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 weavestories like rivers flowing downward to the earth.
I have practiced exactly one thousandpositions, 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 saythat there is power in our softness, in our vulnerability. When I see us inmirrors, biting lips and furrowing brows, I want to drop to my knees womyn andtell you that we are perfection. But we stand in this all together, carryingwith us the whispers and shouts of a glossy photoshopped world that tries towill us into non-existence with size 00's and I see you worry that my gazecomes with a judgement but I promise you it doesn't. (And to be clear no shadeto my slender sisters, I simply believe that you/we should all get a realnumber)

Dorothy Allison says “Femme girls dance on razors everyday 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 yourinsecurity and I love you in all of it.

 

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

And I can't fit it all in here, nor will I try, but I promise to tell you allthat I love you more. Proudly declare it and treat you preciously. In this patriarchal, racist, mind fuckof a world we are both what is desired and defiled, vessels of power and ofshame. A world oftensurprised 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 dropjaws. Can't help but free minds and steal hearts. We are scientists and sexworkers and when we find each other and find ourselves in each other, I know Iam watching god.

And it is oh so hard to love withoutconditions, to love with the urgency that we deserve, and in defiance of allthat opposes blackgirllove.
For the moments we forget, for themoments we can’t find the joy in our arms curve, the blessings in our fatthighs, the bliss in our sagging breasts.
For those moments,
I want to remind us that we are nevertoo much and always enough.
Explosions of stardust
Bodies of pure worship
Magnificent in our ugly
Eternal in our darkness

 

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 androoted in Toronto. Emerging from the successful staging of Amanda Parris’stheatrical 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 ourfirst-evercollective art installation exploring diasporic journeys, from December 3-4th,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.


Learning To Love In The Dark

I try to remind myself that there is no purity in any of it, decolonization, even liberation are processes we move in and out of, ebb and flow, live and learn in. There is no in-authenticity in any of it, through it all we Black and Brown, this too is a part of our experience. There is so much nuance, degree in all of it. It's why I love it when we tell our stories, all of them.

Justice

Throughout this whole process, the responsibility, the work has been left with me and my folks. Queer and transfolks, young people, people of colour, cash poor, we are used to the tragedies,the late night calls, the never ending battles and the lawyer - well he drove home in his Lexus.
The work of trying to forget what happened in order to cope, the work of rehearsed remembering in order to hold him accountable, the work of walking out of the courtroom on a ‘break’ only to beexpected to share the same space with him and his conspirators. The work of being okay of making it through each day and of reconciling my years of surviving sexual violence prior to that. This is our work.

And through all this, I know that I am not alone and in many ways I am privileged to have a community of people who haveshared experiences, who have brilliant wisdom and the capacity to support mewhile they make it through everyday.

In Praise Of The Vulnerable Femme

My breasts sag.
I don't need to be reassured that they don't, nor do I need to be told that I am still pretty anyway or that it doesn't matter because breasts are meant to feed babies.
The reason I don't need any of those things is that I love that my breasts sag. I haven't always, I have had partners who promised me that once I had 'their' babies that they would gladly buy me breast implants. I have had my breasts ignored outright in sex despite the fact that I see the goddess herself when my breasts are being worshiped, I have had sales associates in bra stores advise me strongly to get something with more support that keep my girls up high.

The thing is, sometimes I wear my hair up and sometimes I wear it down and I wanna wear my tits in the exact same way.

Our Call To Revolution

Can we blame these leaders who attempt to work within these systems and who are then made martyrs by the colonial powers? We may know that 'master's tools cannot dismantle the master's house', but there is no purity in this system, we do what we can. There is no outside, we are survivors, perpetuators and perpetrators at various times in various spaces and perhaps all at once.

But that isn't the point.

I watched X-Men Origins today with Nabil. (Promise no spoliers) And one of things that the movie explored was the complexity between Professor X's approach to activism and Magnetos. Professor X was definitely on the "Forgive them father, for they not know what they do" tip. He preached understanding, forgiveness, non-violent action and faith. But what the movie also shared was some internalized self-hatred and a desire to make himself and all mutants invaluable to the humans in the hopes that they would accept them. Whereas Magneto, a Holocaust survivor had suffered directly at the hands of 'men doing their jobs' and had no reason to trust humanity, believing that if they had to make themselves useful in order to be accepted, the moment they were deemed no longer immediately useful, that they would be exterminated.

Nabil and I thought about the way that Malcolm X was demonized for being unwilling to trust a group of people who hadn't yet shown themselves to be trustworthy, but Martin Luther King believed that someone had to trust first, had to forgive first, had to love first and he was asking us as the truly powerful ones to do that.

Courage

But what I have learned during this most affirming time in North Carolina, that in fact I was deeply hurt. My feelings, my heart and my spirit were assaulted during that experience. And it could have been avoided, it could have even transformed in real time. But the folks in charge wouldn’t allow it, despite the surging of energy in the room. I felt tokenized, exploited and silenced, so I left early and didn’t return – until now.
But I want to, I need to write about this because I want to warn us all, to affirm us all, and to remind us to trust our intuition, and to conserve our energy in order to nourish ourselves and our communities.
That is the thing with oppression, it is violent and violence hurts. But unlike a hit to the face, which can be treated directly, with intention. You can ice that until the swelling goes down. Oppressive violence, whether it is overt, subtle or systemic doesn’t operate in isolation, it becomes chronic, exists across centuries and can seed itself on our insides active or dormant, lodged in our subconscious. It is a parasite. You may not even notice that it is there at first. It may have already had time to multiply inside you, trick your body and brain to believe that it is supposed to be there. That its presence is somehow normal. It may have you doubting yourself, your very right to exist - but my folks it is real.

For Femmes Of Colour Who Rose Too Early & Set Too Soon

I think something very different happens to girls know sex too soon.
Girls who come to know that sex is a currency and we are in a recession.
Girls who don't yet know the context, that we come from a history where sex workers were priestesses and now our bodies are regularly dismembered and commodified. We are blamed and branded as we tap into a power stemming as far back as time immemorial. And my sistren, I want to remind us that we remain both beautiful and priceless no matter how many people we sleep with, no matter what happens to our sex.
In this patriarchal, racist, mind fuck of a world we are both what is desired and defiled, vessels of power and of shame.

And there I was trying to walk that impossibly fine line between Madonna and whore. Completely inexperienced, but with a body that clearly said otherwise and I had no allies. Had no mentors, had no women I could ask to provide me with guidance as I wandered, or rather strutted.

And then we are told that this is what makes us special. And at first it feels like it, and even when it doesn't it still is the only place where women are truly 'validated'. We can be smart, athletic, creative, but we all are required to still be attractive. And being this exceptional, holds in betwixt the fingers of its' mysticism the promise of love, attention, adoration, but mostly the promise of a promise. The promise of something more.

re.member.ing.

I don't have a really strong grasp on what family means.
And trust and unconditional love are things that I found only in my relationship with my grandmother. So now as I look through footage of my grandmother and think of how to piece things together, I find myself walking into increasingly uncharted territory. Soft and sharp memories, unending contradictions.

I am trying to challenge myself to be honest, not narcissistic, but to release the shame that has kept my womyn suffering in silence.

I am also trying to observe, and note the inevitability of life and the passage of time and energy from one body to another.

I grew bigger as she grew smaller.
I grew louder as she grew quieter.
I learned more and she remembered less.

Granny, do you you really think I am ready to hold your legacy, to carry our stories in my bones alone?


Radical Education

The Message
Another way to think about this, is that what happened second gets told first. i.e. "Columbus discovered America" as opposed to "First Nations people living on Turtle Island had complex societies all across the continent and Columbus couldn't navigate his way out of a paper bag and somehow made it to their homes."
This type of messaging or propaganda is necessary because it allows for the empty and unrelenting pursuit of profit and policies that support this.
Another example is 'The War On Crime" as a policy as opposed to recognizing that people commit crimes because of being cash-poor and oppressed, lacking access to basic human rights like healthcare, self-determination, right to education that affirm their identity. As well realizing that many people in prison didn't commit crimes at all, but we have an inherently racist system.
The truth is, it's all just a cover for ensuring the perpetuation of legalized slavery of these "criminalized", "demonized" bodies of Black, Brown & Red bodies.

How To Protect and Preserve Your Sanity

I realize that I need to institute this as a life policy. For when I get into ridiculous arguments on the street with Pro-Lifers, Jehovah's Witness, everyone working for "Free/Save/Exploit The Children", I need to have this present in contract form and ask for them to sign it before I proceed. Smh, it is not our responsibility to educate people, sometimes we just need to remind them to do the work.


Living, Breathing Self-Care

1. "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon." "We need to be able to live to fight another day" (Sakura Saunders)
I loved this metaphor, but then I was reminded that it isn't even a marathon. At the end of a marathon, you vomit and fall to your knees. (Dave Meslin) If our goals are to increase the quality of our lives, then this goal must part of the process.

2."When people were asked how they became activists, they said it was because their friend was involved." (Judy Rebick)
We need to count it as activism when we cook each other dinner, watch plays together, cuddle and generally just play with each other. We need to be social beings and love and be loved.

3. "We are not trying to live forever, but we are trying to make ourselves obsolete, reproduce ourselves."
This is something I work hard to live by. Few should not do the work of millions. We actually need to decentralize leadership friends, this means not leaving anyone behind and instead of speaking on behalf of others, we need to bring more to the table - this is not only good for ourselves, but good for the movement.

4. We can't use activism as a way to deal with or to avoid dealing our own personal traumas or guilt. (Adrienne Marie Brown)
Transforming yourself, this can be the deeper work. This is what liberates into the world we want to see.

The Beginning, Middle & End

But as my granny would always say, "Some people have to feel to learn, and Kimmy you are one of those people." Never content to learn from observation, I had to touch the sizzling surface of the iron, had to pick up the scorpion by its flicking tail, had to climb defiantly to the top of that volcano - had to do all of these things to sometimes learn the simplest of lessons (which I find are often the most complex). I could only do things when I could make the choice to. I think until you are ready, choices made under pressure won't stick. It's kind of like rubber cement, you gotta let it dry, you apply the wetness and you have to wait for time to pass for it to get sticky - in fact for both sides to be sticky. We all, as a community need to be ready for one person's choice before we can make it stick. All the pushing together in the world won't do a damn thing, cause once you release that pressure, everything falls apart.

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