Note: I miss my mother. She is a phone call away and lately those phone calls haven’t been made as often. When made, they are shorter. She thinks my girlfriend is always around, a specter she’d rather avoid. I didn’t tell her when we broke up, although she is usually the one who holds my heart when it is broken. I miss my mother and I often think of my sister’s post, bravely written when our blog first started. This post is a comedic meditation on the ways that parents grieve when their children live in ways the parents never …Read more »

“Only Odd” is borrowed from tumblr-speak, as in, “I can’t even… I can only odd.”  Bloggers are often expected to react to major events. And though we often comply, the energy expended for such argumentation could also be used to finish manuscripts, start novels, knit sweaters or make passionate love as if the world wasn’t crumbling under the weight of imperialism. Sometimes we can’t. And that’s ok. Here’s a list of things this holiday that made me say, “I can’t even… I can only odd.” Sandy Hook, Santa Clause, the NRA and the commodity of innocence. A man killed 28 …Read more »

Porn is what’s hot in the streets (aka halls of the academy) now. There are brilliant scholars who historicize and build upon black feminist participation in conversations about pornography. And there are others who simplify the argument into a false then vs. now paradigm that presents our foremothers as prudes, not as the women who made it possible for us to talk about sexuality in the ways that we do today. I believe these others wish for the day when black women can talk about sex as if they were white men, with no cloud of controlling images over their …Read more »

CFs Chanel and Asha ask that you hang out with us on December 11, from 8:00 pm to 8:20 pm. We also talk about our Feminism 101 for Girls project and the necessary steps to plan other events like this. We look forward to hanging out with you!

One point on which Creflo Dollar and both his daughters agree is that he walked into the kitchen and said, “Why are you crying?” He already knew why. I imagine that he asked his question with a bullying tone; I imagine there was an unspoken threat behind the question, a threat with which too many are familiar: I’ll give you something to cry about. And to the question with the obvious answer, to the veiled threat, she didn’t give the response Dollar required. According to Dollar, his daughter didn’t give enough deference to his privileged position. She didn’t acknowledge his …Read more »

This just in: black women have skinny, ashy ankles. Black women have skinny, ashy ankles and the world needs to know. They are disproportionately represented in sales for Nivea, the thick cream marketed purposely toward black women’s bodies. They supply the band-aid brand with most of its sales, as they are the frequent victims of blisters. And they are dying. Read it: DYING from skinny, ashy ankles. GIFSoup This is why it is a national crisis. Black women with skinny, ashy ankles are frequently the victims of career-ending injuries. Since black women are fat, their skinny ankles don’t hold all …Read more »