Bigoted, biased, opinionated, narrow-minded, and limited are all words that describe partisan. Growing up in a southern household, many of the people I’ve encountered have been closed minded to the freedom of women’s sexuality. So as a little black girl growing up, I felt the need to be reserved and private about the intimate relationships I was discouraged to have in the first place.
Beyonce’s Formation music video and 2016 Super Bowl halftime performance represent a shift for the pop music icon, and are touted as her most politically-charged and socially aware work of her career; following the legacy of “movement music” that utilizes its platform to provide sociopolitical commentary. Despite notable and contradictory problems with the songs actual lyrics – colorism, classism – her Super Bowl performance and other images were revolutionary. Beyonce defiantly, unapologetically, and without invitation, brought the topics of racism, sexism, misogynoir, police brutality, and the devaluing of Black lives onto one of the most-watched shows and biggest platforms in the United States; and into the homes of viewers worldwide. Providing powerful affirmations of Blackness, solidarity, as well as Black women’s agency over their careers, lives, and bodies.
Attitudes to power and what it means to be a woman in contemporary Jamaica are often subtly encoded in the raunchy displays of female sexuality in dancehall culture. How women sing about themselves and each other, especially as it relates to sex, embodies a considered “folk†knowledge (Cooper, 1993), which, when deconstructed, disrupts conventional notions of “femaleness†(Cooper, 1993). They contest the ubiquitous ideologies of gender promoted as culture in “official†society. As such, the lines from iconic, male dancehall artiste Shabba Ranks’ Can Wuk, quoted below, offer unique perspectives into how male conceptions of women sometimes radically converge with a traditional grassroots, feminist agenda. These reflect “female politics†as it is articulated across various generations and which aim to overthrow oppressive regimes of gendered controls both within the dancehall as well as the wider society. Using a combination of song texts, primarily, those performed by female artistes like Tanya Stephens, Lady Saw and others, this article argues that dancehall culture is much more than just sex. On the contrary, it is a compendium of folk wisdom, transported across time and space and fetishized as sexual pleasure. These often belie much more important messages about female subversiveness in society.
Today was her first day of graduate school and it felt like starting high school all over again. She got ready, did her make-up as best as she could, picked out an outfit that would make her look good, but not like she was trying too hard. She made it to class five minutes early, but when she walked into class there was only one empty seat.
Adornment, a visual expression of culture, may be utilized as an instrument for Womanist resistance. In the creation and selection of adornments, women of color exhibit agency over their bodies, and more importantly, over the types of images of womanhood and idealized beauty, that are accepted as being authentically their own. Here, the assertion of aesthetic tastes, the rejection and the resistance against sociocultural norms and Eurocentrism are brought together by the simplistic and mundane act of selecting adornments, which are essentially wearable forms of art. Finally, the most critical aspect involved in wearing adornments or creating these pieces of material culture, is that of choice; and those choices are guided by historical traditions and intersecting factors in the built environment, which help to impact, influence, and shape the experiences and thus worldview and aesthetic preferences of women in the African diaspora.
Various commentaries about Rachel Dolezal on race, transracial, and transgender. Subject: Re: [PAR-L] Why Rachel Dolezal’s Fake ‘Transracial’ Identity Is Nothing Like Being Transgender – Take It From a Black Trans Woman Who Knows
Okay he's asleep. Maybe I can get out of here Nicki thought as she quietly slid out of the bed. She picked up her Victoria Secret panties and Michael Kors mini skirt from the floor and tiptoed out of the room, slowly closing the door behind her. Once safely out of the room, Nicki quickly got dressed and rushed out of the apartment. Where do I go? What do I do? Should I tell someone? Who can I call? Nicki fumbled with her cellular phone trying to sort through her thoughts. It was 3:30 in the morning and she was now walking the Bronx streets. I'll call Charmaine, she'll know what to do.
Rape! Sexual assault, sexual violence is something we believe happens to another person, in some other place, but never in our college or neighborhood. For some, women cry rape simply to get attention when they want to punish a boyfriend. About victims, many tend to think they are somehow responsible for provoking the attack.
Ignorance is bliss. This is an expression I would soon come to appreciate and agree with after taking a new course slightly out of my comfort zone. I had always wanted to take a feminism course and thought it would be an empowering course about woman overcoming boundaries and setting higher standards for themselves. I was very wrong. The majority of the class focused on rape. I am not the most comfortable talking about a topic like rape because growing up we were never given the talk and the most affection anyone showed was hugging their significant other. I have always been in the dark about these things. Rape involved sex and sex was not talked about openly in our culture.
A poem. Black woman, what is your value? Always on the battlefield, But nobody ever asks you, Asks what you need, Or how can they help. But regardless of anything, You play the hand you are dealt.
For 2 generations, Black and Latina/Latino youth in the U.S. have been shipped off to prison in numbers never before seen anywhere in the world at any time. More than 2 million people, of all nationalities languish in prison – ten times the number 50 years ago. The U.S. Has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prison population! More than 60 percent of those in U.S. prisons are Black or Latina/o.
November 24th, 2007. That was the day that I let a man come into my life and change everything about it. His name was Roberto. The youngest of three siblings: a rebel child. He was a chain smoker with a habit of heavy drinking and overspending. The biggest jokester anyone will ever meet because he did not take anything seriously. He was six years older than me and when we met, I was 12 years old. He was a father to a child he left behind in Venezuela and for almost four years, the man I was convinced I was going to marry. He was everything I thought I ever needed in a man and I was so in love with him.
Black womanhood is an identity forged in the lived experiences of black children. Anything else perpetuates society’s fetish for celebrating only parts of our bodies. Rachel Dolezal is, after this week, a symbol to many African Americans of the separation of blackness from black people; to me, she is an example of how American society simultaneously devalues the individuality of black women and us as a community to the point that the performance of black womanhood is preferred over the people.
The struggle in Ferguson, Missouri proves that the police in America are a law unto themselves, separated from society, determined to control it. Ferguson is not an isolated case. The same militarized police state that is murdering people across the country is deporting refugee children fleeing U.S. – driven drug wars and poverty. In Michigan, it is replacing democratically elected officials with dictators who aim to hand public assets such as water over to the corporations.
Starting with the extrajudicial execution of Michael Brown by local police on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a predictable white fog has settled in. It is a miasma, historically resonant, comprised of structural racism and denial of it, policing practices that are race-based and authoritarian, and political/cultural narratives that obfuscate rather than illuminate.
