As you may have heard, Rick Ross came out with the controversial line from his latest song, “U.O.E.N.O.” : “Put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it / I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it.” A few days later, he addressed the lyrics with an “apology” that made me give him one of the biggest side-eyes ever. The kind of side-eye equal to smacking him (hey Ross rapping about murder, it is always clear that it is about murder. however when you rap about rape, you tend to excuse it like you are doing now). This incident with Ross comes on top of others like Lil’ Wayne‘s lyrics about beating a woman’s vagina like Emmett Till was beaten, reactions to the Steubenville Case, tech developer Adria Richards receiving death and rape threats and was fired after reporting sexual harassment, and the countless rapes of people all over the world. The war against women and control over their bodies continues, even in Women’s History Month, and so I am giving a loud and clear message to all out there:
You do not have the right to give me any substances especially if they may be harmful to my body without me knowing it. You do not have the right to do anything to my body without my permission. You do not have a right to do what you want with my body because of my own personal choices with my body. You do not have the right to disrespect my body and my mind, and call me out by a name or a statement that I do want addressed to me. You do not have the right to patronize me when I call you out on your bullshit. You do not have the right to define rape for me. Rape is when I do not give you absolute consent. It does not need to be said as rape for it to a disgusting action in which you take advantage and use your power over someone’s body. If I say no, if I am unconscious and cannot consent, or if I look scared or uncomfortable, do not touch me; do not enter my body with force! If you really think I am a queen and the greatest gift to man, you would know that. So here is a message from the future (and not the rapper Future who decided to cosign that mess); now you know it.
For more information on how to respect Black women, their minds, their bodies and their bodies, take a look at Black Girls Are From The Future website.
When some think of the song “Lady Marmalade,” one of their first thoughts is that it is a song about a New Orleans prostitute. On the surface it may be, but the song is much more nuanced and has deeper meaning beyond that. Listening to the song, I realized how ambiguous it is.
First, the title is “Lady Marmalade” for a song supposedly about a creole prostitute. For a woman who is a sex worker to be still called a “lady” is important despite that this aspect of the song is rarely discussed. She is a lady no matter what she does; she is still respected. Another is that she is creole. Looking into Caribbean studies, there is a lot of literature on the significance of creolization (creolite)– the hybridity or syncretism of cultures (ex. Santeria’s use of Catholicism), but in connection to the song, also the fear of racial and sexual miscegenation that Lady Marmalade represents. How do men in power suppress their fear about a sexually independent or powerful women or guilt about taking advantage of her; they usually call her a “hoe” or “prostitute” (i.e. Jezebel). Additionally, the lyrics themselves do not fully suggest she is a prostitute; it at most sounds like she is a sexually powerful woman. But even it being about a prostitute, the song refutes the sentiment that a song about a woman classified as a “hoe” or “prostitute” is not about one of us; it does concern all of us (“hey sista, go sista”).
Angela Davis is more than an afro and if you think wearing an afro is radical and revolutionary enough, then you do not know much about Angela Davis’ life. Having grown up in Birmingham and knowing the girls who were murdered in the Birmingham church bombing, Davis seemed destined to want to make a change in the world and she did. Here was a black women who received a Ph.D. in philosophy, spoke out against the Prison Industrial Complex long before it was a popular phrase and in the mainstream, was tracked by the FBI for her outspokenness and links to communism and the Black Panthers, and later came out as a lesbian. And she did this all as a black woman!
Living in a world where power and knowledge is equaled to mainly male, white and heterosexual, all of that was quite a feat. We need to know about her and others like her as a part of our history, and the many aspects of them that connect to us. As Erykah Badu said in The Black Power Mixtape, what we need to do is read, write and document our stories because if we do not, we allow people to twist those stories in their favor. Shola Lynch’s film Free Angela and All Political Prisonersis another chance for the hunted to take back their story from the hunter. Happy Women’s History Month to Angela Davis and the film will be in theaters April 5th.
Actress Ethosheia Hylton will be playing Adesuwa, who connects spiritually with the orisha of storms and change, Oya, in the upcoming film Oya: Rise of the Orishas. Below is her interview and donate to the Indiegogo campaign:
But I also wanted to do a list of kickass actresses who would be great Oyas as well and take a look at other blogs’ lists (Gangstarr Girl and Divas and Dorks, too:
After reading Kurt Vonnegut’s famous and controversial novel, Slaughterhouse Five, one of the other works that came to mind was Dead Presidents, starring Larenz Tate. Besides both works detailing veterans with PTSD, previously related to shell shock at that time, after witnessing the terror of war, they both tie together the psychotrauma of witnessing that carnage and the fantasty of escapism.
The two pieces have a number of parallels. One of the memorable covers of Slaughterhouse Five is the yellow skull and crossbones on the striking red cover. The cover thematically reflects the Dead President’s movie cover of the painted skull used as a mask in the bank robbery. The climax of the novel, which it is named after, brings Billy Pilgrim, the story’s time-traveler, to a slaughterhouse for animals in Dresden. In Dead Presidents, the main character, Anthony Curtis, after coming home from war, works for some time in a butcher shop and has terrifying nightmares that include it. The imagery of carnage is linked to not only the widespread destruction that they viewed in war, but also the death of their innocence. Both characters are depicted as having changed, a kind of death, after traumatic experiences. Vonnegut repeatedly mentions blue and ivory colors of Pilgrim’s feet to show a kind of death that he has experienced. After the war and the plane crash, Pilgrim becomes more detached from the real world. Neither is Curtis the same. His wife Juanita in the violent argument they have before Curtis leaves for good mentions that he is not the same person he was before the war and she doesn’t know him anymore. Of course, he’s not, the war killed the old him.
Another parallel is the two works’ criticism of American capitalist social structure, social injustice and the mistreatment of veterans, most of whom have mental illness and/or are poor. They both highlight that American society values money more than human life, and soldiers and veterans get the short end of the stick. Pilgrim and Curtis’ disillusionment with the society leads to fantasies of escape, but in two different ways.
Last week, I read a post about time travel in Black Nerds Network. While we have not reached physical time travel yet and I am not sure I would want that, let’s consider mental and spiritual time travel. The imagination is probably our first vehicle of time travel. Through media, art, artifacts, symbols, stories, traditions, memories and speculations, we move back and forth through time in our minds, exploring our relationships to the past, present and future. Our present environments are gateways to recapturing experiences from previous periods of life, imagining experiences of the next ones and even existing outside of time. As we already know, for people of African descent now, time travel is difficult for us given our histories of slavery, colonialism and racism, but we still time travel despite them, often in hopes that the societies we live in honestly take a look at themselves and their pasts and in hopes of a better present and future. Below are a few time traveling thinkers (BTW, I may update this later):
“Framing the future: Ngwatilo Mawiyoo at TEDxNairobi”
Ngwatilo Mawiyoo uses poetry as a way to return home and make the future look back at itself. She quotes Robert Pinksy who said, “and as poets too, one of our responsibilities is to mediate between the dead and the unborn.”
We should be“…moving past keep it real…let’s keep it surreal.” Musician Vernon Reid said this in his presentation of Artificial Afrika and it stirred some thoughts on “keeping it real.”
I see it as reality that is presented to us and the reality we create or perpetuate can always be called into question. Reality changes, multiple realities exist and we go outside of our given realities. What we perceive as reality is one sense a set of social performances constructed for and negotiated with a particular audience. Much of the reality we view everyday is not real, but the illusion or mask is often more entertaining and more powerful.
And the people who audiences expect or hope to “keep it real” and truthful seem to be the ones most faking it. Finding out a while ago that rapper Rick Ross was formerly a prison guard and took his name from the real drug dealer “Freeway” Rick Ross, was kind of surprising, but he is not the only rapper, or artist, who has a fabricated image. Nicki Minaj recently confessed that she is not bisexual, but told people she was in order to get attention. Terrell’s response to her on tumblr reveals the silencing effects of shaping an image based on marginal communities which one is not a part. This is also seen in the wearers (including college students) of racist Halloween costumes, which sparked the “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume” campaign. Speaking of campaigns, I am also reminded of the presidential campaign, in which there is Mitt Romney, who is always changing his face, and President Barack Obama, who may be a bit more truthful, but also has to put on a certain persona to be acceptable to the general public.
Online PhD sent me a link to this list about female philosophers and the post generated some thoughts about the lack of attention around women in philosophy, particularly black women, leading me to a few interesting finds. Philosophy, which means “love of knowledge or wisdom,” is one of the oldest studies in human history. Afrofuturism itself can be considered a philosophy or a philosophical field, since it is a way of thinking about, feeling and engaging with the world. But often philosophy is attributed to men, especially white European men. Philosophers like Aristotle, Sophocles, Kant, and Nietzsche are constantly mentioned and praised with little criticism outside of the usual boundaries. Sometimes other cultures are mentioned in philosophy, like Chinese philosophers, Indian philosophers or a brief mention of the Egyptian Ptahotep, but other than that not much else. So, what space is there for other kinds of philosophers, including female ones of the African Diaspora.
In 2007, the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers had their first meeting to gather together women who are in the field. Later in 2011, when The Philosopher’s Eye did a post on the future of philosophy to celebrate World Philosophy Day, all of the philosopher’s included were men, showing still an uphill battle in recognition of women philosophers and philosophers of color There is already a small percentage of black philosophers, and the amount of women who are is even smaller. Below is a list of some of them:
With issues concerning women consistently headlining in the news in not just the past few weeks (ex. Malala Yousafzai), but for months now with examples like Todd Akin, I want to take some time to write about one aspect that goes unmentioned. Many of these discussions about women show a fear and lack of understanding and appreciation of women, feminine energy and female bodies. This fear and misunderstanding goes down to even the naming of our bodily parts.
From The Vagina Monologues to vajazzling, consistently the name of the female genital area in English is incorrectly used. It is not the vagina, that is just the pathway to the cervix; the entire region is actually called the vulva. Now if we get that wrong and don’t care to correct it, what does that say about how we address a female’s body and women in general (cis-gendered, transgendered and others in between). We are basically reduced down to our uterus and the pathway to it.
If we look back in time through the figures and statues left behind, we see that the female genital was not hidden, but looked at as powerful:
Last week, I wrote about how the ideas about creation in Frankenstein can be found in records like “Dr. Funkenstein” and “Monster.” Since Nicki Minaj is on “Monster,” I want to continue the Frankenstein theme with women. Although Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, most of the women seem to be weak, secondary characters in the story. Dr. Frankenstein’s fiance/bride, Elizabeth, is murdered by the monster, Justine is wrongly accused of a murder done by the “monster,” and the monster’s bride never actually comes to fruition (although later films show it differently) for fear that she would not comply with Frankenstein and the “monster.” His mother, Caroline’s, death fuels Frankenstein’s desire for creation. Looking at novel again, the secondary characters are as important to shaping the themes of the story.
It looks as if Shelley is commenting on the creation of the female as an afterthought (Adam and Eve), who is stripped of her powers. She is subtly hinting at the mythical reaction to the perceived power women have in the creation of life and over men. Frankenstein wanted to create life on his own, not shared with his soon-to-be wife. Male-dominated creation has often worked on the basis of controlling both nature and women. Another interesting note is that characters like Safie (her name is linked to Sophie, goddess of Wisdom), who is known for her independence and intelligence, does not die, and the “monster” learns language from her interaction with Felix. At a time when women were expected to submit, Mary was able bring in conversations about male power and creation in relation female dis-empowerment. In a sense, the “monster” represented the suppressed feminine shadow haunting Frankenstein.
After reading Kurt Vonnegut’s famous and controversial novel, 
Anthony Curtis, after coming home from war, works for some time in a butcher shop and has terrifying nightmares that include it. The imagery of carnage is linked to not only the widespread destruction that they viewed in war, but also the death of their innocence. Both characters are depicted as having changed, a kind of death, after traumatic experiences. Vonnegut repeatedly mentions blue and ivory colors of Pilgrim’s feet to show a kind of death that he has experienced. After the war and the plane crash, Pilgrim becomes more detached from the real world. Neither is Curtis the same. His wife Juanita in the violent argument they have before Curtis leaves for good mentions that he is not the same person he was before the war and she doesn’t know him anymore. Of course, he’s not, the war killed the old him.
Last week, I read a post about time travel in 
