and finding the perfect shade of fuchsia lip gloss for my milk-tea skin count?"Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “A Time to Hole Up And a Time to Kick Ass” in We Don’t Need Another Wave (via gingerrqueer)
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I wore this dress out to my bff’s birthday celebration a couple of weeks back. It’s short and low cut and super clingy. And I wore it, happily, without feeling self conscious of my thunder thighs or fat stomach. In fact, I felt comfortable, sexy, confident, empowered, proud. And I still do.
[Yes, I realised that I only have one pose when my mamma’s taking photos of me]
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Tumblr bomb this! Help CeCe McDonald!
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Muholi’s role is to simply and effectively afford her subjects a platform to be “seen” and furthermore be recognized in a climate that has, to date, marginalized this community and omitted documenting its existence.
Giving a Face to Black Queer Identity (Photography by Zanele Muholi)
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its not long enough to be a manifesto, but it should be: the orifice on this black woman’s body can speak and will speak, but you gotta listen
Dear Nicki Minaj,
Next time you dress yourself in animal print clothing and dance around in a cage while being a colored woman, you should realize that you the result of years and years of male-dominated media stereotyping colored women as exotic, hypersexual, promiscuous, animal-like things. Not even human, just things, objects. Hope you’re proud of yourself and how you make colored women look. So, next time…just don’t.
Sincerely,
a disappointed young woman.Dear faineemae,
As somebody who is an African American woman and not necessarily a fan of Nicki Minaj, it pains me when non-African American people attempt to talk about our hyper-sexualization and our objectification. It pains me because most often they have not educated themselves about the history associated with the hyper-sexualization and objectification of black women’s bodies. They have not done the research necessary to understand its origins in our society, in what societal dynamics this occurs, what constructs are at play, and the effects it has had on African American women over the course of American history. Instead, cases like Nicki Minaj are often times inappropriately used as umbrella examples as to how the behaviour of one is affecting us all.
I, like many of us, have a voice. I am perfectly capable of saying what about Nicki Minaj’s representation bothers me and how I perceive it affects the representation of African American women in mass media. I am perfectly capable of saying that who Nicki Minaj chooses to be in the limelight does and does not have a bearing on my black woman’s body. But the onus isn’t on her to change her behaviour for the sake of black women everywhere. The onus is on society to stop the continued pattern of hyper sexualization and objectification of black women’s bodies which has existed longer than you or i or Nicki Minaj have been alive. The onus is on society to stop viewing black women’s bodies as merely objects for the taking and at the same time stop associating them solely with their sexuality. It is possible to be a sexual being and not have your identity totally wound up in the manifestation of such sexual expression. Yet black women have not enjoyed such individuality or bodily autonomy in this country and dare i say in on this planet. And if we continue to point the looking glass in the wrong direction, then we never will. We will always be body policing ourselves, afraid of whether our appearance or behaviour is sending a larger message to an uncritical audience unwilling to look at the whole person and not part of the person as a reflection on the whole group.
We, African American women, have been speaking to our oppression when it comes to our representation in mass media for years. We have published books, articles, spoken in documentaries and interviews. The problem is that people don’t listen, or their late to the larger conversational party and talk over us, talk over the scholarship we have done in an attempt to pretty much say the same thing and they garner more attention because they have no connection to the identity of being an African American woman. They are not black, so people will listen to them before listening to us.
Just as you are not black, and people have listened and reblogged your post instead of listening and talking to us about how we feel. And when African American people and our allies have expressed discontent over your post, pointing out the flaws in your argument, instead of being heard they get swept into the category of “haters who will just keep on hating”, people who have no right to their hurt or anger or their feelings.
And for the fact that our comments get swept into the dust basket of “hateration” continues the silencing of black women’s voices, shuts down the ability for non-black women like yourself to understand the seriousness of such critical issues as they are related to our livelihood, shuts down the opportunity for you to listen to us, and allows you and others to walk away with the impression that silencing is okay, talking over us is okay, talking about our issues using our women and our representation and our bodies without understanding all the facts is okay. When quite frankly…..its not.
I personally don’t think you should delete your tumblr. At the same time i was deeply offended by your post about Nicki Minaj i don’t think its worth deleting your tumblr over. You don’t deserve the hateful comments, but if you delete your tumblr i don’t think you’ll ever understand why this is such a hot button issue.
Tumblr provides you with a unique and rare opportunity to learn from people about their own oppressions from their own raw voices. Don’t allow the guise of “hateration” or the cult of personality that exists around you to blind you to such a unique and rare learning opportunity. I think you’d make a fine ally to black women, but its not something that happens overnight. It’s not something that happens because you have African American female friends who agree with you or because people are willing to sing your praises before challenging your ideas. It begins with discomfort, it begins with that internal twisting which wants to believe you have all the right intentions and the right desires for changing the world but maybe you lack the knowledge and the real world experience of being an African American woman. It begins with understanding that you only know so much and that’s okay because nobody is judging you on what you don’t know but more or less what you’re not willing to learn.
It begins somewhere, but delete your tumblr and it never begins. Shut out people with valid axes to grind and the evolution of your ideas will never come into fruition.
sincerely
Ari
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FATSHION FEBRUARY: DAY 3 // High waisted shorts
T-shirt, tights, socks, headband and cardigan - Primark; world’s greatest shorts - New Look; belt and scarf - Dorothy Perkins; earrings - H&M; brooch - Minimum Mouse
I am so bad at taking pictures of myself. I need a tripod/someone to take some snaps/some kind of photographic skills. The first picture is me pulling up one of my socks, forgetting that my camera timer was on. Anyway, these shorts are probably the best item of clothing I own because they’re super comfortable. Also, it’s so cold at the moment that I have to wear a massive cardigan and a scarf in my house. -
FATSHION FEBRUARY: DAY 2 // Chanelling Violet Beauregarde
Jumper - Peacocks, ridiculous coloured cords - Dorothy Perkins, belt - gift from my Mama, headband - gift from my sister, boots - Red Herring @ Debenhams, bracelet - bought at a music festival, earrings - H&M, fox brooch - Topshop
I feel gross today but purple cords are helping. Also, apologies for my weird face in the last pic, it’s the only one with a decent shot of my fox brooch.
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FATSHION FEBRUARY: DAY 1 // Rock and roll or something
Hoodie - Primark, skirt - H&M, tights - George @ Asda, knee high socks - Primark, shoes - New Look, headband - ASOS, earrings - bought at a music festival
Yaaay, Fatshion February’s back! I’m really excited for the challenge of putting together and photographing interesting outfits. This time of year’s always miserable and FatFeb gives me a reason to actually take care of myself for a month. That said, today’s outfit is super lazy - I’m having a study day and it’s like -2 degrees outside so I just wanted to be warm and comfortable.
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I currently have very strong feelings about my quiff, the surgery scar on my wrist and this oversized blue cardigan.
