dehumanization

So, recently I started dipping my toe back into the poisonous dump site that is straight dating. Deep breath.

Men of Color, especially Black men, have historically been coded as animalistic abusers and r*pists when it comes to white women. This stems from the idea that Men of Color literally want to steal and sully the belongings of white men. In turn, it becomes the “duty” of white men to protect white women — not because they truly care about white women, but because white women are the property of white men.

It’s like being a deer in the headlights. You’re in imminent danger. You know it. But you can’t move. You can’t speak. No reaction whatsoever. You just stand or sit there, frozen in time, waiting for the crash.

I understand the connections between the violence that leads to police shootings and the violence that leads people to starve themselves. I know with complete certainty that diet culture is a manifestation of the state’s expectation of assimilation and of social control, both of which are manifestations of institutional violence.

This is a love song for those who showed me there was a thing called freedom, and it wasn’t closed-legged, and it wasn’t passable, that it was expensive and gaudy, and I wanted it, and I didn’t want it.