what’s in a name?

If you were to ask me to list all of the things I identify as — “black”, “woman”, “queer”, “writer”, etc., I think the word “feminist” would follow sometime after the word “tall”. “Feminist” is not an identifier I readily think of as something that defines me. This is not because I don’t believe in a movement that combats the subjugation and devaluing of women globally. Or because I’m not forced to face the devaluing of my own womanhood on a daily basis. I don’t even think it’s because of the history of feminism as a movement that centers the issues of middle-class straight white women, although that may be a contributing factor.

I think my disconnect from the word “feminism” is that it feels like it forces a singularity. I am “woman and”, rather than both of my identities of blackness and womanhood existing simultaneously. I think in a way, I have “chosen” blackness. This is because when I am around black people, I am black and a woman. When I step outside of my community, I feel like I have to choose. In the eyes of “women of color” I am a woman. In front of “white women”, I am black. It is only in black spaces that I feel like both of these identities can inform and live together, especially in the presence of other black women.  I identify more with the idea that I am a black person who is a woman, than a woman who is black.

That being said, I don’t see blackness as something above my womanhood. The spaces I seek out and participate in are those that center black womanhood. The relationships with women I prioritize are with other black women and femmes, not black men. If I were to identify as something relating to radical work to uplift women, I would identify as a “womanist”, like Alice Walker. In her words explaining womanism, she states that a womanist is someone who is: “A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility … and women’s strength. … Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people”. Like Walker, I believe in black women’s, and women of color’s, socialization of being a site of care and healing as possessing profound tools to heal the world and ourselves.This is what i would also use for the radical women of the 1970s/80s.

Even so, I feel like my activism is something I live, not something I necessarily have to name. In that, I would identify as a black woman who prioritizes the healing and care of other black women. I don’t find that the naming of “feminism” makes others more visible to me. Instead, it makes those who carry the values and beliefs I do about radical healing invisible to me. The word “Feminist” groups us all together, making it unclear what we all stand for.