by t.d. mcinnis

As a queer, black, woke womxn graduate student at a private, majority-white institution, you will only awaken further—you will, in fact, have trouble sleeping. You will excel just enough to be seen, but you will always know that your visibility, the mere tolerance of you, is contingent on your silence. Should you speak—when you speak—you will be ignored, talked over, challenged, laughed off, or worse, deified as the only one who can relieve the white guilt of faculty, administrators, graduate students. Please, they will say without saying, tell me that I am good.

You will realize quickly that you cannot give them the satisfaction; you would be lying. Whether you lie or devastate them with a truth they will quickly explain away, they will never let you be. They will email you syllabi on their classes about race and stare at you, seeking your approval. They will talk condescendingly about the other whites who are not as good as they are.
They will read Baldwin, Coates, Hurston, Morrison and angle their books so that you might see how aggressively they have highlighted the words that they somehow still do not understand. No, you will say, you have not yet read the new Coates book. You will grimace as you watch them feel smug and work to mask their contentment that they are more in touch with Blackness than you are. This, they must believe, is the cure to their white guilt.

They may even read this essay, and share it on Facebook. They may want to talk about it. Already, you are tired of white people intruding on the work you have written, this healing work, that though in part about them, is not meant for them.

When friends ask, you will compare them to parasites that feast on your life force and leave you emaciated. You will reference the scarabs from The Mummy franchise, that wreak havoc beneath your flesh, hiding all the damage they have wrought. They will focus on the skin beneath your eyes, leaving permanent bruises from every microagression, every question, every sympathetic smile.

You will ultimately become distrustful of your white professors (even the allies), your white colleagues, your white friends. You’ll wonder, Is your presence in their life their absolution? On your best days, you can only speculate as to the answer.

You’ll question friendships you once thought pure, genuine. You will burn bridges and hope they will light the way to a better place. You will burn bridges to places you hope to never visit again, cut ties with people you hope to never again encounter.

You will learn the difficult lesson of keeping a healthy distance from white people in your life; you will only trust those who you know will put their bodies between yours and whatever threat the world presents to you as a Black, queer womxn.

In shedding this extra weight, you will have several moments wherein you believe you have lost yourself. You’ll look at yourself in the mirror for hours, just to remind yourself that you still exist. At its worst, your silhouette will start to blur.

At its worst, you will consider heeding the advice of the Black faculty member with shifty eyes: “keep your head down.” You will wonder what manner of trauma she has endured to ask you to remain silent about your own.

You’ll learn that she has advised many of your colleagues in a similar fashion. You will, in this order, resent, forgive, and pray for the students of color who have chosen selective ignorance as their route to survival.

In your third year, when comprehensive exams seem to threaten what remaining stability you have, you will, for a bit, follow this advice. Because you will know but not be able to prove that you have been barred from opportunities because of your race, gender, and sexuality. You will know but not be able to prove that your work is of greater relevance, and use, to the world than that of those who are awarded for their writing within your department. You will know but not be able to prove that the arbitrary rubrics of excellence your department hides behind obfuscate the mechanics of marginalization that bolsters most institutions. Knowing these things, and being powerless to change them, will drive you to self-destructive coping strategies:

You will drink and eat too much.

You will devote (too much) time to learning how to explain these mechanics, the machine of white supremacy, to anyone who will listen.

You will master it so much that people will ask you to do it ad infinitum, and you will fall behind on your own work.

When your advisor tells you that you are falling behind your colleagues, you’ll nod, say thank you, and cry in the stairwell of the old brick building that houses your old white department.

In your shame and embarrassment, you will decide for your survival that it might be best to be quiet. It might be best not to punctuate every sentence with “white supremacy” to remind white academicians on whose backs they stand, that not citing the Black womxn who already wrote the argument they are so proud of is an act of violence.

You will re-commit to your own work, to writing about diversity and anti-blackness in your hometown. To teaching for the future. You will comfort yourself that success will be the best revenge.

You will do so with little to no celebration and affirmation. You will do so after you’ve cultivated a reputation as an angry Black womxn who is aggressively anti-racist. You will do so while internal fellowships and awards are given almost exclusively to the white women in your cohort.

To survive the lack of celebration, the lack of affirmation, you will have to convince yourself that any award from an institution so morally and ethically corrupt would prove that you have failed your life’s work of dismantling white supremacy. You will wonder what kind of life you lead where you must convince yourself that some success is not for you.

Audre Lorde, who you will encounter time and time again throughout your career will call to you during your reading for comprehensive exams. She will meet you where you are, and you will hear her voice in your head, gently telling you to do better. She will remind you that “your silence will not protect you.” Her words will repeat in your mind until you realize how tightly your throat has clenched around all the words you ought to have said.

You will search desperately for and find a community who, like Audre, understands you and encourages you to scream your truth and be brave. They will take you in and take you hiking, dancing, sightseeing, shopping. They will cook for you, cry with you, and affirm you. They will create a space wherein you can be a person with interests besides the white supremacist world to which you are always reacting to in the classroom.

Within this community, you will find, date, and fall in love with a Black womxn who understands, and loves you, and helps you heal. You will relish in the comfort of not having to explain what you have been made to endure.

Over time, your obliterated self-esteem will make it difficult to tell where you end and she begins, and you will rely on her as your only source of joy and fulfillment. Although you will advise your friends on their relationships over cocktails, quoting bell hooks and her reminders of how being “solitary is central to the art of love,” you will gradually, though unknowingly, forget how to be alone. You will fall into codependent patterns that inhibit your growth, and hers.

When you realize that you are seeking her light to shine for you both, you’ll know that you will soon drain her dry. You realize on days that you are both depleted and you expect her to lift you up that you will soon lose her; or rather, that for both your sakes’, you will need to let her go.

When it ends, when you both realize what white supremacy has made of you both, you’ll accept that you must work to survive and heal on your own; that it is not fair or sustainable to rely so heavily and exclusively on another.

You will roam the halls of your department vengefully, snapping at your colleagues and implicitly blaming them for losing what you mistakenly, and harmfully thought was the best thing in your life. It is not that simple, you know, but for a while it will be the only thing that feels right.

You will cry every day, like clockwork. Your dog will curl up near you, knowing when it is time.

You will undertake the work of learning to be alone in a world that has never loved you.

You will have to write down why it is important to be with, and love on, yourself, because when the break up turns sour (they always do) and when you overhear her packing the last box, you will too quickly forget.
You will lay on the floor and bawl while your friends remove every trace of your lover from the home you built together. You will read Rupi Kaur’s “to do list (after the break up)” 112 times. You will wallow for fourteen weeks.

You will return to your dissertation with a vigor that feels metaphysical. You will impress yourself with your writing and you will wonder why things had to fall apart so that this could come together.

You’ll have to remind yourself that you can sleep like a starfish; that there is no need to curl up on the left side of the bed.

When you find that the cure to what ails you is the time alone of which you were so frightened (and sage, lavender oil, crystals, therapy, and countless hours outdoors, preferably by the sea), you will tell your lover that you will take the chain off the door and leave it unlocked for her, should there come a time when you are both ready.

But you will not hold your breath.

You will learn a valuable lesson of radical self-love…and reflecting on the scars no one else can see, you will wonder if there were other ways to learn.

You will sit down to write your manuscript, and find that your need to write against academia has its hands around your throat, over your eyes, so that you cannot think until these words are on the page. You will hope, against hope, that in giving in for just these three pages, you can move on to your work.


t.d. mcinnis is a PhD candidate at an elite Southern university. She hails from Miami, Florida and researches the intersections of and within anti-blackness and diversity in her hometown. Her hobbies include crafting, writing, and reading to a preferred playlist of Beyoncé, Trick Daddy, and 90s R&B.

by Ashleigh Shackelford

Rape culture is a culture in which gender and sexual violence, white supremacist misogyny, and inaccessibility to absolute bodily autonomy are the norm. Rape culture is pervasive within our everyday lives. We often center rape culture dialogues on how to avoid being assaulted or raped rather than telling people to stop being violent.

Rape culture is deeply embedded within our behaviors, our thought processes, our politics, our relationships, and our desires. But we need to dig deeper as a society and within our communities to push the conversation further. In fully addressing rape culture and sexual violence, we need to address that everyone is capable of engaging in sexual violence and/or rape. As frightening, uncomfortable, and disgusting as this reality is, we must address that violence is embedded in the tools we are given to love, to provide intimacy, and to interact with each other. There is no blueprint in which we’ve figured out what true, inherent consent culture looks like.


In addressing this complicated understanding of how rape culture (rather than consent culture) works, this doesn't excuse that most rape and sexual violence is perpetuated and enacted by cisgender straight men. This doesn’t excuse that misogynistic violence stems heavily from patriarchy and toxic forms of masculinity. But how do we move the conversation to push us to critical self-examination and deeper analysis of how violence works within our marginalized communities? How can we start addressing our role and our failures in engaging consent so as to transform our communities away from internalized rape culture politics?

In my navigation of being a queer, agender Black fat femme, I'm still plagued by the reality of rape culture permeating my relationships, my ability to decipher between misogyny and truth, and my own personal politics surrounding my body and autonomy. As someone who's dated primarily masculine-of-center folks, dealing with rape culture politics and misogyny has normally stemmed from my partner.

At the beginning of our relationship, my ex-girlfriend pressured me into telling her how many people I had slept with. I have never in my entire life told anyone how many people I've slept with due to the advice and Black femme power my mom instilled in me. But eventually, I gave in because I loved her and I felt like I owed her my truth. When I finally revealed my past, she broke up with me. We got back together after she calmed down (or rather, temporarily pushed her misogyny aside), but she still held it over my head and her internalized misogyny manifested in multiple ways within our relationship during the time we were together.

Another situation in which a partner's misogyny and rape culture politics violated me was with my ex-boyfriend, who was also 15 years older than me. He not only exploited me and forced me into non-consensual sex work, but he raped me on multiple occasions when I explicitly said I didn’t want to have sex with him. At the time, I didn’t know it was rape. I thought this is what women/femmes were required to do when their partner wanted sex but they didn’t. It took me years to understand that our relationship wasn’t actually a relationship. I was a transaction to this man. He used me, he sold me, he raped me, he disposed of me. The levels of trauma I carry with me because of his violence and exploitation still haunts every relationship I engage in.

Although these examples of my lived violence speak to the reality that rape culture politics affect masculine-of-center folks regardless of gender, sexuality, or race—I want to also share how I've participated in rape culture politics and abuse. This is important if we are to deepen our expectations of consent culture, even for women and femmes who are disportionately affected by sexual violence.


In a more recent relationship, I violated my partner unknowingly. During the first time we engaged in physical intimacy, I assumed that they just wanted to have sex with me. My assumptions were based off my insecurities of being a Black fat femme who is often only seen through the gaze of fetishization or demeaned as someone you can only love in the dark. Of course these assumptions do not excuse my behavior, but they contextualize how limited my understanding of the situation and the consent for this other person was. I was so focused on my own trauma and experience that I never questioned what the situation felt like for my partner at the time.

We were hanging out watching The Adventures of Mary Kate & Ashley and began kissing. Things got heated and we began dry humping. After a while, I guided their hand on my body—on my chest and eventually in my underwear. We went to third base and when it was over, they seemed okay in terms of their demeanor with me. We cuddled and started watching another movie. Mid-movie they stopped everything and said, “I really didn’t want it to go that far tonight.”

My heart sank because I was so confused. I thought they enjoyed it as much as I did. I thought they wanted to be intimate the way I did. But as they continued to tell me how they felt about the situation, I realized I didn’t communicate at all during our hookup. I realized that I relied upon them, a masculine person, to always tell me when they feel uncomfortable because I assume they’re trained to be vocal with their feelings. But my skewed expectations and my trauma don’t excuse that I perpetuated abuse within this interaction with my partner. I didn’t take it well. I made excuses. I felt attacked because how could I be abusive when I’ve been abused, and in ways that seemed incomparable to this situation?

But after reflecting, I realized how fucked up I was in making my abusive behavior about myself instead of my partner. I listened, and then listened some more. I processed, held space, and centered my partner. I apologized. And I committed to changing my behavior around consent and intimacy. I committed to repenting through actively unlearning violence everyday. I committed to never hurting them like that again.

I proactively asked my partner if they wanted me to separate myself from them, and leave the spaces that we both frequent to give them a decision in how they heal and navigate the pain I caused them. My partner did not want to break up with me though. They wanted me to hold them through it. In addition to carrying their own trauma, my partner was committed to understanding my trauma navigation by offering me the space to be forgiven and to grow. They still wanted to love me while holding me accountable, no matter how uncomfortable it got.

I understand that this situation does not happen all the time. Sometimes our partners or folks we engage in physical intimacy with are abusive in ways that do not warrant us to give them space to grow, but instead traumatize us beyond repair. Sometimes we violate our partners and we are not forgiven or allowed back in their lives. Sometimes our partners become violent to the point that we can’t engage in a conversation with them about what makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes our relationships mirror dysfunction and trauma on new levels that we don’t have the language to unpack or decipher in order to address our feelings around it. But sometimes we can find transformative ways to address violence in our relationships that allow for us to move through trauma instead of circumventing or perpetuating it.
Recently an article written by Kai Cheng Thom, titled "9 Ways to Be Accountable When You’ve Been Abusive," was published on Everyday Feminism. It beautifully illustrated something that we rarely talk about: survivors can be abusers. Often we center our trauma, our survival stories, and our pain so much so that when we hurt other people because of our own trauma, we are almost permitted to justify it because the origin of our trauma was never our fault. But ultimately, that maintains a cycle of trauma in our communities. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If we continue to use our trauma to avoid accountability, none of us will ever be free to move through our trauma to heal. If we maintain this idea that our trauma limits the harm we can do to others, especially to our partners or loved ones, we will never be free to break the cycles of trauma that white supremacist violence has manifested within our minds, our politics, and our behaviors. We must acknowledge that we have the power to harm others regardless of our pain and experiences.

Envisioning the future of consent culture means we must acknowledge the fact that we can be knowingly and unknowingly violent, abusive, or non-communicative with the people we engage with. Consent culture also means unpacking the intersections of agency and body autonomy when it comes to race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and size. The culture we build around consent must go beyond the bedroom and private spaces. We need to politicize access to bodies through touching other people without asking them, touching someone’s hair, asking about someone’s sexuality or gender, interrogating bodies who we deem as “Other,” and so forth. Consent culture means we are inherently holding space and agency for all people to exist freely without persecution or infringement upon their autonomy. Consent culture means we are accountable to our communities and to ourselves in upholding inherent body autonomy for everyone.

Author’s Note: I was given permission by my partner to write about the experience I had in perpetuating abuse within my relationship prior to publishing this.

Photo: Shutterstock

Ashleigh Shackelford is a queer, agender Black fat femme writer, artist, and cultural producer. Ashleigh is a contributing writer at For Harriet, a community organizer at Black Future, and the creator of a body positivity organization Free Figure Revolution. She is a Ratchet Black Feminist dedicated to dismantling anti-Blackness. Read more at BlackFatFemme.com.

Today, and everyday, I am thinking about what it means to engage in transformative, Black queer love.

Engaging in queer black love means not only surviving your own trauma, but holding the paralleled trauma of your partner and navigating the ways in which that trauma collides. In existing, navigating, and surviving as queer Black folks within a white supremacist patriarchy, it feels impossible to heal our own selves, yet alone offer healing to each other. In seeing each other, holding each other, and loving each other, we must engage in community practice and dialogue around what transformative love looks like beyond survival. Revolutionary Black love is often praised within our organizing and activist spaces, yet rarely engaged in practice enough to garner understanding of how our mental health, political growth, and prospering are cultivated within our intimate partnerships.

by Ashleigh Shackelford

by Jasmine Alvarez

About two months ago my boo and I decided to go see the movie Dope. As Black queer women, we were excited to see a movie with an all Black cast, an authentically Black storyline, and of course A QUEER BLACK GIRL CHARACTER. How could this movie not be freaking amazing?????? Welp, unfortunately there was something that really ruined the entire film for me, and yes it has everything to do with the queer character, Diggy. (Warning: major spoiler alert ahead.)