This is kind of a ramble so please be patient.

I just read some horrifically transmisogynistic commentary on Reddit … perpetrated by black cisgender women (as if they had to police Black womanhood).

And now I just want to hide in a hole for a month.

For non-black readers, there’s a thing that goes on in minority communities where your group membership always seems to be in question if you don’t “minority” correctly.

We’re placed on the margins and confined to the shadows if we refuse to conform. We’re also routinely placed in the “not really [marginalized person/community]” box to a sickening degree if we hold our ground. This obviously happens in white, heteronormative communities as well. However, it’s a super depressing and commonplace occurrence in Black/African-American communities, too.

Which is why I value my outcast/outsider role even more the older I get.

That’s the space I’m most comfortable in despite appeals to conform to “proper” blackness. There can never be such a thing.

The only “proper” blackness is the blackness each individual black person selects for themselves (and acknowledges within themselves) without coercion, force, or peer pressure.