Thursday, July 23, 2015

Esther Armah's Emotional Justice


#‎SandraBland‬. Fear Masquerading as Opinion, This Most Toxic Masculinity
Words. Her tone. She did sound irritated. Why didn't she just put out her cigarette? Who talks back to a cop like that? Some Black men on social media pages standing on broken hearts, dripping judgment, criticism, respectability politics all over Sandra Bland's barely buried black woman body. Wagging toxic masculinity fingers' in sisters' faces via their threads; lecturing, hectoring, censuring. And we ask you to stop. You don't. We ask again. You insist. We remind you of the issue, not your ego. You keep going. Even in grief, we reach for you with kind words. You won't stop. We get mad. You chastize. Why can't you just say you're scared? That you have no idea what to do. What would it mean to say you're scared? You don't know how to be kind when you're scared. You don't know how to be loving when you feel paralyzed. So, be silent. But be here. We should be in this together. Stand beside us if you are unable to comfort us or yourself. But you don't. You enter threads with 'I'm just offering my opinion'. You're not, you're lying. And you're hurting us. Doing this dance of 'she should have' when the single soundtrack is of black women's tears, is painful. You're taking up space where tears are being shed. You're practicing that worst trait of this most toxic masculinity - the expectation that broken hearts, stunned minds, illiterate with trauma and grief should abandon every fibre of feeling in bruised spirits and molested souls and listen to your poison, tend to your wack ass, acknowledge you are right. Stand the fuck down. ‪#‎emotionaljustice‬

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