Why Reverse Isms Don't Exist

This is why things are not equal and this is why you can't just tell people to get over it, do something about it, not be angry about it or treat everybody the same.

This is why reverse racism, sexism, heterophobia doesn't exist.

A member of a group with less power cannot affect a group with more power.

Similar parallels can be made with sexism, women as a whole do not have the ability to exercise power over men, but men do. Globally, men are in the most decision making positions.

Queer people don't have the ability to exercise power over straight people, they don't have decision making power, when queer people want rights, they have to appeal to the straight or straight acting dominant structure. Don't you think if Queer People could just band together and have all the rights that we wouldn't just do that? It's not that we haven't thought about it.

Differently abled people don't have the power to exercise dominion over 'Able-bodied' people. This is why so few places are accessible. It isn't an accident, able bodied people didn't think about different bodies, mothers with strollers, seniors, the chronically ill. And even though they would all like to have all places completely accessible to them and work hard to do so even while managing negotiating an oppressive world and violent institutions, they can't change everything because built into the system they have no power.

Poor people don't want to be cash-poor, cash-poor people don't want to hate rich people, cash-poor people are working really hard, just as hard and often harder than rich people, but capitalism requires that a lot of people be poor for it to function. This isn't an accident, it is intentional, it was designed that way to keep a few people really rich and dominating everyone else. And the biggest lie is that they say it is our fault, that the reason why we are in these positions is because we are lazy, sinful, angry, ugly. And then a lot of us believe it, we internalize it and the people in power believe it with ease because it helps them sleep at night after they have millions off of us. They dress up as us for Halloween, they make caricatures out of us, they buy our music and keep us out of their clubs. Lawd Jesus!

And it could all change if people who have power and privilege would give some up and stop arguing about how much you have. We learn this in kindergarten, if you cut me a quarter of the cake, keep 3/4's for yourself and then shit on it, don't be mad when I don't want to eat it or cry when I give it back. Yes it is different from not feeding me at all, but I ain't proud of you for acting right.

If we could actually acknowledge who was making decisions and the ways they got there, if we could start acknowledging and talking about what is really happening, if only 3 racist things happened to me in a day, I would consider racism dead.

When you suggest that it isn't hard or we aren't working hard enough or that everyone is equal or that we are being or not being fair, when we know for a fact and it is clear and self-evident that it is not equal, what is happening to us is violent and we are working our assess off every damn day to survive -  this is oppression in its finest. If you have privilege in this power structure and someone does you the service of telling you about it, be grateful that you found it, angry that it is happening, and committed to doing something about it.

T-Dot Renaissance Review

For those of you who weren't able to make it and for those who were part of the fabric woven in the space, here are some of the community musings on our most recent installation of T-Dot Renaissance.

Truth

Just wanted to share this that was also reblogged by witchsistah and theoceanandthesky.

*Trigger warning, writing about sexual assault.

This so fully captures what my personal experience of being sexually assaulted late last year as well as the ensuing court case and to be honest also the years of sexual violence I have experienced prior to that. It meant so much to me to read this, cause it can be so difficult to find language to speak to the paralyzing experience I still have when faced with sexual violence. It is difficult to feel entitled to protect my body, to deny others access when my whole life I have been taught that my body is not my own. It is difficult to explain to people who don't live it, that saying no is an enormous privilege.

I still think about how to be nice even when my physical body is being threatened, but I am getting better at not giving two fucks. I would also add as layer, the experience of being a womyn of colour, or in my case as a Black womyn, and worrying about whether people will think I'm a 'bitch' and therefore use the 'angry black womyn' trope to discredit me. I appreciate Malcom X's sentiments in this case, “I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”

So what everyone is saying that I need to respond sweetly when someone yells misogynist comments or grabs at me or disregards my constant pleas to leave me alone and then I get blamed for being the cause of the very violence that is being perpetrated against me. Umm, no.

This in part is why I reappropriate words like bitch and cunt. Bitch has been used to dismiss the experiences of violence that we have had, to act like we are entirely unreasonable for being angry when we are being deprived of basic human rights. If you run into me in the streets, I won't have a smile, cause I am protecting myself against racism, misogyny, if I am on a bike, a violent car culture and now, it is also cold.

But when I look across the street and I lock eyes with the adorbs Queer & Trans POC that resist by existing in glitter, bow ties, swagga that won't quit - I remember our resilience. I know we ain't got a choice, but babies you do it with such style, such grace.

Thanks for keeping me whole.

“TW FOR RAPE If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes. Women who are taught not to speak up too loudly or too forcefully or too adamantly or too demandingly are not going to shout “NO” at the top of their goddamn lungs just because some guy is getting uncomfortably close.

Women who are taught not to keep arguing are not going to keep saying “NO.” Women who are taught that their needs and desires are not to be trusted, are fickle and wrong and are not to be interpreted by the woman herself, are not going to know how to argue with “but you liked kissing, I just thought…”

Women who are taught that physical confrontations make them look crazy will not start hitting, kicking, and screaming until it’s too late, if they do at all.

Women who are taught that a display of their emotional state will have them labeled hysterical and crazy (which is how their perception of events will be discounted) will not be willing to run from a room disheveled and screaming and crying.

Women who are taught that certain established boundaries are frowned upon as too rigid and unnecessary are going to find themselves in situations that move further faster before they realize that their first impression was right, and they are in a dangerous room with a dangerous person.

Women who are taught that refusing to flirt back results in an immediately hostile environment will continue to unwillingly and unhappily flirt with somebody who is invading their space and giving them creep alerts.

People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored. They don’t wonder about all those daily social interactions in which women are quieter, ignored, or invisible, because those social interactions seem normal. They seem normal to women, and they seem normal to men, because we were all raised in the same cultural pond, drinking the same Kool-Aid.

And then, all of a sudden, when women are raped, all these natural and invisible social interactions become evidence that the woman wasn’t truly raped. Because she didn’t fight back, or yell loudly, or run, or kick, or punch. She let him into her room when it was obvious what he wanted. She flirted with him, she kissed him. She stopped saying no, after a while. ”

— Harriet J on Another post about rape (via archenemies) Oh my god, this. All of this. (via one-bite-at-a-time)

GYC Profile: T Dot Renaissance

In Praise Of The Vulnerable Femme: The Redux

My breasts sag.

They are small, soft,

Easily laying against my chest

Falling off to the sides

Across them light lines that weave stories like rivers flowing downward to the earth.

I have practiced exactly one thousand positions, casually cupping them, shrouding them

Your eyes averted, kissing around them

You pretend my breasts don’t sag

I pretend my breasts don’t sag

We pretend our breasts don’t sag, pretend our bellies are flat, pretend our hearts do not hurt.

And I want to say that there is power in our softness, in our vulnerability. When I see us in mirrors, biting lips and furrowing brows, I want to drop to my knees womyn and tell you that we are perfection. But we stand in this all together, carrying with us the whispers and shouts of a glossy photoshopped world that tries to will us into non-existence with size 00's and I see you worry that my gaze comes with a judgement but I promise you it doesn't. (And to be clear no shade to my slender sisters, I simply believe that you/we should all get a real number)

Dorothy Allison says “Femme girls dance on razors every day of our lives, and some days it is only bravado that keeps us upright." And womyn I see you, I see you in your fierceness, your anger and your insecurity and I love you in all of it.

I love the many expression of femme-ness, love the subtly and directness in our sexuality, love the war paint, love us knee deep in the swamp and wide eyed in my arms. I love it when you tell me what to do and love it equally when you have no idea.
I want to shield us from the whole world beautifulbrokengorgeous as we are. I think that your round bellies are so sexy, the way you wrap your tight curls/locks/braids/crown is artful and commanding and when you say something crass/brilliant/provocative/brave I.melt.every.single.time.

And I can't fit it all in here, nor will I try, but I promise to tell you all that I love you more. Proudly declare it and treat you preciously. In this patriarchal, racist, mind fuck of a world we are both what is desired and defiled, vessels of power and of shame. A world often surprised by our intelligence and dismayed by our independence.

But babes we are oh so hard on the world, can't help but turn heads and drop jaws. Can't help but free minds and steal hearts. We are scientists and sex workers and when we find each other and find ourselves in each other, I know I am watching god.

And it is oh so hard to love without conditions, to love with the urgency that we deserve, and in defiance of all that opposes blackgirllove.

For the moments we forget, for the moments we can’t find the joy in our arms curve, the blessings in our fat thighs, the bliss in our sagging breasts.

For those moments,

I want to remind us that we are never too much and always enough.

Explosions of stardust

Bodies of pure worship

Magnificent in our ugly

Eternal in our darkness

T Dot Renaissance Elders Dinner: The Trailer

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Ancestor Worshipping: T Dot Renaissnce Style

"I walk here because you walked first,"

Since my grandmother passed, I talk to her all the time. In a very real way, since she outgrew her physical body, her fyre has been liberated into the universe surrounding me always. I have come to understand my actions as offerings I give her on the alter that is the life she gifted me with. Knowing this, it has made me more conscious of my actions and their significance backwards (into her arms), forwards (to my babies) and side to side (my community).

But in my experience, in our families, the cycle of hurt, trauma and violence can often mean that love skips a generation. This can look like 'bad parents', 'great grandparents', like endless Aunties and 2 Moms, even 3. This happens in a whole other sorts of ways too, this is not 'the' solitary experience, but one of the experiences that resonates for Folks of Colour. All too often because of slavery, residential schools, wars, silence, our parents didn't learn how to parent because they never enjoyed such a privilege. And at the same time, we also had elders that could turn $20 into 2 weeks of food, that made birthdays feel like national holidays, moved us across oceans and helped us do our homework. 

As children of the diaspora, we also learned how to craft new families, seek our villages in the cities and the hoods. Elders, parents, caregivers can look very different for us.

And it is here is where this idea sprung up. At this intersection between elders and ancestry, at the point between worship and honour and at the place between love and gratitude, we birthed our 'Elder's Dinner'.

For the past year, I have been meeting as part of the T-Dot Renaissance Collective. We are a group of emerging and interdisciplinary artists, working and rooted in Toronto. Emerging from the successful staging of Amanda Parris’s theatrical production, 32C, and her motha luvin incomparable Artistic Direction we have converged to tell a single shared story through different mediums. We will be having our first-ever collective art installation exploring diasporic journeys, from December 3-4^th, 2011 at Loft 404 (located at 404-263 Adelaide St. West). 

And as I met with some of the members of the Audio and Visual Group, Keisha-Monique, Logik Donaldson and Alix Mukonambi, the idea came that we should host a dinner. A dinner for our elders, a dinner where we cook for them and sit with them and ask them questions and hear stories across diasporas, across, decades and oceans, across Ackee & Saltfish and Ugali.

Through all they have done and lived, do they know, I mean really know that they are not alone? And not just as a Black womyn or as a Red womyn, do they get to sit in the collective experience as a Womyn as Men and People of Colour and feel affirmed in knowing that in pain, imperfections, the brilliantbrokenblessed parenting, they cleared space for us to have a resistance? They have given birth to Activists, Artists, Cultural Curators, Fathers, Life Givers? They gave birth to us.

Do you remember when we were little and our elders (parents, caregivers, chosen family) may have suggested that you have a playdate with someone. Maybe because you both like to jump rope, you were both 8 or maybe just cause they wanted to have some adult conversation for an hour...this is not a grown-up play date. Not for the faint of heart, but for the exact opposite.

Welcome to the renaissance.