I am a Black woman who recently moved to a new neighborhood. There were a couple reasons for the move: 1) The rent at the apartment in which I’d lived the past 2 years was increasing to the point that I felt it was foolish to finagle on a student budget; 2) The roommate with whom I’d lived for those past 2 years was moving to a completely different part of the city (with a new roommate) and I, too, caught the bug for a change of scenery. 3) The blinding whiteness around me and traumatic state of blackness over the past 2 years were mixing badly in my psyche.
I chose this neighborhood as a place that would allow at least some reparative work on these 3 points along with all the other micro-considerations that take place between deciding to move out and unpacking the last box.
On point #3: I will go ahead and admit that this neighborhood is more ‘white people diverse’ than diverse in a true sense of the word. Diverse in that case meaning the presence of POC, particularly Black people, and enough that you cannot forget they don’t exist in your neighborhood. In reality, it is about 50% white, 20% black, 30% nBPOC. To a white person those kinds of demographics are bordering the territory of sketchy neighborhood. We do have a Target.
But this is only the context that leads up to, not the reasons behind, me starting this blog. So let me really begin:
Misogynoir1 is a real condition of this country (and beyond) that places Black women under attack inter- and intra-racially at all times from birth till death. We cannot trust the police who take advance of our intersectional position to both physically and sexually assault us; we cannot trust the law, whose rhetoric is soaked with a language against our favor; we cannot trust the patriarchs or peers in our community who take advantage of their status as men to assault, rape, abuse, and murder us without retribution.2
Black femmes as a general fact of life can best and often only count on each other.
Misogynoir is a modulating condition; it is felt dually/simultaneously but its internal parts intensify at different moments, different times of the day, different locales. Going from a neighborhood that was all but all-white to one predominantly white but less so was an intensity shift. Whereas my Black femme visibility formally manifested mostly as feeling Black, a neighborhood with more Black folks has me feeling the womanhood and femme-presenting parts of myself much more potently; I reiterate that these are both feelings marked by misogynoir — “feeling like a woman” in this case means feeling the risks of violence to my body because I am so,3 even as that womanhood is still ever and always inflected by Blackness and said violence or risk of violence is always ever inflected by anti-Blackness.
In a neighborhood with more Black men I am now catcalled at least every time I leave my apartment. If I walk to the grocery story, shop, and walk back that will usually mean at least 2 instances of street harassment. I am leered at. I have had a man old enough to be my father - or grandfather, since you never really know - interrupt my afternoon walk to tell me he could look at my legs all day long. I have been followed. I have been approached inside a Target while wearing headphones. I have been shouted at on an 80 degree day at the end of a 10 mile run with headphones in from across the street. I have been told that I am beautiful, pretty, and sexy. I have been followed. I have been harassed while wearing gym shorts, a tank top, a crewneck sweater, sneakers, sandals. Makeup or no makeup. Well, pretty much anyway my body has appeared in public over the past few months.
I am an anxious, worried person. All these interactions are an occasion to think about the women who have died at the hands of male entitlement. Women who die for going along with their business. For refusing to engage. For saying no. I think about them every time. My body exists in a state of suspended panic; I cannot calm down until I have moved to new location or entered a restricted area.
I am concerned with the impact this has on my mental health. I am starting this blog as a cathartic space with a pointed intention. Here I will be documenting all my instances of street harassment from black men.4 Part of me hopes that having stuck this stake in the ground some sort of ironic turn of events will pull the rug out under and give me nothing to report. I would love that. Please.
That being said, I very much doubt that will come to pass. So here is this blog.
1 “Misogynoir” is a term invented by Moya Bailey, developed by Trudy, and also critically follows from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept “intersectionality.” This is not an educational blog, but I have provided links for citational and educational purposes should the meanings of either of those words are unclear.↩
4 The title of this blog is deliberately contentious and derives from the intra-racial state of danger to Black women; I will actually be documenting any and all street harassment and the trend of that could absolutely speak on its own. But I’m also tired of being told who my greatest allies are when my everyday knows differently.↩
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