When Blackness Is Clear but Womanhood Becomes a Debate: A Question for Black Leaders

When you are a woman—an adult female human being who has overlapping disabilities that all intersect with being a woman—it gets extremely challenging

When you are a woman—an adult female human being who has overlapping disabilities that all intersect with being a woman—it gets extremely challenging to keep hearing your existence trivialized. I’m selective about speaking publicly about my outrage around this because some non-Black people who talk about “blackface and Black culture” in the morning will accuse you of being an “ungrateful victim” by sundown.

Not afraid or hesitant, but more choosy about where and how I use my limited energy.

BUT……Some people, who look just like me, know exactly why Black history cannot be reduced to personal identification. They understand why Black people insist on speaking for themselves about their experiences. Yet when women describe the material realities of growing up female, suddenly the importance of those distinctions becomes controversial. I want to know why the principle of listening to people about their own lives seems to change when the people speaking are women.

There are some conversations that leave me more than a little unamused. Particularly when I hear people speak with absolute certainty about Blackness, Black history, and who has the authority to define Black experiences, only to become remarkably uncertain when the conversation turns to women.

I have watched Black leaders, advocates, and commentators explain why blackface is offensive. They understand that Blackness is not a costume. They recognize the insult of reducing Black people to stereotypes, appearances, and performances. They understand why someone cannot simply put on an identity, claim the history that comes with it, and expect Black people to surrender their right to question that claim.

And I understand those arguments.

What I do not understand is why some of those same people suddenly struggle with the meaning of the word woman.Woman is not a vague identity. It is a specific category, just as Blackness is specific.

Blackness has a history. So does being female. Both have shaped who was allowed to vote, own property, receive an education, hold authority, and enjoy the protection of the law. Both have been used as grounds for discrimination, exploitation, and exclusion.

When people discuss Blackness, they understand that stereotypes do not determine who is Black. Yet somehow, when we discuss women, we are invited to consider feelings, clothing, presentation, and social expectations as though these things determine who is female.

I reject that vital and essential misunderstanding of women and our everyday lives.

And I am not interested in having either part of my humanity treated as negotiable simply because an institution has decided that a different definition would be more convenient. For them.

The Certainty That Somehow Disappears

You cannot build a movement on the importance of listening to people’s lived experiences and then turn women and girls on mute when they begin describing theirs. There is nothing “generous” about offering someone else protections that you expect women to pay for with their own.

I have listened to people speak passionately about the importance of Black people defining our own experiences. They insist that our history cannot be rewritten to accommodate someone else’s feelings. They know why representation matters, why language matters, and why allowing outsiders to claim authority over a group can have real consequences.

They know that they know that they know.

But when women say that women are adult human females, suddenly everything becomes complicated.

We are told that definitions must change. “That category must expand.” “That women must reconsider boundaries established around our bodies, our safety, our opportunities, and our rights.”

And sometimes we are told this by people who would never tolerate the same reasoning being used to dismiss Black people’s concerns about racial identity.

I find that contradiction difficult to ignore.

One week, someone can explain in extraordinary detail why the N-word carries a history that cannot be separated from Black American life. They understand that context matters, that words carry consequences, and that not everyone has the same relationship to a particular history.

Another week, that same person can explain why Black American contributions must not be erased, renamed, appropriated, or credited to someone else. They recognize the importance of ancestry, historical accuracy, and the right of a people to describe their own experiences.

Then, when women begin speaking about female history, female socialization, biological realities, or sex-based protections, some of those same principles seem to disappear. The selective historical awareness can cause a whip lash if you let it.

I find it difficult to take seriously the sudden confusion about women from some people

You have demonstrated that you understand the importance of history, identity, language, boundaries, and the authority to speak about a people’s experiences. You have explained these principles beautifully when discussing Black Americans.

Then the conversation turns to women, and suddenly you cannot seem to find those same principles. Like you lost them. Like I lose keys just as I am about to walk out the door. And again, all of this happens within the same calendar year.

I am not asking anyone to pretend race and sex are identical. I am asking why your understanding of historical specificity becomes so uncertain when women are the ones asking to be recognized.

You cannot spend Monday explaining why a people’s history must be respected and Friday treating women’s history as something that can be rewritten without our meaningful participation.

As some of my people say, “What dafuq?”

Women Are Not an Idea That Institutions Get to Redefine

If your advocacy requires women to surrender their voices, you have not built a bridge toward justice. You have simply decided who -which specific human beings—must stand underneath it. Black people like me, for example.

I do not believe institutions have the authority to redefine women out of our laws, policies, categories, and opportunities simply because someone wants a different definition. I assert that around my Blackness, my health care, and my womanhood.

Women did not spend generations fighting for legal recognition, education, employment, political participation, and protection from sex discrimination so that the category those protections were created to serve could become unrecognizable.

Women are adult human females.

That is not a description of how a woman must dress, behave, speak, or present herself. It does not require femininity, motherhood, beauty, softness, or conformity to anyone’s expectations.

A woman can be strong, gentle, outspoken, quiet, athletic, disabled, childless, a mother, a wife, unmarried, or entirely uninterested in the roles society has assigned to her. None of those things determines whether she is female. And no woman should have to perform femininity to establish that she belongs to her own sex.

Black Women Have Already Lived Through Enough Redefinition

As a Black woman, I am especially aware of what happens when other people claim the authority to decide what we are, what we deserve, and which protections apply to us. Black women have lived through centuries of having our humanity questioned, our bodies exploited, our pain dismissed, and our needs placed behind those of others.

We have been told to wait. To “understand.” To “sacrifice.” To make room in rooms where others kick us out of the room that WE built. To accept that someone else’s struggle must come before our own.

We have also watched people celebrate Black women’s strength while remaining remarkably comfortable with the burdens placed upon us. So when I hear another argument that women must surrender clarity about our own sex, I recognize something familiar.

The expectation that women will accommodate a decision they did not make, then prove their goodness by accepting its consequences.

Recognizing Someone’s Humanity Does Not Require Erasing Women

Every human being deserves dignity and protection from violence, harassment, and unlawful discrimination. Nothing about that principle requires pretending that biological sex has no meaning.

Nor does it establish that every person is entitled to enter every sex-based category, service, competition, or protected space.

We make distinctions throughout society because distinctions can serve legitimate purposes. Age matters in some laws. Disability matters in others. Sex matters in areas involving reproductive healthcare, female sports, privacy, safety, and the collection of meaningful information about discrimination and violence.

Those distinctions should be examined carefully, fairly, and with attention to their purpose. But women should not have to begin every conversation by defending the existence of the category female. And an institution’s preference for a particular definition should not automatically override the interests of the women whose rights and protections are affected.

I Have a Question for Some Black Leaders

When you speak about Blackness, you understand why a person’s feelings, personal interests, or admiration do not automatically establish their authority over Black history.

You understand why stereotypes cannot substitute for the lived realities of Black people.

You understand why Black people object when others presume to define us without our consent.

“I grew up around y’all,” or “I’m attracted to Black people” or “I always talk like dissss” doesn’t move most of a full inch on our positions and lived understanding of Blackness and Black life.

So why does that understanding sometimes disappear when women speak? Because my position on Blackness doesn’t slide over with those assertions or claim because I am “mean” or lack compassion. It doesn’t move because reality doesn’t move at all for me and the rest of the Black folks because someone else says they identify with some of us….or some observed aspect of our culture.

Why are women expected to accept definitions imposed by institutions, organizations, and policymakers without meaningful consideration of what those changes mean for us?

Why is our insistence on naming our own sex so often treated as the problem rather than a legitimate concern worthy of discussion?

And why do some people who recognize the dangers of racial stereotypes seem comfortable returning to stereotypes of femininity when discussing who qualifies as a woman?

These are questions about consistency, not an invitation to turn Black people and women against one another. Black women belong fully to both histories. We should not have to choose which part of our humanity receives serious consideration.

If you understand why Black Americans should not have our history, identity, and contributions defined for us, why do you struggle to understand women asking for that same consideration?

I Am Not Asking for Permission to Know What I Am

Women are not the spare room in somebody else’s movement. We have our own history, our own needs, and our own rights to protect.

What I am asking for is intellectual consistency. I expect people who understand why Black people must be able to speak about our experiences to recognize that women have the same right.

I expect lawmakers and institutions to explain how their definitions affect female rights, protections, services, and opportunities rather than treating women’s objections as inconveniences.

And I expect women to be heard without first having to reassure everyone that we are sufficiently kind, agreeable, or accommodating.

Women are not a category that exists at the pleasure of institutions.

We are human beings with our own bodies, history, experiences, needs, and rights.

I did not arrive at my understanding of womanhood through somebody else’s permission. I arrived here by being female, growing up female, and living in a world that has never had much trouble recognizing my sex when it wanted to place demands upon me.

It should not suddenly become confused when I ask for my rights to be respected.

When discussions concern Blackness, many Black leaders rightly insist that racial history, ancestry, discrimination, cultural experience, and community boundaries cannot simply be set aside because someone wishes to identify differently.

They understand that Blackness is not a costume, a collection of stereotypes, or an identity someone can establish merely by adopting particular mannerisms.

They understand why blackface is offensive. They understand why someone claiming an experience they have not lived can raise questions about authenticity and representation.

And they understand why Black people should have a meaningful voice in conversations about their own history.

But when women ask for recognition of female biology, female socialization, and sex-based experiences, some of those same people approach the question very differently.

That inconsistency is worth examining.

There are differences between race and sex, including their histories, classifications, and the ways societies understand them. A careful comparison should acknowledge those differences rather than suggest the two are interchangeable.

But that still leaves your central question unanswered:

Why is the importance of recognizing a group’s material history treated as obvious in one conversation, yet negotiable in another?

What kind of leadership teaches people to demand recognition for themselves while treating women’s recognition as something that can be negotiated away?

For women, the consequences of sex are not theoretical. Menstruation, pregnancy, female genital mutilation, sex-selective discrimination, reproductive healthcare, institutional and systemic hearing impairment and many forms of sex-based violence cannot be understood adequately without recognizing female bodies.

And female socialization has its own history. Girls have been subjected to restrictions on education, mobility, clothing, speech, marriage, and independence precisely because they were recognized as female.

Women should be able to name those experiences without being accused of hostility simply for making distinctions.

I owe it to the girls to speak. They do not deserve a world with a steeper incline than the one I already had to travel.

A leader who can recognize injustice everywhere except where women are standing has some serious questions to answer about the limits of that leadership.