This Black History Month was fraught with anger & despair.
Imagine a world where everyone has a unique power tied to their emotions (i.e, when the main character experiences intense joy, their power allows them to manipulate light; when they feel anger, they control fire). What emotions are most salient for you right now and what power does it give you? How does that power shape the relationships you have with others and with yourself? – Prompt provided by BIPOC Sex Worker Writing Space (ig – @ bipoc.swws)
Each morning I wake up and my body is filled with rage from the previous evening’s events. The thing is, nothing even fucking happened last night. The mere mention and thought of our current political environment fills my entire body with a deep seeded rage! This anger manifests itself in ways I am unfamiliar with, and yet feel so deeply connected too. When I am mad like this I begin to preach and speak from a place of real authenticity. It takes hold of me when I speak and uses my words to move others into action. Often that action looks like a deeper connection within community. I have been told time and time again that my words carry so much weight to them that I am speaking to what others are feeling at that moment. My words, when held from a place of guttural anger, have the capacity to move fucking mountains. It can manipulate the air around my lungs so that I may wield it as a sword.
More often than not this past month I was ANGRY as fuck!! A majority of the spaces I stepped into during Black History Month was filled with whiteness. At the start I would enter with an immense sadness and as folks began to share their big, and understandable, emotions I very quickly became enraged. I was angry at the situational outrage that I was hearing. I am angry at my “comrades” that are continuing to hide out of a need for safety when I will never be afforded that same opportunity. As a Black Trans Femme there is only so much I can do to keep myself safe. It is a privilege to be able to de-transition and assimilate into the gender you are assigned at birth. I hold that privilege. If push came to shove I could “un-femme” myself. Stop wearing nails, deepen my voice, do some dude-bro bullshit, and begin using my dead name. Will doing this hurt me deeply?
ABSOLUTELY.
Will creating a de-transitioned persona in order to fit in with societal norms keep me safe?! FUCK NO!
There are things about me that I can not hide no matter how hard I try.
I CAN NOT hide my Blackness!
Trust me; I have tried.
Growing up I was made to feel ashamed of my skin. Never quite fitting in for a myriad of reasons, but the one constant was the color of my skin when compared to my peers. I am a mixed race Black person and was never quite enough for either side. It felt like a constant battle of having to choose between being Black or white. For a long time I chose the latter. I cast off any notion that I was Black, would joke around with my family & “friends” that I am an “oreo”. That I am “just burnt”. I came out the “wrong color”. My family didn’t help dispel any of these statements, often calling me a “porch monkey, half-rican, or a mistake”. When my “friends” would see my mom they would be so confused and I would be bombarded with unrelenting questions of “why is she white?”. As I got older the questions turned to comments about her beauty. Comments that never seemed to make their way towards me, or any other Black person I knew at the time. When I started to have sex I would choose men that “celebrated” my Blackness not knowing at the time that what they were doing was fetishzing me. It didn’t feel good, and it didn’t feel bad. I felt seen for a moment. I would sleep with those that deemed me acceptable or beautiful “for a Black person”.
To this day I still struggle with my Blackness. Often feeling like I am not “Black enough” while simultaneously feeling disgruntled towards white people at best. I want to name, that if you are reading this and you are white (in any capacity) and you are feeling activated, asking yourself questions like, “but not me, right?”, “does Kleo hate me?”, “what did I do?” then you are 100% part of the group that I feel disgruntled towards. Now, if you are able to sit in the uncomfortable and understand how whiteness perpetuates a state of harm, and if you are able to dismantle your own privilege & proximity to whiteness, then you might not fit into the category of folks I feel disgruntled towards.
I will not apologize for your uncomfortability.
I am so fucking angry.
Honesty, seriously… just WHAT THE FUCK!
You know that moment after a really realistic dream, even sometimes borderline wet dream. In that space when your trying to figure out if your still alive, still asleep or if you just busted all over yourself while you slept? I feel like I am living in that space every waking second of my life.
At this point of my life I feel like I am a walking, talking giant ball of sleepy jizz. LOL That is probably way too descriptive and yet I also feel like it is not quite descriptive enough. Watching the Orange man in his current regime is an entire fucking fever dream. I know he doesn’t deserve that much room in my brain, and watching him for these last few weeks has been actually insane to me. Too add salt to the wound watching “community” finally begin to say something about the atrocities that have been ongoing worldwide is actually fucking heartbreaking! I am MAD AS FUCK!!! I am so angry that so many choose to stay silent after the global awakening to Palestine. I am SO ANGRY that so many are still choosing to stay silent after being shown more images of the women in Congo being sexually assaulted! I AM SO FUCKING FURIOUS that yet again these fucking Rich, White Men are taking whatever they fucking want and I am being told that “it will get better”, and to “just breath through it”. I dont want to FUCKING breath through it. I want us to engage with collective fucking outrage! I want us to be storming the GOD DAMN STREETS! I am so tired of being told, “it will be better in 4 years just gotta wait it out”. NO THE FUCK IT WONT!! You Think these politicians are gonna save us… FUCK NO! The dems wanted the republicans in office so the rest of the world could see “just how bad it could be” this is a fucking ploy so that when they take back office in 2028 they can yet again BE THE “GOOD GUYS”!! GOD FORBID they are actually held accountable to their actions. God forbid we, the people, actually learn from our mistakes. GOD FUCKING FORBID we begin to get angry, and push our own privileges out of the way and say FUCK being comfortable in a country that commits total GENOCIDES elsewhere just to feed us actual horse shit here. Not saying it would be any better if they treated us better. You cant fucking bomb the fuck out of countries and then turn around and tell your citizens… “Everything is okay”. “You will be fine”?. SHUT THE FUCK UP! Dead ass. Cause I will show you “fine” as I shove my entire fucking arm up your penis hole!
I would say asshole but you might like that!
XOXO
Mx Kleo