ubyouu.

1. Stop slandering our natural features. Stop with the dark skin jokes. Stop with the natural hair jokes. Stop dehumanizing black women for our features. Black women–especially young black girls–internalize these “jokes” and grow to sincerely hate their blackness. Cut it out.

2. Respect our choices. All of them. You don’t have to like it but you need to respect it. If we choose to wear our natural hair, respect it. If we choose to wear weave, respect it. Stop chastising us for the choices we make for ourselves. Stop policing how we choose to live our lives. Let us be great. Gahdamn.

3. Stop with the respectability politics. You can’t say you love black women and then pick and choose which black women you’ll respect based on your standards. You still give a black woman respect regardless of how she chooses to live her life. You respect all black women because we are human just like you, not just the ones who wear natural hair, listen to erykah badu and shit.

4. No means no. If you approach a black woman and she says she’s not interested, oh my fucking god, my nigga, just leave her alone. Move on. Let it go. Please do not persist. Take the rejection gracefully. Don’t call her out name, don’t follow her, don’t assault her. Let her be. She doesn’t owe you an explanation. Her “no” is enough and you will deal my friend. 

5. LISTEN. Bruh, when black women are telling you something you’re doing is harming them, can you put your ego aside and just L I S T E N. Why is that your first reaction is to get defensive? If you love black women like you say you do, wouldn’t you want to know when you’re doing something harmful to them? Stop getting defensive every time a black woman calls out your misogynoir. Stop brushing that off as “bashing black men.” Stop calling black women “shea butter bitches” for calling out how you harm black women. Black women are just asking for empathy at the end of the day. That’s the least you can do.

6. Stop slut-shaming. Stop shaming black women for their sexuality. Stop calling black women “thots” and all kinds of hoes because her sex life is something YOU disagree with or because she presents herself in a way that conflicts with YOUR standards. Someone’s sexuality has nothing to do with you and you don’t have the right to police what a woman does with her body. Stop reducing a black woman’s worth because you don’t like what she does with HER body.

7. Understand that our identity intersects. Stop telling black women they have to “pick a side.” Black women aren’t black men or white women’s “side kicks.” We are our own people with our own unique struggle that, yes, may have similarities to BM’s and WW’s struggles, but is not identical to theirs. We are black and we are women. You can’t be an ally to black women and not be intersectional when our existence is the epitome of intersectionality. Black women don’t just experience racial violence, we experience gender violence as well. Stop insisting that we have to divide our identity down the middle to suit you.

8. Say something when you see black women being attacked. When you see black women being harassed online and offline, do something. Ya’ll gotta start holding each other accountable. Stop @-ing me telling me how terrible it is that I’m being attacked. @ ole dude who’s attacking me. Tell them to stop. Have my back. Intervene in the best possible way you can. Stop allowing the violence against black women to persist right in front of your eyes.

9. Please kill the “strong black woman” narrative. Placing this title on us constantly, denies us humanity. Black women aren’t allowed to be vulnerable like everyone else. We’re constantly told be strong or we’re written off as only angry and bitter. We’re told how we’re suppose to feel and how to respond to violence against us. Black women are humans. We laugh, we cry, we smile. We can’t be your idea of “strong” all the time.

There is an erasure happening within movement spaces to folks disabled by a society that fails to meet the necessities of their conditions/circumstances (often despite having ample, but not well-dispersed, resources to meet them). I believe this is largely due to an inability to “show up” in the not-diverse ways typically celebrated by our movements and a perceived lack of other options. I’m most focused on redefining what involvement looks like for myself, but fighting this erasure is a two way street that requires reciprocal, conscious effort from us as individuals and the community, aka “MOVE UP, MOVE UP”:

- Movement communities have a responsibility for creating the conditions necessary for persons with chronic conditions, necessities, and otherwise undersupported circumstances (bodily, mental, or sensory; visible, invisible, or ignored) to MOVE UP as both activists and organizers. Work on it!

- Baes, here are 8 ways to MOVE UP in our movements when you cannot exactly “show up”:

1. Organize in a space constructed to meet your needs, such as your home. (one of the reasons I started Paint & Drank!) Disrupt local spaces you naturally encounter, such as on your way to work.

2. Use art as a tool for cultural organizing. Our current popular culture has been built to affirm systems of oppression and needs revolutionizing. (For the People Artists Collective has been a space for me to do just that)

3. Recognize and affirm your self-care and healing as a necessary component of our community’s healing - a super necessary piece of movement sustainability.

4. Do harm-reducing outreach (written and oral) to key people/stakeholders, sign petitions, and make donations to or raise money for campaigns when you have the capacity.

5. Advocate for more intersectional approaches to the issues you face. The Medical Industrial Complex especially exploits the black people and POC. These folk are too often left out of accessibility advocacy.

6. Participate in the strategic planning of actions. Ask me about this offline.

7. Amplify your needs to your community. Be consistent, unapologetic, and invite others to amplify theirs as well. This helps accessibility checking become a habit in our community, and others who don’t have the opportunity to speak their needs are likely to have some overlap with you.

8. Focus on mobilizing others in cases where you cannot be present. Start with close friends and family. Telling others to participate even though you can’t does NOT make you a hypocrite.

I’m just brainstorming (feel free to add), but for now, just know that everyone is useful and that there are concrete steps we can all take to contribute.

There is an erasure happening within movement spaces to folks disabled by a society that fails to meet the necessities of their conditions/circumstances (often despite having ample, but not well-dispersed, resources to meet them). I believe this is largely due to an inability to “show up” in the not-diverse ways typically celebrated by our movements and a perceived lack of other options. I’m most focused on redefining what involvement looks like for myself, but fighting this erasure is a two way street that requires reciprocal, conscious effort from us as individuals and the community, aka “MOVE UP, MOVE UP”:

- Movement communities have a responsibility for creating the conditions necessary for persons with chronic conditions, necessities, and otherwise undersupported circumstances (bodily, mental, or sensory; visible, invisible, or ignored) to MOVE UP as both activists and organizers. Work on it!

- Baes, here are 8 ways to MOVE UP in our movements when you cannot exactly “show up”:

1. Organize in a space constructed to meet your needs, such as your home. (one of the reasons I started Paint & Drank!) Disrupt local spaces you naturally encounter, such as on your way to work.

2. Use art as a tool for cultural organizing. Our current popular culture has been built to affirm systems of oppression and needs revolutionizing. (For the People Artists Collective has been a space for me to do just that)

3. Recognize and affirm your self-care and healing as a necessary component of our community’s healing - a super necessary piece of movement sustainability.

4. Do harm-reducing outreach (written and oral) to key people/stakeholders, sign petitions, and make donations to or raise money for campaigns when you have the capacity.

5. Advocate for more intersectional approaches to the issues you face. The Medical Industrial Complex especially exploits the black people and POC. These folk are too often left out of accessibility advocacy.

6. Participate in the strategic planning of actions. Ask me about this offline.

7. Amplify your needs to your community. Be consistent, unapologetic, and invite others to amplify theirs as well. This helps accessibility checking become a habit in our community, and others who don’t have the opportunity to speak their needs are likely to have some overlap with you.

8. Focus on mobilizing others in cases where you cannot be present. Start with close friends and family. Telling others to participate even though you can’t does NOT make you a hypocrite.

I’m just brainstorming (feel free to add), but for now, just know that everyone is useful and that there are concrete steps we can all take to contribute.