A Ph.D. in being me

A man demands citations that I’m a feminist

Do Black women need to study oppression to know we have lived it? image credit: Shutterstock

I was a feminist before I even knew what the word meant, and I remember the first time I had my feminism challenged. My now ex-husband informed me that some friends were passing through our city, and he had invited them over for breakfast.  

The bald, white self-identified "freedom fighter" asked, "How do you know you are a feminist? What feminist scholars have you read to inform your stance?" He was a former African Studies professor who presumed you could only read your way into knowing. Logical, given his chosen occupation was teaching something he’d not experienced: Blackness. 

My response: "I'm assuming that you will be cooking since you invited them." He said, "I guess so," looking embarrassed and overwhelmed by what he just volunteered himself to do.  

I cleared the table before heading outside to do my morning routine. When his guests arrived, I was mid headstand on the front lawn. They quietly crept by; I assume attempting not to disturb me. I finished my sequence, journaled, and entered the house to greet everyone.  

After eating, we retired to the living room for conversation. I don't know how we got on the subject, but I told the male guest I was a feminist. The bald, white self-identified "freedom fighter" asked, "How do you know you are a feminist? What feminist scholars have you read to inform your stance?" He was a former African Studies professor who presumed you could only read your way into knowing. Logical, given his chosen occupation was teaching something he’d not experienced: Blackness. 

I'm sure every bit of my irritation was present on my face. I glanced at his silent wife then back at him with a look of confusion, and responded, "Are you saying it is necessary to read literature to know oppression?" With a smirk he replied, "Certainly you have read some feminist literature, if you are using the term." 

The audacity of this white male sitting in my house, asking me for references to prove my own sense of worth. As if living my life as a woman, a Black woman, for the past 30 years was not reference enough. Questioning if my experience as a Black woman in the United States wasn't enough to make me well informed of the way patriarchy has impact in women's lives. He was not the type to count life experience as evidence. I could tell because his arrival to a home where the man who invited him was cooking breakfast while his wife continued her self-care practice and didn't let his arrival interrupt her, should have alerted him that something feminist was afoot. If he was an astute observer of his experiences, he would've seen feminist practices in place that may have made him reconsider questioning me. 

The conversation got a little heated, as I declared my experiences were valid enough. I asserted research is nothing more than a collection of lived experiences analyzed for trends. Research is often a rabbit hole that the powers that be send you on to validate our lived experience, often years behind conventional knowledge and centuries behind ancient wisdom. I didn't need funding, research studies or scholars to validate my experience or to recognize the trends all around me.  

I could gather data in the stories of my mother, grandmother and great grandmother, seeing they all had a common thread: oppression. I can collect evidence in the stories of my aunts, sisters and friends. I can observe the dynamics at school PTA meetings, parks and in the homes I've been invited into. In the wake of the internet, I can see how widespread these experiences are. I could see a clear trend that women are overburdened and men were reaping the benefits of it. 

I exited the conversation to head to a dance class I taught. On a later day, when my then-husband returned from work. He handed me a six- or seven-page document — an excerpt of feminist writing. The “friend” from the other day, asked him to give it to me. I took it and tossed it on the table, feeling like everything I said to him had gone over his head. Annoyed at my ex-husband for even bringing it to me, I responded with a baby nestled in a carrier on my back while simultaneously making dinner, and a hint of sarcasm in my voice, "I will get to it when I have a moment." 

A couple more days passed until I decided to pick it up and read it. I’m not anti-learning. I have a Master's degree. I am anti-ignorant patriarchal audacity. I decided to read the article while breastfeeding. It contained no new information to me. But I kept reading, hopeful it would reveal some new insights. It only further proved my point. 

My ex-husband asked what I thought. I told him every single word of those page I’d lived or heard firsthand accounts of. I have lived as a single Black woman, a married Black woman, a Black woman in predominantly Black environments, a Black woman in predominantly white environments, a stay-at-home mother and the mother that worked outside of the home. I didn't need the article to tell me about my experiences of oppression. I’d already lived them and heard them in my life with women.  

One reason I write is because society makes us too busy to collect our own stories then calls our own anecdotes invalid. You claim to be oppressed, prove it and not with what you can see with your own eyes, but with what you can get funding to research. Show us your double-blind longitudinal study, suck up all your years, life and time to prove to us something that we are going to do nothing about.  

I write not to prove anything to anyone outside of ourselves. I write so we can see ourselves and recognize the patterns. I write so we can see we aren’t alone but also to see what ways we can do disrupt the patterns in ourselves, our relationships, our children and our communities.