J. Brown Jr.

GWS 201 - 001

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Final Website

http://incarceratedwoman.weebly.com 

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Letter to Feminism

Dear FEMINISM,

It has been a fun ride with you, but its been a hard one! I feel this overwhelming sorrow, deep beneath my soul, knowing that males with penises are the only reason you are what you are. The patriarchy that aids to a a sexist, racist, evil system has infested this country since the day it became. 

I am sorry for ever man-splaning, exerting misogyny, acting in ways that were once believed okay. I am sorry for being so judgmental, controlling, and residing on the side of napoleons complex. 

Feminism I am sorry, but I can’t take it back! We must move forward, learn to love the ones that lie to despise us, be patient with those that live lies, and tell truth to those that believe they captivate its very existence all while living a whole lie. 

but Feminism, you owe me an apology because you too haven’t been perfect. The first wave forgot about my black woman, because at the time they didn't apply to you! The second wave was started by Black Woman in the 1960′s so it forced you to be inclusive. But, today, per-the women's march you seem to have left my black woman back in the 60′s! I am disappointed in you because I must hold you to a standard, no matter how high you set the bar for me!

I Love you Feminism, I believe in you, I know your demands will one day be achieved. But I have some bad news and you may or may not like it! I wont be sorry for being a man! I was born what I was and I cant change that, I strive to be “perfect”, but that goal is incomprehensible and I will fall short. 

Now that we are at the beginning of another rode I am taking a few key lessons with me that I have learned on this journey: Men and woman will never be equal and they shouldn't be because woman are much more valuable, sacred and  important, men have fucked things up though out history and when you get you swing at the bat knock that bitch to outer space, and Feminism is built on resistance, pride, and tiresome so get your rest Feminism becuase the fight continues tomorrow! 

Lastly Feminism, Take care of your self because if you don’t who will! 

Until next time!

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Born This Way

When did I know, I was straight? At Birth? Well I am not actually sure! The first time I had consensual sex with a woman? This first time my penis became erect when I looked at a woman, but not the same thing happened when I looked at a man?

Is that what that question warrants? A bunch of personal Information that is none of your damn business! Well, in all reality I didn’t choose to be heterosexual, heterosexuality chose me.

Often I propose an argument with other humans that lack my span of understanding. The argument I propose goes just like this word for word,

I say, “Yo, do you think you can be born gay?”

They respond, “No I think being gay, bi’, and lesbian are choices people make!”

I then respond, “So when did you decide you were straight?”

They respond, “Well I just knew what I liked, girls, pussy.”

I then close the conversation with, “So you were born that way?”

I believe people are born how they are. Being homosexual or anything else other than heterosexual is not a birth defect, it is not a mental illness, nor a problem. Often people lack the understanding needed to make an educated opinion about certain matters; they don’t consider social norms or concepts like compulsory heterosexuality. That heterosexuality is merely enforced and believed that it’ll be adopted by anyone regardless of their individual sexual preferences.

So, when did I decide to be straight? Well, I was born this way! I was born loving women and enjoying sexual intercourse with a woman! Does that mean that I don’t like men? I don’t know honestly! I just know that the blood flow in my genitalia doesn’t increase when I look at another man, but o buddy when I look at my woman of three years, blood is flowing everywhere.

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I Don’t “Do Gender”

How do you do gender? 

Well, I am asking you because gender can be “accomplished” in many ways more than one, but one way seems to be the most efficient. The most efficient way of doing gender is through the social constructs that were set up based on what people attributed to different sexes. Performing masculinity and feminine behavior are directly rooted to what was born between your legs. So, where do we place “masculine” females that like women? Are they, now, men or will they always be a woman? Due to social constructs, they will be performing their gender and not their sex: short haircuts, heavy lifting, rugged style. Let’s look at a masculine male that fits the same MO as the women previously discussed, but instead he likes men, is he now a woman or does the way he “perform” gender still make him a man? “Doing” gender is a tightrope and up for societies judgement, your opinion could be different than mine and who validates who’s judgement?

Do I perform masculinity? 

Being a 6 foot 300-pound black man, sure! Please trust me as far as you can throw me. Why? Because, I partake in transgressive behavior, as some would call it, every day. My major, psychology, is what they call a “soft science”, I paint and draw (you know that artsy shit), and I can cook the hell out of anything you put in front of me. I clean like a black house made, post the Civil War, I can bread/ plat any hair, and I match the colors in my clothes every single day. Let’s not mention that I get pedicures with my girlfriend and Aunt when I visit Georgia. So, what is my gender? Who the hell knows and cares? I am me, the same person that does all the above and can talk about sports all day, cut the grass like a professional landscaper, can lift well above 200 pounds in the gym, and the same person that builds things like 7’x7’ canvases.

Do you, whatever that consist of. Hell, Pro Foot-ball players must take ballet classes for balance. So, go imagine Odell Beckham, Jr. in a tutu. Don’t thank me later.

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Mass Disenfranchisement

The point of striping felons of their voting rights is too control who gets elected and what agendas are executed. People that have experienced the harsh system first hand would have sometime of opinion into changing it to better benefit the people. Disenfranchising previous criminals allows the prison industrial complex to thrive and remain a system that disproportionately incarcerates Black males and any males of color for that matter.

When you take away the prison industrial complex, disenfranchising people of color has always been an item on the check list of America that remains checked even when systems are broken down. Broken Down? Better yet evolving and changing to the climates of the era. Jim Crows Era never ended, it just took a new name which is Mass Incarceration. Slavery never ended it just became politically correct to call them criminals rather than nigger or boy. Changing the name doesn’t change what it does and how it affects people that’s like calling shoes sneakers or tennis shoes, they are practically the same thing.

Disenfranchising people of color ultimately controls elections, state local and nationwide, thus controlling policy and that means policy that directly affects them and their communities. As this has happened it has allowed black communities to get thrown under the bus and underfunded, thus underfunding schools and community centers thus leading to more and more children turning to crime, parentless and confused kids that have no clue they are just caught in a cycle that’s ben on repeat since 1619 and 1865 just proving that no matter how many advancements we make or seats in the white house we take up their can’t be change with systems in place that aid to the destruction of the black man and women.

Sure, I am the angry black man with an angry black mother, but I came to college and still haven’t escaped the real reality I go home too: the murders, drugs, and the poverty. Defying all stereotypes and still can’t get away from the system!

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Orange and Hopeless, 13 and Hopeless

Orange is the New Black, will not incite a damn sense of change or inspire an ounce of higher consciousness. Orange is the New Black merely hints at the systematic problems that are associated with actual prisons that actual people live at. Orange proposes the issue that many offenders in prisons are non-violent and honestly don’t deserve to be in prison serving the sentences at hand. Litchfield in Orange becomes a private prison which represents the privatization of prisons.

In terms of inspiring change from a damn television show, please stop fantasizing. They display these stories and these real-world issues, many in dim lighting, for the soul purpose of entertainment. The Documentary 13th wasn’t released for entertainment, but for education and raising the consciousness of Americans.

Orange proposes no hope in terms of inspiring anyone to do anything because its created and produced for entertainment. 13th on the other hand, I have a lot of hope for all the while watching it and feeling hopeless. Being a black man in America, you live and see what they talk about and relies that you are just a new slave in these here Americas. It creates a large sense of hopelessness that no matter how many steps we take forward, we have been pushed and forced a thousand steps backwards. So as much as I would like to think that 13th will give people hope, it has the complete opposite effect on me.

Stop believing that Orange is the New Black will help anyone or raise awareness. Orange is merely entertainment while documentaries like 13th makes you access your privileges and then keep moving forward, because the shit just doesn’t apply to you or your life style and if it does you are already well aware of the things that happens in this county.

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The new or old Jim Crow?

Michelle Alexander refers to the prison industrial complex as the “new Jim Crow” she refers to it as such because it has had the same impact on minority communities as its recent counterpart, Jim Crow. The prison industrial complex is a new form of a racial caste system that aids in the genocide and mass incarceration of Americas minority population. The relationship between prisons and Jim Crow is like the relationship between melted ice cream and heat, it is clear that one has an effect on the other. The relationship between prisons and Jim Crow is that it is a new caste system in which it is successfully targeting and disenfranchising minorities in America predominantly black people. The two factors that are correlated with the effect of the war on drugs and mass incarceration are race and class are the underlying factors that determines who is being targeted by the system. This is proven by disproportionate amount of black people that are in prison and the amount of people that were targeted during the war on drugs. After the war on drugs was launched there was a major spike in crack-cocaine in black communities across the West-coast. The government created criminals when the war on drugs were launched and they did it for a few reasons: convict leasing & disenfranchisement. Modern day slavery came in the form of the convict leasing system post 1865; there was a major loop hole in the 13th amendment that said forced labor was illegal unless it was for punishment. Convict leasing allowed white business men to get away with using black freed slaves for cheap labor and it was also a way to stop them from voting and becoming political powers in “the new south”. Along with convict leasing, the disenfranchisement of black people and of minorities has been on the agenda of this country since the beginning. Convicts aren’t allowed to vote and that has played a major role in elections; when black people get out and vote they are using the deciding class of people that’s put the president in office examples of this have been seen in our recent elections in 2008 and 2012 when our country voted in the greatest president America had ever seen.

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Appropriation for A-Profit

Why are people appropriating? Why do artist such as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift have such a tendency to appropriate from other cultures? They have a tendency to do this because its more profitable to put on a costume for a day, then to be themselves. It is like Halloween, all the damn time evidently, people dress up in costumes for a day and walk around neighborhoods to get drowse of candy. All the while you wake up the next day and people aren’t just throwing candy in your face anymore. Culture appropriation grasps a negative light because people are doing just that, profiting on others cultures. While in all reality appropriating from other cultures is not inherently bad; it allows us to experience another culture, respectfully, while giving them credit like any other art collaborations.

What about appropriating Black Culture in America?

This is such a touchy subject because Black people are scrutinized for their culture and their culture is of no value to anyone, until people like Ms. Cyrus makes it cool to twerk. Just like how “Bantu knots” become “mini buns” because a white person says so. The problem with the appropriation of Black Culture, isn’t the appropriating part it’s the “a-profit” part and the “a-no-credit” part that’s hidden between the letters. Artist are appropriating Black Culture and giving no credit to the people or the culture they are stealing the ideas and traditions from. Oh, yes, I said stealing! Its theft if no credit is given to the people, its theft when the people that created it are not profiting off of it, and its certainly theft when the people didn’t allow you to use their culture for capitalistic purposes. Black people have been practicing things like Hip-Hop Culture since, the first block party on Sedgwick Ave hosted by DJ Koolherc, 1973. Black Culture been cool to black folks regardless of the public's views on it; cornrows where cool before they ever hit the run way, that featured little to no black folk.

So the appropriating of cultures isn’t bad, but the appropriation of Black Culture certainly has a bad name. 

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7xJaGZCy2E)

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bell hooks: Eating the brains of “Socially aware Zombies”

hooks describe “eating the other” as the commodification of black culture. Black people being the other to white people. This claim is actually supported by a psychological theory known as “The Erotic becomes the Exotic”. This theory makes a case for why males from all female families become gay and that’s because they are never exposed to males and once they are they become “exotic” and they want to explore the exotic. The same thing could be said about black people and black culture to white people predominately males.

Applying her metaphor “eating” to how we consume media is plausible and an easy thing to do.

We consume media at an exponential rate every year. We are glued to smart phones and televisions suffering from media obesity as if we can’t help to take it in at large amounts. Scarfing our fragile minds with fake news and alternatives facts; the fact that you are even the slightest bit of familiar with the term “alternative facts” means some type of media put you up on game. Am I correct?

Our media consumption has created socially aware zombies. Feeding on the next FOX News story or the latest BuzzFeed news or entertainment that somehow highlights the negative part of whatever their “news” is that day, or that second. Whatever “good” news is becomes “the other” that hooks is referring to, but in our case it’s the spectrum of good and bad that the media lands on.  

“Socially aware zombies”, what possibly could I mean by that? We are so caught up in media we become encapsulated by it. Due to this, we allow media to be our brains, eyes, and ears that control our very movement. So unlike zombies we are aware, but at the mercy of media. The media is the driving force of social movements, justice, and change. No, it is not a completely a bad thing, but when the media becomes the source of every “awakening” you have to question how awake are people or are we at the hand of something larger that wants us to act on whatever they see fit. 

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Audre Lorde Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference

Audre Lorde states in her article Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference that there are many differences such as race, class, age and sex. She believes that we ignore these differences for the comfort of those that see differences as bad things.  Lorde claims that we ignore our differences within society because we have been trained to look at differences as bad. Also, Lorde states that with differences we are trained to think that there is a superior and an inferior attached to the differences. The reason that we ignore racial differences because if you ignore the fact that we are different, it somehow makes us alike and the same all the while ignoring the very things that make some people who they are. Lorde gives examples such as white women not seeing black women as “black” women; they do this because not seeing their race allows them to act as if they don’t have privilege one the basis of being white, but that they have a “sister hood”. We ignore class differences so that the “elite” can act as if hard work was the underlying reason that they are where they are. Ignoring class creates a reason for things like white privilege to be invalid because class ism doesn’t exist when everyone made it through hard work. A lack of understanding is another reason we ignore differences, differences such as sexuality. The things we don’t understand give us a reason to ignore them, because it makes us more comfortable. No one, but the elites benefit from not seeing differences. Elites are classified as: thin, white, heterosexual, Christian, males, that are financially stable. The only people that benefits from ignoring differences are the people that won’t profit on the creative ways that recognizing differences would bring on society and culturally.

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Pipers Privilege

Is Piper Chapman privileged? As long as the sky remains blue. So yes, she is privileged. We know she is privileged because the context of the television show and her character. There are many things that make Piper Chapman privileged. The first instance of privilege that I noticed from the television show was her “choice” to surrender for such crime that she committed; having been a person of color in the same situation I believe she wouldn’t have given a choice to “surrender” or the ability to serve her time 10 years after the actual crime. The second instance of privilege that told me she had such privilege was her ability to be with family and prepare herself and them for her going away; her privilege allowed her to read books that was meant to prepare her for prison itself I believe that other people aren’t given that choice or opportunity sometimes families aren’t given any for waring and it all comes to a sudden crash. Her privilege was confirmed for me when she said, “My mother told her friend that I am volunteering in Africa.” Many people don’t get the opportunity to have their family lie to their rich friends to protect the view of their family. When she arrived to prison she was allowed to tell the guard to hold on when she was waiting to her husband to get back from his car. When she gets into prison so many things start happening in her favor because she is a white woman; she gets a tooth brush, yogurt from red, and even shampoo fro and also a phone call. Her privilege comes at the cost of other not having it. The black women may also have privileges that will present themselves further into the series. Pipers privilege is well established through one episode.

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As If There Is an Answer!

While reading and dissecting the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we are challenged to consider the following question, regarding laws that are used to oppress people of color and if the protesting is interrupted and first amendment rights are discarded of even though it is peaceful, “What then, is an appropriate way to show resistance?”

While attending the Trump Teach-In on January 18th here at the University of Kentucky, I came forth with a story regarding this exact question in which the brilliant Dr. Finney graciously commented on in agreeance to what I had to say. The story that I told was about my growing frustration with the initial question, “What then, is an appropriate way to show resistance?”, because I am stuck at the cross roads of giving up and not giving up. For centuries we have begged the oppressors of all people brown to give us equality and give us freedom, but they don’t seem to want to. When brothers and sisters die in the streets at the hands of police officers and die in cells at the hands of those that have sworn to protect us, what is there to do about it? We sit and they throw boiling coffee on us, we march and they sick dogs on us and arrest us, we kneel and they burn our jerseys and boycott sporting events, we beg and beg for equality and all we get is a “but” as if a “no” wouldn’t suffice.

So the question at hand is one we will never have an answer for, because no matter what we were to do the oppressors and the powers to be will always see a problem with it.

What road did I choose to take regarding this question and the growing feeling I have inside of me that wants to give up? I choose every day to fight on! Why? Because it’s selfish of me to want to give up now when we have come as far as we have. What if Harriet Tubman gave up? What if the run-away’s of the Great Dismal Swamp had given up or Fannie Lou & Ida B. or Bill Russel & Jackie Robinson? The selfishness one could have because there is no answer to this question is human and normal, but we is must fight on! In any way shape or form; from the class room to the court rooms, from the streets of West End Louisville to Compton!

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What Is Feminism?

What is feminism you may ask? Well it is a whole list of things, but after reading these two separate articles I can surely tell you what feminism isn’t. Feminism isn’t perfect and that’s why the term “bad feminist” has been adapted by people like Roxane Gay. Feminism, “at its best is a way to navigate the shifting culture climate”, as said by Ms. Gay in the introduction of her book “Bad Feminist”. In the introduction of this book I learned that feminism is flawed only because humans are and overall feminism is the blanket that covers gender equality in all realms. A “bad feminist” doesn’t mean that whomever is one is a bad person, but rather they aren’t perfect and they’ve accepted that fact and use that fact of imperfection to drive their ability to act a feminist and be the role model for those underrepresented in the community and those that don’t reconcile with the “poster feminist” that they put on a pedestal just to be knocked down for ever so present imperfections. As for “Feminism” written by Paula Treichler and Cheris Kramarae this article provides more of a cut throat definition for what feminism is. Referring to feminism as ''Feminist is formed with the word 'femme,' 'woman,' and means: someone who fights for women. For many of us this means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of this class.” has been an issue for the feminism community. Also highlighted by this passage is the misrepresentation of feminism through the definitions placed upon them. I coincide with the first excerpt that I read from Bad Feminist. My understanding coincides with this because as I have learned about feminism through a friend back home I learned that feminism isn’t perfect and no matter how much people want it to be, it’s not. I learned from her that people aren’t perfect and movement lead by people aren’t perfect. I completely stand behind feminist in the fight for gender equality across all races and ethnicity’s. .