Hello, this is YM of Lavender Kitchen Sink
Collective. And I wanted to talk to you. This
is piggybacking, to follow up on a video that---the
second video that I posted last week about
where I see my place in the movement. And
one of the things that I feel like, as someone
who is basically a historian---I have an undergraduate
degree in history---and history kind of infuses
all of the work that I do. I feel like it's
really, one of my roles in the movement is
to ground our work---Black LGBTQ liberation
work in history, in economic and political
reality.
And so I'm gonna talk about Black people---specifically
African Americans because that is my own background.
I'm an African American from the Southern
United States---which was part of the former
Confederate States of America. Born and raised
in North Carolina, born and raised in the
South. And I'm gonna talk about African Americans
and our, how [stumbling over words] cissexism,
excuse me!---patriarchy, and gender are constructed
within our community. And that's very important
for those of us who do any kind of gender
liberation work, as feminists, as womanists,
as transgender, same-gender loving, lesbian,
gay, asexual-identified folks who do this
work around the world---but particularly in
the United States, it's very important to
understand how colonialism, how white supremacy
shape our understandings of gender.
In a country like the United States, now we
know patriarchy can be in any culture---there's
a lot of debate of when patriarchy first developed
among anthropologists, among feminists, when
patriarchy first developed as a system of
social organization and a system of social
and political hegemony. As far as the United
States goes, patriarchy, cissexism in our
culture is rooted in British colonialism.
And British colonialism is where African American
gender identity and African American gender
roles are constructed. And now when I say
that, you may get confused, you would say
"Well sexuality is inherent to humans because
humans are primates and humans are animals
and so all humans have a sexuality because
all primates and all animals have a sexuality."
Well, I'm not talking about sexuality in terms
of the procreation, the desire to procreate,
the desire for sexual pleasure----that's not
what I mean when I say sexuality. I am talking
about the construction of sex and sexuality
and gender as we understand it within human
societies. That's what I'm talking about.
And in this society, the United States---which
was a British colony, where British colonizers
stole, they fought Indigenous people---well,
a lot of European powers on this soil fought
Indigenous people to take over this land---but
here on the East Coast, what we now call the
Eastern United States, and that includes the
US South where I live, British colonizers
took over Indigenous First Nations land. This
land where I'm at is traditionally Cherokee,
Eno, and Occaneechee land. And the British
took over this land and they brought, they
trafficked enslaved people from Africa to
work this land. And that's my people, African
Americans---people of British Protestant descent
that are on Indigenous land in the United
States. That's my culture. I come from a British
Protestant background, Missionary Baptist
to be perfectly exact. And the construction
of gender roles that I grew up with from my
parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles,
our church community, the larger Black community
in the South, you know those come out of the
church, out of our understandings of respectability,
how a woman should behave, being a lady, taking
care of the household, maintaining her marriage,
"keeping her man happy," how the man should
be the head of household, how he should work,
be the breadwinner, be the provider, control
his wife and children---that comes out of
British colonialism. And the British Protestant
idea of what a family was and how the man
was supposed to control his family. And that's
something that enslaved Africans picked up
from the slave master, that is what we internalized.
Because our kinship systems, our family systems
of extended family from West Africa, if you
look historically at those ethnic groups from
West Africa---Igbo, Yoruba, Asante, Mende
peoples, Akan peoples---you know they have
very different forms of social organization
that what we have in the United States, which
again---our understanding of gender and family
comes from the British. And so when the British
and other European powers, European colonizers
and enslavers encountered African kinship
systems, again, it's pathologized as abnormal,
just like African religion and African culture,
African cuisine was pathologized as abnormal.
And the way a lot of times that in some kinship
systems power and social organization was
and leadership is built around the leadership
of women and mothers and grandmothers. And
you see some of that vestige within, that
legacy within the African American community
today, where historically our kinship systems
are very much based on matrilineal lineage,
and being raised by your mama, your grandmama,
your aunties---so some of that survives. But
because of antiblackness and because of colonialism,
our matriarch, matrilineal kinship systems
are pathologized as abnormal. As the woman
ran the man off, because the woman couldn't
keep a man because she was---you know the
stereotypes about Black women: too demanding,
too whatever, too controlling of the Black
man, and the Black man can't be the man of
the household. We grew up with this idea and
how deeply cissexist it is and how deeply
patriarchal it is.
And so when we're talking about cissexism,
transphobia, transmisogyny, homophobia, femmephobia
within the African American community, you
have to understand it in that context of British
colonialism, Christian supremacy, enslavement,
and being forced to Eurocentric ideas of gender
and family structure, and power and male leadership
within a family. You cannot understand African
American cissexism without that knowledge.
Also, what's very important, because when
we're talking about femmephobia and particularly
misogyny, transmisogyny within Black communities
and Black families, you gotta think about
how femininity in general is pathologized
for both female-assigned people and male-assigned
people. Femininity is pathologized on Black
bodies. For female-assigned people, whether
we identify as cis women, or non-binary people,
our bodies---you think about Saarjie Baartmaan,
who was the South African---what is now today
South Africa---she was kidnapped by Dutch
enslavers and brought to Europe and then paraded
around in the Netherlands, and Britain, and
France, and when she died her remains were
kept in a French museum, preserved as if they
were, her body was preserved as a relic. So
this fascination with the Black female-assigned
body---the buttocks, the breasts, the uterus,
and you also remember the context of slave
masters sexually assaulting, raping Black
women, breeding Black women so that slave
masters, British and eventually American slave
masters could create more product, you know,
because Africans were products, create more
slaves and build the master's wealth. And
so there's a lot of trauma among Black cis
women and Black feminine-of-center people
in general, but particularly Black cis women
and Black female-assigned people around the
so-called female body, meaning the female-ASSIGNED
body---the body that gives birth.
And that kind of intergenerational trauma
of sexual abuse, of being forced to breed,
being pathologized for how you give birth,
and how you have children, how you raise children.
And that extends to people on the transfeminine
spectrum as well----transgender women. You
know, also just in general in the United States
to this day, just the lack of understanding
of how sexuality and gender work. The lack
of understanding of how the science of gender
and sexuality, the science of how gender identity
develops in utero, a lot of ignorance around
chromosomes and hormones, but that's for another
video.
But when we're thinking about transfemininity,
and how male-assigned at birth femininity
is policed, is criminalized, that also comes
out of colonialism. That comes out of the
idea that when, well, the phenomenon of when
Europeans, starting with the Spanish, the
Portuguese, the British, the French, when
they encountered male-assigned feminine-of-center
people among Africans, among Asians, among
Indigenous people here in the Americas, that
was used to pathologize and then justify crimes
of genocide against people of color, Indigenous
people in the Americas and Africans and Asians
around the world. And so that's where transmisogyny
and femmephobia and deeply homophobic, femmephobic
attitudes toward even cisgender men who are
feminine and femme of center come from. And
that comes out of colonialism as well. And
we have to think about how a lot of times
the people that we would today call trans
women or male-assigned femmes, feminine of
center people---a lot of times in our ancestors'
cultures, they were the priests, they were
revered as goddesses, as lifegivers, as healers.
But again when the European colonizers encountered
them, this was something to be pathologized
"Oh my god, these people are male-assigned
at birth, but they're feminine? What's up
with that? These savages, these natives"---you
know, whether we were African or Indigenous
American or Asian---that was used to pathologize
and criminalize our people and enslave our
people, and to take over our lands. The colonizers
used that as justification. So you have to
understand the whole makings of transmisogyny
and femmephobia in that context in the modern
world today.
And in our day, 2015 going into 2016, European
colonialism shapes most of the world. The
British alone colonized two thirds of the
world, so you know the British Empire was
huge, all the way from here in the Americas,
to the Indian subcontinent, to a lot of Africa,
to also a lot of Asian countries and countries
in the Pacific. Also including South America,
Guyana, when you look at Guyana, and then
the Caribbean. So the British were everywhere,
and so British ideas of patriarchy, of masculinity,
of the supremacy of Protestant religion, bringing
the Bible to people around the world, you
know, you cannot separate modern understandings
of gender from that colonial missionary enslaving
context. And so, when we bring this back to
African Americans in the present day, you
look at the fact that Black trans women in
the United States as of 2015, trans women
of color in general but in particular Black
and Latina trans women in this country, who
are the daughters, the great-granddaughters
of both British and Spanish colonialism here
in the Americas, Black and Latina women being
murdered because our people are hoodwinked,
as Malcolm X said. Our people, Black and Latinx
in the United States are hoodwinked, they've
been bamboozled, they've been led astray.
They've fell for the okey-doke of the colonizer.
That the trans woman is abnormal and that
she must be controlled, she must be eliminated
from our community. A lot of cisgender men,
in general also the ignorance around sexuality,
a lot of cisgender men are attracted to trans
women but because our society pathologizes
cismale attraction for trans women, cis men
take that out on trans women. And instead
of being in solidarity with trans women who
are harmed by male violence, cis women----and
I'm speaking specifically of Black cis women
within the African American community---resent
trans women for so-called "taking our men"
and "fooling" men as if men do not choose
trans women, do not pursue trans women. And
that has to be talked about, that kind of,
again, like most oppressed people who don't
understand how the system works, Black cis
women have taken out their anger and frustration,
their anger at being oppressed, their anger
at being objectified, at being marginalized,
at being invisibilized by the society, they've
taken it out on trans women's bodies. They've
taken their resentment out on trans women,
instead of naming, instead of studying their
history, and studying the history of Black
women in the United States, and studying British
colonialism, and understanding the struggle
of the African American woman. Instead of
doing that internal work, that historical
work, Black cis women have taken out their
frustration on Black trans women who are suffering
with colonial patriarchy just like they are.
And so I feel like as an LGBTQ activist, particularly
as a female-assigned non-binary person who
benefits from cis privilege, who benefits
from female-assigned at birth (AFAB) privilege,
I really see it as part of my responsibility
not only to combat my own transmisogyny, my
own femmephobia, but to challenge other female-assigned
people: cis women, and non-binary female-assigned
people, transgender men as well---to hold
us accountable for our transmisogyny. And
I do that not only in solidarity with trans
women and also in a desire to be accountable
to Black trans women in my community, but
also to combat this legacy of violence, this
legacy of trauma against the Black body in
the United States and across the entire African
Diaspora. To combat the legacy that the British
colonizer left us with in terms of violent
masculinity, violent patriarchy, rape culture---that
is my way of exercising those demons. Because
those demons live within me too. It's not
just, you know---the colonizer did this, the
American state does that, the police do this,
social workers do that. That violence is within
me. It's within YM. And I carry that legacy
of violence. From my mother, my grandmothers,
my forefathers, and I see it as part of my
responsibility to unpack, to unpack how I've
internalized patriarchy, how I've internalized
transmisogyny, how I've internalized cissexism
and femmephobia. To combat those demons within
myself. And to reach out to feminine of center
Black people across the Diaspora, but in particular
transgender women within the African American
community. I see that as my work. And I want
to join with other Black gender justice leaders,
whether you're an LGBTQ activist like myself,
a Black feminist, Black womanist, if you're
a Black man, a Black cisgender man in solidarity
with the liberation of Black women and Black
LGBTQ people, I would love to join with you.
And how can we put our heads together, if
we could figure out how to combat cissexism
and heteropatriarchy within the Black community
in the United States, but also across the
entire African Diaspora. How can we do this
work?
Also, trans women: please feel free to call
me out, feel free to hold me accountable for
what I am doing and how I am trying to combat
transmisogyny and how I am trying to approach
cisgender women and other female-assigned
at birth people about our problem with transmisogyny
and femmephobia. Any advice that you can give,
any---just let me know how you think I'm doing
on this work. Because it's not enough for
me to say "Well, I want to fight transmisogyny."
I have to be accountable to my community,
I have to be accountable to trans women in
my community about how I do this work. So
I definitely want to hear from you on that.
So yeah.
Just again, we want to, Black people---we
want to figure out how to come together, how
can we deal with our legacy of trauma. Post-traumatic
slave syndrome, as Joy DeGraw says. Post-traumatic
slave syndrome. And cissexism and transmisogyny
and heteropatriarchy are part of that legacy
of post-traumatic slave syndrome. Thank you.
