Catch My Breath or: Racism vs. Brotherhood, Sisterhood, Equality

Last year I opened up to share my philosophy of ethics in friendship and sexuality. I wrote one essay, Superpowers Against Patriarchy, subtitled, Feminism vs. Misogyny or: Narcissism, Perfectionism, and Capitalism vs. Vulnerability, Hedonism, and Sloth that was a great personal success to express these thoughts, many of which- full disclosure- developed through sharp, often painful observations of my own intimate relationships of various kinds, with lovers but also friends and family members of multiple genders.

Yet my head was far from clear of pressing thoughts struggling for expression. It is my ethos to continually impress the importance of communication. How? This is what I consider constantly as an artist and it’s what I practice especially with my writing.

But here is something critical I have thus far not included enough, if not left out. I have failed to point out the urgency of our situation, mine, not only as a woman, but as a human being, as a person of color, as a Black American. Related (by blood, you could say) to misogyny, ubiquitous and (for me, and most of the world’s people, at least) deeply personal, lies racism.

Racism, like misogyny– AKA sexism, patriarchy, rape culture, etc.– has many names. In Europe, where I live a semi-nomadic life, racism is more easily recognizable as xenophobia. Xenophobia from the Greek means fear of others, or fear of the other. That’s a great place to start my deconstruction, for that fear of what is “other” is the taproot, old twisted gnarled and dying of both racism AND sexism. That cis-male, white, able-bodied, hetereosexual, person in or with power or property (see “property is theft!”) fear of an/y other, one perceived or judged not like him and, therefore, according to his own thumb-up-his-ass logic (the logic of the Western world), inferior. This so-deemed beneath (eg global South) or less than (ie poor) populous, a multitude of various individuals and identities that purportedly lack the preferred labels, differing in any way from his identification(=value) system, includes women (of all ethnicities) and people of color (of all genders), prominently.

He– it is usually he– believes, erroneously, that due to his ownership– defended by threat of violence– and self-identification, the…