Esoterica
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This work by Mikki Kendall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 
 
 

TW: discussion of rape, sexual violence, and/or sexual assault

wrcsolace:

blackamazon:

karnythia:

So I’ve been doing some stats research on the rate of sexual assault for young black women & I almost want to ask if any of us made it to 24 without being abused in some way, but I think I’m afraid of the answer. I always say that most women have a story even if they rationalize it as “Not really rape”, but now I’m feeling like every black American woman has a story by 30.

This right here is why I am kind of like I willd o cultural shit at large but large scale lets end rape movements that dont admit and highlight that beinga WOC but ESPECIALLY a Black woman or Native woman means you have a chance of assault that is in the high 80’s

?

Is someone colluding with rape.

If you’re issue with That show about a whole bunch of women who were approached BEFORE or just after the age of consent

is not hwo is a culture supporting the predation and victim blaming of our girls but hwobad it makes you look to your industry friends?

You collude with our rape.

And frankly we to busy trying to stay alive than to help you feel good a bout being a do nothing.

Isn’t the stat like 1 in 5 or 6 Black women will be sexually assaulted or abused at some point in my life. I have 5 sisters. That is all I think whenever I hear that shit.

side note the willingness to allow Black women to talk about how sexual violence has shaped their self-perception and self-esteem is one of the reasons that I really like Tricia Rose’s anthology Naked. when it was recommended to me that was a comment that someone made, ‘watch out because it talks about rape a lot’. not as a trigger warning but as like, mayne this book would have been better if they didn’t put all that dark shit in it. but then—as the numbers show—it wouldn’t have been the reality of Black women’s lives either.

whenever i think about this stuff I also think about how rare it is for me to have discussions with Black women I know in real life, hell Black women in my family about sexual violence. we don’t share that.

Actually the stat is more like 2 in 3 if you include childhood sexual abuse. I always find it interesting how rare it is to include children in those statistics & by interesting I mean horrifying.

 
 

more on the white washing of “victim blaming”

strugglingtobeheard:

hiphopcheerleader:

so im reading this one essay “On the Issue of Roles” written by toni cade bambara. she says in referring to the black woman being stereotyped within the black community, “one who needs constant protection and guidance, for she has a lascivious nature that must be curbed.”

& i start thinking, is black femininity really framed in this way? as one who needs protection? & if so, who is doing the protecting? is it being done at all? this is part of what ill be focusing on in my graduate thesis, where do black womyn go after we’ve experienced sexual violence? what do we do? who do we turn to? are there systems in place within the community to help us? & since some (if not all or most) of us do a shitty of making space for trans/intersex womyn & checking our privilege, are there any resources within the community for black trans/intersex womyn survivors? do they feel safe with us? what are the differences & similarities there with regard to coping mechanisms? & what can we do to facilitate these spaces??

& then on the point of guidance. who is guiding black womyn & girls besides ourselves? & even when we guide each other, we still sometimes police each other. we police each other for a lot of reasons, because some of us dont want to recognize the other’s humanity cuz then you’d have to deal with your own humanity & how its been taken from you on a whole bunch of different levels. or we police each other in an effort to pass on skills that we feel have kept us out of harm’s way & kept us alive, like slut shaming for example. slut shaming in the black community is this effort for black womyn to attempt to achieve cis, able bodied, thin white femininity in the best way we know how, even though i believe some of us refuse to acknowledge that this is denied to us on institutional and structural levels. but even deeper, its knowing either consciously or subconsciously that being white & achieving white femininity has privileges that black [trans/intersex] womyn & girls arent afforded. 

i think this is why terms like ghetto, ratchet, ugly, bitch, ho are all god things to reclaim. at least for me personally. its about being counter to and not complicit with being forced into a box of white femininity. i also like to reimagine the term “lady” for myself. i call myself a lady no matter what specific behavior i might be referring to. or dainty. or elegant. or fragile. or femme. or innocent. like im all the things that i want to be whether i’ve been told i was that & it was supposed to be a bad thing because im black or i was denied that because im black but i know that i can and do still embody it. its revolutionary to repurpose those terms for ourselves & for our own self determination(s).

there’s been no general, concerted effort on the part of black men to protect the sexual honor, innocence, fragility of those black womyn & girls who [choose to] embody that. nor has there been any mass efforts to reinstate or preserve self determination or bodily autonomy for black womyn & girls. its an either or thing. either youre a virgin & you get chastised for that while not embodying white femininity. or youre sexually active, promiscuous, ho, slut whatever & you get trashed for that in various ways which can include being made to believe that being raped is a result of that. & i believe those in the latter situation get it a lot rougher.

but THERE IS a concerted effort to police black womyn’s sexuality as a way to plead to the larger society that we’re not ALL hypersexual ho’s & that we deserve respect. therefore, black womyn are asked to be anti-sex, to bend for the purpose of everyone else but ourselves. again.

but all this to say, that mainstream feminism does a shitty job of articulating why the concept of victim blaming isnt just a one size fits all paradigm. its involves race too & its faulty as fuck to white wash it.

“In general terms, black women survivors of violence exist within a dominant conceptual space that make it difficult for them to easily occupy the status of “victim.”  Some of these reactions were described by many feminist bloggers as classic “victim blaming” which does not necessarily require a particular racialized context in order to proliferate.” 

like, if black womyn are not “victim” blamed in the normative/white sense of the phrase because we are not seen as victims, because we are denied the privileges associated with white femininity (no harm can be done to us because we are not REAL womyn, instead we are STRONG BLACK WOMYN incapable of hurt, pain, frailty, & weakness & because we are constantly being stepped on in this society for everyone BUT us) then “victim blaming” assumes that woman is white, middle class, cis and able bodied because they are the only ones constructed as eternal victims.

it is particularly difficult for black men to see black womyn as victims (even when black men are the perpetrators as in cases of intra-racial violence) since largely black womyn are stereotyped as emasculating & castrating of black men. & since a lot of black men endorse victorian sexual ideals & believe black womyn’s rightful place is at the back. there may have also been efforts to silence black womyn about our/their experiences of intra racial violence, in an effort to “save the race” and continue the “real” and “more important” fight for civil rights.

slut shaming for black womyn is used within the community to convince black womyn to endorse victorian sexual ideals to ask for respect from larger society & to ask for protection for black womyn. while victim blaming in the ”white community” doesnt bear the weight of stereotypes & general the need for protection. 

this is a really good post and i would love to think about it more and discuss but not tonight.

I want to discuss it, but maybe not on Tumblr. This is one of those areas where I know the intrusion of white feminists & random derailers will only upset and hurt us.

(Source: afrafemme)

 
 
brazenbitch: “Please”,she cried,” let me go home to my husband and my baby.” (Herbert) Lovett spread an old hunting coat on the ground,told his friends to strip down to their socks and undershirts,and ordered Taylor to lie down. Lovett passed his rifle to a friend and took off his pants. Hovering over the young mother,he snarled, “Act like you do with your husband or I’ll cut your damn throat.” Lovett was the first of six men to rape Recy Taylor that night. When they finished, someone helped her get dressed,tied a handkerchief over her eyes,and shoved her back into the car. Back on the highway, the men stopped and ordered Taylor out of the car. “Don’t move until we get away from here,” one of them yelled. Taylor heard the car disappear into the night. She pulled off the blindfold,got her bearings, and began the long walk home. A few days later, a telephone rang at the NAACP branch office in Montgomery,Alabama. E.D. Nixon, the local president promised to send his best investigator to Abbeville. That investigator would launch a movement that would ultimately change the world. Her name was Rosa Parks.”- Excerpt from “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women,Rape, and Resistance- a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power” Danielle L. Mcguire   Recy Taylor was abducted and raped at gunpoint by seven white men in Abbeville, Ala., on Sept. 3, 1944. Her attack, one of uncounted numbers on black women throughout the Jim Crow era in the South, sparked a national movement for justice and an international outcry, but justice never came. Now, decades later, there may finally be some solace for Taylor, 91, as Alabama state Rep. Dexter Grimsley tries to make his state issue a formal apology. Reached by phone on Monday, Grimsley confirmed he is drafting a resolution for a state apology to Taylor. “The circumstances merit it,” he said. “It’s something that should be done. Recy Taylor found herself in a situation that wasn’t responded to, the way that the law would respond to something today.” The FBI is currently investigating dozens of civil rights-era murders, mostly of men. But the sexual violence visited upon women like Taylor has never commanded the official attention of the FBI and other federal and state officials who have tried to right the crimes of our past. “From slavery through the better part of the 20th century, white men in the segregated South abducted and assaulted black women with alarming regularity and often impunity,” explained historian Danielle McGuire, whose new book “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance” was the first history of white-on-black sexual violence and black women’s organized resistance to it. “They lured black women and girls away from home with promises of work and steady wages; attacked them on the job; abducted them at gunpoint while traveling to or from home, work, church or school; and sexually harassed them at bus stops, grocery stores and in other public spaces.” New awareness of Taylor’s case, and of the pervasiveness of many more cases like it, has begun attracting new bands of supporters who want justice for past crimes of sexual violence against black women—from members of an online social network for social change, to the NAACP Alabama State Conference, to a black lawyers’ association in Michigan, to individual letter writers and callers from all over the country who have contacted Taylor’s family.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0f702XoFu1qguihno1_1280.jpg

brazenbitch:

“Please”,she cried,” let me go home to my husband and my baby.”

(Herbert) Lovett spread an old hunting coat on the ground,told his friends to strip down to their socks and undershirts,and ordered Taylor to lie down. Lovett passed his rifle to a friend and took off his pants. Hovering over the young mother,he snarled, “Act like you do with your husband or I’ll cut your damn throat.”

Lovett was the first of six men to rape Recy Taylor that night. When they finished, someone helped her get dressed,tied a handkerchief over her eyes,and shoved her back into the car. Back on the highway, the men stopped and ordered Taylor out of the car. “Don’t move until we get away from here,” one of them yelled. Taylor heard the car disappear into the night. She pulled off the blindfold,got her bearings, and began the long walk home.

A few days later, a telephone rang at the NAACP branch office in Montgomery,Alabama. E.D. Nixon, the local president promised to send his best investigator to Abbeville. That investigator would launch a movement that would ultimately change the world. Her name was Rosa Parks.”- Excerpt from “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women,Rape, and Resistance- a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power” Danielle L. Mcguire 

 Recy Taylor was abducted and raped at gunpoint by seven white men in Abbeville, Ala., on Sept. 3, 1944. Her attack, one of uncounted numbers on black women throughout the Jim Crow era in the South, sparked a national movement for justice and an international outcry, but justice never came. Now, decades later, there may finally be some solace for Taylor, 91, as Alabama state Rep. Dexter Grimsley tries to make his state issue a formal apology.

Reached by phone on Monday, Grimsley confirmed he is drafting a resolution for a state apology to Taylor. “The circumstances merit it,” he said. “It’s something that should be done. Recy Taylor found herself in a situation that wasn’t responded to, the way that the law would respond to something today.”

The FBI is currently investigating dozens of civil rights-era murders, mostly of men. But the sexual violence visited upon women like Taylor has never commanded the official attention of the FBI and other federal and state officials who have tried to right the crimes of our past.

“From slavery through the better part of the 20th century, white men in the segregated South abducted and assaulted black women with alarming regularity and often impunity,” explained historian Danielle McGuire, whose new book “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance” was the first history of white-on-black sexual violence and black women’s organized resistance to it. “They lured black women and girls away from home with promises of work and steady wages; attacked them on the job; abducted them at gunpoint while traveling to or from home, work, church or school; and sexually harassed them at bus stops, grocery stores and in other public spaces.”

New awareness of Taylor’s case, and of the pervasiveness of many more cases like it, has begun attracting new bands of supporters who want justice for past crimes of sexual violence against black women—from members of an online social network for social change, to the NAACP Alabama State Conference, to a black lawyers’ association in Michigan, to individual letter writers and callers from all over the country who have contacted Taylor’s family.

(Source: sluteverbabe)

 
 
[general trigger warning: child sexual abuse and rape]

Sometimes I am a survivor, and other times I am a victim. I’m here, and I am a victim of child sexual abuse and rape. Well, so what? Maybe that makes some people feel uncomfortable, that we are going around and (gasp) existing as people-who-survive and people-who-are-victims. But when I draw attention to my situation, I am claiming my right to exist in this world as a full and complex person, with all of the wants and needs therein. So labeling myself as a victim is not something horrible; it’s realistic. Yes, I was a victim of child sexual abuse and rape. And yes, it has all affected me in significant ways. That is a fact.

If I can’t acknowledge this, the fact that I have been and sometimes still am a victim, I create unrealistic standards for myself. I make myself believe that I must always be strong, that I must always be the Survivor with a capital S; always powerful, always laughing and never crying. I tell myself that I must always be tough and unflinching in the face of fear, in the face of a kind of death that reaches beyond the body and into the heart.

More Reasons You Shouldn’t Fuck Kids: Reason #97: The right to be a victim

I know it is a faux pas to repost your own content, but i was rereading this and it really got to me. How did I even write that last line? It makes me tear up every time I read that paragraph because it feels so right and true to me. It’s just…so utterly unbelievable that something like that even came out of me.

Thank you, Audre Lorde, for giving me the inspiration to write like this.

(via fromonesurvivortoanother)

 
 
femonster: Stomp & Holler, Northampton MA. October 22, 2011 Sign reads: 1 in 3 Native and Alaskan Native American women are raped at some point in their lives. That’s 13% more than the national average for all women in the US. 86% of the violators are white males. Most victims do NOT recieve justice and are victimized. America continues to appropriate and hyper sexualize Native culture. I am Seneca. Native women must be heard. American culture enables the targeting of Native women and disregards justice for us. FIGHT RAPE CULTURE & MISOGYNY FOR EVERYONE!ON ALL FRONTS!
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltiu58tc511qc62mqo1_1280.jpg

femonster:

Stomp & Holler, Northampton MA. October 22, 2011

Sign reads: 1 in 3 Native and Alaskan Native American women are raped at some point in their lives. That’s 13% more than the national average for all women in the US. 86% of the violators are white males.

Most victims do NOT recieve justice and are victimized. America continues to appropriate and hyper sexualize Native culture.

I am Seneca. Native women must be heard. American culture enables the targeting of Native women and disregards justice for us.

FIGHT RAPE CULTURE & MISOGYNY FOR EVERYONE!
ON ALL FRONTS!

 
 
The U.S. Black Woman Experience

leonineantiheroine:

Trigger warning: rape, lynching.

“by Zakiya Lasley

In truth, specific oppressions (male domination, white supremacy, class exploitation, etc.) rarely work singularly. Instead, oppressions feed off of each other, their dynamics changing according to specific contexts. The current challenge for anti-rape organizers is to develop solid analyses of rape and rape culture that recognize a multiplicity of oppressions that constantly shape and influence each other.

Throughout history Black women have taken deadly risks in confronting rape under extreme fear and terrorism. Black women who were slaves participated in concentrated and deliberate instances of retaliation of rape by their white male slave owners. Documented in many autobiographies and biographies are horrifying accounts of female rebellion manifesting itself in the poisoning of rapists, burning of property, and assassination of their white slave owners. Also in instances of desperation enslaved rape survivors who were mothers often killed their girl children as a form of resistance to slave rape.

Looking at anti-rape activism done on the part of Black slave women forces us to think about rape in a much more complex way. Rape is not only a tool for male domination over women; Rape is also a tool for economic exploitation and white supremacy. The example of rape survivors killing their babies to keep them from being raped is also resistance to the use of rape to promote the institution of chattel slavery after the banning of the Mid-Atlantic slave trade. We can see the dominating forces of capitalist and white superiority dynamics within rape not only in the case of the rape of thousands of black slaves, but also currently in global issues such as “mail-order brides” and global sex-trafficking.

Another anti-rape movement headed by Black women is the anti-lynching movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During post-Reconstruction, southern white people were determined to regain control over Black people. As a result, they instituted a system of lynching Black women, men, and children when they “got out of line.” Lynching was a sexualized form of murder. Often, the justification for lynching Black men was that they raped white women. The issue of rape was utilized as a scare tactic geared directly towards white women. As a result, many southern white women supported lynching efforts instead of recognizing that sexual violence towards white women, by anyone, is deeply connected to sexual violence towards Black people (as well as other forms of oppression). When Black men were lynched, the mobs would often torture them before hanging them, cutting off sexual parts of their anatomy in particular. When Black women were lynched, they were often raped first.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an activist and writer during this time, spoke openly against rape and did not defend Black men who were, in fact, guilty of rape. But after she researched and investigated 728 lynchings that had taken place during the 1890s, she found that only a third of murdered Black people were even accused of rape, much less guilty of it. Spurred by her investigation, hundreds of Black activists at the time, (including the NAACP and Black intellectuals) developed an anti-lynching movement for which activists were burned out of their homes and businesses, run out of town, and murdered.

In my assessment of the anti-lynching movement, I never stopped to look at the moment as an anti-rape movement because the goal of these activists were not specifically to end rape, but to end lynching. Nonetheless, it is so profoundly an anti-rape movement because the theory and activism work the organizers produced challenged all forms of racialized sexual violence. Deconstructing the myth that Black men are overwhelmingly “more desirous” of white women was critical in order for white women to eventually reflect on the sexual violence being done to them by white men as well as their own sexual freedom. Most importantly the anti-lynching movement forced America’s hand in recognizing that other manifestations of oppression are inseparably linked to sexual violence. There is no genuine way to discuss rape and organize against rape without being committed to deconstructing complex ways that race, ability, religion, age, economics, and sexuality are integrated into rape.

This next phase of anti-rape organizing in the 21st century must be able to hold on to the complexity of rape culture with all of its degrees of oppression. The time for thinking about rape as merely a tool of male domination is over. We must be able to mindfully articulate spaces where anti-rape organizing is inseparably linked to organizing against police brutality, for labor rights, and for immigration rights. And we must show up to these other types of organizing work as allies moving towards liberation.”

 
 
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