My Experience with Black Female Erasure in Gender Critical Feminism
+ My Interview on the WhoseBodyIsIt Podcast
Greetings Everyone! I’m happy to share my latest interview with Isabella Malbin on her podcast, WhoseBodyIsIt—one of the foremost media platforms covering women’s issues through a gender-critical lens.
One thing I love about interviews is how each host takes on a unique angle of exploring my work, perspective, and life journey. I knew this interview would be fun whilst going deep into topics of embodiment, community, and women’s wellness.
Interestingly enough, I had early (symptomatic) stages of covid during this interview and had been very sick but you would never know because I had been mercilessly sleeping, guzzling green juice, broth, Fire Cider, and herbal teas for the past 24 hours.
I wanted to make sure I was well enough for our conversation, which was filmed during the solar eclipse. Most notably, I made the effort to curl my locs for this interview and I was not willing to delay my debut, Okay?!
Isabella and I explored my journey awakening to gender ideology from the very beginning, including some more personal encounters I had whilst seeking community amongst Sapphic women of color in various cities, as well as my work as a women’s sensual wellness facilitator.
Here are a few topics we discussed:
The experiences in “Queer and LGBT POC” spaces in New York that led me to make a firey video called “Transwomen are Not Female” in 2013. This was my first time recognizing and speaking out against gender ideology.
My evolution of understanding around gender ideology through personal experience.
My challenges of hosting women-only spaces whilst living and working as an Artist and women’s wellness instructor in Berlin.
The social hierarchy of Trans, Non-Binary and Queer, with women either named last, de-prioritized, or erased altogether, particularly in spaces that are meant to be “lesbian-friendly”.
Challenges navigating new women’s spaces where everyone is female but nobody identifies as a woman.
My new essay, How The Trans Movement is Erasing Black Women From History: Setting the Record Straight About Pauli Murray.
Check it out!
Now, it’s interesting that Isabella named this podcast title “Black Female Erasure” in reference to the Trans movement—because I have a few stories about our erasure from gender-critical feminism that are connected to the WhoseBodyIsIt podcast.
This interview was special because, within the past year or so—there have been a couple of influential women—former guests on WhoseBodyIsIt, who have connected with me and/or been deeply influenced by my voice—who offered to connect me with Isabella so that she could platform my work.
As it turns out, those women did not support me as wholeheartedly I thought they did. And to be honest, these experiences have given me a more intimate understanding as to why and how some black women do not receive the credit they deserve for their contributions throughout history, and how easy it is for white folks to receive public accolades for things that black women did first.
It was kind of trippy to experience it firsthand!
I have actually been cooking up a very honest, yet firey essay to share my feelings about (gender-critical) white feminism for the past couple of months, which I originally intended to publish after this interview was released.
But the pot is still simmering.
For now, I’d like to speak about black female erasure through the lens of my journey with this specific podcast, and spill the tea about my experiences and perspective.
I also share why I wanted to be on WhoseBodyIsIt despite being one of very few black women on that show, and how I arrived there after all—amidst the odds and haters.