on femininity (a mini-rant and a clusterf**k of thoughts)

I have many pet peeves. Many. Like, more than you think.

I can’t stand hearing people chew. People who come through the drive thru. People saying what a sauce is for when they order in the drive thru. People who are bumper-to-bumper in the line. Can’t stand when they say “and for the drink” or “I’ll have this for the entree.” It’s fucking fast food. No entrees in sight, bitch.

Most of my pet peeves center around my job. Give me a break. I’m there four/five days a week.

I can’t stand when people turn their noses up at cursing. I’m a writer. I know how to use my words. I just think curses add a certain personal flourish.

Above all, I cannot stand when people, especially men, call women “females.”

Now, this is a topic I touched on a little in one of my first posts, cornbread crumble.

cornbread crumble

As someone who has…not struggled, per-say, but thought heavily of, their sexual and gender identity since high school, I’m very sensitive to titles. As a Black woman, I’m especially attuned.

My first year on TikTok, I stitched a video of a Black woman discussing their relationship to the word “woman.” It’s a tumultuous one if we really think about it. I’d said (in summation):

“Black womanhood is a relatively new concept due to slavery. Withholding womanhood from non-white women is a basic foundation of white supremacy. American womanhood is something white. Black womanhood is “won.” It’s a badge of honor, one that I’d wear proudly even if I didn’t identify as a “woman.”

I still believe this. Womanhood is something precious, something to be protected and fought for.

Here’s an excerpt from “Antebellum White Womanhood vs. Black Female-hood,” from my paper Whores Playing Whores: The English Actress in the 18th Century.

The domesticated woman/whore trope in English public life and the stage aligns with the white woman/black woman duality in the antebellum South. Whiteness equated purity and calm while blackness, corruption. As in England, domestication was an oppressive ideal but also suggested clear stature and positive moral character. The South harbored “the ideals of Victorian womanhood as the center of a Christian, moral home, and severely limited [woman’s] public and political roles” (Long 4). The white woman was to be chaste, submissive, and pious, characteristics that presented them superior to black enslaved women. In opposition, black women were primitive, “viewed as immoral and dominated by base instincts” (Long 4). Of course, this ideology was heavily flawed based on overt factors: those who created these virtues and the corrupt slavery system that instilled them.

In her 1836 Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, abolitionist and female rights activist Angelina Grimké plays to Christian sympathy and fellowship to inform the women of what they can do to reasonably fight slavery. For Grimké, the very feminine qualities that made them white women demand that they work to abolish slavery. These “pious” women were to “pray for that poor slave...and [educate] him” (Grimké 6). White Christian women were supposedly the beacon of light of the South, with the ability to gently sway their male counterparts towards God and and abolition. As they benefited from the slave system, Grimké herself included, it was their responsibility to act against it. But, throughout Grimké’s appeal, the enslaved population were objects to emphasize the genteel nature of the white Christian; although they were on a mission to save the black soul, they could not possibly understand its circumstance. This does not hide the fact that the dualism of the pious white/wretched black trope prevailed, and arguably thrived under this savior complex. Educating the enslaved in a white society would make them pawns of a shallowly veiled system, intent on wiping out blackness.

This is a long way of saying that racist morality played and plays a large part in labels. During slavery, Black women were “females.” To be a woman meant to have a family, live a pious life, raise your children up from Republican Motherhood. It meant having the relative freedom of being white. It equated to being white.

As I said, Black womanhood is a relatively new concept. It’s loaded with trauma, struggle, hope.

I had said in one of my college classes that I wasn’t a feminist. I’m a womanist. Kind of like the whole “girl supporting girls” thing. I don’t support girls, especially ones who don’t support my best interests. But, I believe in protecting girls. Same with “feminism.”

Grimke’s feminism was based on the white woman helping the humble negro out of the kindness and duty of her heart. Feminism nowadays is still stained with this. People say it’s feminist to have Planned Parenthoods on every street. No, that’s racism. Where are these PPs? In BIPOC neighborhoods.

I’m not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist. I’m ranting with the vengeance of truth behind me. That sounds so dramatic.

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In my paper White Supremacy and the Importance of Distinction, I discuss the difference between racial and class privilege. Many people in the 50s believed that mental eugenics pointed to a downside of white supremacy. Essentially, disabled white people thought a target was on their backs because of their whiteness.

I argued that while white supremacy did put a target on their backs, it suggested a larger problem: the erasure of BIPOC genetics. To make it easier for myself, I created a metaphor:

For instance, a mother has two sons, one whom she neglects and leaves to his own devices while the other she coddles and searches out every imperfection. Technically the first son is stronger and able to fend for himself; the other, however, has the privilege of being cared for and cultivated. Of course, citizens like Buck do not perfectly fit into this analogy but the general message stands: cultivation signals privilege.

Cultivation signals privilege.

Think of rich, American neighborhoods. Think of the trees you see growing. A Whole Foods on the corner. The HOA up your butt about your grass being perfectly cut and aligned with your neighbor’s.

Now, think of a food desert. 7/11s and Popeyes down the street from you. No plants. Yellow grass. Wire fences.

We can easily see the distinction between cultivation. And we can picture what the people walking in each neighborhood look like.

Now think of it in terms of white and BIPOC.

Above all, the idea that whites had the power to police racial superiority and cleansing is supremacist in itself, which Bridges does not address. Disadvantaged whites were susceptible to this movement and yet, being scrutinized and tested for their “worth” in the white race is privileged—people of color never had the chance.

My God, where was I going with this?

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If you’re still with me, let’s take what I’ve written and apply it to what I was talking about.

I couldn’t finish watching The Handmaid’s Tale because it was too real. It’s the same thing with biopics about civil rights or Black struggle. It’s too close and I want to escape.

I’ve been seeing a lot of Tiktok comments saying that Project 2025 is “the beginning of the handmaid’s tale.”

I can’t stand comments like this because, first off, Parable of the Sower. Like, show some class. It’s right there. Get the right information from a Black woman. But also, this stuff has been happening for way longer than Handmaid was a thing. It’s based off real events of BIPOC women (but you know, without the BIPOC women).

Same thing with Hunger Games. Katniss should’ve been Native. But, no, we got Jennifer Lawrence. And people want to say, “we’re the revolution! we should have our own hunger games! we’re the generation that will set the world on fire.”

Yeah, ok.

It’s BIPOC erasure that makes labels so, so precious.

Females are dogs, racoons, non-humans. They are what BIPOC women were referred as during slavery and colonization.

I’m not saying this as eloquently as I’d like to. It’s just a subject that is very close to my heart at the moment.

So much pain and struggle went into being seen as women. It’s not something that should be so easily taken away.

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Ok, so I’ll end it there because I literally have no idea what I was going with that. I’m trying to be more comfortable with posting things that aren’t perfect. It’s my Substack so I should give myself a break. I’ll probably go back in and edit some things while I can think of better words.

Also…pls vote. Pls pls pls.

Love yall! :)