mind body mama: Girl Power

So it came to pass that one of my feminist process groups had a discussion about the use of the word “girl” in the original name of our group.

One of the two African American members of the group initiated the conversation with an eloquent email. She started her sentences with phrases like, “In my community…” and “In my experience….”

The gist of her message was, “This feels really crappy to me and I’d like us to change the name.”

And so we did.

In the process, I noticed something.

I realized that I had never felt completely comfortable with the name of the group myself. The use of the word “girl” didn’t sit right with me, but I wasn’t entirely sure why. It felt somewhat anti-feminist to call a group of adult, professional women children.

It was the kind of thing the old school lesbian separatist feminists would not have liked. I thought of the thirty-year-old feminist vegetarian restaurant where the collective members call the patrons, “Women.” As in, “You women can sit by the window.” Because they don’t know our names and won’t call us “You guys,” or “You ladies,” as in the vernacular. They always call us, “Women.”

I thought of all of this. I felt uncomfortable with the word choice.

I didn’t say anything.

When my colleague described the way the word “girl” has been used derogatorily by non-Black people towards Black women in this country, I knew exactly what she was talking about. I hadn’t thought of it myself, but I got it.

About one hundred years ago when I was an undergraduate, I studied at the City University of New York. The student body of my college—Hunter College—was, at that time, over eighty-percent African-American women. The other twenty percent were not exclusively suburban blue collar middle class white lesbians.

Which is to say: the story of my undergraduate experience is the story of being different than those around me.

It is also to say: I had the incredible privilege to study feminism in a setting that was primarily Black.

By grace, I listened a lot as my classmates told their stories. I read a lot about the African American experience. I took in a lot of information about experiences other than my own. I learned to see the dominant culture and name things that had been as invisible to me as air: racism, classism, imperialism. I learned a feminism that assumes racial and economic justice as bedrock, not as secondary concerns in a hierarchy of oppressions.

So last month, when my colleague described how and why Black people have been called “boy” or “girl,” and how that nomenclature has been a tool of oppression, it was not new information to me. When she described her personal, visceral experience of having been called “girl” by the “rich, White ladies” for whom she worked, my heart hurt and I felt angry. When she suggested that we might not want her and the other Black women in our group to relive that oppression, that historic or personal memory, through our work and our name, I agreed immediately.

But it reminded me of the canary in the coal mine: the one who gets hit first, and hardest, by the deadly toxic fumes. The choice of the word “girl” for our group felt wrong to me. I had a scritchy awareness that something wasn’t right, the way you might notice a bad smell when you enter a room. But if you ignore it a while it becomes familiar and inoffensive; it requires no action.

But to my African-American colleague, for whom the language choice raised personal and community experiences of racism, it wasn’t a bad smell—it was a toxic cloud. While I was sniffing and saying, “Hmmm, smells funny here, huh?” she was falling onto the ground clutching her throat and coughing, “Ack, ack, ack!”

Does this mean that we are responsible to know in advance anytime our choice of language might translate to an experience of oppression for someone whose experiences are different than ours? I hope not. Because I know I’ll forget again. I might not forget this one, but I’ll miss something else—something completely obviously offensive to someone who’s lived a different experience than I have.

What I hope I’ll remember is how easy it was for me to brush off my own initial discomfort. How easy it was for me to discount the sexism inherent in calling adults by the childish descriptor, and how hard it was for me to access my own understanding of the racist echo. I had to be reminded—even though it was not new information; even though I had already heard many such stories.

I hope I’ll remember that the person living any given oppression is the expert therein; it is terribly hard to imagine ourselves into one another’s experience, even with good and large hearts. I hope that I’ll remember this when my straight or privileged-class or male allies tolerate the bad smell of language or action that feels like it’s killing me, and I hope I’ll have a fraction of my colleague’s dignity and wisdom with which to explain it to them. I hope that I’ll remember this when something feels scritchy but tolerable to me: that I can be a better advocate for myself and others if I speak up.