Author: TMA43

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Where did the community go?

After watching the United in Anger documentary and reading You Are Not Entitled to Our Deaths by Mia Mingus, it really made me sit down and think about how performative protest can be at times. I struggle to understand why that is, because the main foundation of every protest is the collective understanding of the mutual struggle that they have and the common cause of said struggle. For instance, the exclusion of disabled people in the talks surrounding COVID, as noted by Mingus, the documentary talks about how many people did not join in on the ACT UP protests until they received a diagnosis of their own. Likewise with the documentary mentioning how some of the AIDS reform was regressive because it was male-centered in how the disease can manifest itself, so women were still left out because some of the criteria that one would need to be able to get some benefits, like common illnesses that come along with a diagnosis, were not common among women, and they were still suffering. Even beyond those examples, looking at the women’s suffrage movement and how white women were hesitant to include black women, for fear that their demands would not be met. The beauty of protests is that people from different walks of life come together and no one is left out; their voices are not trampled over by other parties. Must we wait until we have a personal stake in something before it matters to us? What good is protest if we don’t bring everyone to the table?

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Weaponsmithing 101

Throughout our class discussions about various communities using their bodies for change, I got flashbacks to middle school science class when I first learned about potential and kinetic energy. I think the thing that makes non-violent protests so powerful is that they mirror the concept of potential energy. Potential energy is defined as “the stored energy an object has due to its position, state, or composition.” The part of the definition regarding position is what stuck out to me. For example, with the Susan Foster Reading, and how we learned about various social justice movements, particularly the lunch counter sit ins. During these sit-ins, the activists weaponized the perceived kinetic energy that the media places on the black community, that they always lash out and are always violent. With these sit-ins, they flipped that media narrative on its head by weaponizing the potential energy and power that their bodies had. I think it is so important to note how non violent protests in general tips the scales in favor of marginalized groups, such as the black community, LGBTQ+ community, disabled community, incarcerated people, and anyone whose power has been stripped away from them because of their position in society, I am in no way saying that violent protests do not also tip the scales as well, but oftentimes these communities have to resort to non violent protests because they cannot afford to further or reinforce any sort of negative sterotypes pushed onto their community.

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No, No, No, Stick to the Status Quo

Since birth, we have been subjected to the status quo and fitting in norms, like, for instance, growing up as a girl and being told that you shouldn’t play sports or you should like the color pink, or telling young men that they cannot cry and they have to remain emotionally stoic at all times. While we were reading from Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, I just kept on thinking about this random song from High School Musical, and while this song focuses mainly on students knowing their niche and sticking to it, whether they be the jock, the braniac, etc. I think it relates to the topic at hand because they focus on how any efforts to stray from their niche will overthrow the whole system, and they have to stop that from happening by any means necessary.

“Stick to the stuff you know
If you wanna be cool
Follow one simple rule
Don’t mess with the flow, no no
Stick to the status quooooooooooooo”

Anything that does not follow the status quo, for instance, being nonbinary, elicits such vehement responses. While I don’t identify as nonbinary, I deeply appreciated getting to read the memoirs from people of various walks of life talk about their experiences, and I think this meshes so well with the video from Chimamanda about the dangers of a single story. When identities that society has not deemed to be the status quo arise, society imposes its own labels on them and forces them to fit into a box, thus pushing this single story on a vast group of people. While the memoirs vary in their own ways, a common theme among them is the way other people impose their assumptions about one’s identity on another person, or very clearly display their discomfort with constant stares or looks of disgust because they stray from what we have deemed to be the status quo. There is this itch that society has to oppress people, and if one tries to exist in some sort of gray area, it will pick you out of that gray area, forcefully, to maintain control.

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The Black Female Body: The Restrictive Covenant

With all of the readings, I was really intrigued, and I really wanted to connect some of the content with the Black Woman’s experience in America. I often feel like Black women don’t even own their bodies. Our bodies are always for public debate, and when I say bodies, I don’t just mean like our physical self, I mean like everything we do, whether it be speaking, our general demeanor, etc. It always becomes a matter of public opinion. Citizen by Claudia Rankin talks about the public outrage that Serena Williams was behind, with the way that she expressed her discontent with the umpire of her match, and how she was messing up her calls. It just reminded me of the first reading we did in class, “Introduction: Not Just the Reflexive Reflex” by Kosut & Moore. There is this quote we went over in class. It was in reference to the body and how “it is our possession and our prison, while at the same time it is out of our control as it leaks, fails us, and gives us away” (2), and we discussed in class how this process of “leaking” is completely normal. I looked at it from the point of view that what Serena did was completely normal; her being upset was her body “leaking” in a way. Still, for some reason, it was a problem; it no longer became normal to be a professional athlete who spent their entire time training for matches like this, to be rightfully upset when the umpire made an error. I also found a connection between “Throwing Like a Girl” by Young and how women often have this battle of I can and I cannot, or maybe in this case, it is I should and I should not. While this was in reference to physical activities, I connected this with how we as Black women so often know that we should speak up when we are disrespected, but we hit ourselves with the I cannot. We don’t have the luxury of being able to voice our opinions without it ruining the public perception of Black women as a whole.