Misogynoir but Make it Concern

I put my hand on the doorknob and looked up to see him, loading clothes into a machine. My mouth gravitated toward the ground as I stepped inside the laundry room. He was trying to make small talk with me; I kept my replies short and distant.

“I’ve been going through a lot right now. Whenever you need someone, it’s like they're never there. It’s a shame.”

“Right.”

“You know the rent's due today and I haven’t been able to pay it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah so if you ever want to talk about any problems going on, I know you have your own stuff to worry about, you can always stop by. We are neighbors.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

If there’s anything that every man of any race has, it’s the nerve and the audacity. Part of me thinks this was a deliberate scheme yet that probably gives him too much credit. But what else could explain him asking me to perform emotional (possibly other forms of) labor right after stirring up trouble for me?

For the past six weeks or so, I’ve been leaving my apartment after I get off from work around 8-9pm. I lied to my mom and told her I was walking around the building when I was really smoking. She hassles me about it but that makes my nerves bad which leads me to smoke more. Anyway, I went to my next-door neighbor Gemini* to buy some weed. When I knocked on his door, the neighbor on the other side of Gemini opened his door, saw me and closed it. I went into Gemini’s apartment for 90 seconds at the most and left.

Ever since my mom’s been interrogating me about where I’m going or who I’m going out to see. At first, I just brushed it off but it eventually got to the point where she would yell at me for being “selfish and foolish.”

“The people in this building are nosy,” she said. “They’re always talking about somebody.” Then one night after I came inside she said, “I hope you're using birth control.”

I got so angry! I asked what would make her 1) say something like that to me 2) think I’d be out fucking random people? After an exhausting discussion, it was all about her not knowing where I go or what I’m doing when I leave. It hit me that my mom implied that I must be doing something so shameful that I couldn’t just tell her about it, which confused me. Sex isn’t shameful. I’m 24 years old and I'm pretty sure my mom knows I'm not a virgin. So what if I was getting my back broke, as long as I'm practicing safe sex, what's the problem? To her, it's very selfish of me to have a baby right now so that my mom would have to take care of her grandchild. This is her conveniently ignoring all the times I've told her that I don’t really see myself getting married and if I do, I don’t want kids. Because what woman or vulva having person wouldn’t want to perform their biological function?

I was so upset at being accused of something I truly wasn’t doing, upset that my mom knows so little about me to jump to such a specific conclusion and upset that this entire debacle demonizes me for wanting to perform a natural act that consenting adults enjoy. I was even more upset that my late 40 something-year-old neighbor can ask me to go back to his apartment right after snitching to my mom about how I briefly went into another man’s apartment and upset that my own mom placed the responsibility of declining the invitation on me and not him! I was upset that I had to be surveilled like a precious gemstone that must avoid getting soiled while older men had the freedom to prey on younger women. And what upset me the most was that I'm responsible for whatever worst case scenario my mom imagined because she wasn’t reacting to what has actually happened, so how could I possibly resolve this?

I could stop interacting with my neighbors altogether but I can't just throw my mom away. I gotta find a way to love her despite her internalized misogyny. What about Gemini? He could be as much of a victim as I am yet this rumor doesn’t make him look bad. For men, this kind of talk makes them look and feel good. And what about the snitch, who could’ve gained from all this drama by saving the damsel from the distress that he caused? It's totally possible that he didn’t say anything and all of this is a coincidence of perfect timing but does it matter? He doesn’t carry enough weight in my life for me to seek out his side of the story. Even if his intentions weren’t malicious, would that change what happened? Would I actually want someone twice my age with loose lips around me? Absolutely not. Besides, he was trying to trauma bond with me. That by itself is a huge red flag.

I've discussed misogyny and misogynoir on youtube and twitter a lot but this episode really demonstrated the difference between the two. White feminism is about giving women the freedom to rebel against how femininity was defined by whiteness; to be unladylike and explorative of sexuality. As a Black woman, that same freedom sought by white women binds and entraps me. I'm assumed and expected to be sexually free and lacking innocence and fragility. I'm treated as if being prude isn’t possible for me. My womanism is a tight rope where I avoid falling into respectability politics and internalized misogyny. Instead of having to prove to the world that I have sexuality to flaunt, I have to prove that I deserve the respect of a Madonna. I’m seen as a hoe who insists that I’m not actually a hoe but keeps reminding folks that’s there’s nothing morally wrong about hoeing. All this emotional labor over a man whose name I don’t even know, just to protect the image strangers have of me in their heads. This is why people cry if the gender of a fetus is revealed to be female; its tears of frustration and exhaustion wrapped up in a pink bow of concern.