{"id":125,"date":"2015-10-01T12:45:23","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T12:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=125"},"modified":"2015-10-01T12:45:23","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T12:45:23","slug":"immediate-cause-obscene-questions-and-chris-brown-sympathizers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"Immediate Cause: Obscene Questions and Chris Brown Sympathizers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shange\u2019s \u201cwith no immediate cause\u201d in <\/span>nappy edges<\/span><\/i> is powerful and effective in ridiculing rape culture, wherein people downplay the horrible and frequent violences occurring to women. <\/span><\/p>\n

For me, the structure of the poem in how it paces how I read it is most powerful. Accustomed to hearing grave statistics in speeches, commercials, and other daily mediums, I read,<\/span><\/p>\n

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten<\/p>\n

every five minutes a<\/p>\n

woman is raped \/ every ten minutes<\/p>\n

a lil girl is molested<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

slowly and with a great pause at the end of each statistic. Shange quickens my reading by following the statistics with a smooth narration of how she encounters these statistics daily in microagressive ways. By smooth I mean that these narrations can be read quickly and easily while still capturing fully what she is saying (which is definitely not always true with Shange\u2019s work). Shange then repeats this sequence of reading pace by slowing down the reader through repeating the statistics and then quickening the reader\u2019s pace through including another narration of violence against women. She repeats this process twice more with perhaps even more graphic instances of violence each time to indicate an overall speeding up in the poem. The height of her poem is reached with the following rhetorical questions, <\/span><\/p>\n

before i ride the subway\/buy a paper\/drink<\/span><\/p>\n

coffee\/i must know\/<\/span><\/p>\n

have you hurt a woman today<\/span><\/p>\n

did you beat a woman today<\/span><\/p>\n

throw a child across a room<\/span><\/p>\n

are the lil girl\u2019s panties<\/span><\/p>\n

in yr pocket<\/span><\/p>\n

i have to ask these obscene questions<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can feel the urgency and desperation in her voice through these \u201cobscene\u201d questions. Especially in the context of patriarchy and rape culture where women are many times dismissed for their fears and the violences occurring to them, these questions are unsettling because they are both outrageous and familiar at the same time. Women have constantly expressed concern over these violences but are dismissed daily by the law, the media, and their community. Shange effectively draws the truth and gravity out of these violences through embedding these outrageous yet familiar concerns in the statistics and narrations. <\/span><\/p>\n

Reading this poem reminded me of a <\/span>Crunk Feminist Collective <\/span><\/i>piece I read last year, titled \u201cHow Chris Brown is Effing Up My Sex Life: A B-Side to Dating While Feminist.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The author describes her internal conflict of having sexual and intimate relations with men who do not have the same intentional gender politics as she does. Specifically, she cites an instance where she found out that her partner was a Chris Brown sympathizer and therefore she had to reevaluate her standards. She grapples with the question, <\/span><\/p>\n

Can<\/span><\/i> you be a good feminist if you have intimate engagements with partners who have diametrically opposed gender politics?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This author uses the same tactic of narrating her relationship and other instances in her life where she had to confront this conflict and then climaxing with a series of outrageous yet familiar questions:<\/span><\/p>\n

In a culture where sisters are dying in alarming numbers from domestic violence, what responsibility do I have to them and to myself to choose intimate partners whose thinking and actions are sound on these matters?<\/span><\/p>\n

To what extent is and should my sex life be political?<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean <\/span>should <\/span><\/i>I withhold sex from dudes with sexist attitudes as an act of solidarity with my sisters?<\/span><\/p>\n

How can I get next to you if I can\u2019t get next to your politics?<\/span><\/p>\n

How can I let you touch me if I wouldn\u2019t touch your politics with a ten foot pole?<\/span><\/p>\n

Can I feel safe in the softness of your touch if you don\u2019t feel led to question a culture where other men routinely touch other women violently?<\/span><\/p>\n

Can we really cuddle if you have the option to not care about women and violence?<\/span><\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that choice, the choice to not care about how the world affects the woman you\u2019re spending time with, a violent one?<\/span><\/p>\n

How can I trust you to hold me when your beliefs hold me down?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Having read \u201cThe Art of Transformation: Parallels in the Black Arts and Feminist Art Movements\u201d by Lisa Gail Collins and therefore understanding the crucial role Shange played and continues to play in bridging the Black Power and Women\u2019s Liberation movement for black women makes this even more relevant. The <\/span>Crunk Feminist Collective <\/span><\/i>author pays homage to the black women before her who also bridged these movements:<\/span><\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be the first time that Black women withheld sex from Black men in service of larger racial interests. After the Civil War, Black men (but not Black women) could vote for a few brief years. Back then, most Black folks voted Republican as they were the more liberal party at the time and the party of Abraham Lincoln. But there were times when some Black men determined to vote Democrat so they wouldn\u2019t be the target of white racial backlash. In addition to accompanying their men to the polls to monitor their votes, Black women banded together and encouraged each other to withhold sex from any man who voted against the community\u2019s interests. These sisters knew how personal the political was long before white women said it. They knew that when it comes to Black women\u2019s quality of life, there is nothing more political or personal than the person we\u2019re sleeping with.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

nappy edges <\/span><\/i>was published in 1978, this article in 2011. Black women are still grappling with these internal conflicts today but we must show love to Shange for being a visionary of her time to vocalize the intersectionalities and realities of black women. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shange\u2019s \u201cwith no immediate cause\u201d in nappy edges is powerful and effective in ridiculing rape culture, wherein people downplay the horrible and frequent violences occurring to women. For me, the structure of the poem in how it paces how I read it is most powerful. Accustomed to hearing grave statistics in speeches, commercials, and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,1],"tags":[30,32,35,20,38,36,34,37,33],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogposts","category-classes","category-uncategorized","tag-blogpost-2","tag-crunk-feminist-collective","tag-intimate-partner-violence","tag-nappy-edges","tag-personal-is-political","tag-rape-culture","tag-relationships-with-men","tag-violence-against-women","tag-with-no-immediate-cause"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}