Young Black women have been sold a bill of goods. They've been told that anything and everything that they do is empowering. They've been told that degrading themselves is empowering, that objectifying themselves is empowering. Well, I've got to do something. I know they won't hear me. I know they will react violently, calling me vile names, but I must speak out and tell them that there is no power in devaluing yourself and your womanhood to your sexuality
EMPOWERING
·
Owning your sexuality, not being ashamed of the
number of partners you’ve had, not being slut-shamed for not conforming to the
concept that women have to be asexual and pure to have value. Human beings are sexual beings. Women have a right to pleasure and they
shouldn’t be ashamed of their desire and/or need for touch, intimacy, arousal, pleasure,
or orgasms.
NOT EMPOWERING
·
Being indiscriminate with your body, sharing it
with people who have not earned your trust, respect, or who don’t value you as
a person. Having casual sex with people
whose only intent is to get off, who don’t see your totality as a human being is
not empowering. Can you have casual
sex? Of course, that is your right as a
human being. Is it empowering to be used
by someone in essence so they don’t have to masturbate? No. Is
it empowering to use someone, to not take their humanity, feelings, and
personhood into consideration? No! You derive no power from letting people use
you, nor is it empowering to use other people. Using people is manipulative,
it’s immature, it’s dysfunctional. As
much as people want to deny it, as much as people swear that casual sex has no
consequences, it does. Physical intimacy
with another person is not recreation.
I’m NOT saying that sex is bad, I’m not saying people need to be chaste
and asexual. I’m saying it’s immature to
think that using people is empowering.
EMPOWERING
·
Feeling confident and beautiful in the skin you’re
in. Holding your head high, knowing that
in your own unique imperfection that there is value and worth beyond anything that
society can define or label. Empowering is being an individual who doesn’t
conform, who doesn’t NEED external validation in order to feel attractive but
who can graciously say, “Thank you,” when it’s given. Empowerment is the unshakable knowledge that
your beauty comes from being intelligent, having integrity, creating a style
that is not contingent upon having men lust after how many of your body parts
are on public display. Empowering is
knowing that you are sexy without having to show that you are sexy.
NOT EMPOWERING
·
Spending inordinate amounts of money on your
clothes, shoes, make-up, hair, and nails, often times to the point of debt, in
order to conform to what society says is attractive is not empowering. Needing external validation of your
attractiveness = not empowering. Putting
your sexuality and body on display like it’s a commodity to be purchased. Defining your beauty by what men determine is
attractive to them. Needing to alter
everything about your appearance before you can feel confident, having to
present to the world this false image of perfection at all times. Calculating your self-worth by the number of
people who tell you that you are sexy or hot, measuring your beauty by
comparing yourself to celebrities is the very definition of not being
empowered. I KNOW, I know, you’ve been
told that anything that women do is empowering.
You’ve been told that a woman objectifying herself is empowering. Conforming to patriarchal, sexist,
misogynist, limiting definitions of what it means to be a woman is not
empowering however. It’s the very
opposite of being empowered if your power comes from being seen as pretty or
sexually desirable to fuel men’s desire for you.
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