Wishing I Could Just Be "Love and Light"

Personal Reflections...

I’ve been feeling disconnected from this platform lately.

Most of my audience is white and middle-upper class, which is the primary demographic of the online gender critical / alternative media space.

Although all kinds of people are welcome to read my work, I wish I had more black WLW readers—especially since I focus so heavily on us in my work.

I tend to find like-minded black women in spaces that are devoted to Art and Wellness. So, I have wondered if my inability to be fluffy “love and light” all the time, pushes women in my community away.

Gender ideology is a hard topic. Sometimes, I wonder if I talk about it too much.

The irony is that I started educating myself about gender ideology because of how I was treated when I tried to host a Women’s Sensual Dance workshop in 2019. One of those workshops was also an affinity space for black women in Berlin.

The amount of language and inclusion policing I encountered for hosting a female-only space was totally unprecedented.

(I was also policed for being fatphobic because I included a beautiful photo of me as the flyer image—but that is another story lol)

I managed to host the workshop successfully, but not without a great deal of nervousness around this matter. Suddenly, I felt the need to address and clarify things that should have been obvious.

Then, I noticed other strange dynamics when going out to local events, just trying to have a nice time and make friends.

Feeling marginalized in female-run ‘BIPOC’ and LGB spaces because I didn’t identify as Queer, Trans, or Nonbinary was weird.

Even within spaces that clearly invited me, there were plenty of social hoops to jump.

Apparently, just existing as I am sets off alarm bells.

And eventually, I realized that doing my most authentic creative work requires me to push back against gender madness.

So, I’d rather make myself loud and clear.