December 2011
73 posts
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"He Ain't Talking About Me": How the Word "Ho"...
The sexism and sexual oppression of women throughout the world is evident. However, in this discussion, analyzing the use of the word “Ho,” and the perception of Black Women as seen in mass media and popular culture, is crucial to the understanding of the term and it’s use as a controlling and oppressive image of Black womanhood and femininity, used to justify the sexual...
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“By being sexually independent of men, lesbians, by their very existence, call...”
– Barbara Christian
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“According to many African-American women writers, no matter how oppressed an...”
– Patricia Hill Collins (Black Feminist Thought, “The Power of Self Definition,” 130)
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“I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of...”
– June Jordan
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“Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of...”
– Bell Hooks
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“…racial difference is essentially mythological and highly idelological. Although...”
– Michele Wallace, (The Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, xxv)
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“[Racism, Sexism, Heterosexism, and Homophobia] The above forms of human...”
– Audre Lorde (Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving, 45)
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“Black women and men who recognize that the development of their particular...”
– Audre Lorde (Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving, 46)
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“For Black women as well as Black men, it is axiomatic that if we do not define...”
– Audre Lorde (Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving, 45)
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“Black lesbian relationships pose little threat to “self-defined”...”
– Patricia Hill Collins (Black Feminist Thought: Black Women’s Love Relationships, 182)
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“African-American women experience the pain of never being able to live up to...”
– Patricia Hill Collins (Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images: Color, Hair Texture, and Standards of Beauty, 98)
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Excerpt from Ntozake Shange's, "Sassafrass,...
She saw something spreading out of her in a large scarlet pool at her feet...
Sister Mary: Indigo, the Lord's called you to be a woman.
Then Sister Mary Louise rose, her thin body coated with Indigo's blood. She gently took off Indigo's clothes, dropped them in a pail of cold water. She bathed Indigo in a hot tub filled with rose petals; white, red, and yellow floating around a new woman. She made Indigo a garland of flowers, and motioned for her to go into the back yard.
Sister Mary: "There in the garden, among God's other beauties, you should spend these first hours. Eve's curse threw us out the garden. But like I told you, women tend to beauty and children. Now you can do both. Take your blessing and let your blood flow among the roses.. Smile like when God chooses to give you a woman's pleasure. Go now, like I say. Be not afraid of your nakedness.
Then Sister Mary shut the back door. Indigo sat bleeding among the roses, fragrant and filled with grace.
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“WHERE THERE IS WOMAN THERE IS MAGIC. If there is a moon falling from er mouth,...”
– Ntozake Shange
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The Unique Struggle of Being Black, Female, and a...
Excerpt from Ebony Magazine, August 1977, “No Crystal Stair: The Black Woman in History” by Lerone Bennet, Jr.
“…the enslaved Black woman was engaged in a total struggle for survival…Her struggle merged with and grew out of the total Black struggle. But her struggle was unique; for the system of slavery, which threatened all Blacks, threatened her in peculiar and peculiarly...
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“As black people, we cannot begin our dialogue by denying the oppressive nature...”
– Audre Lorde
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“I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary...”
– Audre Lorde
“Anti-feminists are incapable of making a distinction between being critically...”
– Barbara Smith, Introduction to Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, (1983)
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Sexism and Misogyny: Who Takes the Rap?
Who Takes the Rap?: Bell Hooks’ Cultural Critique on Sexism, Misogyny, Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Rap Music
”The sexist, misogynist, patriarchal ways of thinking and behaving that are glorified in gangsta rap are a reflection of the prevailing values in our society, values created and sustained by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. As the crudest and most brutal expression...
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10 Things Men Can Do to Stop Human Trafficking
1. Challenge the glamorization of pimps in our culture
Mainstream culture has popularized the image of a pimp to the point that some men and boys look up to them as if they represent legitimate male role models, and they view “pimping” as a normal expression of masculinity. As Carrie Baker reflects in “Jailing Girls for Men’s Crimes” in the Summer Ms. issue, the glorification of prostitution is...
“I have the deep luxury of not measuring my impact, success, and purposefulness...”
– Alexis Pauline Gumbs: “Off-the-Hook Black Feminist Mentorship: An Anti-Capitalist Re-evaluation”
Read the full piece here:
http://thefeministwire.com/2011/12/off-the-hook-black-feminist-mentorship-an-anti-capitalist-re-evaluation/
(via blackfeminismlives)
A woman who chooses Sisterhood over Male Chauvinism and Misogyny,is labeled, Lesbian. A man who places another man above a woman, regardless of his personal relationship with her, and lives under the ethos of “Bro’s before Hoes”, sexuality goes unquestioned?
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A New Way of Looking at the Word, "Ho"
Has Black Culture’s appropriation of the word “Ho” changed it’s meaning, in the male perspective. Has the word “Ho” now become a way of dehumanizing the general population of Black women by refusing to acknowledge their individual and complex identities, and become simply another term to describe a mass of name-less, face-less, PUSSY. A term that was once given on the basis of a woman’s sexual...
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“Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do...”
– Sojourner Truth
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“To most of us Black Power meant wooly heads, big black fists and stern black...”
– Michelle Wallace, (The Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, 36)
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DARKSKIN GIRLS = LIGHTSKINGIRLS
“I name myself “lesbian” because this culture oppresses, silences, and destroys...”
– Cheryl Clarke, “New Notes on Lesbianism” (1983), in The Days of Good Looks: The Prose and Poetry of Cheryl Clarke, 1980 to 2005 (via agradschoolbreakup)
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I am thankful for the writings and works of June Jordan, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Gwendolyn, Cheryl Clarke, Sonia, Nikki, Alice, Toni Bambara Cade, Toni Morrison, Ntozake, Octavia Butler, Gayl Jones, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur…
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WatchLisa Bonet plays a voodoo priestess in Angel Heart (1987). Her character, Epiphany Proudfoot, has a sexual episode with Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) that was so graphic that the movie almost received an X rating.
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“The black man is going around saying he wants respect; well, the black man will...”
– Malcolm X, from “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, as told to Alex Haley, Ballantine Books, New York, 1965, pg. 241.
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The Black Male Privilege Checklist
The Black Male Privileges Checklist
Leadership/Politics
1. I don’t have to choose my race over my sex in political matters. 2. When I read African American History textbooks, I will learn mainly about black men. 3. When I learn about the Civil Rights Movement & the Black Power Movements, most of the leaders that I will learn about will be black men. 4. I can rely on the fact that in the...
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“To the slave master, the Black woman “was a fragmented commodity whose feelings...”
– Barbara Omolade, (Words of Fire, p. 366)