And here's where you need to stop. This piece has been through edits with my editor and it's not your duty to interrogate personal details from my life. It is also not your duty to act as my editor. We are done.
@vain: I read all this and I loved it, it was beautiful. You're a lovely writer and I hope that even if this piece caused some soul searching you found some solace in it.
As far as criticisms go, I feel like I'm very open to them. I'm a writer after all--everything I do goes through drafts. It's part of life. But I feel as if you are crossing the line of appropriateness.
I supplied an anecdote about my sexual history that I thought made my point very clearly. @chalkypink seemed to get it. My blackness was being fetishized, I was again pretty good but not enough. In the context provided--examples of other ways that I feel that my basic humanity was being denied--I thought it would come through. And, if you know anything about what black women face when it comes to normative standards of beauty or how we have been historically been fetishized for our bodies in the media, or that time a black woman was literally paraded around because she had a large ass, I think that's a fair point to make. It doesn't work for you--that's a completely fair criticism.
I don't actually mind you talking it out with another user. I think you're having a useful conversation with chalkypink! I'm not trying to demonize you or shame you. But I do think you are approaching a place where you are starting to speculate on my sexual history beyond the example I provided.
This piece isn't about my sexual experiences. It's about my blackness. To ask me, or anyone else, to provide any more details about who I fuck or why makes me feel really gross. I hope you understand why I took the time to write all this out.
Hey! I'm not really gonna be in the comments today but I just wanna reach out to everyone that's expressed their (polite) criticisms. I think it's fostered some really interesting discussion here. Disagreement and dissent is essential to both social change and conversation, as long as everyone is kind!
I also always found there to be a special gut punch irony in the fact that if you tell someone in the majority that you feel alienated by something, the result is often an argument that just pushes you back and makes you feel more alienated, which is kind of the very problem you hope to some way alleviate by talking about the problem in the first place.
I think this is a really salient point. It's hard not to be defensive of one's personal experiences - it's your life, after all! - but it really does create an air of tension and hostility. I've tried very hard to speak with kindness, clarity and empathy when using anecdotes about my own life to talk about race/gender/sexuality and I can only ask that people receive them in kind.
On that note, while I've loved, LOVED talking to everyone, I gotta make dinner and get on with relaxin'. It's been a very long four or five days for me and I'm bushed. Hope to see you all around soon, can't thank you enough for the kindness you've all been showing me.
@eternalgamer2: This is a beautiful comment. It really hits home for me, actually. I've sort of, casually, been in the closet as a bisexual woman for so long because of those comments you describe. It's horrible to know exactly how people think of your identity because they think you're "one of them." A few years ago I decided that it's too taxing on my conscience to continue to be silent. Solidarity.
@pekoe212: face/off is my favorite movie of all time. it's perfect. it's absolutely a pure piece of cinema and one of my favorite nicolas cage performances, and absolutely my favorite john woo movie. i am being entirely sincere. i love face/off.
I think that is fair to disagree with me. In fact, I invite disagreement! What I do not think is fair is to tell me that my experiences are wrong or that I have interpreted them incorrectly.
Last time I was here, some users decided that I needed to be in therapy based on tweets I was making. Despite the intimate nature of this article and, yes, my tweets, these kind of comments are inappropriate and over the line. We are two strangers. Imagine this comment section is a bus stop. I have my headphones on.
And don't fucking call me honey.
edit: as i pressed enter i thought "gee i'm totally gonna regret this"
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