HOT TAKE: you could do all the therapy and healing in the world but if you don’t have financial security, your nervous system will always feel unregulated.
ppl genuinely believe they have the right to restrict the autonomy of other ppl down to what they’re allowed to even THINK AND FEEL& are simultaneously refusing to draw the very short line from there to the way WOMENS autonomy has specifically and systematically been destroyed
So much style discourse (and maybe other discourse but definitely style and shopping) online comes from people wanting to outsource the long and sometimes difficult process of figuring out what exactly they personally need and want from their clothes.
harriet jacobs’s question “Why does the slave ever love?” genuinely stopped me in my tracks. and for that question to follow an extended illustration of the sexual violence she faced is a powerful rhetorical move
‘We are aware of the many reasons
To fall apart
To break apart
To never rise again
But we have lived in the glory
Of standing with our face
Towards the sun
Again and again.’
— Ijeoma Umebinyuo
Technology Facilitated Violence against Women is a real thing.
Tons and tons of research have been published.
An extension of traditional misogyny into digital spaces.
all i will say is that with the way nigerian women are groomed to center their lives around marriage, be very wary of a twice divorced nigerian man. as per not one but two nigerian women experienced him and said nope? it's better for you to marry lucifer tbh
I sometimes suggest folks to tell their doctor they would prefer to insert the speculum themselves for an exam, and see docs reaction. That’ll tell you all you need to know about their reproductive health framework.
Some years ago I wrote that African politicians can loot state coffers and once in while, organize a charity event. And people will still celebrate them and say “well at least he is a generous thief”.
That is how most of our first ladies on this continent became distributors of sanitary pads and plastic buckets in so-called charity activities, handing back crumbs of what was stolen from the very people receiving them, and being applauded for the generosity of the gesture.
I realised today that the exact same logic applies to foreign powers looting our resources. They can extract hundreds of billions over decades, assassinate our leaders, control our currencies, poison our waters and then return with a token pledge of meager investments at a summit they organised to rehabilitate their own image, and people will say: “well, at least they were kind enough to host the event here because hotels were sold out”.
When you have been conditioned long enough to expect nothing, a crumb looks like a banquet.