By Kole McDaniel
Editor’s Note: Violence against women
“Only when our sons and daughters know that forgiveness is real/existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our communities” – Joan Morgan
This month, I watched If Beale St Could Talk in a theater full of Black folk. In an early scene, the main female protagonist, Tish, delivers the news of her pregnancy to her boyfriend Fonny’s mother, who then begins to speak pure hatred about “that child” and to go on about why her son should have never been with Tish. Suddenly, Fonny’s father slaps the mother with so much force it knocked her to the floor.
In the seconds leading up to and during the violent scene, audience members cheered as though they were watching a sports team score a winning goal. But I could only pause and sit with the pain of witnessing the normalized invisibility of violence towards Black women depicted in art, in our communities, and through the state.
“He didn’t have to hit her tho,” I muttered to myself. I wanted to cry. How do so many Black women love violent Black men without reciprocating violence themselves, but can’t get that love in return? How do we normalize the sharing of care strategies for Black women who hurt us? For Black women who have state inflicted rage? Who are triggered by us? What was the original hurt done to Fonny’s mother in Barry Jenkins’ film, and why wasn’t that explored?
***
Maybe I’m an anamoly. I was raised by Black men, masculine women, and gay men who ran and controlled blocks and communities in Watts, Wilmington, Compton, South Central and Long Beach. They demanded respect. I saw them do things with their hands in defense of territory, family and community that I grew to emulate. I saw the complex beauty of Black manhood, masculine womanhood, and fatherhood on the block. Most importantly, I saw physically and emotionally violent Black Women loved by them without receiving violence in return.
I saw my communities study the complex cycles of invisibility/hypervisibility Black women navigate, and instead of manipulating them with pimping, I saw these men and masculine folk fight the urge to hit, or make women feel the pain their words caused. They would say, “Damn, don’t you care if your words cut?’’ Sometimes, I’d hear them speak up for violent women among other men: “She don’t mean no harm, it’s what she been through,” or, “Give her space, y’all, let her breathe for awhile.”
I saw Black men and masculine women sit with the pain flowing inside their hearts as Black women expressed raw rage toward them. I watched as the bodies of these men and masculine women flexed in her direction, then retracted. They took in her words that cut deep. They sat with the urge to slap her, cooled it by breathing intently, then exhaling slowly.
This practice of controlled breathing in a moment of random violence is a tool. Breathing practices offer time to think about what Black women’s violent words and/or actions mean and who they are meant for. Many times, the violent expressions are a reflection of the profound depth of the invisibility of violence Black women navigate in our communities and the broader society.
Knowing that a Black woman’s man was locked up, killed, or violent towards her, the men and masculine women I grew up with would offer a number to call if that violent ex-partner comes back. Sometimes, we would show up in a group—someone would take care of the kid(s), someone would take her for a walk & check-in, and someone would take her partner & check-in. I watched as violent Black women approached their family and partners with intent to hurt and that family or partner opened their strong arms to the women. As she swung and punched, they held her while she started to cry or continued to swing out her frustration.
I saw them, then later myself, practice processing Black women’s rage; rage, I now recognize, that was often ultimately directed at the state violence hyper policing their human right to healthy intimacy—not at the bodies of their loved ones. And so I’m pushing for masculine people and broader Black communities to continue to process this rage in our art so that we can build the intimacy with Black women in our communities that they are denied.
This work requires seeing both Black violent and non-violent women as complex beings. This work requires knowledge of the difference between verbal “disrespect” from a woman (which threatens an ego grounded in a performative masculinity that depends on women making themselves smaller, childlike, and voiceless) with a physical threat, attachment trauma, or rightful rage at a violent, patriarchal world. Knowing when it’s not about you is huge. Black women deserve the room to release their rage.
This requires us knowing how to listen to our bodies when we are being emotionally abused, triggered, or challenged by Black women. Emotional and physical violence often means two people have unhealthy attachment styles and should not be forming a relationship. According to Dr. Lisa Firestone, a clinical psychologist, author, and the Director of Research and Education for the Glendon Association who studies violence, couples and family relations, “Many of us who experienced an insecure attachment pattern early in life will go on to unwittingly recreate strained, hurtful, or painful experiences in later relationships. Because our attachment models left us feeling insecure and insensitive to ourselves, we may not have made the best choices in terms of who we’ve selected as partners. We often choose people with whom we can reenact relationship dynamics from our past, or we distort or provoke them to recreate the familiar emotional climate in which we grew up.”
My father slapped me once as a child, then years later I saw him strike my mother. Both times were in response to us not being silent in the face of his verbal disrespect. I’ve held back Black & brown femme partners who re-lived past trauma on my body, in the present, so many times that I questioned out loud for years to a therapist if I would ever construct healthy intimacy. I saw how these partners expected violence of me in return. If I wasn’t violent, they would become violent for the both of us. I’ve seen uncles hit my aunties.
Yet, in the midst of all that violence, many of these same communities also created tools to care for each other. They passed down to me breathing practices, how to form communal groups of care. They modeled when to walk away and active listening skills.
One of my butch aunties founded a church for our family and broader local communities for worship and spiritual healing. This same aunt also started sober living houses for queer, trans, bi, and other women who wanted to start a safe healing journey through a twelve steps program.
Today, after years of therapy and other self-care practices, when I feel rage building up in my body, I can use these tools to recognize when my partner, friend, or family member is hurting me and I need to walk away, process, and determine if this person deserves to be in my life. Today, I know cycles of untreated trauma can make us seem invisible to love.
At a conference for Black women’s mental health, La Keita Carter, a Black woman psychologist that specializes in trauma with a focus on female rape survivors and veterans, explained, “The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain responsible for adulting — for organizing, initiating and deciding how to manage your Saturday. Your children don’t have it because their brains keep growing until they’re 25. When you’re in distress mode [or triggered], your prefrontal cortex shuts down because your brain is doing more important things.”
Without therapy helping us identify what is triggering our behavior, we can still develop the tools I learned from my communities as listed above. When therapy is added to the tools, we have a chance to become more effective at Black love—the capacity to grow through the lifelong healing process needed to face this violent world and past worlds together.
Today, if my mind, body and spirit don’t agree on a partner—I leave rather than return abuse. I can check-in with myself. I look at my throbbing hands that want to swing on her, or him, to acknowledge the rage or pain moving in my blood, while grounding myself, and feel how my body is saying, “Leave.” My body is saying, “This person’s words and or actions are doing harm.”
I want to share this. I want us to continue to share how to be present in our bodies when we hurt each other, how we can and do love violent Black women in the midst of them hurting us. How we can continue to model our healthiest intimacy in a world that has been historically and presently violent towards us; historically and presently violent towards Black women.
***
I was raised by Black women, some queer, some trans, all from the block and the church. The projects, small Black suburbs, and Black Detroit of the seventies. Black Watts of the eighties and nineties. Black women who survived the crack era, three strikes, AIDS/HIV and still raised healthy kids and communities with their souls intact. I watched them love Black men from the horrors of Folsom, County, and Corcoran jail cells. I saw them love violent Black men and women with their bodies and spirits as filters; love them back to life.
But we can do better to share this love without giving too much of ourselves with therapy combined with developing specific communal efforts like the resources shared in my community. Black men, masculine women, and other Black masculine folk are capable of this love without violence too. We been doing this work. We gotta keep showing our folk how to do this. Archive it. Center taking care of violent Black women in our art.
If Beale St Could Talk it would say, “Violent Black women deserve love without violence too.” They deserve to have safe venues to release their rage. How will you complicate, model, and elevate the love of violent Black women in your life? I’m asking for us to think about the world Black women navigate. Think about how we treat them in our communities, art, and in our hearts. Black Women’s words have context. They reflect, among other things, her current and past violences. We, at the very least, need to continue listening—even when it hurts us.
Suggested Readings:
Lisa Firestone Ph.D., “Healing from Attachment Issues“, Psychology Today, 2018
“What Is Attachment?“, Psychology Today
Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down, 2017
Kole is a Black Feminist from the block & small black suburbs in LA County. Who writes for their Black momma & pops; Black cis/trans, queer, hetero & bi aunties, grandmas, uncles, and relatives. Follow her/them on twitter @queerblackness
