Letter to My Sisters: A Contextualized Response to The Appropriation of Black Womanhood in Trans Activism

I am a black woman as well.

My parents specifically named me a sexually and racially ambiguous name such that I wouldn't be discriminated against potential employers and opportunities when they take a look at my resume. When j was little I hated my name as I could be mistaken for a boy by teachers and my peers called me a boy because of my name and my blackness. I thought I could never be loved because of my black body.

Comparing a black woman's struggles and insecurities to the ones of a man who happens to think he's a woman is so racist and underhanded it fills me with rage. Black women's qualities are only desired when they are on someone else and they know this. We are constantly asked to step aside, make room, and lift up other people instead of ourselves. And the moment a black woman decides to commit to herself and herself only, she's called all sorts of names and one of them will for sure compare her to a man. So to be asked to make room for delusional men who want to dress feminine? You got me fuuuuucked up.

I refuse to be a good little black broodmare that lifts men up while they simultaneously wear me down and become a caricature of my womanhood.

The appropriation is never complimentary. There's nothing wrong with being a white, gay male Aaliyah super fan or black feminine gay men wearing their femininity in a black style. OF COURSE black gay men would wear feminine fashions from their own community. And gay white men adoring a female pop star- well that's a stereotype of theirs!

But that's not what's happening when it comes to appropriation. Appreciation doesn't come saturated with envy and sourness. They really do think that black women are "hogging the spotlight." Spotlight for what? Who the hell knows. But for trans activists, black women are annoyingly visible.

It is also meant to “neg” woke Black women who probably know better than to seek validation from “cis” men, but struggle to recognize and repel the “kiss the ring” tone some transwomen carry towards Black women.

That's a perfect way of describing it. "Kiss the ring."

Our exclusion from those rules does not mean we owe ally-ship to anyone fighting for a seat at the very table we’ve been happy to walk away from when the working day is done. Let all who please kneel and pray at the altar of idealized White femininity. Do not allow anyone to assume that Black women are collectively kneeling besides them.

Three cheers for "TD." What a great writer. I learned a semester's worth in 16 minutes.

white male slave owners used to say black women were the same as males. They had to come up with some "reasoning" to have women working in the fields. 

Do you have any sources for this? I have read (I'll try to find these again) that some white men considered black men and other moc infantile or feminine because they have less body and facial hair than white men and this is why they "needed to be led", but never what you said. But I know with these sorts of things the belief (x is subhuman) comes first and then the reasoning just comes later to explain it away. Though I am wondering at the idea that women couldn't work in fields, there definitely were and still are female farmers and/or women who had to work in fields because of poverty, and I don't think I've ever seen pearl clutching over that. Also, enslaved women didn't only work in fields, many worked in houses too (which has led to some men claiming that enslaved men had it worse, which not only is laughably false but also ignores the fact that not all of them worked in fields either). But I'm going to take a guess that it was overall more likely for a woman to work in a house than a man, and for a man to work in a field than a woman.