#in the way they weaponise their femininity/womanhood to be racist

[reignof-roses]

me (a black woman) : oh the karen thing will a 100% become an excuse for people to be misogyistic, behind the veneer of criticising racism in white women.

everyone : noooooooooo! you’re crazy. we’re just making fun of white women who use their white priviliege to hurt the black community!!!!!!!

me : sure-

*the karen thing obviously becomes a way to silence any woman (REGARDLESS of race) who tries to stand up for herself or complains about anything (no matter how valid her complaint) or says anything a man might disagree with. or simply exists in a way that is ‘annoying’ to men.*

[pumpumdemsugah]

The most telling thing to show that no one really takes Black women and Black female academics seriously is how Black women and the ‘eurocentric gender binary’ is discussed. Its a master class in anti-intellectualism, racism and putting the stories of Black women in the back seat for other people and weird narratives

It was never referred to as  “eurocentric gender binary “ because first and foremost, it was always about further weaponising sex and gender roles in African societies and the othering of Black women to justify rape. It wasn’t that Black women didnt fit but that the societies these aspiring slavers met, the women were involved in collecting firewood and subsistence farming etc etc. The funny thing about this is, this was also common in Europe for women who didnt have money so had to grow their own food or starve to death. The average european woman during that time followed very similar gender roles as the African women these dumb asses met. The same way upper class white women of that time weren’t involved in collecting fire wood or growing food, nor were many of the high society African women but again, it depends on the society and culture.

I think we get so warped up in the projection of white femininity and womanhood, many missed the point the average white woman don’t live like this either. Shes a subsistence farmer too. She was on her hands and knee grinding grain and cleaning. Many hunter gather societies were wiped out but again, the white women in those hunter gatherer euro societies hunted small game as well as child care. Many didn’t have the luxury of reclining. The rich slavers wife had the luxury of not doing shit and so did the well off european aristocracy but most women didn’t live life this way.

The racist ideas about Black women these men created were a complete fantasy and they knew it. They needed a way make themselves look better for the mass rape and slavery they were planning to commit. The Black women they met weren’t doing anything at a core level too different from white women in their country. Of course, there were some cultural differences that were used to justify their brutality but the main things these racist focused on was them looking for an excuse and way to dehumanise a group of people they planned to enslave

A lot of you sound like mad saying Black women don’t fit eurocentric gender binary because that argument is a re-proposing of the, Black women don’t fit eurocentric beauty standards and generally, its understood what eurocentric beauty standards are but what i’ve seen called eurocentric gender binary varies from non-sense, racism to acting as if because ONE pre-colonial society saw gender X was you can apply that to all of them which is racist. If you’re going to say Eurocentric gender binary please be specific because there was no one way pre-colonial societies saw gender as their cultures aren’t interchangeable. Just because they had 3rd and 4th genders, didn’t mean that was incompatible with how gender is seen in modern western societies. The focus on the difference of Black people was done to animalise and strip us away from our humanity by saying they don’t look like us so they can’t be people so we’re not mistreating people. This is what dehumanisation is. Unless you lot actually believe Black people are apart of a different sex binary like we’re fish or hyenas

The concept of white femininity and womanhood is a reality that doesn’t exactly exist for a lot of white women outside them willingly participating / being pit against Black women to hide wrong doing or animalise Black women being abused. Particularly in America, this construction of white womanhood was important for capitalism and keeping women away from any real social mobility outside marrying a rich white man who were responsible for all the assets

Point being, the othering of Black women is needed for a racist society to keep us away from humanity, resources and justice. They needed the idea of Black people not being people to stick otherwise these gentlemen were pedophiles, slavers and rapist, terrorising human beings. They were never genuinely confused by Black women, they needed to protect their image and excuse their depravity.