In light of what’s been going on lately in the feminist community (and in the world as a whole) I’ve decided to revisit the Twitter rant that I went on almost 3 months ago. That rant was specifically about intersectionality and in light of the non-conversation that Roxane Gay recently had with Erica Jong about the race and feminism, that rant resonates even more strongly today.
So again, I’m going to ask you to bear with me again for a minute while I fall back on my own Black rhetorical tradition and we think about intersectional feminism and why it’s imperative that we have it. Also in this moment in light of Nicki Minaj’s recent callout of Miley Cyrus at the Video Music Awards for saying in an interview that Minaj was, in essence, just too angry to be heard. Really?!? Who the hell is she to police Minaj and the tone that she takes? Who is she to insist that Minaj speak and act in a way that is acceptable to her? When will Black bodies (and voices) stop being policed by White bodies and stop being held to their standards of propriety?
Intersectional feminism is a must because generic feminism (aka White feminism) still refuses to acknowledge that our identities and experiences affect us in such ways that necessitate that have feminism that takes all of these variables into consideration when it considers what we need and what our fight entails. Intersectional feminism sees, acknowledges, and understands the tone of the voices of all women and respects it because intersectional feminism knows where it comes from and doesn’t try to make it fit into a default box.
Without intersectional feminism feminists of all bents have no hopes of coming together. We’re all too busy judging, criticizing, and blaming one another for all that is wrong in the world. It is Erica Jong’s shady ass attempted put down of Roxane Gay for bringing up the fact that it was Beyonce’s birthday by offering up her canon of more “acceptable” Black feminist artists. Perhaps Beyonce was too street for her, but then Moms Mabley was too since she didn’t know who she was either (but she did know Mae West). Jong’s canon of socially aware artists (or great old broads) is apparently as selective as her feminism. And that exclusionary feminism assures that marginalized women are still marginalized. Even on the margins.
By destroying canons and giving up on bullshit ideas of propriety that are steeped in sexist, racist, patriarchal culture from the outset, we can finally have the opportunity to come together and consider how to work together taking all of our different and differing experiences into account.
And this means all of us. We all have to take responsibility for the justice work that needs to be done. No one gets to sit back and put their feet up in the Amen corner. We’ve all got work to do.
Do we really need to go back and look at all of the arguments that were made in the suffrage debates? Know your history people (as subjective as it is), because those who don’t know it are doomed to repeat it.
And don’t even get me started on these homophobic/transphobic/generally xenophobic ass folks in the struggle. I don’t care what is or isn’t unsavory to you. It’s not your place to judge. You must acknowledge, accept, and work with folks that are different from you in a whole lot of ways if we are going to make this shit work. You don’t get to pick and choose and if you think you need to/want to/have to then you know what? It’s time for you to move on because intersectional feminism just ain’t for you. There’s a nice little exclusionary hate group for you over in another corner of the internet. Yeah, I said it. If you ain’t with us then you damned sure are against us. There ain’t no half stepping, because the folks coming for us, our families, and our very lives ain’t pulling no punches either.
In all the ways that my identity is intersectional so is my work. I’ve spent more than 2 decades of my life studying scholarship in my areas and just because I am currently writing about one damn sure doesn’t meant that it’s not informed by the others.
(Wrap your head around that.)
Just because I am writing about games doesn’t make my work trivial. I write about games not only because I like games and I think that there is a lot that merits study in the games community, but because it is one of the spaces in which I exist as a Black, queer, woman, mother, scholar, and activist. And there are a whole lot of other people in those spaces doing the same thing and struggling for equality and against hatred and bigotry. It’s because this space has become a microcosm for the world that we live in outside of games. So when you see the news stories or see the fucked up narrative depictions of what goes on in games communities don’t shake your head and look down your nose because this is the hatred that we have sewn in the real world…simply taken to a new level in a place where rather than hiding behind white hoods in the dark of night the perpetrators are hiding behind keyboards and avatars.
And all of my work in Critical Race Theory, feminist theory, and queer studies give me a lens through which to view these actions and see them for what they are: hate-filled and rhetorically terroristic.
So don’t tell me that I am not doing the work of the field, the work of the struggle. I live and work in the struggle every motherfucking day. It is Black enough (ask all of the folks who don’t want me to forget that they still see me a “nigger”, PhD and all), queer enough (or the wonderful folks who misgender me as “fag”), or feminist enough (so say the hateful folks that declare that I am a cancerous cunt who should die for fighting for the equal representation of women).
Don’t denigrate my work. Don’t tell me it’s not real scholarship. Real theory. Or real at all. Know that my shit is there for a purpose and so am I.
I am a change agent and the people who work with me every day are too. Folks who wake up every day and live the struggle, field the slurs, and the threats…we are there in our spaces working for change and making progress. Slowly, but surely.
And in the xxx of Nicki Minaj I’m calling folks out. It’s a come to Jesus kind of moment (regardless of your beliefs).
If you are not working to make things better for other marginalized and oppressed peoples you are making them worse.
Not just for the people that you ignore, but for yourselves as well.
Because darlin’ you are as fucking abhorrent to those who want them gone as they are.
And once they get rid of them you can damn sure believe that they are coming back for you.
And at that point there will be no one left to come together with.
No one left to fight with. No protection.
We have to come together. Get over ourselves and be the fucking change agents we have to be.
Now I know that I have pissed some of y’all off. And some folks have already left vowing never to return.
But I gotta do me and you know what? You gotta do you too.
I do what I do for a reason. Game space ain’t something that I do just for shiggles. I do it because Black folks, queer folks, women, and a whole lot of other marginalized folks exist in these spaces.
I am there for all of them as well as myself.
You don’t have to like what I do, but you damned sure better respect it.
These spaces are real and they extend to the real world. To ignore the bigotry that exists within them, to hide from it, is to hide from the bigotry in the real world and some of us just don’t have that PRIVILEGE.
So while I fight for equal representation and opportunities for folks in games and the games community, know that I am not just fighting for people like me, but for people like you too. I do it not because I want a better world (online and off) for myself, but for my child and yours.
