Struggling To Be Heard-Twerk Video
Its so funny to me how the context of strugglingtobeheard’s twerking video was completely ignored and disgarded. Conecpts of reclaiming the black body, black space, cultural dance forms practiced by our ancestors, and reclaiming the gaze through which black female sexuality is viewed meant NOTHING to those outside of the conversation. Nope. It means absolutely NOTHING to them. All they are interested in and all they are capable…in fact all they want is to pour black female sexuality through the same tired sieve of anti-black heteronormative misogyny. They literally cannot view our bodies and their very movement across spaces in society in any other way. They could not even begin to grasp the complexity of her words and what she was trying to do. The dialogue across oceans and generations that she was engaging in through the use of her body. The dance forms inherited from mothers spanning generations tailored to ways that make the black body look best and celebrate the unique beauty of our shape. The idea of turning something on its head and removing it from a white and male gaze and placing it in the hands of the bodies that performance. Ideas of agency, anti-slut shaming, resistance, body positivity, bodily autonomy, resistance of respectability politics…the list can go on all day.
But folks were not and are not trying to hear all that, even as she explained it in her video, people are not willing or perhaps even able to make that leap. But I just want to say to her that i see you boo! And it makes me so sad, angry, and disheartened that all people could do is try to slut shame, “expose”, hurt and vilify her as she attempted to be revolutionary and reclaim HER space! This is the epitome of misogyny, antiblackness, heteronormativity and every other -ist you can think of…this is how society attempts to crush voices that “get out of line” and “talk back” to the patriarchy. How fucking dare we….
Thousands of white girls all over the globe can march up and down the street in their bra and panties, and not even mention the concept of “slut shaming” to reclaim the word slut and the world calls that feminism, a win for women everywhere.
A black genderqueer makes a video, explains the context in the video, connects the dance done in that video to dances done by ancestors, dances continue to be done on the continent and in the diaspora in celebration of black bodies branded sexual by their white colonizers and oppressors and the world claims it as depravity.
This, white women, is why our struggle is not the same fucking thing.
YES!! YES!! YES!! OMG YES!! Because ppl see shit how they want to! And if they want to see black bodies as depraved then thats gonna be how they see them. And they will ignore your voice in the process like someone pressed mute on the remote control. It just all goes to show how we arent seen as human, it doesnt apply to us the same way it applies to white women because white people can be acknowledged as human beings.
the bolded doe.
