On group chats and hyper-masculinity

[Image courtesy of @thejpgvibe] 

There is nothing new – about men banding together to share nudes and violate women in a plethora of little ways. It’s not a big deal right? People are just letting off steam, having a bit of a laugh. But no, my existence cannot be a punchline in your conversation.

I have often found that hyper-masculinity in the 2018 world is so often amplified by technology – whether this is the faux feminism of some men on Twitter or the open sexism in these all men group chats. Very often these all male group chats operate as sort of microcosms of the “old boys club” mentality. Women cannot join because? I am willing to say it is because men know that women would not be ok with the conversations they have there and that is because so much of those conversations expose men as being sexist, misogynistic, patriarchal and rapey.

The group chat is the final safe space for men to peddle their privilege and hatred without any fear for what people will think – think white people at a dinner table. The problem with this all boys club is it normalises what is fundamentally problematic behaviour. It allows men to hide their true selves in the proverbial closet while masquerading as feminists and writing “Black women are beautiful” under our Instagram pictures.

The all male group chat phenomenon is really the worst kept secret of our generation and yet somehow no one really speaks about the core of what it means. There are so many times I or other women I know have been the subject of problematic male behaviour in these hallowed halls of masculinity.

My most recent experience of male whatsapp groups and aggression brought into sharp focus the bigger discussion. It reminded me that I can be friend, lover, partner, wife, mother but when it comes down to it men will almost always see you as JUST a woman. It reminded me, as aptly put by one of my favourite women, that at the end of the day you are still just a sexual play thing that if the “opportunity” presents itself they would still “hit”.

When it comes to this particular issue I am happy not to generalise, I think some men do try to unlearn the nurture that has taught them to see women as as sub-citizens. I also think however, that the concept of men “growing” and “unlearning” is so often used as an excuse to be ok with ill treatment and that I will not do, anymore.

I will not excuse lovers who treat me as though my vagina makes me a less important component of the relationship, or male friends who expect me to hold their hands as they unlearn and unravel their misogyny at the expense of my own trauma, or myself for standing for it. I will no longer make even one more excuse.

There is an unlearning there too. Unlearning the internalised behaviours that have made us complicit in our own pain, as women and as people. Today we must each choose, ourselves. We must choose ourselves vigorously, wildly, and with abandon.

Letter for my sister, and yours

Dear Josephine,

In a world filled with angst and anger and insecurity it is ok to be confused, I am so often confused. Do not let the bad moments and the bad people consume you. I have often thought about the things I wish someone had said to me, the words to soothe me on the days when I have felt like less, so I am writing this to you and to every young woman walking on the eggshells of life.

On Friendship

Do not worry about others’ friendship so much, people will be who they will be and sometimes that will hurt, be more concerned about who you are. Be a good friend, a deliberate friend, be careful with how you love those close to you. That won’t always be easy, but the important things never are. Often you will hurt people and often it is because you were careless with them, you were not deliberate. Be deliberate.

Know when to walk away, know when to run and never look back. Sometimes you will love parasites, sometimes your best friend will sleep with the love of your life and act like it’s a Wednesday, do not place too much importance on that. You will meet and keep the people you are supposed to. It’s ok.

On these niggas

Do not let bad love make you cruel. I wish I could protect you from the heartbreak of loving someone and it doesn’t work out, I wish I could remove the men who will make an altar at your feet only to desecrate your temple but I can’t. What I can tell you is you will need to fight, to get on with the everyday things, to love again, to love yourself again. Do not let the process change you so much that you cannot be good and open to the next person. Realise that bad love feels personal but it is not about you, it is about someone fighting the brokenness in themselves in your arena. Forgive them, but not enough to go back. Please, do not go back.

On success

You will never feel like you are where you are supposed to be in your life. Your career will move slower than you had planned, you will be more broke than you thought and it will seem as though everyone else is so much closer to their dreams. It is at that very moment that you must slow down, stop. Take stock of your own journey, of the little wins, of how hard you have fought to be just where you are. That, right there, is success too. I believe that winners win, and mama didn’t raise any losers, so relax (but not too much).

On family

Bear with them, even when you think they are being too hard or too soft or too anything. Family is the one thing that is constant. Mama has always said to me “you are not in exile, if you need to breathe come home.” When things get to be too much and you feel as though you are losing yourself in the noise, go home. Do not be too proud to pick up the phone, or your bags, and simply go home.

On being black

Embrace it, even the hurtful things. Embrace your black spaces, celebrate your culture and your skin and your nappy hair – not just because it’s trendy but because it is who you are and it is beautiful. Learn that being told you are “well spoken” is racist and that as awful as it is, you really will have to work twice as hard. What I have learned the hard way is that success and happiness do not worry about the cards that are stacked against us as a people, but on the daily toil of simply getting ahead and then giving every black person you trust a seat at the table. Don’t let the race debate distract you so you spend your life explaining who you are, use that time to win.

On being a feminist

Be a feminist, please. Don’t fall into the trap of “I wouldn’t really call myself a feminist because feminists are X”. By virtue of being a woman, a black woman, believing in yourself as whole and important and worthy is the only thing that will help you in this world. But be careful about your feminism. Make sure it takes into consideration your culture and religion and anything else that is important to you. Real feminism is about the choice to build the life you want. If that life is as a stay at home mom, or as a woman who “sleeps around” then that is amazing, as long as the choice is wholly yours. Do not let anyone, even me, decide the kind of woman you should be. But watch other women, your friends, your mom, your loud aunts, watch and learn. Rinse and repeat.

On being a good person

Be accountable to yourself. Always have the hard conversations about who you are and why you are. Call yourself out daily. Being an honest, kind, present person is so important and so difficult. Whilst you are doing all this, find time to be kind to yourself, to forgive yourself, to celebrate yourself.

Lastly, I love you. You are my sister, and I am here. On the day I’m not and the walls are closing in, understand that every black woman is trying to build a world for you where we are all your sisters, lean into that. There is life there, there is hope.

Love and light, sis.

 

From Kintsugi: The rot

We stay like we are rooted to the ground

We stay because black heartbreak is our ancestral land

We stay because our mothers and their mothers and their mothers

 

Like sunflowers turning to the sun, we stay

Like daffodils planted in the drought

Like petals browning in the field

 

We stay.

 

– It’s easier

 

On turning into my mother

By Genevieve Beyleveld

The earliest memories I have of my mother were of her sitting in her office working.  Her office was next to my bedroom and I would always feel at peace drifting off to sleep, with a slither of gold light peering tentatively through my door. Most nights I would fall asleep long before the light went off. These nights were my favorite. She would sit at her desk past midnight, humming to herself as she worked.  It was only when I was 11 years old that I realized my mother didn’t have a job.

Every house we lived in, my mother would carve out an office of some sort for herself. When the house did not have a designated room for her work, she created a small office on the mezzanine floor, dangling precariously above the family room. Each morning, after she dropped my sister and me at school she would come home and get ready for her day. She showered and washed her hair, most days curling it into a wild bush of coils. She would apply her make- up religiously and finish off the look with a bright red lipstick. She was in her forties and home alone with five dogs.

When I returned from school, I would find her sitting behind her desk, sometimes with a glue gun and mosaic tiles, other times with an easel and paintbrush, and on the odd occasion with a note pad and pen. She glued each tile with no less importance than the last; accurately and carefully, breathing a slight sigh of relief when it stuck perfectly to her canvas.

I had always meant to ask her what she did in her office until late at night, but I never did.  On a deeper level, I realized that this office was hers and that the work which she created within those four, butter colored walls, was for no one but herself. It was her room of creation, a room to which she could escape the mundaneness of suburban housewifery.  I don’t think it was that she believed in her art, as much as the fact that she believed in her self-worth. She knew that in order to survive twenty years of marriage, three children (one lost), five dogs and a parrot, she needed a place of her own in which to create.

As someone who wishes to be a writer, I am always asked the same frightening question, “how are you going to make money?”  Those words never cease to jolt me out of my creative security. In truth, I have no idea how I am going to earn a living, or whether the words I tussle with daily, shall find a place on someone’s bookshelf between Stein and Nabokov. Perhaps I will be a housewife, who spends her days reading her work to a Schnauzer, only to crumple it up and throw it in the bin numerous times before her children come home from school.

I am uncertain about many things regarding my career choice, except for one. Why I have chosen it.  I choose it because I cannot picture myself doing anything else with my days. It is important – going boldly in the direction of your dreams –  and for this reason, I created a writers chopping block for myself. My white desk stands in the corner of my room, piled high with books. A black and white photograph of Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” hangs on the wall above my desk, and a pristine white orchid finishes off the cleanly cluttered look. A dog’s bed is at my feet, in which Master Fifi, my Chihuahua snores loudly. This is where I sit and engage in a torrid love affair with words.

Many nights, long after the sun has set, one can find me, sitting at my desk with the night lamp burning. Sometimes I am reading, other times writing. If you had to stand and peer at me through the door, you would notice just how much I look like my mother.