Upcoming Event - Part Two: Is There Really A Black Feminist Movement? On Diasporic Black Trans Politics, Praxes, and Perspectives
Left to right: Black American activist, Pauli Murray; Afro-Brazilian activist, Alessandra Ramos.
By Black Women Radicals
Join us for Part Two of “Is There Really A Black Feminist Movement.”
On Thursday, August 29th at 6:30 PM EST, join us for Part Two of “Is There Really A Black Feminist Movement?”, a four-part online series that serves as a political provocation to discuss the convergences and divergences of Black feminist movements and politics. Part Two of the series focuses on Diasporic Black Trans Politics, Praxes, and Perspectives. Featured panelists include eli berry – st. john, D’andrea Gates-Riley, Renae Green, and Nala Simone Toussaint.
Register for Part Two of the series here: https://bit.ly/PartTwoBlackFeministMovement
Watch Part One of the series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X49-c4YqIo
ASL Interpretation Provided. The Event Will Be Recorded.
This series comes from the question –– “Is there really a Black feminist movement?” –– that was posed by Black Women Radicals’ executive director and founder, Jaimee A. Swift, during our Black Feminism Lives! Summit in August 2023. The question was met with much conversation from panelists and audience members alike, with some believing that there is a movement and others vehemently expressing there is not one.
Rooted in bell hooks’ critique of Black feminist essentialism in the chapter, “Revolutionary Black Women: Making Ourselves Subject” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992) and Audre Lorde’s essay, “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger” (1984), the mission of the series is to learn and embrace Black feminist difference; analyze the power of Black feminist organizing, both past and present; and to discuss the ruptures, silences, betrayals, hurt, and even harm that are perpetuated in our work to ensure the strength, sustainability, and possibilities of our Black feminist world building.
About Part Two of the Series: Part Two of the series – Diasporic Black Trans Politics, Praxes, and Perspectives – examines the power of global Black trans feminist knowledge, political, and cultural productions as central, critical, and integral to Black feminisms. From Xica Manicongo to Pauli Murray, to Alessandra Ramos to Sharon Davis and Rummie Quintero Verdú, to Marsha P. Johnson and Jazzie Collins, we know and understand that Black trans communities have always been at the vanguard of Black feminist movement building. Moreover, we know that Black trans organizers, educators, activists, and more have radicalized and transformed Black feminist politics, and ultimately, are foundational to historical, contemporary, and the futurity of Black feminisms, as theories, movements, embodiments, and practices.
However, if we (those who identify as radical and revolutionary Black feminists) know and understand the information above, then why do many of us still adhere to Black feminist theories and practices that advance bio-essentialism, racialized gender binaries, and anti-trans radical feminisms? On discourses on state, structural, and symbolic violence and knowledge and political productions, why, in 2024, are we still stuck in the phase of centering cis-heteronormativity and gender essentialism, which we know are oppressive and impediments to our liberation? How do we move beyond inclusion, integration, and performativity to political inherency, where Black trans feminisms are not seen as “addendums” but as central, foundational, and inherent to Black feminisms? These questions –– and more — serve as the political provocations of this event and beyond.
