Enforcing Femininity

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who was asked if there was a female counterpart to toxic masculinity.
The short answer is 'all of it because patriarchy', but we were able to break it down a little. I came up with some thoughts from that and figured I might as well post about it.

Toxic Masculinity is a problem. That's just a fact. It is caused by patriarchal societies. Patriarchy affects all genders, and yea, there's a female side to it.

I call it 'Enforced Femininity', and that's a term I made up because there IS no term for it. There's no term for it because, even when working to address the effects of patriarchy and dismantle it, it is still so Hard Coded in our brains that men come first, or nothing will get done if men aren't addressed, that we've named Toxic Masculinity, and ignored the female equivalent.

And there has to be one. If you're making a list of Manly things for Men to do, there have to be opposites or counters to that in order for them to be anything, much less manly.
For instance
Body Hair - Masculine.
Lack of Body Hair - Feminine.

Dresses - Feminine.
Not Dresses - Masculine.

Nail Polish - Feminine
No Nail Polish - Masculine.

When we think of toxic masculinity, how we determine an action is manly is based on judging it off of what ISN'T considered manly, and what would that be?

Yet, as important as it is to address to fully deal with patriarchal views, it isn't addressed. Not really. There's talk of 'let your boys wear dresses and let your girls wear pants' but not 'maybe don't buy your girl dresses if she doesn't want them'.

The actions of addressing toxic masculinity ends up being 'Alright people, lets work on boys super hard. Encourage them to have feelings, let them play with dolls, encourage them to have close friends. I guess girls can play with cars or something now?'
It seems little, but there's a big difference, and a lot that gets inferred. If your kiddo is given dresses and pants, that's awesome. But if ONLY girls are given dresses and pants, and boys have to ask for dresses, it still sends the message that one thing is for one gender.

Its a societal thing, and part of patriarchy is that society tends to disregard and ignore females. And even in the movement addressing the harm that this does to people, the conversation, terms, and focus are all on men.

*I'm just gonna pause right here and say YES men do need to fix things, and do not for one second think that I'm giving you an 'out' because I want women to be addressed, too.*

This is not great, folks. We can't actually fully address patriarchy if we continue to follow its guidelines as to where our focus needs to go.

I'm not strong, just stubborn and lucky

When I was a kid, I was constantly regaled with stories about my mother almost dying constantly. She was an extraordinarily death prone child.
Extraordinarily.
When I became pregnant, the one thing I hoped for was that my child would not be death prone.

My child is incredibly death prone.

It's hard. It's unbelievably hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to struggle through in my life, and it's a daily struggle.

Everyday, innocuous things could kill her, and it's only getting worse.

I had one and a half years of a child that couldn't be killed by the wrong person giving her a hug.

She's now 5, approaching 6.

I've spent 4 years making sure that the wrong person didn't hug and/or kill her.

4 years.

I'm told often that I'm strong, that it's great and amazing that she's healthy and alive. and it is. But I am not strong.

I broke. A few years ago, I was broken.

I was suicidal and seriously contemplating abandoning her, because I couldn't do it. It broke me, completely.

I got lucky. I got a bit of reprieve from depression long enough to see a doctor. I was lucky that I had a support system. I was lucky that my doctor decided to medicate me first, rather than force me to wait for a therapists prescription. I was lucky that the first thing worked long enough for me to function.
I got lucky.

I got lucky, and I'm getting better. I'm still not better. I still struggle every day. It still breaks my heart when she panics because something happened and she doesn't want to die.

It kills me to be constantly on high alert, but I'm stubborn, so I have no choice.

It's draining to have to constantly police other people.

It's horrifying when I let myself remember that I am the ONLY person responsible for her health. That if something happens, it's because of a choice that I made.

I know that I'm lucky. She's alive, she's lived through so many things already.

I have support, I have understanding friends and family.

I am stubborn. I am relentless, and I'm lucky that I have those traits.

But her survival is not due to my strength. I wish I could just be strong and that would be enough, but it isn't.
I have to be stubborn, I have to be determined, and we both have to keep being lucky.

Racism is not entertainment

I have a 5 year old daughter. I love Halloween, and Fall. I love spices and cool breezes and dead leaves. So this year I've been looking for some fun, age appropriate cartoons or shows for my daughter to watch that are Halloween based.

I found a collection of classic cartoons on Amazon prime, there was a picture of Casper the friendly ghost, so I started it. There are some problematic things with some older cartoons, mostly sexism, but those are things that I address in all of the shows that she currently watches as well.

We sat through a Casper cartoon and a Popeye cartoon, and I wandered off to another room and left her to it.

A few minutes later, I heard it. I heard the loud stereotypical voice of a black woman coming from the TV, I caught a couple of phrases and rushed right into the living room to see my daughter watching 'Butterscotch and Soda', and an incredibly racist caricature of a black woman.

I rushed to turn it off and explained that she couldn't watch anymore because it was racist, but.. she'd seen it. I don't believe in sheltering children from racism. But I do want to choose, as best I can, what she absorbs and when.

This was in a cartoon. A MILD cartoon. A cartoon for children, where everything is lighthearted and nothing is scary. Except black people.



This isn't something teaching a lesson, this is a depiction of black people as 'less than', in the most casual consumption available. This is showing children, CHILDREN, that black people are exagerated, greedy, lazy, incapable of behaving better than children, and, basically, like talking pets.

It's two thousand fucking seventeen. I should not have to try and shield my child from mammy images. She's got a black mom. As pale as she is, she's got YEARS to learn that this is still how some people will see her, that this is how some people see me. She has years to discover how badly blacks have been treated in this country, without images that show black people, black women, as laughable and incompetent.

This is not a 'classic' cartoon. This, like many, many other things, does not belong in anything that is labeled for children. Keep it, by all means, do not hide it and do not erase it. But put it where it belongs, in a museum, or a collection with that fawn from Fantasia that made it out of the VHS copy I owned as a child.

These things are important reminders of our history. And as such, belong there. This is not entertainment. This is not appropriate 'entertainment' for any age.

I don't need comfortable allies.

I want to talk about comfortable white allies.
Don't be one.

I watched the United Airlines video, along with most everyone else, and I've seen it a few times. There's a white lady that's memorable because she loudly exclaims "Look what you did to him!"

I'm gonna use her as an example of the problems that happen when an ally is comfortable.

A man, a POC, was assaulted and forcibly dragged away by police because he said 'No.'

Everyone on the plane was watching. And this woman cried out, cried out so loudly that her voice comes across clearly in the video.

One might say that she is so much better than people who sat silently, because at least she said something.

I would argue that she's worse. 

She didn't sit silently. She sat vocally. But she still sat. She cried out against what was happening. From her chair. With her phone out, taking a video.

This is comfort. It is not ok. This doesn't help anyone.

Was he any less assaulted? His face any less bloodied?

The last thing we need is for people to cry loudly about how terrible racism is from the comfort of their seats. 

We need you to stand up. We need you to stand up because you have so much less to loose. We need you to stand up in place of the POC who can't, because they're dead or in prison. We need your voices, but most importantly, we need you, standing up, and being uncomfortable.

Because our society is so deeply entrenched in racism, if you're white and comfortable, you're not fighting it. You're not helping us, and if you're not helping us you're hurting us. The last thing we need is for people that want to help is to think that all they have to do is say 'racism is bad' and go to bed.

That won't cut it. You need to speak out. You need to be uncomfortable, you need to force others to look at things differently. We do it all the time and, honestly, we're tired. 

And we're not going to thank you. You're not going to get some flowers or a card, you may not even get a smile, but I'll tell you why.

We face racism every. single. day. You facing it when you choose is not something for us to fawn over. You have the luxury of dealing with it whenever you like. You HAVE to choose to make yourself uncomfortable, because the world is set up to make you comfortable. So your fight, your thankless, tireless fight to undo racist behavior?

That's called being a decent fucking human being and no one gives out prizes for not being an asshole.

I don't care about your black kids.

(do I care about the kids themselves? Probably. But if we're having a talk about race, any mention of your kids better be fucking relevant.)


I am a Black Woman. I don't say that often because it's not how I identify myself, but how America identifies me. If forced, I will say that I am a brown woman, if I need to give specifics, I will say that I'm mixed race.

As a black woman, I am treated as such. There's no difference in the way people treat black or mixed people. Unless you can pass, which I cannot, your blackness is visible and informs how this country treats you. And what I'm talking about here is the black experience, not the fetishization of skin tones. For the black experience, if you are perceived as black, you are treated as such.

As a mixed woman, I'm half white. I've grown up with less fear of white people as a result, but growing up black has made me more careful, and fearful than I was as a child.

I know that all white people can be racist, and I know, firsthand, that they won't see it until they HAVE to see it, but sometimes, if they see it enough, they stop needing it pointed out to them.

My mother is a White Woman. She grew up with her own experiences and lived with them. When I was growing up, she didn't question my many suspensions, complaints of me acting out, the IQ test I was forced to take to prove that I wasn't mentally deficient because I didn't feel like doing homework. She assumed that I was seen as a child, she didn't understand that I was seen as a Black Child, and that that is something very different when there aren't that many in the school.

As a young adult, she assumed that I would be able to move through the world as she had, because she knew no other experience. She didn't question the large security deposits and questionable and illegal things that I had to deal with when renting apartments, those were just bad landlords.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that my mother, who has been with me all of my life, never saw the microagressions directed at me, because she assumed that I moved through the world the same way that she did. She always questioned why I wouldn't raise a fuss in stores to get what I wanted, or why it was so hard for me to return things.

She didn't even know that CVS will ask SOME people for their CVS card as proof in order to redeem extra bucks, because for years she's never heard the question asked.

I have spent years pointing out what I can, and still, sometimes she won't notice something until I point it out. My mother loves me, completely and unconditionally. She'd step in front of a gun for me, she would do anything for me and I know that, but that doesn't mean she knows what it is to be black in America. She knows what I've taught her, what my brother taught her, and what she's seen. She's a good ally, but she walks through the world as a white woman, and benefits from racism constantly without question. If it's brought to her attention she will question it, but sometimes she just doesn't notice and I'm tired.

So if we're talking about race, don't tell me about your black kids, your black partner, your black friends, and assume that you have nothing to learn. If a black person is telling you that you have something to learn, sit down and listen.

Loving a black person does not make you immune to racism. There's no magic anti-racism switch that turns on the second you truly care for a black person. It's just not that simple.

Racism in our country is constant, toxic, and everywhere. You need to pay attention, and you need to listen when someone tells you something, and not fall back on the black people in your life, as if they are a magical shield that means you can do no wrong. You can, you probably will, and it's ok if it happens, if you can learn from it and do better.