I'll start out by acknowledging that I haven't written in forever.A part of this lack of writing is driven by the growing pull of "adult" work/life responsibilities; But I must admit, a bigger part of it feels a little more traitorous. More like the comfortably treacherous resting spot of complacency.
I've tried to rack it up as the normal progression of young adults transitioning from college to the workforce. Protest isn't as readily available (nor is time). I tell myself that when I get "settled in to things" I'll get back into that good old activism.
But months have now turned into a year, and I am not the woman that I used to be. I toss and turn at night asking myself "am I upholding the ideals I'd set for myself when I began this journey toward social justice" (not that it's a place, in fact it's more of a process)? And increasingly, more timidly I find myself asking, "am I a good feminist?"
This second question has crept it's way into the forefront of my year of independent adulthood. Each month cracking away at the sturdy feminist foundation I thought I had built. I started this year, two weeks out of undergrad - degree in hand (with solo apartment, salaried job, and new car to follow), believing I was living the dream. I was independent. Doing it all on my own, answering to no one, depending on no one (oh the joys of the Strong Black Woman trope). I was the epitome of what I'd learned Black feminism was about.
Then I met a man, to be honest a few, who slowly unraveled the blanket of security, confidence, and independence I had knit around me. Each one bleaching the bright hues I had painted in declaring my uncompromising will to achieve each and every goal I set in spite of all the reasons my race, gender, and class dictated that I shouldn't. It wasn't all their fault I will admit. I for one cannot claim a feminism that will exalt my victimhood without equally acknowledging my agency in the matter.
So we, I and they, created a world where I slowly became less of myself.
It happened slowly, imperceptibly at first, I would give them bits of me, bits of my feminism until I was left here, a fraction of myself asking, "am I a good feminist?"
It started with the one who had the allure that only an educated, driven, black man can have. He, like all the rest was older, making my deference so easy, so natural. He mentored and consoled me. We embarked on a spiritual journey together. In the midst of all this bliss, who was I to speak out against the things I considered small slights on the patriarchy scale? Things I'm sure my feminist self would forgive. Of course she would overlook the benevolent sexism: the opening of doors, paying for meals, guiding my footsteps by the small of my back. I mean I do (technically) live in the South. It's how things are here. I even convinced myself that playing second to other women wasn't so bad because he's an EDUCATED BLACK MAN with a GOOD JOB willing to stand by and support me. I mean men like that are practically extinct right? Who was I to complain?
Then there was the stalker. The man who couldn't take no for an answer. Who took access to my body as a given because "I was a STRONG BLACK WOMAN, I couldn't be taken advantage of. I HAD to have wanted it, or I wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place." He used all the power patriarchy and manhood placed at his feet to intimidate and control me. The threats, then the gifts given to a woman who, though independent, couldn't do it all for herself.
I have to admit my part in it. For months I couldn't bring myself to turn him in. I found comfort in believing that male sexual violence was something bigger than me. It was patriarchy's fault, who am I to try to fight it? Besides, turning him in would be sending one more black man to jail and I for one did not want anything to do with that atrocity. Finally, after a break in and a death threat I got a restraining order. By restraining him I freed myself. Or so I thought... because there it is again, that sweet patriarchy, wrapped up in gifts, trips, and dinners, tasting like "I love you."
I met a man. I fell in love. That "Love Jones" type of love. He was a hardworker and a poet. He gave me everything I could ever want because he wanted to support all my dreams. He filled the difference and paid for all the things I couldn't afford as a STRONG BLACK WOMAN working two jobs, and preparing for graduate school. "How noble" I thought, "How did I end up so lucky?" With all this luck in the air, it was easier to overlook his homophobia than to argue (I blamed it on black culture's strong ties to the church). It was easier to ignore the underlying feeling that if children came into the picture, child-rearing would fall to me, career and educational aspirations or not. He was such a wordsmith that he made giving up my feminist self sound good.
It was in the midst of this garage sale of myself that I found Joan Morgan's "When Chicken Heads Come Home to Roost...my life as a Hip-Hop Feminist." She gave voice to all those feelings I was too scared to acknowledge in the light. She asked the questions I had encountered head on during this year of self-shedding, like:
"Can you be a good feminist and admit out loud that there are things you kinda dig about patriarchy?"
"Suppose you don't want to pay for your own dinner, hold the door open, fix things, move furniture, or get intimate with whatever's under the hood of a car?"
"Is it foul to say that imagining a world where you could paint your big brown lips in the most decadent of shades, pile your phat ass into your fave micro-mini, slip your freshly manicured toes into four-inch fuck-me sandals and have not one single solitary man objectify- I mean roam his eyes longingly over all the intended places--is, like, a total drag for you?
"Am I no longer down for the cause if I admit that while total gender equality is an interesting intellectual concept, it doesn't do a damn thing for me erotically? That, truth be told, men with too many "feminist" sensibilities have never made my panties wet, at least not like that reformed thug nigga who can make even the most chauvinistic "wassup, baby" feel like a sweet, wet tongue darting in and out of your ear"
Better yet she called for a feminism "...brave enough to fuck with the grays. And this was not my foremothers' feminism." Isn't that what I was in? The gray space that we ignore in high-minded conversations about theory? Morgan discussed a more complicated feminism that didn't hold on to "the protective mantle of victimization" without also discussing the complicity of women.
More broadly, she notes that in the midst of all the sexism women of color face, benevolent and otherwise, "the real crime isn't the name-calling (the bitches and hos), it's their failure to love us--to be our brothas in the way that we commit ourselves to being their sistas. But recognize: Any man who doesn't truly love himself is incapable of loving us in the healthy way we need to be loved. It's extremely telling that men who can only see us as "bitches" and "hos" refer to themselves only as "niggas." She offered a critique that is unique in its willingness to not only acknowledge the traditional markers of sexism, but also the plight of the women who are trying to love these men where they are, not where we want them to be. Women who are dealing with the broader issue of loving men who do not love themselves.
And then she offers a solution that spoke to me in a way that my old textbook-wielding feminist self no longer could.
"...the focus of black feminists has got to change. We can't afford to keep expending energy on banal discussions of sexism in rap (or the benevolent sort) when sexism is only part of a huge set of problems. Continuing on our previous path is akin to demanding that a fiending, broke crackhead not rob you blind because it's wrong to do so. If feminism intends to have any relevance in the lives of the majority of black women...it has to rescue itself from the ivory towers of academia."
So it's here outside the walls of academia, smack dab in the middle of the day-to-day that I ask, "am I a good feminist?" and more pointedly, how do I become a good black man loving feminist? How do I love a man that has not been taught to love himself? How do you love someone without losing yourself?
And most critically, in the midst of all the rights-gaining,self-proclaiming, patriarchy-blaming feminism I have known, where is the road map for love?
