sexism

If you can’t stand the heat…

Posted on by karyn deshields

“Women want too much”

“Black women are too aggressive”

“Older women with children aren’t desirable”

“Less than perfect women should not expect to be protected and provided for by a man”

“Strong women don’t intimidate men… unless she thinks strong means aggressive, rude, unpleasant, and outspoken”

Strong, old, Black, too short, too tall, too big, too skinny, and just people with vaginas say a rousing… Fuck you! The Trumps, Richard Spencers, Robert Fischers, Kevin Samuels, Umar Johnsons and all the men who subscribe to their particular brand of women hating can also grab a seat on the Fuck You train. Men who have taken credit for women’s accomplishments, deemed us too weak and not smart enough, or James Evan’ed us to the kitchen and the bedroom instead of the lectern, boardroom, classroom, or wherever the hell we wanted to be… fuck ya’ll too! Check this out, real men don’t sit around dissecting and dictating who and what women should and can be. Men with time to focus on what women are doing or not doing should perhaps find another job, lift some weights, pick up a hammer or chisel, do some carpentry or masonry, or choke on BBQ smoke. Pick one.

Sexism is a tale as old as time. Before a White man ever thought about enslaving a Black man, he was controlling his wife. Many extremely smart women in the 19th century and early 20th century never married, such as Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Caroline Hershel, or their accomplishments were credited to their husbands. Women feigned being dense or dim-witted to marry, because men weren’t interested in smart women, but women who would bear them heirs, look pretty on their arm, curtsy, and make a good biscuit for their tea. Sadly, not much has changed. Women who champion feminism and the rights of women, or those whose successes brought about the need for that championing are looked at as aggressive, masculine, independent, and uninterested in male companionship, marriage, child-bearing, and things the patriarchy paints as feminine. This is true across racial lines, and especially true, a remnant of both racism and sexism, for Black women.

Here is a truth… as a collective, NO other group of women in history have been as abandoned and abused, and then victim blamed as Black women. None. Our victimization has been at the hands of men: men in power, particularly White men, and men we share blood or affinity to, particularly Black men. Those are facts. Slavery separated us from our ancestral families in Africa and the ones we created in America. We were forced to bear the slave children of our Masters, creating an emotional wedge between us and our slave husbands. The Civil War left us without husbands, alone to raise children, who fought on the front lines for a country that would never treat us fairly. Jim Crow and Black Codes destroyed the communities of color we built, leaving us destitute and unable to feed, clothe, and house ourselves. Black women were forced to take on maid and mammy roles while Black men were forced out of the job market. Desperation and unjust laws left them jailed and us alone to raise kids with no men in the home, practically destroying the Black nuclear family.

Today, remnants of watching our single mothers struggle but persevere while knowing our father’s chose not to participate in our family reside just under the surface. We watched our brother’s take on man roles in a child’s body, and now see them struggling to overcome the stigma of incarceration. We remember our uncles, real and play, teaching them that manhood was about how many women, cars, and dollars you could stack and never showing emotion, compassion, or vulnerability. We see them mistreating our friends and sisters, helping themselves to whatever we have and leaving us worse off than we started. We stay at Friend of the Court trying to get them to help buy a pack of diapers or help pay for DeVanté, who looks just like his trifling ass, go to the private school so he can be a doctor like he always talks about. Before you get in your feelings, YES, there are plethora of Black men, men period, who are excellent husbands, fathers, friends, and leaders. We salute you!!! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 But for any man to spend his time determining that how we broadcast strength and resilience is wrong and indicative of our worth, without acknowledging what we have been through… he might want to consider that he is just further victimizing us with his judgement and patriarchal bullshit. Fuck you guy.

You want us in the kitchen frying your pickerel in lace underwear, real booty banging, hair laid (and it can be weave as long as you can’t tell), smiling and calling you King. But fish grease pops, so when we put our clothes back on we are rude, when we tie our hair back we are aggressive, and when we stop smiling we are rude. No, we just got fucking burned… but we keep on cooking. It’s you who can’t stand the heat bruh… so back your ass up out of the kitchen until your balls drop, you can grab them, and come help me tend to my burns. Until then, keep your fucked up opinions to yourself. How I exhibit strength is MY BUSINESS. If you don’t like it, then go find a woman you like, cuz the fact that you are talking about it MEANS that you are single af. Figure out why that is before you lay out your philosophy on why some woman, you don’t want, acts in a way you don’t agree with. Newsflash… she likely doesn’t give a fuck!

Your homework: Before you write a dissertation on why certain women are so undesirable, figure out why nobody wants you?!?

Women are always caping for men… all women. We keep your secrets, help you hide bodies, and cover your abuse with Maybelline… because we want to help make you better before we give up in you. But we are sick of your abuse, your judgements, your dominion… and we won’t continue to be your victims. We can be bad by ourselves. We can choose who and what we want to be. We can exist, live and breathe and walk and talk, without seeking your approval. And the entire truth is…

“Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” 1 Corinthians 11:9.

Get it right!

I Request Equal Time…

Posted on by karyn deshields

So y’all already know I think and process in song lyrics.

Trump: This monster who was onstage with Mike Pence…

Senator Harris: Just killed another career it’s a mild day… (Nicki Minaj, Monster)

I got your monster, you joker!

We all saw VP Pence do that white patriarchal privilege bullshit at the VP debate on Tuesday, speaking over Senator Harris, attempting to force her to bend to his whim, mansplaining, being condescendingly disrespectful, undermining her intelligence and experience, and speaking to her as he was the superior intellectual on the stage. But like a true Boss, she tapped that. She gave him the business. She did so with full on face language in moments that cursing him to hell would have been inappropriate, by coming at him with facts, and calling him on his lies despite his evangelical tone.

“Ok first things first I’ll eat your brains…”

Meanwhile Black women far and wide could relate, and were posting and group texting about how they endured that same level of sexism that showed itself in his ‘the man will get the last word’ behavior and the added intersection of race that led him to question her qualifications and experience like she could not be the most qualified and experienced person on stage. It is a reality we are all too familiar with, sadly. We are often the first or the only in the room. Our intelligence, skill, and ability questioned and excused as good guesses and somehow only pursued to engage in some nefarious activity like we are all out here on our Jamila Davis. No shade to Jamila… she’s a Boss in her own right.

Not just victims of sexism or racism, Black women face the intersectional realities of being both Black and female in a nation that hates women and both fears and despises Black people. We are often marginalized by everyone… White men, White women, and sometimes Black men. We are labeled as weak of mind to expose our alleged inferiority to White men, but strong of body like animals, to inform our need to be controlled like savages. While white women are seen as needing protection to maintain some false purity standards. Yet we are among the most highly educated group of people in America, we have increased our entrepreneurial efforts by over 200% in recent years, and we are making it harder for anyone to deny our skills, talents, and success by how unapologetic we are being about spreading our accomplishments across the social sphere. Despite the stereotypes, we are professional, educated, skilled, and respected in every facet of American finance, law, industry, government, education, healthcare, technology, art… everything!

“You could be the King but watch the Queen conquer”

The truth is, like Senator Harris, we come prepared with a script on how to handle these shenanigans, borrowed from the boardroom and translated now across every place where we take up space. Our facial expressions say everything from …

And when you don’t get those, we are forced to use our inside voices and our SAT words to slice you a new asshole, and you know it’s happening, but it’s done with such precision and care, you don’t know you are a bloody mess. Then we settle back into ourselves to give you a chance to right your wrongs. But when you question our very presence, you can’t help but be a bigot and throw your privilege around like a boomerang… until we again, less gently, fact check the shit out of you, and your own privilege ricochets to smack you upside the head. We have an answer for your every move, but it’s an exhausting game that we have been told we must tiptoe around to avoid being cast as the very stereotypes that haunt us.

But I am here to tell you, after a decade of fighting with White men and women with my pen, careful words, tempered anger, and lowered voice, I can tell you that it won’t change your circumstance or their behavior to stay in the pocket. Being angry at mistreatment is normal, you don’t have to scream and holler but you can surely call out their discrimination, bias, privilege, and disrespect by name as your full self without worrying about the stereotypes you might fall into. You were born into these stereotypes, they aren’t yours by ownership though to claim or discard. God gave you a voice to speak up and out, to educate the ignorant, and to call out the clowns. You were put into that position divinely.

You don’t think some fool man tried to take over Harriet’s plan and try to mansplain to her how to best cross the delta in the darkness… you know Soloman B. did. But Harriet’s sideeye said to him…”How many slaves have you freed?”

You don’t think some extra dainty White woman hasn’t tried to tell Serena Williams a lithe body would fare her better in tennis, of course Amy did. But Serena had to politely tell her with a laugh… “I got Masters you just got plans.” But Queen Serena wasn’t joking.

You don’t think some White man told Oprah she’d never amount to anything more than a local TV host, of course Tanner did. But now Tanner works for her, and at the latest Harpo picnic Oprah invited Jay-Z to perform … “Call me a Phil Collins I feel a billion is in the air. I affiliate with Billy Gates, that’s my peer.” (Jay-Z, A Billi)

So my sistas, don’t cower, don’t bend or beg, don’t wait for scraps. Let them know you are there and if you don’t get equal pay, equal billing, and equal time where you have earned it, first you’ll ask for it. Then you’ll take it. Periodt!

This Woman’s Work III: A Foreword

Posted on by karyn deshields

A Modern Day Tale:

“…but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind! ” -Virginia Wolf

It was 2018, I was working in a federal government office, where I had worked since 2004, amid moves and changes in everything from job title to the way I logged into my computer. People had come and gone, and I was still plugging away. My workplace had transformed from this very robust, albeit disheveled and disorganized office, like the set of Barney Miller, to this very sterile building. It was cold, soulless. Clean and neat, but like a psychopath, it lacked a genuine personality and flavor. It wasn’t even vanilla. Very often my spirit felt held captive.

Welcome to Dystopia.

Culture and diversity are kaleidoscopes. No matter which way you turn, there is rich color and a soundless rhythm you can still feel in those same places music makes move. Some White Americans are devoid of culture, so they latch on to the fallacy of the American Dream as their identity. When one can only see themselves as important through a lens of monetary and positional success, money and power become the things that mean the most to you. Similarly those of us who embrace our many cultures, I for example am a Black woman, of the hip hop generation, educated, urban, and a Detroiter, have an identity beyond the tools use to subjugate most of society… money and power. Most of the White people that I know and consider friends are very cultured… whether that be spiritual, regional, ancestral, you name it. And in this cold and sterile environment, cold and sterile White men had infiltrated this once robust and diverse group of people. Money and power trumped (pun intended) public service, employee development, and humanity.

In practice, these White men wanted me to turn over my brain to their whim… and I wasn’t built that way. I am of the “Mama Said Knock You Out”, “Knuck if you Buck” generation of Black women with a killer side eye, a big ass brain, and a deadly vocabulary. So as they tried to force us into servitude, held us down and forced disciplinary action and termination down our throats, I refused their poison. Instead of gouging out our eyes, they made us watch our ancestral sisters walk the green mile, cardboard box in hand, to remind us of our punishment should we disobey.

It was a pure mind fuck!

While this wasn’t unique to any particular women in the office, Black women were on the front lines. It was almost like they hired newbies to remind the old school folks just what would happen to us if we were bold. A few days in the door, and the writing on the wall was clear… do our bidding or get sold. I watched them come and go like barren slave girls, sold off, cast off. And although I knew their pain, I could at least find solace in the fact that the powers that be were threatened by my big ass brain and deadly vocabulary. I also knew that I was more competent than anyone above me, and being the smartest person in the room is a sign to find the nearest exit. You are the prey.

My daily experience seemed like a cross between films I had seen on the gestapo and life on the plantation. Overseers watched over us and used bullying, threats, harassment, and discrimination as whips upon our backs. I got paid a nice sum, so it wasn’t the horror of involuntary human subjugation, but it was inhumane all the same. To shield themselves, our overseers did the bidding of the powerful… and no one seemed to do it with more enthusiasm than other Black people. A Black woman in particular. The personification of self-hate.

A self-proclaimed minister and counselor, she was so blinded by feigned power and control, she could neither see nor feel the sting of her own abuse. Her own personal demons lashed out at us, all younger, more aesthetically pleasing, and well liked. She was Black and cracked… and not with the beauty of kintsuroi but with the fury of karma. If you didn’t kiss her ass she disliked you more, and if you did, it was only a set-up to stab you in the back. She used stereotypes to paint us as loud, lazy, Black girls with bad attitudes. Behind closed doors her White friendly smile turned into a self-hatred scowl and her fake endearing voice turned into a Newports and Colt 45 growl. She thought she was keeping us in line like a den mother, but in all actuality she just proved that Black people can be racist towards one another. She was the antithesis of freedom. Her presence was the penitentiary.

The workplace was not a place for me to develop my talents into skills, and serve my country. Instead, it was the realization of my intersectional position. My race, my sex, and my race paired with my sex, along with my age, after 40, became these identities that both made me proud and also served to marginalize me into professional pariahhood. I felt alone. I started to share my experiences out of necessity, so I could see if anyone could feel me and maybe help me navigate this space.

“Your silence will not protect you.” -Audrey Lorde

Suddenly, I had a hundred other examples and stories and anecdotes from Black women who assured me I wasn’t alone in dystopia. Soon, every group of Black women I came into contact with had discourse that would read like an anthology on the plight of sistas on the modern day plantation. I was swimming in a sea of support, and it made me realize that like Kimberlé Crenshaw before me, there didn’t just have to be one Harriet to lead us through the maze of patriarchy, racism, sexism, ageism, and colorism to freedom. I too could be in that number.

Come with me on an exploration of how Black women experience the workplace, and how despite our trauma, we continue to succeed and elevate with style and grace. Only through the sharing of information, can we expose how limiting these practices are to corporate America with the creativity and innovation Black women bring to the table. We must take our seats at the table armed with our manumission papers. We must free ourselves. Furthermore, perhaps just one somebody will refuse to participate in this exercise of inhumanity, drop their weapons, and free themselves from dystopian thought. We don’t have to join them to beat them!