community – The Establishment

An Inside Look At The Kick-Ass Establishment Online Community

Nikki Gloudeman — Thu, 08 Nov 2018 22:00:53 +0000

Our exclusive Slack channel is, as one member puts it, a “small miracle.”

How else can one say it? The world is fucking bleak.

Looking at social media, reading media headlines, just being in the world, is to swim daily in a stinking cesspool of bigotry and closed-mindedness and unimaginable hate.

It’s so easy to feel hopeless, helpless, hapless. To not know where to turn for the kind of support and insight that’s needed to just.keep.fighting., even when your foes are bullies of immense power and boundless cruelty.

For me, at least, The Establishment community has been a true saving grace.

If you follow our social media or check out our site, you’ve probably heard a lot about this mysterious community. But you might not know what exactly it is. In the most basic of terms, the Establishment community is a Slack channel where our members convene. Yet over the last few months, it’s become so much more than that.

Nearly 500 people are currently part of the community, and in channels ranging from #news to #social to #resistance-resources, more than 15,000 messages have been posted. Together, we’ve nerded out on Dr. Who and Breaking Bad and the Marvel Cinematic Universe; discussed white fragility, asexuality, toxic sports culture, and reproductive rights; posted and discussed the latest Trump administration news; shared up-to-the-minute updates on the midterms and detailed info on local resistance marches; chatted in-depth about Establishment content; and reveled in GIFs of turtles and baby bears.

In the most basic of terms, the Establishment community is a Slack channel where our members convene. Yet over the last few months, it's become so much more than that.
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I recently had a baby, and the #parenting channel in particular has been the place I turn to not only to talk about the logistics of raising a human, but to go deep on important issues like fighting gender norms, managing anxiety and depression, and combating body shame.

I feel safe doing so because, and this is just the truth, Establishment members are the fucking all-time best: compassionate, open-minded, thoughtful, and good to the core.

It’s a beautiful thing. And I promise I’m not the only one to think so! Here’s what one of our amazing members, user @Inkwell, has to say:

“No matter the age of history in which one finds oneself, finding those people who are truly invested in the goings-on of the day is no mean feat. However, the Establishment community is that and so much more besides. We’re home to highly engaged people who have their fingers on the pulse of current events, and being able to discuss them in-depth with nuance and insight is a small miracle. What’s more, they take after the Establishment magazine’s tone and offer warmth and wisdom to any who ask. To me, they have been a source of strength, entertainment, comfort, and encouragement when all of those things seem to be at a premium. In short, the Establishment community is everything that you would want from not just an internet community but a community altogether. I can’t say enough kind things about it.”

Seconds equally-amazing member Anna Tarkov:

“The Establishment community is like a breath of fresh air. With most any online community, you’re never sure whether the people there will be on the same page with you on important things like social justice, racism, etc. And it’s always a rude awakening when you find out that someone in, say, your photography club is a raging bigot. But that’s something you don’t have to worry about here. And it turns out, maybe unsurprisingly, that people who are devoted to justice and activism are amazing, interesting, intelligent, kind, caring people. I think we could all use more friends like that.”

Want in? All you have to do is sign up right here, for 5 bucks a month (or more if you’d like!), to become a member. You’ll get an invite to our exclusive Slack channel plus gain access to awesome gated content plus be supporting our incredible, diverse writers.

The best place to go when the going gets tough is a safe space filled with people who care, who are right there with you on working to make things better. We’d love to have you be a part of what we’re building.

Filing A Bystander Complaint Shouldn’t Be This Hard

Lindsey Weedston — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 08:55:28 +0000

My problem wasn’t just with these police. It was with an entire system of policing that is failing to protect and serve those it claims to.

At 2 a.m. on Sunday July 7, 2018, I awoke out of a dead sleep to the sound of a woman screaming for help at the top of her lungs. I don’t know how many times she screamed the word “help” or exactly how long it took me to come out of sleep, figure out that it wasn’t a dream, and realize that a woman really was screaming and I was hearing it.

It took another second of paralysis for that to sink in before my partner in bed next to me said, “did you hear that?”

“Someone’s screaming for help.”

It took several agonizing seconds for us to get our pajamas on. I ran outside while my partner fumbled with his shoes, but the screaming had stopped. I stood still, trying to listen, and realized with horror that I might be too late. A commotion finally came from an apartment three down from mine. That should give you an idea of how loud the woman was screaming. A man came out of the apartment and into the parking lot, followed by a very angry, but very alive, woman.

That was when my partner decided to call the police—a decision he now regrets, though he wasn’t the only one to call.

The two of us stood huddled in our jammies, watching the couple fight to make sure no one was hurt. It’s hard to say how long it took for the police to arrive—probably five to ten minutes. I didn’t hear any sirens, only the sound of cars approaching and doors slamming shut out of sight. Three officers then walked around the side of the apartment building and slowly approached the couple.

At the sight of the police, the woman turned around and started storming toward her apartment. The officers shouted at her to stop, placing their hands on their holstered firearms. They didn’t draw their weapons, but my mind flashed back to all of the video footage I’ve unfortunately watched of police shooting and killing unarmed suspects. My only comfort came from the fact that the couple was white, so they stood a much better chance of surviving.

The officers separated the couple and spent about five minutes interviewing them. After that, an officer walked over to the woman and handcuffed her. They informed her that she was under arrest. Stunned, I listened to the woman start to sob, and then a bit of hell began breaking loose.

People were angry. One neighbor, who had been watching through the window, started yelling at the police. “What are you doing?” he shouted repeatedly, “She screams for help, and then you come and arrest her?”

Another man approached from a different apartment building, having heard the commotion and also demanding an explanation. My partner yelled at the woman to stay quiet and get a lawyer. Meanwhile, my mind was racing. The woman was being led off by the one female officer, away from her apartment, in only her nightie. Stories about women being sexually assaulted by police and prison guards shot through my head. I started following her, terrified, but feeling that I couldn’t just do nothing.

My partner, being afraid of cops (as so many of us are), started yelling at me to come back. He regrets doing so. I regret listening to him. We both regret the entire night.

My partner yelled at the woman to stay quiet and get a lawyer. Meanwhile, my mind was racing.
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The detained woman had been led out of sight, back to the police vehicles. The two remaining officers were looking on edge, trying to respond to the few members of the community who had come out to voice their displeasure. I remember the female officer coming back to me and my partner, who was upset to the point of going into “say every word that comes into his head” mode. All I could do was ask the officer in a shaking voice, now crying, if the arrested woman was given anything to wear. It took two tries to get an answer to my question.

“She’ll be given something.”

Translation: No.

The officers started telling everyone to go inside. We refused at first, still afraid that the cops might do something violent to our neighbors. Eventually, it became clear that there would only be talking, and I went back into my apartment.

I had work the next day, but I couldn’t sleep. I felt both helpless and useless, my mind going over all the things I could have said or done to intervene. Instead of sleeping, I found a place online where I could submit a complaint about the local police. I wrote that the officers on the scene acted aggressively by putting their hands on their guns and telling bystanders to go inside, that they made an arrest in very little time without the aid of a domestic violence advocate, and that they hauled off a woman in a nightie without allowing her to put on some reasonable clothes.

Later that morning, in the light of day, I surprisingly got a call from an officer, who attempted to explain away some of my complaints. When I expressed that this was not good enough, he asked me if I wanted to come down to the station to file a complaint, which I thought I had already done.

My partner and I decided to go together, mostly because I was too scared to go alone. We’re both white, so we didn’t expect to be brutalized, but we were still afraid—of authority figures, of guns, and of the amount of police misconduct that goes on in this country.

Sergeant Collins was friendly and took the time to read through the police reports and the complaint I had made. I was a little confused as to why we were even there. I had expected to pick up an official complaint form to fill out either there or at home. Then he started talking.

He spent about the next half hour “explaining” why the police acted as they did. It felt as though he was attempting to talk me out of making a complaint. Then he admitted that it was “very unusual” for bystanders to an arrest to file a complaint against police. This surprised me. Were people not doing this? Were the bystanders who have personally witnessed all the nearly daily incidents of deadly police brutality not filing complaints against the offending officers?

Information on how many complaints are filed against police in any given area, whether by arrestees or by bystanders, is hard to come by. And where it does exist, it often seems fishy.

In Seattle, criticisms about how the police handle complaints go back decades. A news release by the Washington State ACLU from 2009 called for an Independent Office for Police Accountability due to the fact that people who file complaints against the SPD have been “ignored, dissatisfied, and even threatened with libel suits.” In the nearby suburb of Bothell, where I live, complaints are handled internally. The vast majority of complaints against the police that are handled by said police are thrown out, so that doesn’t inspire much confidence.

He admitted that it was very unusual for bystanders to an arrest to file a complaint against police. This surprised me. Were people not doing this?
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When it was found that the LAPD went through 1,356 allegations of biased policing without upholding a single one, the Police Commission president finally decided that they needed to look at how they handled investigations into these complaints.It seems utterly impossible that there were no incidents of “biased policing,” aka racial profiling, seeing as black Californians account for 17 percent of all arrests in the state while making up only six percent of the population. But according to the president and cofounder of the Center for Policing Equity at UCLA, racial profiling by police is “excruciatingly difficult” to prove.

The LAPD’s Biased Policing and Mediation reports include a description of the department’s adjudication process. It starts with the accused cop’s commanding officer, then goes through undefined “multiple levels of review” as the matter is investigated. There are multiple steps where higher authorities can “disagree” with the decision of the lower, ending at the Chief of Police. If that happens, it goes to whatever “officer director” applies in the specific situation.

What I can gather from all this as an average citizen without a criminal justice or law degree is that there are many ways to throw a complaint out and only one narrow path to sustaining the complaint—which brings the accused to a Board of Rights tribunal whose decision can be overturned by a court of law.

There is no standardization on how a police department should handle its complaint procedures. In New Jersey, for example, they just don’t bother to investigate 99 percent of brutality complaints. In Tacoma, Washington, not far from where I live, only 10 percent of complaints against police were sustained during a 12-month period investigated by Reuters. In Chicago, a recent and exhaustive report found 125,000 complaints against 25,000 officers from 1967 to 2014. Only 660 led to firings. Seven officers racked up over 100 complaints each over their careers, and were able to get away with this clear pattern of misconduct because this was the first report in the history of the department that made it possible to “to identify officers with a long history of complaints.”

How can you eliminate problem officers from a police department if you can’t even identify them?

Following the Chicago Tribune’s report, the U.S. Justice Department found “a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution” within the Chicago Police Department. It also found evidence of racial bias in the use of force, and that these problems are “largely attributable to deficiencies in its accountability systems and in how it investigates uses of force.”

How can you eliminate problem officers from a police department if you can’t even identify them?
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In a recent video by Truth Be Told, DeRay Mckesson pointed to police unions as the source of these problems. These unions have worked tirelessly for the past 40 years to codify protections for officers into department policy, union contracts, and even local and state law. Police officers often get a “cooling off” period in which they cannot be questioned by investigators after a complaint is made. Most get their disciplinary records erased after a set period of time. Others get special information about the case, including the identities of the individuals who made the complaint.

The last thing I would want a rogue cop to know is that I filed a complaint against them. If citizens aren’t filing complaints against police, maybe it’s because they think that it’s pointless at best and dangerous at worst.

It dawned on me that Sergeant Collins did not understand why I was there. He was probably hoping I would either withdraw my complaint or accept his explanation and go away.

Realizing this, I just wanted to get out of there, but I had no idea how to end the interaction. Then, as Sergeant Collins and my boyfriend were discussing why cops had to go for their deadly weapons any time anybody did something they didn’t like, the officer demonstrated the action by grabbing at his holstered firearm himself.

My partner couldn’t handle it. His fear of guns is worse than mine. We both left in tears. I held back long enough for Sergeant Collins to get me an official complaint form, and before I could leave, he again tried to “explain” what the cops had done. I finally managed to tell him that it wasn’t just about these individual cops and whether they had followed protocol.

My problem was with the protocol. It was about an entire system of policing that is failing to protect and serve those it claims to.

I complained because I have legitimate concerns. I don’t understand why cops have to grab at their guns all the time, and why they don’t understand (or don’t care) that doing so is literally a death threat. I don’t understand why they had to threaten to kill a tiny woman in a nightie. Being told that the cops were afraid of weapons in the apartment doesn’t alleviate my concerns that she could have been sexually assaulted or make me feel any better about the complete lack of dignity with which they treated her.

I know that women can be domestic abusers, and I don’t know thing one about that couple. But I don’t understand how you decide who to charge within five minutes of talking without the aid of a domestic violence advocate. What I do know is how often women are arrested and imprisoned for lashing out in self defense. What I do know, and can’t ever forget, is the sound of that woman screaming for help as loud as her lungs would allow her.

I finally managed to tell him that it wasn’t just about these individual cops and whether they had followed protocol. My problem was with the protocol.
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These are some of the things I said in an impassioned email I sent to my mayor, the Bothell Chief of Police, and the Bothell City Council after my meeting with Sergeant Collins. Again, to my surprise, I got a reply, this time from Mayor Andy Rheaume himself. To my disappointment, it was more of the same—an attempt to explain away the things I had complained about, ignoring the systemic roots of the issue. I wrote back, begging him not to brush me off.

I haven’t heard from him since.

I don’t know what came of the charges against the woman. I haven’t seen her or her partner since that night. I do know that she was booked at the King County Jail in Seattle on Sunday and set free on conditional release Monday afternoon. I hope she’s okay, and I hope her and the guy she was seeing stay away from each other.

What I did make sure to find out was whether my complaint had been filed into official record—and it has. I received an email from Captain Ken Seuberlich of the Bothell police, and he spoke on the phone with my partner. That conversation seemed to go well, and the Captain wanted to speak with me on the phone as well. But when we spoke, it was more of the same excuses.

This was a mild experience compared to so many of the violent and disturbing incidents of police misconduct that go on in the U.S. I feel traumatized from what I witnessed, and I didn’t see anyone hurt, beaten, sexually assaulted, or killed. But I know that happens daily, and that’s why I complained—because I could see the roots of the problem at work even here. Cops treating civilians in their pajamas like threats. Cops trying to talk bystanders out of making complaints. Cops refusing to look past the surface of the problem. Cops seemingly ignorant of the fact that many civilians are terrified of them.

Maybe some of my complaints were unwarranted, but I’m still glad I made them. And I’m glad I had the fortitude and the protection of my privilege to follow through and refuse to withdraw my complaint or let it go. Nothing will change if we’re not willing to constantly demand change at the core of the policing system that kills so many and is designed to allow killer cops to get away with murder. We’re facing a group of people who have given themselves special privileges, and are defended by the legal system every step of the way.

The police are supposed to protect their communities, not terrorize them. I’m not letting this go until I see real change.

How LGBTQ Yoga Can Heal A Community

Lindsey Danis — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 07:23:22 +0000

For LGBTQ people, mainstream yoga culture can be alienating. But a community-specific practice can heal more than the body.

As a chubby, gender nonconforming queer I’d always been the odd duck in yoga class.

For 10 years, I’d used yoga to relieve back pain or pause anxiety, but self-consciousness kept me from connecting with it on a deeper level. I didn’t go to yoga studios often because I couldn’t afford to, first and foremost. But when I did attend classes, I felt invisible.

I was chubby and inflexible, barely able to touch the ground in a forward fold, nevermind execute an arm balance like crow pose. I practiced in loose pants and old t-shirts that flew up to expose my round stomach, because leggings and clingy yoga tanks felt invalidating. Every time a yoga teacher used gendered cues, mentioned upcoming yoga retreats, or offered the class an opportunity to practice handstands—something that seemed to come easy to the bendy, leggings-clad yogis that packed most classes—I was reminded anew that I was an interloper in yoga land.

I stuck to the back of the room, hyper-aware of everything from my smelly feet to my attempts at chaturanga, and scurried out of the studio at the end of class. Boston may have been a cosmopolitan city, although a highly segregated one, but this ancient practice of Hindu philosophy felt like it was reserved for skinny, wealthy, white women who had their shit together and could afford to invest in personal, physical, and spiritual development.

When my local yoga studio began offering LGBTQ community classes, the $5 price tag got me in the door. The class was a collaboration between a yoga studio I’d visited occasionally and my local LGBT center that offered AA-type support groups and youth programming. While these programs are needed by many LGBTQs, the center didn’t exactly offer social opportunities for adults. I didn’t expect much from the class, but I never turned down cheap yoga—and I wanted to support the attempt at adult programming.

Every time a yoga teacher used gendered cues, I was reminded anew that I was an interloper in yoga land.
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The LGBTQ community class was a beginner-level class. I recognized many of the people in the room from previous events at the center (I’d moved on from Boston a couple years earlier) . The yoga teacher talked my fellow yogis through poses I knew well. While she explained the body mechanics of low lunges and forward folds, she emphasized breathwork and tuning in to the body. Through mentions of the chakra system and, in later classes, of Ayurvedic doshas, she maintained a cultural connection that, as yoga has become more popular in the West, is too often lost or appropriated, like those “Namastay in Bed” tees.

These concepts weren’t new to me, but here, surrounded by queer and trans folks, I made a new connection to them. I appreciated this teacher’s brief explanation of her own yoga journey. She began practicing yoga as rehabilitation of an old injury. She felt relatable. She couldn’t do yoga perfectly, either.

There was no default to gendered language, something mainstream yoga teachers used without a second thought. I’d become accustomed to these cues and developed my own workaround: Rather than take the recommended hand position for men or women, I would switch my grip midway through the pose. It was my way of coping with a system that used hand positions, pose recommendations, and different terms for male and female yogis to center, without space for fluidity, the gender binary.

But here, as we flowed through sun salutation, something shifted. Surrounded by other LGBTQs, I felt seen and uplifted in a way I’d never been in yoga class.

It hit during savasana — THIS was what yoga was all about. It was about feeling connected to my body and to my community. And if all this happened during one class, what else could an LGBTQ-affirming yoga practice heal?

For too many within LGBTQ communities, the body is a site of shame, not pleasure. External pressure to adhere to unrealistic beauty standards — namely preferences for thin, gender-conforming bodies — lowers self-esteem. Calls for “no fats, no femmes” on personal ads, or the continued use of the transfeminine body as a punchline in entertainment, make many of us feel invalidated.

When children grow up hearing transphobic and homophobic slurs, their body image suffers and they internalize shame. Long after coming out, LGBTQs bear the scars of stigma.

In a Chapman University study, 77 percent of gay men felt they were judged on appearance, and 51 percent of gay men expressed interest in cosmetic surgery. Pressure from romantic partners, friends, and media to conform to unrealistic beauty standards leads gay men to experience higher rates of eating disorders and body dysmorphia than their straight peers.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that lesbian, bi, and queer-identified women are exempt from pressure to be thin, as the assumption is women only attempt to be thin to adhere to the tastes of straight men; however, some studies suggest that with greater acceptance of LGBTQs comes increased pressure to conform to heteronormative beauty standards.

When WHO Assigns Our Genders, Who Assigns Our Genders?

theestablishment.co

This seems true for LGBTQ youth. Sure, they’ve come of age in the era of gay marriage, but they still face discrimination — and employ unhealthy coping mechanisms. A joint survey of 1,000 LGBTQ youth from The Trevor Project, National Eating Disorder Association, and Reasons Eating Disorder Center found that 71 percent of transgender youth and 54 percent of all LGBTQ youth had been diagnosed with an eating disorder. After trans youth, cis female LGBTQ youth had the highest rates of eating disorders.

Trevor Project CEO Amit Paley writes in the study’s introduction that, “The unique stressors that LGBTQ-identified people experience, such as coming out and harassment in schools or the workplace, can impact levels of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and unhealthy coping mechanisms,” from eating disorders to substance abuse.

These stressors carry lifelong consequences. Almost half of transgender adults report depression or anxiety, compared with 6.7 percent and 18 percent of the general U.S. population, respectively.

“While the main reason [for] mental illness and depression amongst trans and gender variant people is due to the lack of acceptance and social ridicule…it cannot be denied that the actual physical [gender] dysphoria most certainly plays a large part,” notes Rebecca Connolly, an Advanced Clinical Practitioner and member of WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Connolly adds, “The vast majority of trans people have huge degrees of body dysphoria purely, because [their body] does not match the internal representation of who they are and how they express themselves.” While gender-affirming surgeries are available, they’re not accessible for all who want them, nor do (or should) all trans folks want surgeries.

There also continue to be few professionals nationwide who have the knowledge to address LGBTQ mental and emotional wellbeing. In a 2015 survey of 452 transgender adults living in Massachusetts, nearly one in four respondents had experienced discrimination in a health care settling — and were more likely to postpone or avoid seeking care as a result.

“A huge struggle that my trans clients face is being able to feel safe in their own skin without the world judging them,” says Bernard Charles, an LGBTQ lifestyle coach who uses meditation to heal LGBTQ body image issues.

In the face of a lack of bias-free, gender-affirming care, many LGBTQ folks have turned to self-care tools like yoga to fill the gap. While yoga has long been known as a stress reliever, it has potential to heal body image issues, too. Studies have chronicled how yoga lowers stress through improvements in heart rate, respiratory rate, and systolic blood pressure. Yoga activates both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous systems. Flowing sequences like the sun salutation stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, while seated meditation boosts the parasympathetic nervous system.

LGBTQ-affirming classes, such as the one I’ve been fortunate to find, are more welcoming of diverse bodies, genders, ages, and abilities. Sally Morgan, a lesbian yoga teacher, says, “[speaking] as a lesbian… the yoga community is not particularly inclusive and I know some of my lesbian friends with bigger bodies are very self-conscious in yoga classes because they don’t fit the stereotypes of yoginis.”

In the face of a lack of bias-free, gender-affirming care, many LGBTQ folks have turned to self-care tools like yoga to fill the gap.
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Morgan, who trained in Phoenix Rising yoga, notes that specific styles of yoga may work better for healing trauma. In her work with trauma survivors, Morgan avoids hands-on corrections (which may be unwanted) in favor of clear directions that avoid “yoga jargon.” Rather than gendered cues — common in traditional yoga classes — LGBTQ-affirming cues are open-ended, so participants can decide how to adjust their bodies.

Jacoby Ballard, a New York City-based yoga teacher who offers Queer and Trans Yoga classes, acknowledges that mainstream yoga classes often center a particular experience—the young, affluent able-bodied white women with whom I’ve shared many an om—and this makes the practice inaccessible for folks who can’t afford it, don’t feel welcome, or are disrespected when they show up on the mat. Ballard speaks to the LGBTQ lived experience in yoga practice by addressing homophobia and transphobia in meditation and highlighting savasana as a time to release inner shame or guilt.

Yoga’s power to heal a negative body image lies in its focus on movement that draws participants out of their minds and into their bodies. While remaining in a pose, students may be encouraged to ground, balance, or soften. Strength, stability, and emotional release come through focused movement. Playful poses lighten the mood, helping participants find fun in their bodies. Yogic breathwork grounds participants in the present moment, which can pause anxious thoughts.

With regular practice, yoga changes fascia, tones muscle, and increases balance. As it becomes easier to move, people feel better in their bodies.

Morgan structures yoga classes to lower anxiety, increase relaxation, and remain sensitive to trauma in her students’ pasts. Says Morgan, “We…spend nearly all of the class on the floor as a way to help people feel more supported literally and emotionally….I use cues such as ‘Where is there dark in your life?, Where is there light in your life?, What is the message from the dark?, What is the message from the light?’….Sometimes this look inward prompts journal entries, which can further foster healing.”

As connections are made explicit in yoga classes, participants can return to them at home. As Morgan says, yoga “causes one to look inward and to find a quiet place of peace in the mind and body. Once a person learns this skill, it can be applied in any situation in life that is challenging.”

What keeps LGBTQ people from feeling comfortable on the yoga mat isn’t yoga itself, but the mainstream culture that’s been built around yoga in Western societies, which focuses on hetero- and cis-normative body images as the assumed goal. But when those structures are stripped away, yoga can become a place to heal.

Listen To The Sound Of Gender Transforming: Five-Tracks Of Resistance

Ayesha Sharma — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 08:17:35 +0000

Diasphoria: A Narrative Archive for and by Trans People of Color by Ayesha Sharma

We experience not only the in-betweenness of gender, but also the instability of ‘home.’

I’m Ayesha Sharma, and I’m an agender multimedia creative. I move through emotions like waves and, especially with the experience of gender and cultural dysphoria, I’ve felt an urgency in the past year to find a community that would provide comfort in shared identities and could foster mutual growth at the same time.

I was motivated to find a medium to share these discussions around gender and cultural dysphoria sonically.

On several warm December afternoons in Cape Town, South Africa, old and new friends sat down around a coffee table to discuss something that was relevant to all of us: gender disruption. We are six trans and gender variant people of color who share a real boredom in the gender binary.

Some of us were determined in our resistance of gender conformity while others had grown tired and frustrated from the backlash we’d received and the dysphoria we experienced.

We had gathered on these afternoons to collaborate and spend time with one another, but our meetings offered us much more: community affirmation toward some of our daily struggles.

Shared identity definitely does not mean shared experience, but it can provide mutual comfort and potential growth.
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The group of us includes Rumano Fabrishh, Jay-Aeron Gertse, Reinhard Mahalie, Nazlee Saif Arbee, Suhail Kapdi, Saadiq Shiraz Soeker, and me, Ayesha Sharma.

We’re from South Africa, Namibia, and the United States.

From Southern Africa, East Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia; we are diasporic migrants through generations.

And so we experience not only the in-betweenness of gender, but some of us also feel the instability of “home.”

I produced the beats for each track through personal meditations on diaspora and gender resistance and then traveled to Cape Town to take part in relevant conversations with other trans and variant people of color.

I then recorded our conversations and later sampled words, phrases, and sounds from these recordings to overlap and mix with the theme-inspired beats I had produced.

The process evolved to become this autoethnographic EP, called Diasphoria: A Narrative Archive for and by Trans People of Color. The EP features two main tracks, “Catharsis” and “Imagining.” “Catharsis” is meant to stand as an ideological and emotional exploration of (gender) oppression and imagining as a journey in seeking elevation from the personal struggles that oppression brings as well as from the mental restrictions that keep us from actualizing our expansive selves.

This five-track recording offers a taste of our theory-forming, community-affirming group discussions.

Trans and gender variant people of color, like in this very project, are often the creators of content; the teachers, and the earth-shakers.

That’s why, when several conversations are sliced up and put together, they stand as an exhibition of new knowledge — new theory. Trans and gender variant POC are academics, journalists, and creatives in the fact that our personal acts of resistance and persistence boldly oppose colonial social structures. In that, people who occupy these identities have the potential to be role models and uncomfortable truth tellers.

The sentiments shared in this EP are arranged specifically for trans and gender variant POC listeners, as the discussions themselves were initiated with the intention to promote insight, affirmation, and expansion based on shared identities.

They comment on colonialism and the gender binary, gendered bodies, queer desire, self-confidence and community affirmation, religion, morality, social media community, and much more.

Others who are not trans and gender variant POC are invited to listen to this EP too, but with the understanding that the goal shouldn’t only be to consume, but to hold oneself accountable to meaningful reparations as well.

Some of the ways that this is possible are by promoting the media visibility of trans and gender variant POC creatives as well as by supporting representation of trans people by trans people, when cis queers often gain disproportionate mobility for capitalizing on them instead.

This project would not have been possible without the energy and time of my friends and collaborators.

Jay, Rumano, and Reinhold

Jay, Rumano, and Reinhard are an inspiring team who possess the capabilities to revolutionize their industries and people’s lives in the process.

Saif, Suhail, and Shiraz

Saif is passionate, intentional, and steadfast in their messages of liberation, meaning that they come away from most interactions either getting free things, loyal admirers, or stupefied students. Suhail is a hilarious, humble, and explorative soul whose interests are subtly rooted in a motivation toward deeper meaning and morality. Shiraz is a force whose essence and beliefs challenge traditional knowledge through creative practice.

Wandile Dhlamini

Wandile Dhlamini was the illustrator for this project and created its cover in addition to individualized designs for each track. They’re brilliant, bold, hilarious, and talented in pretty much everything they do.

If you like what you hear in this project, share it. You can also download all five tracks directly through Bandcamp.

Also, check out my feature on this project’s collaborators soon to be released on Everyday Feminism and be sure to follow everyone on social media to support their latest work. You won’t regret it.

Sensing Danger Before It’s Visibly Apparent (And Other Useful Lessons In A World Rife With Destruction)

July Westhale — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 08:59:53 +0000

“Can you remember things from when you were a baby?” My fourteen-year-old nephew asks me, as we wind through the turmeric-colored hills of late summer Northern California.

“I do, but I’d rather hear about what you remember,” I said, turning down the heady beats of the Wu-Tang Clan I’d been introducing him to. (“Auntie! he’d exclaimed, “This is so much better than Drake!”)

Folded up beside me like a blue heron, or an oil rig, my nephew is a coltish six feet tall, and nearly all legs; he took a long time to respond.

“I remember the dinosaur stickers on my bed,” he finally said, softly. When I followed his gaze out the window, I saw the cranes of the Oakland Port, looking themselves like ancient, industrial beasts. I saw the externalized thought, the making-adult of a childhood memory, the attempt to make contact. He startled me by continuing, “—before I knew they were dinosaurs. When you’re that little, you have no memory of learning a thing. You just know it, and that’s it.”

Long after I dropped him off, his revelation boomed inside me.

You have no memory of learning a thing. You just know it, and that’s it.

I see evidence of this everywhere: sensing danger before it’s visibly apparent, reading a room, attraction (to another body, to an object that shines just right). Those of us who are able-bodied walk around without really thinking about walking around. We’re repositories of composite knowledge, learned by rote because of necessity or habit, much of which sits below, glacially submerged.

Where, I marveled, did he learn that?

My nephew was talking about linguistics, mostly, and motor skills. He was talking about world-building concepts, like space and time. Things you learn through a kind of osmosis. However, my own first responses—how to sense danger, how to read a room, how to tell if I’m attracted to someone or something or not (and immediately after, if I think the attraction is a good idea or a potentially harmful one)—shows a lot about me as a person. That I learned at a young age how to intuit threat, and how to defuse, defend, or otherwise navigate it.

Today I woke up and I noticed this: a tomato plant in my backyard has grown around a brick.

As the tomatoes start showing their bashful faces, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this muscle memory. A few weeks ago, someone threw a brick through my front window in Oakland. Yesterday, a man made a gun of his hands and pretended to shoot me with it. Down the street, MacArthur Bart is still sewed up with yellow police tape, and Nia Wilson has officially been gone for a week. Down the other side of the street, tent cities bloom and die, bloom and die. Civilians and cops circle one another warily.

Humans are repositories of composite knowledge, learned by rote because of necessity or habit, much of which sits below, glacially submerged.
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And it’s the twentieth anniversary of the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which reminds us that this systemic racism, this cyclical grief, is not even remotely new.

Even if we didn’t cognitively know that to be true, we feel it. The muscle memory of collective trauma prompts us to slide into unconscious action and movement during times like these. We check in with each other more. We shut down ICE facilities. We write, we draw, we archive, we connect.

“There are many ways to show up for a revolution,” my very wise friend Ste once told me. “Jesus and Gloria Anzaldua feed people. Holding a sign is just one way.”

Do you ever feel uncomfortable with how comfortable we can go from zero to 60, and quickly? As if our lives depended upon it (they do). This response is an infinitely helpful one, of course, but it implies a world that is rife with disaster and destruction, one in which an emergency kit must always be at the ready.

I recognize that not everyone feels this way. In fact, it seems to me that the majority of the burden of showing up, educating, and emotional labor falls on marginalized communities, even within liberal and artistic spaces. I understand that the disenfranchised have a more robust understanding of how to handle crisis—for obvious reasons—but our collective inability to have difficult conversations and engage in difficult labor is what landed us with the president and administration we have now.

#MeToo is perhaps a relevant and ongoing example I can point to. While I feel grateful and slain by those in my community (and those in positions of power outside my community) who came forward and told their own harrowing stories, a little part of myself felt distraught: why is it the responsibility of victims to shock the world into caring? Why doesn’t the world just believe people when they claim they’ve been abused? And, even more upsetting, why hasn’t the movement gone farther? What will it take to end rape culture in our country?

Still, some changes are palpable. Holding people publicly accountable is pretty effective. As I enter into the film and television industry—I’m currently taking my first screenwriting course—I can detect the ways in which Hollywood is trying to change its tune.

Nia Wilson’s killer has been apprehended, and folks are still unsure if it was racially motivated, and doesn’t that say something about the ways in which the baseline holds up? That white men can still get away with being assumed not racist until proven otherwise, even when they kill people of color in front of dozens of onlookers?

I feel proud of Oakland for showing up. I also feel sad for Oakland.

I feel proud because I love a city that knows how to handle itself with aplomb in a crisis. I feel sad because the hard truth is that the marginalized and traumatized are always taxed and overburdened with responding—with grace and empathy—to ride or die situations. Individually, and systemically.

We’re seeing an appalling display of what unchecked privilege and power can do. Everyday, hundreds of examples: a man going on a spree with a knife on public transportation, our president taunting entire nations over Twitter, Oakland cops taking advantage of underage women.

For all our unconscious super power—for all our psychological spidey-sense of self-protection against impending violence—how do we know when we are in a Reckoning? I’m so ready for the meek to inherit the Earth. I’m so ready for those who instinctively have a realistic understanding of the danger and beauty and tenuousness and finiteness of our world to have some power in deciding how to run it.

My nephew is right, but is also too young (I think, but what do I know?) to fully understand the additional layer of this fraught knowledge, the one that comes with time and experience and, unfortunately, getting roughed up a bit: the things we have no memory of learning as individuals, the things we hold to be the dearest of knowledge—these are very, very different than the things we collectively know as a society.

The overlap in the Venn diagram of understanding what is wrong with the world on an individual versus a systemic level—well. It’s tiny. As a society we don’t share that baseline. And that’s terrifying.

Walking through the streets of my city and seeing it fall all around me really does make me feel like my basement should be stocked with water and canned beans. And it is (thanks to my Virgo sweetheart).

But I’m mostly stocked up with myself: my muscle memory of how to move in a world that feels like a war-zone. I’m stocked up with my phone tree, my books, my plants that grow around evidence of industrialization. I’m stocked up with my capacity for listening, with my compassion, with my chosen family. I’m stocked up with you.

Keep fighting. I love you.

Why Should You Become An Establishment Member For $5 A Month?

Ijeoma Oluo — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 20:50:20 +0000

I’m here to answer all your burning questions about becoming an Establishment member.

Hey, Ijeoma here. I’m sure you’ve seen a couple (hundred) posts from The Establishment encouraging you to become a member. Now, you may be asking yourself, “What is an Establishment membership?” or “Why should I join?” or “Why do you keep bugging me about it?” or “Who are you?” If this is you, then allow me to tell you all that you need to know about The Establishment Member Community.

What Is It? It’s basically a cool club you can join here at The Establishment for as little as $5 a month. Think of every club you ever wanted to join as a kid, double it, add sparkles, and then you have a membership with The Establishment.

What Do I Get As A Member? You get exclusive content created by amazing writers — LIKE ME (and some other people), you get to ask me questions about life in my upcoming members-only advice column (WUT), and you get to join our loving, lively, and engaging chat community on Slack. WE EVEN HAVE A BOOK CLUB, NERDS.

Why Do You Keep Bugging Me About It? Because we need members! Look, it’s never sexy to talk about money (okay, not true, it’s often very sexy to talk about money), but the truth is — in order to exist in this space as a voice of resistance and pay our staff and writers for the amazing work they do — we need funds. We will always need funds (unless one of you wants to give us A LOT of money and then we will stop asking for a while) and in our search for sustainable and ethical revenue (which included 20 weeks of intense research and discussion in the Matter accelerator program), we’ve decided that paid membership is the best way forward. It allows us to continue to produce widely accessible free quality content, while providing extra paid quality content to those who can afford to help support our work, at a very reasonable support level. All while maintaining our pledge to *actually* pay writers (if you’re a freelancer, you’ll recognize that this is more novel of a concept than it should be).

WE EVEN HAVE A BOOK CLUB, NERDS.

Why Should I Join? You should join because you value the amazing work that we are able to publish here at The Establishment. You should join because few publications so consistently support high-quality work from marginalized voices, and pay for that work. You should join because we do our upmost to ensure that when you read one of our thought-provoking articles, you aren’t going to be suddenly smacked in the head with the racism, misogyny, ableism, classism, transphobia, and other bigotries that often make their way into mainstream writing — marginalizing all but the most privileged audiences. You should join because part of economic justice means paying for the labor of others when that labor benefits us. You should join because the bonuses are fun and cool. You should join because in a time when so much of our media aims to shock or entertain, but not inform — we often do all three with clarity, ethics, and — yes, goddamnit — panache.

If you love The Establishment, and you want MORE of The Establishment — or if you love us just the way we are and you want us to be able to keep doing just what we’re doing, I hope you’ll become a member of The Establishment today.

Thank you for your support,

Ijeoma

SUBSCRIBE RIGHT HERE:

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Introducing The Establishment Online Community!

The Establishment — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 21:05:51 +0000

Establishment membership just got better.

We’ve long believed that The Establishment boasts the best damn readers in all the land. So we had a hunch that inviting our most loyal supporters to join an exclusive online community would lead to something magical.

How right we were.

Launched just last week, The Establishment’s beta Slack forum — open to writers and members only — has already become a place we can’t get enough of. In addition to plenty of cute puppy GIFs, the forum is filled with enlightening conversations about BDSM in fiction, ACA and abortion rights, blowhard political punditry, and more. And, since we deliberately don’t have a comments section, it’s fostered candid discussions about our daily content, no trolls allowed.

In an online world where vitriol is the norm, we’re thrilled to be building a community in the truest sense of the word; a safe, supportive space where we can grow and learn together during these dark times.

Want in? Lucky you! Signing up for membership is just $5 a month and easier than ever. Simply “Subscribe” below to get an invite to our super-cool online community, while also gaining access to sexy gated content, deals, giveaways, and more!

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It’s not easy to remain sustainable as a digital media company, and it’s especially not easy to do so while maintaining integrity and prioritizing readers and writers above all else. But we wouldn’t and couldn’t do it any other way. Through this membership community, we feel confident we can do all of the above — while fostering the kinds of conversations we not only want to be having, but need to be having, now more than ever.

So what are you waiting for? Get in on the enlightening good times today — adorable puppies await.

Why The First Sex Shop Workers’ Union Is So Important

Sam Riedel — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 16:24:05 +0000

“A manager recently asked me why I was letting a coworker take a second 10-minute break. When I explained it was because a customer just threatened them, their first concern was checking the technical details to make sure I wasn’t breaking the rules — not my coworker’s safety.”

flickr/Yelp Inc.

When I was a small child approaching the throes of puberty, my illicit reading material of choice was my father’s copies of the now-defunct New York Press. This was before the ubiquity of high-speed wireless internet, so in place of anything especially sexy, I made do with the blurry ads sex workers placed in the back pages of NYC’s second-favorite free arts weekly. Nestled in between the censored nipples and fake names were frequent ads for something called “Toys in Babeland,” a business of some kind which I could neither fathom — nor wait to frequent.

Flash forward to 2016: My phone gives me pornographic push notifications on the daily, newspapers are gasping for air, and that mysterious sex shop chain — now known simply as Babeland — has become not only the premiere adult store on either coast, but has a distinction that will live forever in the annals (anals?) of history: the home of the first large-scale sex shop workers’ union. (Grand Opening, a small Boston sex shop, unionized in 2005 but is now closed.)

Peter Montalbano is an organizer for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) who, with his colleague Stephanie Basile, helped Babeland workers achieve this dream. A few months ago, Montalbano says, “I received a phone call from two Babeland employees who had concerns regarding their working conditions and wanted to know more about their legal rights to organize with the RWDSU.” The workers knew Montalbano through a friend, whose unrelated experience with the union unexpectedly kicked off one of the most high-profile collectivization campaigns of the past several decades.

The fact that the two Babeland workers found such enthusiastic support is remarkable. Sex shops and their employees have been the target of frequent political attacks throughout U.S. history. The Supreme Court’s 1966 decision in Jacobellis v. Ohio found that sex shops were protected by the First Amendment, but also left their placement open to restriction through zoning laws — a loophole which Rudy Giuliani, in his tenure as mayor of NYC, exploited to eradicate the glut of adult stores in Times Square and other tourism-friendly areas. Many looked down upon these stores, judging them as inherently low-class; NYU professor Daniel Walkowitz described the Times Square shops as a “gauntlet you had to cross to reach the bright lights.” In other states, sex toys and the stores that sell them were banned outright for decades. In Alabama, both still are.

But despite the history of contempt for sex shops (and by extension, their employees), Montalbano says RWDSU welcomed Babeland with open arms. “We were aware of the fact that Babeland both markets itself and is widely viewed as the premier feminist & LGBTQ+ sex toy shop in NYC,” he says. “Our union is very excited to bring the issues of workers in the LGBTQ+ community to the front and center of the fight for workers’ rights and economic social justice more broadly.”

This isn’t just a fight for everyone in the umbrella, though. The fight for unionization has been most stridently supported by Babeland’s transgender workers, who feel left out in the cold by some of management’s policies and training. And although some publications like Glamour attempted to frame the campaign as a gift from the bosses, this was a grassroots effort intended to combat disturbing tendencies in the workplace which management has either failed to address or has been responsible for in the first place.

Workers at any sex shop have their horror stories about problem customers who come in to harass or threaten employees and customers alike — and Babeland, though generally a positive and friendly space for getting dildo recommendations and replacing a broken flogger, is no exception. Octavia Wheeler, who’s been working behind the counter at Babeland’s SoHo location since July, will readily confirm: “In the shop there have been issues of customers harassing us, sexually propositioning us, getting far too personal in their questions on our sex lives and our bodies.”

This would be one thing if management provided sufficient time for workers to recuperate from such personal attacks, but that’s not been the case. Stella Casanave, the Mercer store’s Lead Sex Educator/Sales Associate, says that policies are strict to the point of absurdity:

According to Casanave, this isn’t an isolated incident — in fact, dealing with management is the most time-consuming and draining aspect of their job. They hope that, through collective action, they can ensure the safety of their coworkers — and get financial justice, too.

“A disturbing trend since we have been without a store manager [as of the week before Valentine’s Day] has been to give more responsibilities to Sex Educators without increasing their wages. Heaven forbid they should make a mistake with those extra responsibilities, because then they get disciplinary action.”

Octavia agrees: “The union will help us create a collective voice that demands answers on getting the necessary training and support from management we need.”

On top of all this, trans and gender-nonconforming workers have to deal with additional harassment from customers because of their identities. Other employees told Autostraddle that when misgendering was reported to managers, trans workers were instructed not to correct customers on the floor. They also had their jobs threatened: If they couldn’t suck it up and deal with harassment, “maybe they shouldn’t work at Babeland.”

None of this should be acceptable in any workplace, least of all the leader in metropolitan sex-positivity. Casanave wants to be clear that “what we do is real work, hard work, and valuable work. We teach about consent, gender, and sex-positivity. It’s very important to real people’s lives.” Peddling Hitachi wands may not seem like a big deal to some, but when that means sex educators like Casanave guide women towards having the first orgasms of their lives, it’s hard to deny that Babeland workers are providing a vital public health service.

And it’s especially important that this fight is happening right now.

Thanks to the current national spotlight placed on trans issues, trans and gender-nonconforming people are ready to take the spot they deserve in contemporary feminism. Movements like labor feminism have been instrumental in securing advances for cisgender women since the 1920s — gaining ground in maternity leave and equal pay for comparable work — and now is the time for a similar movement to advocate for the needs of trans and gender nonconforming workers.

For Casanave, this is what it’s all about. “Feminism must also be about workers’ rights and fighting for trans folks and people of color in the workplace, or it’s not worth its salt. We all started working at Babeland because we were feminists and wanted to make sure that we could spread feminism,” they say. “Being part of the RWDSU is the next logical step.”

Especially after Orlando, where the Pulse shooter targeted a trans- and Latinx-oriented gathering, centering these discussions properly is of prime importance. Casanave is adamant that “the LGBT/queer/feminist community needs to be talking about trans folks, about people of color. Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living.” Speaking for himself, Montalbano says it’s “inspiring” to see queer and trans people of color standing up for their basic rights as workers in the wake of tragedies like Pulse.

When I asked if RWDSU has plans to organize other sex shops, Montalbano played coy, saying only that “the RW is committed to organizing any and all workers in the retail industry.” He’s quick to point out that this is only the first step, and that Babeland workers’ problems are far from over. “We feel it is important for the community to be aware of this,” he says, “and continue to monitor the situation to ensure that Babeland’s owners and management do the right thing and honor their legal obligation to bargain in good faith in a real, meaningful way.”

Hopefully, with their sexy, catchy #FistsUpforBabeland social media campaign, these workers will not only win their battles with management, but stem the tide of American sex-negativity in the process.

Does Not Being A Mother Make Me A Bad Black Woman?

The Establishment — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 16:41:54 +0000

flickr/Julien Ducenne

By Tracey Lloyd

Every year, the men in my neighborhood go out of their way to wish me a happy Mother’s Day. All the men. I suppose they assume that a woman my age would automatically have children. Either that, or they don’t want to miss an opportunity to honor the role of motherhood and all it represents. Yet interestingly, this never happened to me before I moved into a predominantly Black neighborhood.

When this happens, I just say “thank you” and keep on moving — but the well-intentioned pleasantry is hard for me to digest, every time.

One reason is that my own mother died over 20 years ago and I miss her every day; the other is that at 43, I have no children and no plans to procreate. And in the face of the myriad Black men looking to commemorate motherhood every year, I feel like I’m letting down my race.

Like many women my age, I grew up believing that I’d eventually have children. I took care of my baby dolls and rocked them to sleep, dreaming of the day I’d get to do it for real. But when I got older and there were real babies in my family, I was afraid to interact with them. My family, which is quite large, said that I’d get over my fear once I had my own children.

My grandparents had 14 children and raised nine, so the expectation was set that I’d follow in their parental footsteps. We’d talk about how my grandparents were sharecroppers and had children to help work the land, and also about how they were expected to have children to make for them a better life than they had. My grandmother plowed field side by side with her husband, ran the home, and did jobs for white women in order to make a life for her family. That model of womanhood — a woman who supports the home and simultaneously raises children — is a standard in my family, and in Black culture in general.

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From the time of slave narratives, Black women have been depicted as stalwart workers and sacrificing mothers who did everything they could to protect their children. These depictions have also made their way into popular culture; in Toni Morrison’s classic novel Beloved, for instance, the main character makes the ultimate sacrifice of killing her baby to protect her from slavery. The recent TV drama Underground features Ernestine, a female slave who bears the attentions of the master in order to protect her children from hard work and mistreatment. Black mothers who are this bold and this sacrificing are depicted as the pinnacle of womanhood.

I will never have the chance to exhibit these qualities.

By adulthood, I’d absorbed my family’s preference toward parenthood. In my twenties, I’d assumed that I’d marry relatively young and have children thereafter. In my thirties, still single, I’d maintained that although I could be a single mother, I would wait to have kids until I had a husband.

Then I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Managing my disease is its own full-time job. Though I’ve been treating my bipolar since 2009, I’ve been in the hospital three separate times. In between those hospital stays, my bouts of depression have lasted for years on end. In truth, I’ve only recently become a productive and well-adjusted person since my last struggle with depression. I’ll be 44 this year, near the end of my child-bearing years. I’ve considered what it would take to have a baby at this point in my life: either going off my medications (to personally disastrous results), or carrying a baby and exposing it to drugs with effects on pregnant women that are currently unknown. Neither of these options are palatable to me.

Maybe a woman with closer connections to her motherhood potential wouldn’t see those options as too difficult. After all, I did date a man who would’ve been willing to have a baby with me, even while I took four different medications. He reasoned that parenthood meant taking care of a baby regardless of how it turned out. That man turned out to be wrong for me — and not just because I didn’t share his willingness to risk a child’s well-being with psychotropic drugs.

I spend enough time trying to take care of myself, monitoring my symptoms and charting my moods. Preventing bipolar relapse and another trip to the psych ward are at the top of my list of priorities. They have to be. Even if I had a child, I wouldn’t be able to put it ahead of myself because if I’m not well, I can’t take care of anyone else. Being a mother means selflessness, at least the way I understand it, and I need to be selfish.

So childless I’ll remain — and as such, fretful about not being a good Black woman.

My clear decision not to have children is at odds with what I feel I’m supposed to provide to my race. I’m a rare Black person. I grew up with married parents. I went to an Ivy League college. I have a master’s degree. I’ve earned as much as $160,000 a year as a marketing professional. People like me are supposedly a credit to Black people, a shining example of success and a role model for future generations. People like me are supposed to raise smart, well-balanced children to continue a legacy of success and benefit all African-Americans. Instead, I’m keeping my genes from future generations like the selfish woman that I am.

At the same time, the feminist in me is quite okay with not being a mother. I studied women’s studies in college, and I learned that being a feminist was all about wanting women to be whatever we wanted to be. Images of burning bras and marching in support of the ERA resonated well with my personal and professional goals. And the second wave feminism that I grew up on was very grounded in breaking women out of traditional roles, like motherhood. With these theories and role models, I believed I could be a good and appropriate woman no matter what role I chose in life.

The Black Power and Civil Rights Movement images I saw were less kind to my lukewarm feelings toward motherhood. Like good feminists, Black women were marching side-by-side with men in the fight for racial equality. But these Black women were also expected to add motherhood to their list of tools in the struggle. I’ve seen footage of the Black Panther Party in which the women continued to have and raise multiple children, all the while working for the “revolution.” Their motherhood was seen as supporting the movement, growing the community by literally creating a new generation of soldiers to take up the struggle.

Even now, my childlessness flies in the face of the needs of my community to grow and take up the fight for equality. The contemporary Black Lives Matter movement and splinter movements have been spearheaded by mothers; women who have been spurred to action by the death and mistreatment of their children. And while I support that movement, I will never know the deep and meaningful mother-child connection that many of its women experience.

But there’s nothing I can do about my feelings of inadequacy besides hold fast to my well-reasoned decision not to have kids. I’ll have to talk about this decision with every man I date, and keep justifying it to my family that craves a new generation.

I can probably handle all of that more than I could a baby. And to me, that’s really the point.

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