In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism. Shirley Chisholm F
In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are
equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.
Shirley Chisholm
From the earliest movements for freedom, Black women have never hesitated to speak truth — not only to their oppressors, but to their own allies when necessary.
🗳️ 19th & Early 20th Century: Speaking Truth to Movements
Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper called out both racism in white feminist circles and sexism within abolitionist and civil rights movements.
They understood that justice could not be divided — that no movement is righteous if it silences or erases women.
Ida B. Wells stood unshaken as she exposed the horrors of lynching and endured criticism from both Black and white leaders. She refused to quiet down for “unity.” Her allegiance was to truth, not comfort.
✊🏾 Civil Rights Era: Challenging Male Leadership
Women like Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Septima Clark, Diane Nash, and Gloria Richardson carried that same fire into the Civil Rights era.
Ella Baker reminded us, “Strong people don’t need strong leaders,” rejecting patriarchal control and top-down politics.
Fannie Lou Hamer looked the Democratic Party squarely in the eye and demanded to know how a nation that silenced, jailed, and beat Black voters could claim to be a democracy. Looked them dead in the eye.
These women refused to bow to fear, because silence would have meant complicity.
That legacy continues.
Women — and especially Black women — will continue to critique any political party or movement that fails to
Honorable credit to veteran women’s rights advocate Kara Dansky
represent our safety, our economic well-being, our education, and our access to meaningful opportunity.
After all that women have been put through — the oppression, the exclusion, the relentless silencing — that is the bare minimum.
This is not division; it is survival.
If lawmakers create policies that erase the reality of female biology, or replace “sex” with vague language that denies the material truth of our lives, They. Do. Not. Represent. Women.
They do not represent the female sex.
Because imagine the implications of this at your work place.
Or that stalker you can’t get any space from even in female spaces.
Or your estranged relationship partner who now identifies into your every sanctuary.
Mega celebrities have bodyguards to take them to pee. We don’t.
By the way, much of this legislation showed up after the #MeToo movement. Men got quiet because they put their energy here….in legislation to cage you in new ways. To put you ladies in check. “Who do you think you are? Human beings with unique needs or something?” They laugh. They legislate.
Women will speak for women because we must.
Our voices are not a threat to progress — they are progress.
And as long as women are left unprotected, unheard, or unseen, we will keep speaking, organizing, and demanding representation that is honest, inclusive, and grounded in truth.
Because survival is not silence.
And integrity will always be the higher calling.
Life is too large to hang out a sign: “For Men Only.”
Barbara Jordan