The Lost Years Part 1 : I Know What to Call It

Living with multiple marginalized identities, I often witness the same phenomena happening across systems. Often teams it's the double speak of people with power and privilege walking back on allyship once pressed into a corner.  White people saying they're allies and "protect black women" until allyship becomes too uncomfortable and they go back to comfortable practice of privilege to avoid being seen as the bad guy. I see men claiming to be feminists while casually and comfortably harming women. I see able-bodied folks talk about being inclusive and empathetic up until someone they dislike or have little care for are suffering through a mental issue or disorder and then Oop back to calling people weak and making fun of people with mental health issues. I've watched incredibly liberal , like I want my kids to go to schools that talk about gender identity" liberal people go back on their allyship when it comes to Israel and Palestine. I had a friend tell me Jews are the most oppressed people ever in order to manufacture my consent or his support of a genocide. While allyship is not easy, I can't help but notice how quickly the progressivism rescinds itself once the more privileged party finds themselves, perhaps unknowingly, in the seat of the oppressor and in a position to really utilize that power and privilege.

One of the phenomena, I've witnessed in this area is around the aversion to certain words or labels. And in place of those words, the privileged party tends to "re-label" or "reframe" the actions categorized by said terms in order to minimize what they find "offensive" "complicated" or "uncomfortable". I've seen white people and men specifically do this often. One group re-labels sexual assault as a "confusing miscommunication" or an "unclear mistake"… Abuse becomes minimized from a pattern of harmful behavior to dehumanize, degrade, and belittle another and transforms into "a few bad moments" or " a little temper". Racism becomes "not everything is about race", " I get the optics but we're not racist" " have black friends. we voted for Obama. We love Beyonce etc. We did an anti-racism book club". But, the ability to successfully manipulate language in order to sell a more "reasonable" less "uncomfortable" narrative is a tool of the oppressor. The labeling subtlety violently squashes dissent or contentiousness for their own ends while helping the more privileged party ease their own feelings of discomfort.   These relabelings are displays of power, putting into the hands of the privileged always the ability to distinguish whose viewpoints are valid and rational, vs not. And often the valid and rational viewpoints are there's not that of the less privileged group. Thus, the manipulation of language in this way helping those in power evade  such, without acknowledging the full weight and implications of their actions.  The powerful will hand you a brick that is 10 pounds and when you rightfully weight it and see that is 10 pounds. The privileged will tell you know if you use my scale, you'll see that it is actually 5 pounds. But their scale, is broken, biased towards showing lighter weights when weighing the bricks of others.  And thus, when they can excuse away all their harm towards marginalized groups as a tiny PBS kid-sized offense, they will not have to deal with the outcry and true impact on their actions of the oppressed.

As in white supremacy , and all systems of oppression really "the right to comfort and fear of conflict" is a core reason why this happens.

• When someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to blame the person for raising the issue rather than to look at the issue which is actually causing the problem. (BIG)

• Emphasis or insistence on being polite; setting the rules for how ideas or information or differences of opinion need to be shared in order to be heard (in other words, requiring that people "calm down" if they are angry when anger often contains deep wisdom about where the underlying hurt and harm lies);

• Equating the raising of difficult issues with being impolite, rude, or out of line; punishing people either overtly or subtly for speaking out about their truth and/or experience"

 These are all deeply rooted facets of white supremacy culture of which I will talk about later. With it, we go backward to make assault not assault, abuse not abuse, racism not racism.  And here is where I will release a long-brewing source of rage. Because after years and years of research, of learning, or conversation, I do not have the trepidation of previous diatribes. I know what happened to me and I do know what to call it.

Can you guess the demographic of the person who wrote this? This comment has made my blood boil for almost 2 years. If I'm being honest, white women historically have always  jumped with ease to silence black women, discredit our experiences and to try to center themselves in places where their feelings are not central nor are required. Her faux empathetic Karenistic tone reminds me of a woman of a similar demographic from the Upper West Facebook group who would complain about the noise from the black lives matter protests  keeping her baby awake.  Like m'am there are black kids dying and you're worried about the noise. I have a separate thought on white people and the colonization of sound, a dislike of any loud noise in any form , especially when coming from people of color. But when you think about it, who gets to speak ? Whose noise is labeled acceptable? Whose filing the noise complaints in your neighborhood? This is her noise complaint and the truth is the noise. Black truth is historically white noise.

I think as a women the idea that you will not believed is never too far away from you when you  think about how to disclose the ways men have harmed you. As a black woman, we know that our word is for some reason (racism and sexism , the mysognioir twins) worthless or perceived as such, particularly when the perps of harm are white. And fine, if not every woman subscribes to the "believe women" or "protect black women" model of feminism, that is your choice. But outside the feminist question, it's somewhat bold to take offense to the way someone describes their experience of which you were not a witness to. But I think about the sheer audacity (caucasity) of such a comment.

Even if you don't believe women, if any woman , anyone's daughter would come to talking about assault or abuse, who would you be to discredit her? Were you there? Have you lived in her body? Were you there lying with her as she lay naked wondering what has just happened to her? Were you there in the shower hearing a man snap at her for not washing his armpits in a Florida condo, or snapping at her in the kitchen for rewatching a video on how to make patatas bravas to double check the instructions? Were you there in the grocery hearing him snap at her for looking at ice cream for too long? Were you there hearing a man go out of his way to remind you on multiple occasions that you have no power or that you can't do anything because you aren't powerful enough to. Have you heard a man unleash his aggression on a woman he knows he outranks in all forms of power? Were you there at his birthday dinner , after a weekend of verbal abuse, hearing him tell me how he sexually assaulted another woman of color ten years before as if it was nothing. Until that day, I believe it best to do little to discredit the experiences of other women, not knowing what they've experienced on a daily basis. At least that is my stance. I will talk about that comment in a later a part of these essays. There is a racialized narrative here that in step with the societal treatment of black women here, the mammy, jezebel, the dehumanized black female body that again will live in another set of words.

But I say this to say this to, to a blond white woman from Florida , the word abuse is more "offensive" than the imagery of naked brown and black girls dehumanized and degraded during intimate moments, late at night, lying naked in fear shock and confusion, having their bodily autonomy betrayed by a man who for ten years has held the mindset of "I just kept going" when hearing women of color saying this "this is hurting me". The naked crying brown girls , the white guy telling black girls they had no power, a year after an anti-racism book club, ten years of deceit and hiding behind as a "victim" of a "false" narrative, none of that was offensive nor worthy of commentary. But yes, a black woman saying the word abuse, awful! Do we understand what the world is for black women, when we would rather find offense with the words of black women rather than the actions of white men who use their power to oppress, assault, and abuse women. When we center the voices of women of color and actually mean it, do we understand what the world really is for them? Because it is always some version of this, her furthered dehumanization and disrespect even if she is the victim, virgin, kind, good etc, it makes no difference. The world is indifferent to the suffering of black women and celebrates it when given the chance to.

What that comment had also inflamed in me was this ongoing conflict around the word abuse. For a long time I struggled with that word abuse. What most people will not realize is that women who've been in abusive relationships will struggle to find that word. A few months ago I went to a Gaia collective sing-along where

A woman had disclosed during our recitation of landslide that as she hears it , it is resonating with her as someone who is "Realizing" she was in an abusive relationship. And there it was, she didn't know either. She had to realize as many women do that the dynamic between her and the partner she likely loves is abusive.  For a lot of people, it takes time and resources to find that word. And even when we've gathered enough honesty within ourselves to be able to recognize abuse in our relationships, we are the last people who want to use that word. We are reluctant to accept that we've been abused and implications of the deficits within us. But when we start to describe the dynamics of the relationships , the use of power and force, the unleashing of aggression , to harm us routinely, it's the word we are all almost immediately offered.  Because that's what it is.

I can remember telling a therapist what had happened during the course of the year with an abusive man and hearing her say the first time "This kind of abusive behavior…" and stopping her. Admittedly, I figured that because I hadn't been as forthcoming as I should've during our sessions that year about the person I was with, that she must've been responding to her own surprise. I said "What do you mean abusive? He didn't hit me".  She paused.  I could see a twinge of sadness flash across her as she tried to gently break it down for me. I held firm when she'd use that word in later sessions, I'd asked her not to in order to avoid the discomfort that came up every time she used that word. Because of our glamorized depictions of abuse , we often forget that the word has a much broader definition that the dramatic portrayals of men. As I had to seek better help for this looming complex PTSD , I'd come to disclose the story a few times to multiple therapists and then several friends, all of which were met with that same word without prompting. "Experimenting by being with you. You're a guest. That's how they treat us. It's always this kind of dehumanization that opens the door for abuse". Emotionally abusive, mentally abusive. I hated hearing it. So I turned to what I felt were more unbiased sources, perhaps everyone was just shocked and reacting. I even posted anonymously on a reddit thread 30 comments all offering the same word. And still I couldn't wrap my heard around it. I took 5 quizzes and finally joined 2 support groups, one for cPTSD and one for women who've experienced narcissistic abuse, and that word kept coming back every single time. And surely if the experts and therapists, a psychologist, survivors, and friends, and strangers had all said it, it had to be true. If I had a disorder caused solely by repeated and multiple instances of abuse, then I couldn't deny it. And then it ballooned, becoming the root of a bunch of other swirling cloud of terminology introduced to me around this time  - emotional abuse, covert narcissism, narcissistic abuse, complex PTSD, derealization disorder, rape by deceit. I hated them all.

My mother was the last person I told. It took me weeks to tell it all in piecemeals for the deep shame that lived in me around this. "Mom. Something's wrong with me. I'm sick." It had given me deep shame to face her with all of this. But when I finally could get it all out to her and, her low muttering of "he abused you" had passed through her lips with such a solemn knowing and ease that I knew I could no longer ignore it.  I hurt watching the pain flicker through her face. In my lifetime, I have seen her cry only twice, one when my great-aunt died and the other when my uncle had died. But when I told her about how he'd left me in that bed, she cried everyday for a week. For Haitian mother who'd been through enough hells to last 3 lifetimes, abuse, natural disasters, destruction, political instability, single motherhood, this had shaken her deeper than I thought it would. And that killed me. This isn't what she brought us here for. This wasn't the American dream that she had for her daughter. And this was all before even before the worst of the auto-immune and hematology issues that would later ensue as a result. I had to face it looking in her eyes. I had to face that word. It was so big and so ugly to keep. But it was the word, the right one. Despite what a white woman from Florida, the historical guardians of social justice would say, I know what to call it. And if it happened to her daughter, she would too.