First, state your credentials. It’s okay to be a woman, but not a black woman. Their lived experiences are immaterial and can be dismissed as merely anecdotal. Make it clear that you are not racist or sexist, you are merely concerned about their plight. What plight? Well, pick one. Or several. Marriage, children, lack of the above, too much education, not enough education, welfare, whatever you think will sell. It only matters that you highlight their troublesome natures. Whatever it is, you must be sure to make it clear that they aren’t like other women. They are failing to perform in some way that affects the whole of society, even if you can’t quite explain how or why their personal lives are public property. Further, rely heavily on the idea of research that shows the problem is a problem. Never mention exactly when that research was done, or who were the subjects of it. Too much context may unnecessarily complicate the conversation.

Utilize stereotypes whenever possible, preferably ones that tie into the Mammy, Jezebel, or Sapphire tropes. Describe black women in ways that play up their sexuality and remove their humanity. After all they are Other, so their skin is a food stuff, the space between their thighs is mysterious, and they have never ever been innocent. No need to mention virginity or purity, even when speaking of black female infants, your focus must be on their sexuality. If you are speaking of black mothers make it clear that they need guidance, financial support, or salvation. What salvation? Well that all depends on whether they work too little and thus are on welfare, or work too much and thus are neglecting their children. There is no point at which they can balance work and family, because again they are Other and that is not possible for them. They are emasculating and thus unworthy of relationships, or the key to being masculine with their all knowing sexuality that is present from birth. Unrapeable, they can be trusted to raise any children but their own, and are sexually available until they become sexless.

They exist to be support systems, whether for men of all colors or women of every color but black. No need to mention their needs, hopes, dreams, or concerns. They have none, even if they do occasionally speak of themselves as real people with feelings. Their voices are too loud, too uneducated, or simply too aggressive. They are always angry about something, but their feelings aren’t real so they don’t matter. Be sure to specify how reasonable you are in the face of their unreasonable behavior. Write of how you studied them at a safe distance, while proclaiming that some of your closest friends are black women. No need to know anything about those close friends, but their names since all that matters is that you have them as proof that you know your subject, and are not racist or sexist.

Contrast them with women of other races, always making sure to highlight that other women are real women, while black women are simply black. Feel free to make blanket statements about their religious beliefs, educational levels, income levels, and family dynamics. All of it is true because you say it is, and you are the expert in black women, not any actual black women. If they are offended by your words, remind them of your credentials and refuse to engage in a conversation with them until they can be less emotional. Point to their tone as a reason to doubt the veracity of their experiences. After all they are only black women and thus they know nothing, own nothing, and are worth nothing but what you say they are.

How To Write About Black Women -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I’m about to get in my feelings as a black mother about this bullshit unsolicited advice to Blue Ivy Carter. I freely admit that I do not give even a tiny bit of a fuck about whatever literary conceits are about to be defended as part of justifying it. Because this letter was not written in a vacuum. This letter was not written out f any genuine concern for her health or safety. This letter was little more than a stunt that used a child of color & her parents to bolster a career. Yes I am sure she will say she meant no harm or disrespect. That she was trying to say good things to Blue Ivy, because she wants to help. Some will likely even say that her message was positive & for the best. Guess what?

We do not exist in a world where mothers of color can walk around without someone passing judgement on their right to be mothers simply because of the color of their skin. We do not live in a world where a woman of color becoming a mother is supported or respected. We do not exist in a world where white women who think they know best have not harmed families of color. We live in a world where white women often decide to “rescue” children of color by taking them from their homes, their cultures, and their mothers. So when a white woman decides she is “helping” by addressing a child of color she does not know as though her words will have any value to that child? I am already wary.

The fact that she is speaking to a newborn about topics that are emphatically none of her damned business & are in fact the province of that child’s parents just makes it even more offensive. It is a curious sort of racist White Woman’s Burden logic that allows you to engage with mothers of color in ways that would be patently offensive to you if the tables were turned. I have seen white mothers of children of color get deeply offended when conditioner and oil are suggested as remedies for the “unmanageable” hair of their child. Often that suggestion comes while they stare at the hair of our children and want to know how we get it to behave.

Meanwhile you often feel entitled to speak to us of everything from religion to sex as though we do not have our own morals to impart to our children. I have had my own share of “helpful” white women who do not know me, but who feel quite comfortable questioning my parenting decisions on every front. Over the last 12 years I have had unsolicited input from those women on everything from what I feed my son with food allergies, to how much responsibility I give to my son with special needs. These are not white women who are my friends, not women who my children know well, these are not even white women who have set foot in my house.

Instead they are little more than strangers (or in some cases employees at a child care facility) with little direct contact with my children. But they feel their input is worthwhile because I am black and a mother, and clearly I can’t know what I’m doing. Here is a thought for those white women who feel the need to approach mothers of color, or their children with unsolicited advice. Don’t. Really, just strangle whatever urge it is that drives you to behave so offensively, and practice the fine art of minding your own damned business. You are not our elders, our partners, or in fact in part of our lives. You do not know what is best for our children, or how we should raise them to survive in a racist society that allows your children safety & security that our children will never know. Spend more time teaching your kids (and yourself) how to engage with people of color as people, and less time finding ways to stroke your egos by attacking ours.

Dear White Women Who Think You Mean Well, -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I wrote this last night while we were talking about this NSFW picture on Tumblr and all the cultural connotations imbedded in the idea of the knowing sexually available black woman teaching the young white man. We got off into sex positivity, the racially specific messages about sex that WOC often get inside their communities as well as what is projected on them from the outside and what all of that really means for us. Then we started talking about consent & how it has been an illusion for so many WOC throughout history. One of my great grandmothers was a quadroon out of Louisiana, and while I’m pretty she was at the base of all the anti sex messages I got from my grandmother, I can only imagine what led her there & what led my grandmother to where she ended up. She could run numbers, but my grandmother always made sex sound like a chore. So, this is a rough approximation of something I want to expand on later.

Looking back I don’t think they could conceive of actually owning their bodies in any meaningful way. I come from a family of beautiful women with hourglass figures (and before someone starts in about arrogance, I am not trying to be a shit, it is just our reality is one where we tend to fall into that range of physical symmetry that American culture prizes), who spent a lot of time fleeing or hiding or passing as men if they could in order to travel safely and those were skills and lessons that they passed on to their girl children. I struggle with the idea that my body belongs to me, and that’s after some legal protections (however weak and ill applied) for black women were codified. Imagine being an attractive WOC with not even that hint of protection.

Further, imagine a reality where rape isn’t even a concept that applies to you. A white man wants your body? Well shit, that’s what it’s there for so lay down girl so he can do his business and move on. A black man wants you? So? Be grateful someone wants you. After all, what other purpose can your body serve in this world when it looks like that? You’re too sexy to be sexless, & you’re not allowed any power including the power to say no. At least not here in your home. So, what do you do? You run. North to that mythical promised land of freedom. Only you’re not free there either. Not really. Different standards apply & maybe having a husband is some protection, but him being your husband after a lifetime of sexual trauma isn’t the same as whatever things might have been if your body ever belonged to you. And so you teach your daughters that sex is a thing they must do to appease men, but you separated from yourself to get through what happened & you try to teach them how to do that out front so they won’t hurt like you do. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn’t but either way you’re trying to make the best of an awful reality. And they learn their own version of the lesson that they try to pass on to their daughters. Because a black girl child isn’t safe any where & so the cycle begins again only you’re further North, or education is a protection that marriage was not, or your daughters have learned not to feel, or whatever else you think might make things better.

Now here I stand, the last of a line of women who never owned their bodies with my own scars. I lost the right to my body before I ever knew it was mine & I have the education, the husband, the law, & still none of it made consent matter as much as it should in my life either. So I teach my sons about enthusiastic consent & hope that works out for someone else’s daughter. And I can enjoy sex, albeit with a heavy dose of shame at times, and much coaxing from a patient man who can live with the fact that sometimes I cannot be touched at all. But I still don’t know what consent looks like without baggage, because when I cannot bear touching I will fight like a rabid dog to keep hand off me and my body to myself even though I don’t really believe it is mine and mine alone. That’s our rape culture. Consent is an illusion, the law doesn’t really protect us, & the risk of enjoying sex might be the thing that turns around to bite out our souls when it blows up in our face.

On Consent, Sex Positivity, & Cultures of Color after Colonization -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

A thing I’m noticing in pop culture is this idea that black women can’t be traumatized by anything that happens to them. Usually when a female character is sexually assaulted/kidnapped/abused it works to make the audience sympathetic to that character. We certainly see that trope enough in books/movies/TV shows with white characters. In fact such traumatic moments are often used to “redeem” bad girls in popular fiction ranging from soap operas to suspense shows. Yet Tara, Martha, etc are some of the most reviled characters in fandom & are often blamed for the bad things that happen to them.

Tara’s treatment by True Blood fandom is a particularly egregious example of this phenomenon. Fans of the show seem to *hate* her for everything she has ever done, ever might do, or ever had done to her. But as written she has every reason to be the flawed angry woman that is on display because awful things are happening to her & around her. So, why isn’t that ever acknowledged? Why are there still weekly posts filled with Martha hate despite the fact that she isn’t even on the show as a regular?

There’s graveyard humor around R. Kelly’s ability to get away with his serial predation on young black women. We make jokes about it to push away the pain at seeing it writ large that black girls are worthless in the face of fame & money. But, if art reflects life & life reflects art then what does that say about the way black women are being presented and treated? We know we’re human, but does anyone else?

What Price A Black Girl’s Life? -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I am past the point where I have any patience for people telling me how I should feel about how black women are presented in the media. Especially people who have never walked a moment, much less a mile in the shoes of black women in America. And before someone decides to break out the face paint & do a documentary? Let me tell you right now that a day or a week or even a month in makeup won’t touch what it’s like to hear from birth that you are worth less than every body else because of you hair, your skin, your culture, your history, & your gender. You know, all those things that make you human? Yeah, the message we get is that we’re not really human. We’re beasts, we’re Mammy, we’re bedwarmers, we’re everything under the Sun but people who are valued & valuable. Well, we’re valuable when we can be exploited by someone else, but pearl clutching ensues when we want to profit from our own labor. 

Black women have a reputation for being strong that is sometimes helpful & sometimes harmful. We do our best to survive everything that gets thrown at us. We fight the messages, we teach our kids to fight the messages, but it is 2011 & I am still seeing books, movies, TV shows, & articles lauded for explaining exactly how much less we are worth than everyone else. We can’t even tell our own stories without having to argue over whether or not we’re qualified to speak. If we’re silent others speak at top volume until we are rendered down to Mammy, Jezebel, or Sapphire with no room for reality. When we do speak up suddenly we are too loud, too angry, too confrontational, simply too much. Even when we whisper, we are doing it wrong, but trust & believe we will be heard whether anyone else likes it or not. We are women. We are black. We will not stop speaking for ourselves. Get used to it or get the fuck out of our way.

A PSA From A Loud Angry Black Woman -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

So, I’m looking at some of the comments and emails that are flooding my inbox demanding to know all the inner workings of my life when I had the abortion that saved my life. And I know I don’t owe anyone an explanation, but there seems to be an ongoing assumption that I had tons of family support, disposable income in abundance, and that my two kids were self sufficient. At the time my oldest was 8 and my youngest was 1 1/2. My friends are supportive, and one of them stepped in to take care of my kids that night but I’ve never had the kind of family of origin that will pitch in to help me (or each other) with more than the most basic things most of the time. It was better before my grandmother passed away, but she’s been gone a while now and without her we’re not a close family by any stretch of the imagination.

When I say my family will help, I’m mostly referring to my aunts or my husband’s family. My parents? They aren’t helpful. They got the phone call that I was in trouble while they were en route to St Louis for a televangelist’s convention. They suggested I call someone else to come get my kids, and then they continued their drive to St. Louis. I did get a phone call from my mother the night after the surgery. She was more concerned with me interrupting her weekend away than anything else as far as I could tell from the conversation. Admittedly I stopped listening after she launched into her latest version of ” This would be shocking, but this is the same woman that didn’t bother to name me and then got mad when I was 13 and filled out my own birth certificate with the name I’d been using at school instead of the moniker she’d always planned to saddle me with so I wasn’t shocked. It was the last straw for our already tenuous relationship, but that’s a story for another blog.

On the disposable income front…at that point we were a one income family and just barely getting by on that one income. It was cheaper for me to stay home with our two kids (childcare costs in Chicago are astronomical), but that also meant we had very little wiggle room financially. So, there was no question of my husband taking off work for weeks on end to allow me to stay in bed all day every day. And while his family will help to their best abilities, they have their own households to run and must go to their jobs too if they want to pay their bills. Same thing with our friends. I don’t know where people live that folks can just stop working and keep living, but I don’t live there.

Someone else asked why I didn’t take my kids with me to the hospital. Aside from not wanting to traumatize them, there was also the part where my oldest was at school. We lived close enough to his school that he could walk home, but having him come home to an empty house was not an option. Nor was waiting for him to get home since you know, I was bleeding profusely and all. My friend cleaned my blood off the walls and hid my sheets so that my son wouldn’t be scared. As for the demands that I have a c-section just in case a micro-preemie could have survived? You should go look at the survival rates for 20 week preemies again. Death wasn’t going to be averted, it was just a question of whether we both died. There seems to be this assumption that major surgery was a better idea than a less invasive procedure. Umm..no. The first thing discussed when I got to the hospital was the lack of viability for a child born at that point, then there was the part where I was in active labor & had no amniotic fluid when they did the ultrasound. But hey, go ahead and assume you know every detail of what was going on in my life so you can pass judgment on the decisions made by the person actually living it.

Lastly, no I wasn’t paid by Salon or anyone else to write that post. It’s not fiction, and the title of my blog isn’t an indication that my nonfiction should be taken with a grain of salt. It is an indication that I’m a published author of fiction and non fiction. The idea that this was a publicity stunt is laughable. I don’t know what planet some of the folks making that comment are on, but on no planet that I work on is having a blog post about a tragedy a way to boost attention for a closed company. Yes, I said closed. Verb Noire is defunct and has been for some time. My writing career has been developing for years and really, I know enough people to have a good chance at selling the book I’m working on.

Mind you, I wrote that post after an argument on Facebook with someone who insisted (as many people do) that abortion is not a medical procedure and that no one ever needs one. I posted it on my personal blogs & on a blog that I co write with several other angry black women. Most of my posts are made in a similar fashion. Most do not go particularly viral. This one has, and yes I did put myself out there when I agreed to let Salon re-post it. Not for an agenda, but simply to write what happened to me and talk about the fallacy in “No abortion is ever necessary” arguments. Did we file a lawsuit? No. I had a lot of other things to do (like mourn and heal) and the hospital staff that did eventually treat me encouraged me to go through internal channels so that patient care would be improved. I did that, and then for the sake of my sanity and my family I put away what happened to me and got on with the business of living my life.

Some say I should name and shame the doctor that refused to do the procedure. If I knew why he refused I might have done just that, but since I know that there are many possible reasons that he did not do it? I’ve left him to deal with the internal procedures in place. Same thing with the hospital where this happened. I could name it (funnily enough many people have correctly guessed and more than a few remember me naming it when it happened), but I didn’t write this post to shame the hospital any more than I wrote it to shame the doctor. Hard concept to grasp for some, but this post wasn’t about revenge or money. It was about me coming to terms with what happened and about my disdain for a particular pro-life argument. Believe it, don’t believe it. That’s up to you. My life will go on either way.

My life is not your life -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Sister Song website

Reproductive Justice: 101

Loretta Ross of SisterSong on “Reproductive Justice 101″ Part 1

Loretta Ross of SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, gives a lecture on “Reproductive Justice 101″ in Miami during June of 2008, sponsored by Women’s Fund of Miami and Mi Lola. Check out their website at http://sistersong.net/

Loretta Ross of SisterSong on “Reproductive Justice 101″ Part 2

Loretta Ross of SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, gives a lecture on “Reproductive Justice 101″ in Miami during June of 2008, sponsored by Women’s Fund of Miami and Mi Lola. Check out their website at http://sistersong.net/

Reproductive Justice: Abortion

Loretta Ross: The Economic and Racial Dynamics of Abortion

Loretta Ross, reproductive justice and human rights activist, talks about the racial and economic dynamics of abortion, STDs, teen pregnancy and health care.

The 2010 Documentary “The Abortion Conspiracy

Abortion Conspiracy Part 1: The Billboard Campaign

Part 2

Episode Two of a five part series looking at a right wing conspiracy theory that abortion in communities of color is genocide. This video covers Pro Life Freedom Rides staged by Priests for Life in the summer of 2010.

Part 3

Abortion Conspiracy Episode 3: This video examines a right wing documentary which alleges that abortion in the African American community is genocide. Through fear mongoring and guilt by association, it tires to make the case that this is a conspiracy led by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.

Abortion Conspiracy Part 4: Racial Uplift

Part 4 of a five part series on the right wing effort to portray abortion as genocide in communities of color. This episode profiles several African Americans who work in the field of reproductive health: an abortion provider, a volunteer at a hotline which offers counseling and two escorts at an abortion clinic in the south.

Abortion Conspiracy Part 5 The Mid Term Elections

One of the strategies of the right wing conspiracy theory that abortion amounts to genocide in the African American community is to try to fragment the Democratic base in the 2010 mid term elections. This episode asks if this strategy will have any effect.

2010: Are Black Children an ‘Endangered Species’? (The shorter version)

Reproductive Rights: Birth

Atlanta: The Doula Story

This video profiles Perez Ridley, a Doula in Atlanta, GA, who counsels pregnant teens on behalf of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.

Northwest Doula Conference 2010

Shafia M. Monroe – Certified Midwife, founder and president of International Center for Traditional Childbearing – presenter on Full Circle Birth Traditions

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 1/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 2/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 3/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 4/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 5/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 6/6(end)

Reproductive Justice part 2: Reproductive 101, Deconstructing the current anti-abortion efforts targeting Black women; also, doulas and midwives. -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I’m probably not going to be willing to talk about this much after today. Because I have a life and responsibilities outside of fandom. Ones that are frankly much more likely to yield good results from time investment than arguing with dumb motherfuckers about basic civics lessons (the next person to make a free speech argument at me about uninviting Moon will get laughed at very loudly), or explaining for the 10,000th time why the framing of terrorist as Muslim by default is ignorant, racist, offensive, and dumb as hell. Both of those conversations are remedial, and if you think I have no patience for 101 conversations I’ll let you figure out I feel about 098 discussions at this stage of the game.

So, here’s the thing about WisCon. The ideal and the reality are in two different rooms. Case in point, my first trip to WisCon was by turns awesome and awful. I spent the first day I was there in 2009 doing panels and hanging out with friends. For some reason I thought that I needed to branch out and meet some new people my second day. This was one of my stupidest ideas to date, and a mistake I won’t repeat. Why? Because wandering around on my own as one of the new black faces in the crowd I discovered that lots of people felt entitled to walk up to me and demand my time. Someone actually asked me to teach them about race within two seconds of reading my badge. Just came right out, and very earnestly requested that I spend my afternoon teaching them. That…did not end well. Then there were the people who just stared into the POC safe space room like it was a particularly interesting zoo exhibit complete with pointing. And the infamous panel on Rape in Sci-Fi, and some other less than stellar interactions with random folks who clearly had thoughts about me, but lacked the stones to express them directly. Yeah, thinking back to that weekend I can’t remember what possessed me to want to go back to WisCon this year.

But I did. And I stuck to friends and friends of friends who I knew would not harsh my squee. And it was awesome. I got to talk about fannish things with people who got it, eat tasty foods at new places, and drink some very creative drinks that left me quite bubbly. It was exactly what a trip to a con should be for someone like me. Because I don’t go to WisCon to be an example of my race, a teaching tool, a teacher, or even to prove that I’m not secretly someone else (at last count I was a white woman, a white man, and an internet construct), I go to WisCon to have the closest thing to a good time that I can at a con. And I say it that way because in general I hate conventions. I’m claustrophobic (on my very best day it is all I can do to share an elevator with more than three people), and large crowds are a particular kind of hell for me. So, I don’t (regardless of how much the subject matter might interest me) go to many things where there are lots of people in small spaces. In fact, if it weren’t for the need to get my name out there as a writer and for Verb Noire (which is currently defunct for a lot of reasons) I probably wouldn’t go to any conventions. Ever.

And so, when I volunteered to help out at WisCon it had a lot to do with the fact that it is a feminist con. One that is ostensibly progressive and anti-racist. After all if I’m going to attend something that requires me to go against all of my instincts I should at least believe in its mission right? Right. And I do believe that WisCon wants to be a progressive anti-racist space. Is that always happening? Well no. There are humans involved after all, and we do tend to screw things up despite our best intentions. But for the most part there is a sense that WisCon is trying to get it right. Or at least for me there was that sense until Moon posted her screed and then refused to listen or engage in any real discussion. And after it became clear that she should not be honored by a progressive anti-racist feminist organization it was especially to see people advocating keeping her as a GOH anyway. Because apparently even though her words were directly antithetical to WisCon’s ideals it was more important to try to educate her/support her as a woman than it was to support the people she’d just insulted. And lots of those people admit they have no idea what was said beyond her post because she deleted all the comments. Well this is the internet and by the magic of screencaps you can see exactly why people did not want WisCon to honor her.

And yes, I am well aware that WisCon has probably unknowingly honored some bigots in the past. Because feminism is fraught with all kinds of issues around race, class, religion, and gender and those things don’t magically go away because someone writes SF/F. However, once someone shares their bigotry publicly and makes it clear that they are not interested in hearing any dissenting opinions, then what is an organization with WisCon’s ideals supposed to do about honoring them? You cannot say “Well we’re supposed to be supporting women, and how can we support them by not honoring Moon?” and call yourself a feminist in my book. Well, you can, but then that intimates to me that you’ve decided that Muslim women don’t deserve support. Or maybe you’re saying that they don’t deserve support as long as they keep their faith. One that you know nothing about, and much like Moon aren’t interested in learning anything about since that might mean confronting your own prejudices.

Honestly, if you’ve bought into conflating a religion with the politics of some people in power in some places that ascribe to that religion then I’m going to doubt your critical thinking skills. Because some of America’s best known domestic terrorists have been white Christian men. Yet no one is advocating insulting and oppressing all the white Christian men as a result of the Oklahoma City bombings, the KKK, the Aryan Nation, or any of those abortion clinic bombings and assassinations. In fact last I checked they’re still being held up as the good guys by a lot of people. Which makes sense since many white Christian men are good people. But no one expects them to wade in and change the minds of everyone that looks like them. It’s only when the conversation turns away from them that the expectation of one representing all starts to appear. Because othering and placing the onus on the other to prove their worth is a very popular tactic with people who want to pretend they are not bigots.

So, if you’re planning on skipping WisCon to protest Moon’s invite being retracted? Go for it. That’s your right. After all there’s a reason Moon’s arguments are very similar to others that have been published over the years. Oh sometimes the subject matter was slightly different, but if you substitute any other ethnic group you can probably find a version addressing blacks, Asians, Jews, and even the Irish somewhere. Because these attitudes are nothing new, and they’re widespread, and frankly if you ascribe to them I’d rather you not come to WisCon and mess with our good time. I want to squee over Nisi Shawl and talk to my friends and not have to worry about sitting in a room full of bigots who think any of us are beholden to prove to them why their prejudices are wrong. Stay home, and let WisCon take another step toward being progressive, feminist, and anti-racist.

Yet Another WisCon post or Why This Black Woman Isn’t Your Friend -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Today in my class we were trying to learn a camera technique. We decided to use funny youtube videos to illustrate the proper way to shoot the scenes we wanted. And my classmates decided that the Antoine Dodson videos were such GREAT candidates because man, wasn’t he SO FUNNY?!?!? I tried to point out the fact that he was talking about his sister’s rape. The response? They didn’t mind that, they were not laughing at him (o rly?) and my personal favorite…”At least he has a sense of humor about it”. And then they went on to discuss dressing up as him on fucking HALLOWEEN.

And this wasn’t just the white kids. There were the other black kids in on this, who thought it was just as funny as the white kids did. After all, isn’t he black and gay and lowerclass and acting in ways not coded masculine? Isn’t that so uncomfortable for us middleclass folk?And his actions and his way of expressing himself became the goddamn story, instead of WHAT he was saying, which was that he was pissed at his sister being almost raped. Hell his sister was written out of the story entirely, so that we the class privileged, we who act our genders as society dictates, we racially privileged, we the women who want to want to believe that rape will not happen to us because we live/work/walk/drive in the right places could laugh. because rape is so fucking funny. because standing up for your sister’s right to lie in her fucking bed without being targeted is so fucking funny. hell it’s not even worthy of note, because your brother’s method of expression is not societally sanctioned and that is much more important than the fact that this fucking culture has a HUGE FUCKING PROBLEM IN THAT RAPE IS UBIQUITOUS AND NEEDS TO BE FUCKING STOPPED. Oh i forget. women are not really human are they? Especially if they are poor. Even worse if they are of color. Immigrants. Prostitutes. Women come in classes, people and dignity and humanity are a zerosum game.

And anyway, he got money from it! (After we made it quite clear that we as a society would completely refuse to take him seriously, to busy reinforcing our class, race, gender presentation and other privileges to see the humanity in a woman being attacked and her brother coming to her aid. They are not worth society’s outrage and protection are they? Of course not.) Hell, even BET, got into the fun. They brought him on to make him perform the “Bed Intruder” Song. Yes, yes they did. A young woman’s near rape was turned into fucking entertainment for the “best and brightest” at the “premier” black awards show!!!!

Oh, and just to make this situation even MORE fucked up, Mr. Dodson is a rape victim himself.

And this is how the mainstream news proceeded to frame it:

Like many, Dodson is hoping to take his 15 seconds of celebrity and turn it into a greater opportunity. “I just want to be the voice of people who are going through similar situations that have gotten their case swept under the rug,” he says. “Most of my fans are victims of rape and molestation and they reach out to me anyway so I just talk to them and comfort them. I try to tell them the ways that I dealt with it because I’m a rape victim myself.”

Because its HIS fault that that the society found this fucking FUNNY and made him into a famous internet meme.

You know what? Other people have taken apart this situation way better than I can:

Think twice

think twice before you laugh at antoine dodson. i know everything is supposed to take a backseat to short-lived fame and exposure. but how would you feel if your sister was attacked by a rapist and people did nothing about it? officials laughed at you, police took their time coming to investigate, media crews didn’t arrive until you called them, and then your time on the news gets spoofed to entertain others instead of warn them. antoine’s taking his time in the spotlight in stride, and i think he’s doing it for kelly’s sake. i hope all the people laughing and singing “hide your kids, hide your wife” are writing all of the people in kelly’s community and state to do something about catching the rapist.

i planned to write about this at feministe, fast on the heels of the gang rape of a 12-year-old at a nearby skatepark. what does it mean when you read about attack after attack after attack, and one of the thoughts in your head is “i hope no one auto-tunes something like this” or “how can this story garner more attention than it’s gotten,” when these stories should be enough to knock ten people on their asses with grief.MORE

Flava Of The Month?: The Antoine Dodson Aftermath

By now many of us know how the story started: on the morning of July 28th, a man broke into the Dodson home in Huntsville, Ala. and, according to Antoine’s sister Kelly, attempted to assault her in her bedroom. As originally reported by WAFF-TV, Antoine struggled with the assailant, who subsequently escaped.

The first thing to note is that WAFF’s original story was not a live-shot. Meaning both the reporter, Elizabeth Gentle, and her editors had virtually the entire business day to get an interview with either a police spokesperson or the crime scene investigator shown at the scene to add to the story and respond to Antoine’s allegation about there being “a rapist in Lincoln Park” – for instance, had there been similar incidents in the area as of late? Gentle also had time to get a description of the alleged assailant from either the Dodsons or the police department, information that would be useful when the suspect in a forced entry and attempted sexual assault is still at large.

Instead, as you can see, the bulk of the story is devoted to capturing Antoine’s anger. And while the visceral emotion might have made for “compelling television,” that kicked off the most disturbing part of this entire affair. While it’s possible this is because of her own choice, Kelly Dodson, the original victim of the assault, became a non-factor in the story. In fact, WAFF aired a follow-up story that completely ignored her and focused on the online fuss surrounding Antoine, while absolving itself of any fault for its’ own reporting:MORE

On Feminism, Liberals, Black Folks and Antione Dodson

In the midst of this institutional racism are the actions of three groups that cannot be ignored:

1. the viewers and listeners who openly mocked Dodson, completely ignoring the rape survivor narrative embedded in his story
2. the white middle class hipster-nerd comedy troupe that made money off of the rape and attempted rape of poor black women and girls and the one man willing to stand up for them
3. the mainstream feminist blogs and feminist communities who have remained largely silent on Dodson’s sister despite the core issue of rape

The multi-racial viewers and listeners spent their time laughing at Dodson and mocking him and his sister in print in the youtube comments for days. The video received some of the largest hits of the week when it first went up. The auto-tune version played black radio stations and a black marching band even set did their own rendition, laughing at the “ghetto” in ways that I personally cannot excuse as black humor as survival but rather black humor as classism and internalized hate. Amongst the 100,000s of people commenting on Dodson or the autotune song, very few talked about the heinous act of rape, the existence of a serial rapist in the area that had gone unchecked for an unspecified amount of time, or the engineered tragedy of the state’s willingness to abandon poor women and girls to predators. In other words, the chance to mock an uneducated black man was more enticing than the fact of violence against women and girls. MORE

Finally we hear from Kelly Dodson video at link with full transcript

Kelly: (unintelligible) There’s really not much that I can say right now because I don’t know how to explain it to you because you really did a lot of damage to me whether you know it or not and if it wasn’t for Antoine, you probably would have got what you came in there for but you didn’t. I just want to know how you feel about the situationMORE

and The accidental fame of Kelly and Antoine Dodson has a different perspective on the subject:

Even though the whole debacle can be seen by some through the lens of “poverty porn,” this can also be viewed in another light. A light that by instead of being stoic and polished, the Dodsons actually got more attention for their plight and the issue of crime in poor communities BECAUSE people found the clip unintentionally funny. Antoine’s message was received (“Obviously, we have a rapist in Lincoln Park …”) and the community took notice.

Said Kenyatta Cheese of KnowYourMeme.com to NPR:

“Kelly and Antoine may be victims but they are fearless,” Kenyatta told me. “They both take control of the camera and call out their attacker. They issue a call to action telling people in their community to look out for the perpetrator. And yes, Antoine may not seem traditionally articulate, but he uses his time on camera to be performative and create spectacle and that gets our attention. In that sense, he’s probably more effective in getting his message out there than a more traditional community ‘representative’ would ever be.

“To me, Antoine Dodson is brilliant.”

MORE

The last time I checked, Mr. Dodson had used the proceeds of “The Bed Intruder Song” to move the entire family to a safer neighbourhood and is planning to go back to school. The spotlight isn’t on Kelly Dodson as much, so I am not not able to discern what she is going to do.

Rape is a multifaceted problem, and it happens not only because someone decides to overpower and forcefully assault a weaker person, but because society condones it. And the lower you are on US societal heirarchy, the less society gives a fuck a fuck about your safety and wellbeing. This series of linkspams will try to examine the various ways in which society’s prejudices help to perpetuate the rape culture in the US (with an occasional piece on Canada).

Rape Culture USA: How race, class, misogyny and homophobia intersected in the Kelly and Antoine Dodson story -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

So, there’s this thing happening in the black American community (and outside it) where women who look like me are supposed to be grateful for any crumbs that happen to fall into our bleak little lives. Apparently, our lot in life is to be miserable unless some rich educated black man wants us. We’re struggling to survive on our own in a world where we might have to actually be self supporting and self loving, and we don’t even have the good sense to realize that it’s impossible to be happy with ourselves as long as we’re not reflecting the picture society expects. After all, such stellar catches as Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan have opted to seek out women of a…lighter persuasion rather than black women.

It’s questionable enough that anyone believes that three dudes who wouldn’t understand fidelity if it walked up to them and sat in their laps being unavailable to black women is supposed to be a clear indicator that black women aren’t valuable. Erm, how to put this politely? Oh right, I’m not in a mood to be polite so I’ll just say flat out I wouldn’t touch any of those cats with my worst enemy’s vagina mmkay? I have standards for the men in my life that include things like trust, respect, and at least a vague grasp of human decency. For the record? I’ve been married twice. The first time was a hot mess in that way that can happen when you’re 21 and too dumb to read the big flashing neon signs that say “Leave this dumb bastard alone” but my current marriage? Loving it. He’s black, educated, and has a good relationship with his mother. It wasn’t hard to find him (I wasn’t even done with my divorce when I met him as a matter of fact) and he has never expected me to be someone else. He loves me for me. I love him for him. That’s our big secret. We’re not unique in this respect either. There are plenty of happy black couples (married or not) out here leading their lives without feeling the need to resort to a Stepford process for either partner. That’s before we get into what it means to be LGBT and unable to legally get married in a lot of places. Newsflash: Not every black woman wants a man. And even for the ones that do? Marriage isn’t necessarily their first priority.

Now, let’s take a second to be real on the topic of marriage. The institution grants certain legal protections and rights, but it doesn’t guarantee a happy couple or even a long lasting relationship. For further proof on that topic feel free to check out the relationship history of the three celebs I’ve already mentioned along with Swizz Beatz, everyone on Basketball Wives, and most of the rest of the modern world. That 50% divorce rate has nothing to do with the flaws of black women and everything to do with the reality that people get married for the wrong reasons to the wrong people everyday. As societal panaceas go, marriage has never really been all that effective despite the hype about the good old days. In the good old days, women got stuck in horrible relationships, men brought home social diseases, and everyone wished they had way out that was socially acceptable and didn’t result in life long poverty. So, let’s drop this idea that marriage has ever been the institution to grant us a stable society. It can’t even grant a stable relationship. And really, if we’re going to harp on the value of marriage? Let’s make it available to everyone instead of offering up expensive substitutes and insisting marriage only has one meaning. If some pop star can get married for 56 hours and the institution still have meaning in the aftermath of that quickie divorce? It’ll be just fine.

This phenomenon doesn’t just rear its ugly head around our love lives though, we’re also supposed to hate our hair, our skin, even the shape of our bodies, and we’re supposed to strive to achieve behavior patterns that are in direct contradiction to our personalities as soon as someone hints that they find us too strong/abrasive/angry/loud or whatever other bullshit excuse they can trot out as part of the effort to denigrate and demean every facet of our existence. After all, we do insist on wearing our hair the way it grows out of our heads, and choosing colors and styles that highlight our skin tones as well as displaying our bodies in ways that we find flattering. I mean, whoever heard of someone wearing a sleeveless top indoors in the winter? Oh wait, I lift weights (and kids) on a regular basis and I also wear short sleeved or sleeveless tops most of the year too. Because they’re comfortable and I like them. And really, what gives anyone the right to police our bodies as though they don’t belong to us? Whoops, I forgot I’m supposed to be begging everyone else for their approval as part and parcel of my experience right? Right.

Except that’s not ever going to happen and the fact that a lot of people are assholes isn’t a reason for black women to turn themselves inside out. It is a good reason to ignore the assholes and keep going about the business of life. Yes, even with “nappy” hair, my natural eye color, and an ass that makes skinny jeans self-destruct I am happy to be a black woman. I love myself, and I love my life even if someone says I’m living it wrong. Instead of finding new ways to insist that to be a black woman is to be miserable, how about celebrating all those unique qualities that are inherent in our shared existence? Oh right, that would require putting down all those ‘ism’s people love to cling to wouldn’t it? I guess if you can’t give up the sexism, racism, and classism then we’ll just have to learn to live with the hate and keep doing our own thing.

On Being A Black Woman and Happy With It -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman