October 20, 2016

Violation and Making The Road By Walking It by Zoë Flowers

October 20, 2016/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Content Notice: The purpose of the #LoveWITHAccountability forum on T he Feminist Wire and project is to prioritize child sexual abuse, healing, and justice in national dialogues and work on racial justice and gender-based violence. Several of the featured articles in this forum give an in-depth and, at times, graphic examination of rape, molestation, and other forms of sexual harm against diasporic Black children through the experiences and work of survivors and advocates. The articles also offer visions and strategies for how we can humanely move towards co-creating a world without violence. Please take care of yourself while reading.

By Zoë Flowers

“Those were my favorite shorts. Blue with a white strip down the side”

One: Violation

When I was a little girl, my grandparents’ house was like a castle. It was a Victorian style home with many oddly shaped rooms. Because my parents worked, they would send me to my grandmother’s house every summer. I spent most of my time either reading or playing in the backyard.

My grandmother’s backyard was massive. It had huge oak trees and wildflowers that grew in all directions. It was my magical kingdom. My older cousins hated getting dirty; so, I had the yard all to myself. It was just me, the ladybugs, and the frogs. On hot days, I’d run through the sprinkler, and then collapse on the dirt, letting the sun beat down on my drenched body.

After a while, I’d reluctantly return to the house damp and covered in dirt.

Nighttime was the only time my cousins and I played together. We would play hide and seek, truth or dare, anything we weren’t supposed to do. As soon as my grandmother went to bed, we’d go out and play.

My grandmother was not as strict as my parents were. Her main restriction was on laziness and boredom. I’m from a traditional West Indian family that firmly believed that idle hands were the devil’s playground. Laziness was a trait she would not tolerate and was reason enough for a swat across the legs. In her eyes, children had no reason to be bored – ever. If she caught us lying around, she would find something for us to do. There were always dishes to wash, rooms to clean or books to read. That was another good reason for me to stay outside.

Physically, my grandmother was a very attractive woman. People who met her could not believe she had twelve children and sixteen grandchildren because she had such a youthful glow. She had jet-black hair that she wore in a tight bun. At night, she would let it down and I would brush it out for her. It was long and soft. She was a bigged-boned woman who was effortlessly gentle…until she wasn’t. Her dark eyes were often steady and they seemed laser-like when she regaled me with stories about growing up in Jamaica. Her stories were not for my entertainment. They always had some moral that related back to the necessity of being an obedient child. She’d talk/lecture to me for hours while I braided her thick black hair. Still, our ritual was the one chore that I didn’t mind.

Most of my relatives lived very close or visited her often. The house was never empty. Food was always on the stove with grandmother standing over it. She didn’t drink but everyone else in the house did. Liquor was a constant in my family. The adults could always count on getting a drink, a meal and good conversation. There were many nights that I’d sneak out of bed, sit at the top of the stairs and listen to the grown-ups. I loved listening to their loud voices debating, arguing and making fun of one another, often drowning out both the television and stereo. At times, it was difficult to know if they were arguing or joking.

One of my favorite people in that house was my “uncle”. He was different from my other relatives. I could talk to him. No matter what the question, he would answer it honestly. Like my grandmother, my other relatives believed children should be seen and not heard. He wasn’t like that. I thought my uncle knew everything; he’d been to places I’d never even heard of.

He and my “aunt” lived with my grandmother for as long as I could remember. In almost all of their pictures there were exotic women flocked around him. His pictures portrayed a confident young man, tall and muscular with a smooth dark complexion and dark curly hair. I guess he would have been considered attractive in his day, but for as long as I can remember, he’d been old and wrinkled. The only remnant of the young man in the pictures was the mischievous twinkle that never left his eyes.

I was seven years old the first time he fondled me. It was a typical day. It was summer. The adults were in the kitchen laughing and enjoying each other like they always did. He called me in his room. We’d often play checkers or dominoes, which we played to the death. He never let me win; he said it was not good for children, especially women, to get special treatment. I raced up the stairs as I always did. When I got in the room, the board was not in its usual place. I asked him where it was, and he told me it was under the bed. I remember getting down on all fours looking for the game. Suddenly, I felt his fingers frantically tugging at my shorts. They were my favorite shorts. They were blue with a white stripe down the side (Blue has always been my favorite color). They were tight but I loved them so much. I maneuvered myself around and looked at him as he pulled me toward him and clamped his hand over my mouth. I was a chunky kid. The shorts were tight. He was having a hard time getting his fingers in. I didn’t know what was happening. I can’t remember if I knew it was wrong. I can’t remember if I wanted to get away. I just remember him saying, “Shh,” in that raspy voice of his. I remember he was almost smiling. One of his hands stayed on my mouth while he penetrated me with the other. After it was over, I went back downstairs. Everyone was still there. The party hadn’t skipped a bit.

I didn’t remember anything until my early twenties. All the painful memories flooded in on me on an ordinary day. I was driving home….nothing major…then all of a sudden I remembered. I never told my family. I knew they’d believed me but I didn’t think they could handle it. So, like so many other things I kept it to myself. I have not shared this story with anyone….until today.

“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible.” bell hooks

Two: Making The Road By Walking It

The question of accountability as a radical form of love makes me think about my childhood and how many children of my generation were raised. To me, linking punishment, accountability and love is not a new concept. Many of us were told we were being spanked out of love. And lots of people still believe and enact various forms of punishment to keep children in line “out of love.” So for me, it’s not about people’s inability to make the leap between accountability and love. It’s about whose well-being is valued in our society and whose is not. I can’t talk about transforming societal understanding accountability as a radical form of love until society begins addressing the impact of adult privilege effectively.

To me, accountability would look like no statute of limitations on child sexual assault (CSA) anywhere in the US. As a society, how can we say we care about children and not do everything in our power protect them, their childhood and their right to move unmolested through the world? How we can say they’re our future when many are not safe at home, school, on the sports field, or in church?

Accountability is believing children when they share that they’ve been harmed. It looks like:

Not re-traumatizing them by forcing them sit at holiday tables with their abuser and acting like that is normal.
Not giving the girls strategies to “protect” themselves around the known abuser and then praying that the tactics work.
Acknowledging that boys get raped too.
Not protecting the abuser because he is a man of color.
Having difficult conversations with family and friends. I’ve had to have conversations like, “I know he’s your favorite singer etc. but he has a history of x,y&z. Don’t you think that’s a problem? Why would you support him financially?”

Accountability looks like creating environments where children feel safe to disclose. And training for parents on how to deal effectively with them when they do. Accountability looks like communities of color addressing mental and emotional illness from multiple perspectives. When I think about the girl who says her mother’s partner is abusing her and the mother essentially says, “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m staying.” That is a woman that may have been abused. How can we talk to her about holding her partner accountable if she’s been dissociated for years? Will what we’re asking her to do even register? She may even think, “Hell, I got over it. She can too.” Families need mental, emotional and energetic healing to heal patterns like these.

When people come to me for Reiki, they come with all the consequences of a society that prioritizes the needs of adults over children. The trauma of parents who made a decision not to make a decision is lodged in the cells of the people I treat. There are more wounded children masquerading as adults than folks might think. Those “child/adults” then go on to have children of their own and the untreated and unacknowledged family trauma is transmitted right into that unborn child.

Holistic healing practices like Reiki, acupuncture, cupping, yoga and other indigenous technologies are often more effective than traditional healing methods (what are the traditional healing methods? I am confused. Perhaps, I’m using indigenous and traditional synonymously) and need to be more readily available in communities of color. These days I am often invited to “hold space” for large groups of people doing difficult work. This Spring I was called into the Black Women’s Blueprint Truth and Reconciliation Commission where Black survivors shared their stories of abuse for an entire day. This is a step in the right direction and it needs to happen more.

Lastly, I believe that healers need to be more vocal and participatory when it comes to issues like domestic violence and CSA. I believe in “praying and watching.” I also think it’s a good thing for healers to demystify themselves. I think it helps when healers lay themselves bare and let folks know that they’ve dealt with some of the same issues in their own lives.

On the question of justice and can we get it without punitive means.. I never intended to involve law enforcement and the courts in my life. However, my ex-partner’s actions made it impossible not to involve them. They were not helpful in my case. In fact, they were the opposite of helpful. Luckily, my artistic voice and following its wisdom saved my emotional and spiritual life after my experiences with domestic and sexual violence. I gained personal power through books, poetry and theatre. I joined the domestic violence movement and funneled my anger, frustration, and hopes into that work. Then my spiritual nature revealed itself and I followed that to a completely new life as a healing artist. So, in some ways I got non-traditional justice.

That said I recognize that many survivors want their day in court. And they should get that. I know the criminal justice system has major problems. And I’d have no problem seeing it overhauled or dismantled. But I don’t see that happening for a very long time and I do not believe we are in the energetic space where punitive justice is no longer an option. We will know that time has come when the needs of all members of our community are prioritized equitably. That’s the reality I envision and that is the world I am working toward.

Zoë Flowers is an author, poet, actress, Reiki Master and seasoned domestic violence expert. Her poetry and essays can be found in Stand Our Ground; Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander, and Dear Sister: Letters From Survivors of Sexual Assault and several online publications.

With almost sixteen years of experience in the domestic violence field, Zoë has appeared on National Public Radio, works nationally and has spoken internationally on the issue of domestic and sexual violence. Zoë worked at several state domestic violence coalitions where she provided training, technical assistance and expertise to local and state domestic violence programs and community partners across the country.

She was one of the original members of the Black Witch Chronicles (BWC) and shared readings, channeled messages to thousands via Facebook and YouTube as part of the trio. She co-created and co-facilitates Solstice SoulShifting with Dr. G. Love also an original member of BWC. This international retreat provides indigenous healing technologies and survivor-centered healing to folks worldwide.

Her book, From Ashes To Angel’s Dust: A Journey Through Womanhood (formerly called Dirty Laundry: Women of Color Speak Up About Dating & Domestic Violence) emerged from interviews Zoë conducted with survivors of domestic and sexual violence and is set for re-release 2017.ASHES is a ChoreoDrama that uses monologues; poetry and vignettes to breathe life into the original stories shared in From Ashes To Angel’s Dust: A Journey Through Womanhood and includes new stories about racism, same sex violence, body image and the journey to self-love.

Zoë wrote, produces and acts in the powerful ensemble piece, which has had successful performances across the country including, The White House’s United State of Women Summit in Washington, DC on June 15, 2016 and at Yale University’s Fearless Conference on April 9th 2016 as part of Zoë’s presentation entitled, Women of Color, Misogynoir, Sexual Assault & Reclaiming Our Magic, a presentation that she will bring to Smith College in April 2017. Zoë looks forward to returning to Yale in January 2017 where she’ll conduct a four month Campus Community Engagement Project entitled, Becoming Magickal: Exploring Healing Through Womanist Performance. Topics will include: poetry & performance, writing yourself “well” historical oppression, the artist as activist, the magick of trauma and ritual as a healing practice. The project will conclude with a weekend run of ASHES that will be performed by Yale’s Heritage Theatre Ensemble on April 7-8, 2017.

October 20, 2016

Unfinished by Dr. Worokya Duncan

October 20, 2016/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Content Notice: The purpose of the #LoveWITHAccountability forum on The Feminist Wire and project is to prioritize child sexual abuse, healing, and justice in national dialogues and work on racial justice and gender-based violence. Several of the featured articles in this forum give an in-depth and, at times, graphic examination of rape, molestation, and other forms of sexual harm against diasporic Black children through the experiences and work of survivors and advocates. The articles also offer visions and strategies for how we can humanely move towards co-creating a world without violence. Please take care of yourself while reading.

By Dr. Worokya Duncan

While growing up in a Black Pentecostal church, I was tacitly trained to view God in a particular way. Like Marcion and his followers, I began to think of the Bible as having two gods- one evil and one loving. Traditionalism and ecclesiastical rules caused me to see Christianity as a religion where pleasure is sin, human desire is automatically not God’s desire, and that do’s and don’ts were of more central value than the complexion of one’s heart. It is not my belief, however, that this indoctrination was purposeful. Certain theologies and hermeneutics that are subscribed to by some Pentecostal churches cause those who are raised/taught under its arm to live in such dogmatic and legalistic bondage.

This alleged legalistic bondage tends to affect every aspect of an individual’s life. Therefore, in several crisis situations, I tended to look at a situation in legal terms rather than realistically. Certain tragedies may be viewed as punishment, or an example of God’s sovereignty, which yet remains to be seen. Feminist, Womanist, and Liberation theology seek to redefine, reform, and realign the way individuals have understood ourselves in light of certain doctrines. These “new” theologies force us to admit the assumptions that are made by theological assertions.

One important example of the distortion and need for reformation is the place given or not given to women survivors of sexual assault- specifically incest, in particular churches. The role that Black women have had to play in the Black church or within Black liberation theology would seem to be non-existent if one would observe many books and theological articles and churches. A blatant sexism that “denies Black women equal opportunity exists in the churches’ major leadership roles (Williams, 1999).” Although Black liberation theology and the so-called Black church are intended to be places of respite from the onslaughts of racism in the greater society, sexism is a form of oppression that is alive and well.

Black ministers have been adamant in preaching against Paul’s sayings concerning slavery andsubmission, but they openly preach about the role of women in a way that sounds only too similar to white patriarchy. In addition, because intellectualism whether theological or otherwise, has been identified with the public sphere (thusly separating it from women), women have been unable (until recently) to speak for themselves. White theology was unable to speak to the concerns of or speak for white women of Black people. It can be concluded, then, that Black theology and a Black church that is written by Black men cannot free or speak in the true interest of Black women.

The key to maintaining any type of power, rather psychological, spiritual, or physical is validation. Validation can either be given tacitly or directly. I believe that the dual silence of the Black church on issues of sexuality and the silence of survivors have given legitimacy to views about sexuality in general, and Black sexuality in particular.

6. That’s how old I was. 6. A super tiny, and very sure-of-myself 6. All of that changed right before my 7th birthday. Everyday after school, I would go to my mom’s job, which was housed in a church- my church. I sat in the stairwell, did my homework, and read a book. This was my schedule. Like clockwork. What I didn’t know, was that someone else was paying very close attention to my schedule, and it wasn’t my mom. He was young. Kind acting in our previous interactions, and I thought, harmless. I didn’t know what grooming was, but I guess that’s what he’d been doing in the months prior. I remember when it started, I was wearing my school uniform, and my hair had a red bow in it. I was reading Charlotte’s Web. I know, that’s not a book a 6-year old would normally read, but I didn’t grow up in a typical household. At any rate, I was reading and he started to touch my knee. I didn’t say anything, and to this day, I don’t know why. Then he started to touch my thigh, and again, I said nothing. I was 6, and grew up in church, and you don’t talk back to your elders, even when what they’re doing feels wrong. Then his fingers moved further up and pushed my panties aside. He inserted two fingers and I finally made a sound. It hurt. I didn’t even know I had a hole there until him. He removed his fingers when he heard me wince, smelled them, and went about his business. He would do this every day until right before my 8th birthday. The way I grew up, bad things happened to people whose faith had wavered, or people who’d committed a horrible sin. I didn’t know which applied to me, but I knew I had to have done something awful for God to allow this to happen to me over and over and over. When I was 14, I found out he’d died of AIDS a few years before. I sat in torment, as back then, there was little we knew about HIV/AIDS. I was convinced I’d contracted it. I said nothing to anyone, including my mother, until I was 16 years old. I told someone in my church because I figured, if the assault happened in church, maybe I could get healing in church too. For me- that was a mistake.

The newest Avengers movie has a scene where Bucky is being held in a cage, of sorts. His captor starts reading of a series of words, and with each progressing word, the audience witnesses a change in Bucky’s eyes and behavior. By the time the last word is spoken, we understand that Bucky was a victim of wartime psychological programming that made him a weapon. All it took was a word to cause him to remember everything of who he was. We were in a youth group one Saturday, and someone said one word, and all of the snippets of memory combined to create a flood. Whereas through the years, I remembered some of what I’d experienced, one word seemed to make more than more than years worth of assault come to the front of my mind, like a record on repeat. I began crying and screaming uncontrollably. They went into spontaneous prayer, because that’s what we were taught to do. When I finally calmed down, the leaders asked me what was wrong. I told them what had happened to me, and their response ripped the band-aid that had been placed over my gaping wound, only to pour salt into it. They quoted Romans 8:28-

All things work together for the good of them that love the Lord.

They said my being molested as a child was equally bad and necessary to make me a symbol of what God could do. They said my emotional turmoil was all part of the process, and that one day, I’d see that. What I thought would begin my healing threw me into pain that for a 16-year old, was unmanageable. What I needed to hear was that God and someone else cared. I knew I’d never receive any kind of legal justice, after all, he was dead. But I needed my church to say something different to me. I needed them to stop pushing a false and harmful theology, espousing violence and pain, specifically sexual violence, as a tool that God- a male God, required to teach lessons to some future people who needed to see how great he was. What about me now? How was my pain going to be addressed? Who was going to show me that God was great, because in my eyes, you can’t have let this happen to me and still be called anything other than a monster. In the church, accountability has to begin with what we say to survivors.

If one is going to use the Bible as the standard in the church, even when speaking of CSA, we have to re-humanize these biblical actors. In the church, accountability admits that churches have sometimes been spaces of harm and not healing. Ministers can use the story of Hagar who was raped and forced to bear a child, or the story of Tamar whose father surrendered her to a crowd to be raped, and subsequently killed, to illustrate the awful, gut-wrenching, mind-fracturing, and body-breaking pain CSA survivors encounter during the act and in the after-math, because the healing does not end. The flashbacks occur when one least expects it, and at the most inopportune moments. Accountability will not always include testifying against a perpetrator, or seeking a remedy from the courts. What I’d like to see is what wasn’t done for me. I’d like to see spaces for CSA survivors to process what they’ve endured, in church, with trained facilitators. I’d like to see ministers no longer skirting the issue and choosing to preach about every #BlackLivesMatter issue, except sex crimes.

For centuries, Black women have been expected to hold up the church, whether through finances, service, or both. Who’s holding up these women? Who’s singing their songs? Love with accountability in the church looks like our churches being safe spaces for crying, screaming, cursing, and even not believing, if that’s part of the journey.

Williams, D. (1999). Sisters in the wilderness: the challenge of womanist god-talk. Orbis Books

Grant, J. (1993) “Black Theology and The Black Woman”. Black Theology: A Documentary History, Vol. 1 1966-1979. Orbis Books.

Dr. Worokya Duncan is a professional educator with over 18-years of classroom experience, a Doctoral-level education, a great deal of energy, and a commitment to students. Over the course of her career, she has taught both elementary and middle school students in a variety of subjects, including United States History, Literacy and Science. Her efforts undoubtedly extend beyond academics. She works hard to instill a sense of pride, community, and motivates students to set higher standards. With everyone with whom she interacts, she takes time to connect with each one, demonstrating genuine sensitivity. Through an ongoing process of planning, delivering, reflecting, and refining lessons, she has been consistently successful at balancing individual needs with the federal, state, and local standards and assessments.

Dr. Duncan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy Studies and Political Science; two master degrees in Theology and Education and a Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction in Education. Given the combination of her competencies, she pursued research in Africentric curriculum in a quest to provide options in effecting true positive change in eliminating the race-based education achievement gap. Through professional development sessions, lectures, workshops, and seminars, Dr. Duncan illuminates the hidden and often ignored issues affecting education in the United States. She is currently The Director of Inclusion and Community Engagement at The Cathedral School of St. John the Divine, and conducts institutes and workshops on deconstructing racism, sexism, ableism, gender-bias, and xenophobia through Duncan Educational Consultants.

October 19, 2016

[VIDEO] Pops’nAde: a Courageous Daughter & Her NonAbusive Father on Loving Lessons, Living Legacies (L)earned after Sexual Violence by Adenike A. Harris and Petter J. Haris

October 19, 2016/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

By Adenike A. Harris and Petter J. Haris

I am looking … to a new and different future in which fathers are whole enough to love their sons and their daughters, to anchor them in trust and security, and to affirm them in the dreams and identities they claim in the free space of independence and wholeness.— Gloria Wade-Gayles, (Introduction) Father Songs: Testimonies by African-American Sons and Daughters
And if there ain’t no beauty/you gotta make some beauty…— Earth, Wind, & Fire, All About Love

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Our Healing Questions:

What dialogue could a biological father have with his youngest daughter that would adequately confront the Root Shock of her rape by a stepfather?

How could we ethically convert our rage into story that wouldn’t be ruined by subsonic rant against whatever God or Devil could allow a child’s safety to be destroyed in her own home?

How could our deep communion with such painful emotional wounds open the door to an even richer revelation between us that we can actually control the impact of evil on our futures?

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Pops’nAde, father and daughter, Black father, Black daughter – our work to answer these Healing Questions will take the rest of our lives. But our lives will not be defined by our work to answer these Healing Questions. We’ve chosen to devote most of our work to living and loving and dedicating ourselves to futures of joy and inspiration and loving lessons we’ve learned and living legacies we’ve earned.

We started by confronting the acts of a criminal predator, prosecuting and convicting him, swearing off revenge at Adenike’s insistence and direction, then igniting a transcendent conversation that has excavated all our fears, explored and confronted the history of our nuclear and extended families, while simultaneously tapping the energy we needed to make – and be available to – beauty in our lives.

In all honesty, we do not want to talk about sexual trauma in our family – neither what Adenike had to confront from ages 14-22, nor the grand and intimate reverberations that we confront in real time everyday. We wish that we were an anonymous daughter and her father living quiet lives of satisfaction and simplicity. We wish our lives hadn’t been tainted, if not cursed, by the manipulations of a criminal masquerading as a doting suburban father and husband.

But in the words of our elders: what don’t kill you make you stronger! So we lift our voices to sing; we speak because we must, and we speak without shame, trepidation, or doubt that we have a right to express ourselves.

Also, we speak with power and, amazingly, with pride and joy and liberated laughter, as you’ll see in our video that is our contribution to the#LoveWITHAccountability forum. The videos are Directed and Produced by Danyol Jaye of On The Jaye Spot and JayeSpotTV.

The video continues the Call and Response Dialogue that comprises most of the Thesis that Adenike submitted to earn her Master’s in Woman’s Studies in 2011 at Georgia State University:Restorative Notions: Regaining My Voice, Regaining My Father: A Creative Womanist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse.

Our dialogue helped Ade discern that her development should include more profound service to others. In 2014, Adenike was certified as an Integral Coach by New Ventures West, School of Professional Coaches, in San Francisco, CA. She is a Whole Living Coach, helping clients heal core issues and negative patterns, while empowering them with effective ‘integrative’ tools, techniques and specific action plans to make effective changes in order to cultivate mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellness.

As a father, fully engaged in a necessary, risky, taboo-free dialogue, Peter has insisted on cultivating his own mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellness. As part of keeping his own balance, he created the Black Man of Happiness Project, which published his book The Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right.’ An unprecedented meditation on Black men and joy, the book earned the American Book Award in 2015. His poetic, personal essays range in scope from Thomas Jefferson’s era to the Digital Age, seeking answers to the simple, provocative question: What is a happy Black man? He devotes the chapter, “Learning the Language of My Daughter’s Hair,” to how he “learned that happiness pulses even within the seams of what’s unthinkable.”

Frankly, we recognize that our healing style represents the temperaments of two folks who are fighters, who refuse to allow a criminal any kind of victory in our lives. Our way may not work for others grappling with the legacies of sexual trauma in their lives. For us, however, for Pops’nAde, we are exhilarated by the most amazing lesson from our tears, candor and imagination: no silence is good that keeps us from talking to people who can help us.

And WE, it turns out, have become our most inspiring conversation partners. We are living examples of a father embracing ethical, dynamic parenting, and a daughter claiming her daddy, her father, her Pops. We are living, breathing examples of how one family is executing, day-by-day, with stops and starts, without one request for interpersonal refund, an actual, non-abusive relationship – even though our DNA includes the pain of sexual trauma that was imposed on us.

It’s our hope that we can offer a rich, loving roadmap for others on their journeys.

We invite fellow travelers to view our video to both witness and join our conversation.

Adenike A. Harris & Peter J. Harris (Pops ‘n Ade)

In their presentations and workshops, Adenike A. Harris and her father Peter J. Harris provide practical and loving lessons drawn from years of courageous ‘call-and-response’ dialogue that helped them heal in the years after Adenike revealed her stepfather had sexually abused her from ages 14 to 22. In the spirit of Lift Every Voice and Sing, Pops ‘n Ade reveal how they became thriving survivors through tears, candor, imagination – even hard-won laughter. Pops ‘n Ade are 21st Century Conversation Starters and Healing Partners with a dynamic message: we’re all worth healing and no silence is good that keeps you from talking to people who can help you. Pops ‘n Ade are living examples, whose powerful service offers a roadmap to rich, loving and inspiring non-abusive relationships.

Adenike A. Harris works for a model arts education organization servingunderserved youth in Los Angeles. She is a Certified Integral ‘Whole Living’ Coach, after graduating in 2015 from New Ventures West in San Francisco. She earned her Master’s Degree in Women’s Studies in 2011 at Georgia State University, and graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland. Her Master’s thesis, RESTORATIVE NOTIONS: REGAINING MY VOICE, REGAINING MY FATHER: A CREATIVE WOMANIST APPROACH TO HEALING FROM SEXUAL ABUSE, illustrates how she initiated a ‘call-and-response’ dialogue as a strategy to heal her relationship with her non-abusive biological father after revealing to him that her stepfather had sexually abused her from ages 14 to 22. Adenike A. Harris has passionately helped to protect, heal and guide individuals towards success in their lives despite their circumstances and experiences. Using her experience as a model, Adenike brought awareness to social issues, such as Domestic Violence and Abuse, Adenike produced consciousness-raising fashion shows of her own, using fashion, music, dance and poetry. Adenike A. Harris was a contributing writer for the Atlanta Abusive Relationships Examiner column, and has been published by J’Adore Magazine andPasadena Weekly Online.

As an Integral Coach, Adenike A. Harris has used her training and understanding to develop and create her own style of coaching. Adenike believes we are all born innately whole, and as we grow and live life, different experiences put dents in our wholeness. Some dents are deeper than others, and some are just minor notches that limit you from functioning at your fullest potential. Adenike A. Harris’ Whole Living Coaching is designed to teach her clients the capacity and the competencies, from the inside out, to create balance and wholeness. You may email Adenike Harris at: Coachadenike “AT” gmail “DOT” com

Peter J. Harris an award-winning cultural worker since the 1970’s, is Artistic Director of Inspiration House, which produces cultural, artistic, educational, and media products and programs featuring virtuoso performers, and also conducts workshops, residencies, and retreats which inspire audience members to re-enter their lives renewed and confident that creativity and imagination are indispensable tools for constructive personal and social change.

Harris is founder of The Black Man of Happiness Project, a creative, intellectual and artistic exploration of Black men and joy. He’s author of The Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right,” a book of personal essays, an American Book Awards winner in 2015. With his brother Glenn Harris, Emmy-winning broadcaster and humanitarian in Washington, D.C., Harris co-wrote Gritt Tuff Play Book: Hard Core Wisdom for Young People, the inaugural publication of the Happiness Project.

In 2011, he was a Contributor-Collaborator with his daughter Adenike A. Harris on her Creative Thesis: Restorative Notions: Regaining My Voice, Regaining My Father: A Creative Womanist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse, Georgia State University. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/23.

Harris is the author of Bless the Ashes, poetry (Tia Chucha Press), winner of the 2015 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Since the 1970s, Harris has published his writing in a wide variety of publications, most recently in Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, edited by Suzanne Lummis; Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology, edited by Thelma T. Reyna, Poet Laureate of Altadena; and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts in Los Angeles, edited by Neelanjana Banerjee, Daniel A. Olivas, and Ruben J. Rodriguez.

His magazine, “Genetic Dancers: The Artistry Within African/American Fathers,” published during the 1980s, was the first magazine of its kind and asserted that African American fathers become artists through the frictions of conscientious parenting. His book Hand Me My Griot Clothes: The Autobiography of Junior Baby, featured a philosophical elder Black man ruminating on life, love, and ethics, and won the PEN Oakland award for multicultural literature in 1993. His personal essays about manhood and masculinity have been published in several anthologies, includingTenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories; Black Men Speaking; Fathersongs; I Hear a Symphony: African Americans Celebrate Love; and What Makes a Man: Twenty-two Writers Imagine the Future. You may email Peter Harris at: peter “AT” inspiration “dot” com.

October 19, 2016

a place to live by e nina jay

October 19, 2016/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

By e nina jay

the porch (an introduction)

When I received the email from Aishah asking me to be part of the #LoveWITHAccountability forum, my immediate answer was “yes.” It was unquestionable for me. I believe in Aishah’s work and her intentions. I read the word “incest.” I read the words “child sexual abuse.” I believed I had. It took me days, maybe even a couple weeks to truly realize that i may not have heard her.

Having worked in rape crisis centers for over a decade, having written hundreds of poems about rape & incest, having performed at endless take back the night marches, perhaps it was possible that those words had become just words to me. Perhaps in order to do the work effectively, I’d distanced myself from them in ways I’m not aware of. Perhaps I’ve become numb. I thought this, at first, as i could not feel anything as i sat to write. That’s what i told myself. I didn’t feel anything. This wasn’t true.

As the initial deadline approached closer, I felt anger. Why did I agree to do this? I didn’t have time. I told myself I didn’t have the patience. I told myself I had no idea what “love with accountability” means. I told myself Aishah was making me angry. She wanted too much. She’s never satisfied. She’s always pushing me. I told myself a lot of things. Except this truth.

I was afraid to intimately engage this process because the person I felt the least accountable to had been myself. To the parts of myself that needed healing. For me it’s easier to focus, fight and love another womon, a community, a society. It’s not difficult for me to contextualize childhood rape trauma when I’m reaching to love somebody else. I deeply understand that I still live in a myriad of silences. I still knowingly live in shame.

So with this forum, I’d do what I’ve always done when dealing with childhood traumas. I’d just attach them to all the traumas & feel them together. At a point, it became clear to me that I was going to have to dig deeper. I was going to have to talk about it at the same time that i was loving and being accountable to myself. I wasn’t sure i knew how to do that. I found this a stunning revelation.

I told myself it would be easy. I’d simply walk into the room where I stored all the files related to my incest and grab something quickly. That’s how i talk about it in my mind. It’s easier that way. Sounds like business. Almost clinical. Controllable. Contained. I expected that I would be able to just walk into the room and open a drawer, pull an old file out to send to Aishah and simply walk back out of the room and close the door back. Tightly.

As the third deadline extension approached, I awakened in the mornings irritated with Aishah. But I wasn’t irritated with Aishah. I was afraid. I was angry at her, though, perhaps, for knowing me deeply enough to know I wasn’t present. Even if she didn’t have the words for it. I could hear her doing her work by the tone of her emails/voice. She was struggling, perhaps hurting. It didn’t sound like she was just walking into rooms and pulling files out of drawers. If my sister isn’t doing that, how could I?

I understood I was going to have to write, which, for me, meant jumping into a volcano and praying I would be able to climb back out without getting burned alive. But not being certain it would be possible. I had to decide it was worth the risk. And I have decided that it is worth the risk. That whatever fears I have about the kind of nudity this forum demands of me, that this is an opportunity for me to face them and to reach toward the possibility of my dreams, for survivors like me.

I believe that we are our most powerful when we are able to embrace every inch of ourselves. I believe our collective loving and healing lies in our ability to acknowledge who we dreamed to be, what has interrupted that dream and who it is that we are now. As individuals and as a community. I believe it is possible to turn pain into power. And this is not a metaphor. I believe pain unspoken can never be transformed into power. And true power cannot be held inside the same hands as secrets.

The following writing, “a place to live,” was born on a morning last week. I share it now in an effort to be accountable to myself and more importantly, to the little gurl inside me who was raped and silenced and further silenced by me. I share it now in an effort to explore what “love with accountability” means to me. I share it now, with the hope that in doing so, I might come to understand and believe in what we call “restorative justice” and/or “transformative justice.”

I share it knowing that whatever work needs to be done, whatever dreams we may have about affecting the world concretely, as it relates to incest and child sexual abuse, that we must first acknowledge that we must first be accountable to ourselves and each other. Our experiences. Our pain. Our shame. Our voices. Our stories. Our power.

a place to live

i need a place to live. i don’t fit into any space. my borders are too wide. i spill out of the sides. it’s difficult to breathe. i’m tired of altering and shifting. i do not fit into this world, as i am. i need a place to tell my secrets. a place to be whole.

i need a place to live. where i can be visible. i want to be seen now. i want to be accepted. i want to be loved as all that i am. i have tried to love and be loved, in pieces, the way people seem to need me. not too much. just a little. of myself. not the wreckage mixed with beauty. not this weeping body i walk around in. just the sweetness that eases down a throat like honey. i’m tired of living without my entire body. without my entire self. i’m tired of secrets i know i don’t wanna keep anymore. secrets i know are trying to kill me. secrets that have filled my mouth with shame. nothing tastes good anymore.

i need a place to live with other people. i’m tired of living alone. tired of being lonely. tired of being in crowds, still lonely. tired of being surrounded by love, still feeling lonely. if i am not being myself, then i am not there. no matter who else may be there. i’m tired of crying alone. tired of my tears splashing onto concrete. tired of running away to cry. to be sad. to feel what i feel. alone. because i’ve learned that i can lose loving, by being honest. i can lose intimacy, by crying. we can lose almost anything, by hurting.

i have learned to be alone. to avoid being alone.

i need a place to live where i can talk and be heard. and i can hear words that sound like mine. taste tears that taste like mine. i need a place to live where my screams won’t break the glass. where the walls won’t cave in on me. where the floor won’t drop from beneath me, leaving me falling. i’m tired of falling. tired of caving in. tired of breaking. and the remnants being stepped over and walked across like garbage. but there is no refuse here. it all matters. it all is me. it all is life.

i need a place to live where i don’t have to keep it all contained. bracing the entire strength of my body against a closet door. attempting to walk and live and love as if i am standing full on two feet. i need a place to live without the feeling of danger. there is danger that comes when opening

doors that have been closed for decades. old houses with old memories. if i keep the door closed, you will never know how hurt i am still. you will never know that i never ever got over it and don’t believe i ever will. you will never know, and i want you to know. i think it’s important that you know. then maybe you’ll understand that i dream to build a village filled with broken houses. broken houses made of broken gurls. with wild flowers in the front yards. and deep pools of rainbows in the back.

i need a place to live where other broken gurls live. broken and powerful. a village of broken and cracked vessels of light that still shine powerful and brilliant like sun. its where i belong. in a village of womyn who do not hide from themselves and each other. a village of womyn who tell the truth and who prefer to hear the truth. a village of womyn who stand at the gates through the day and through the night to usher in the bodies and minds of other broken gurls and womyn who are in search of a life without hiding. who are in search of a community that does not see scars as sin and bruises as badges of failure.

i don’t dream this village an easy place to live. it is not like how people fantasize a heaven. it can never be heaven. not for gurls with bruises like mine. i won’t try to sell you a dream that i don’t believe can be reality. and i won’t try to convince you to live there with me. no womon will be convinced to live there. it must be her idea and her decision. she must be wide open. if she is not open, she will not be able to see the possibility of such a village. the dream is only impossible to those who do not need it. who cannot need it. i can remember when i could not need it.

this village is a place where everything that has ever happened to us, happened. and everything we’ve ever done or said, was done and said. this village is an idea of honesty and love. this village is across the bridge from denial. from pain buried in bibles. from the stench of shame wearing pretty flowered dresses.

this village is not so much a place, as a way of living. a way of existing. a way of moving through the healing as a community. a collective effort of reaching toward an emotional reality for womyn that can feel like justice. or the seeds of it. for womyn who live these lives of silence and shame and some futile reach for a forgiveness we have no need ask for.

i have memories of other womyn telling me that the pain of incest wasn’t something i was going to be able to do away with in my body, psyche and spirit. i have memories of hating those womyn for saying that. for urging me to give voice to the little gurl inside me. i did not want to talk about her. i did not want to talk about it. it was too complicated. it was too messy. all mixed in with family and death and other peoples’ secrets that i could or should not tell. i refused to deal with it. i refused to allow it any more space inside me. to grow any larger than it was. i had already spent a lifetime with my fingers squeezed around it to contain it and control it and i believed i did have it under control. i wanted to live a life that was free of those thoughts, memories and nightmares and i believed i could and would get there. it took almost forever for me to realize that i could, indeed, get “there.” but not whole. not ever whole.

i need a place to live where she, the violated little gurl inside me, and i can live together. whole and unseparated.

she needs my mouth and i need her bravery.

i know, now, that in order for me to have been able to live a life that did not acknowledge, accept and love the gurl that had been raped as a child, that she would have had to die. my past would have had to die. would have had to not exist. but is that realistic?

i need to build this village, even though i know not every womon will want to know this village exists as a viable and reliable and necessary place. some womyn will prefer to view it as a pit stop. a place to stop for a little while, always on the way to someplace else that promises what i might believe is impossible. a future without a past. a tomorrow not built on yesterday. that future. that tomorrow. crumbles. it crumbles. i know because i have tried to build houses on that land. and i have watched many gurls and womyn in my life attempt to build a house on that land. and i have watched them all crumble.

it’s my life now, yes. but she carried it for us. she began it for us. and even though she learned her words were not important, she still found a way to write poetry. through all that bullshit, she still wrote words in notebooks, even after learning that there was not one person in the world that gave a damn about the words she said.

because she told. the little gurl i was/am. she did tell. they listened. they didn’t care. there was no screaming. there were no police. there was no violence rained down upon him. he wasn’t put out of the house. nobody’s beds were moved. no schedules changed. there was no justice. only education. she was meaningless. her words were meaningless.

he had been raping the gurl children in the family for 20 years before she was even born. nobody ever hid the kids and nobody ever warned her. but this little gurl was smart. she had somehow learned that it was wrong for grown men to touch gurls as young as she was. and so when he sat her down the first time with his large penis laying in his lap for her to touch, she refused. she pulled her hand away just before he forced her skin to touch his skin and she said in a scared voice ‘i don’t want to’ and he did not force her that day. he told her not to tell anyone. that nobody would believe her. but she told an adult, anyway. who told another adult. who told the little gurl’s aunt, her mother’s sister, who was this man’s wife. and when she pulled the little gurl into a room with just herself, the little gurl and the big uncle, and she asked the little gurl to say out loud what the grown man had said and done, while he was looking right at her.

the little gurl said out loud what he had done right in front of him. and she didn’t crumble when he said he just didn’t understand why she would tell a lie like that. she did not crumble. the aunt sent her out of the room and she went to play. i think. maybe she did not go play but i know she did not go and die.

maybe it wasn’t as bad as she thought. maybe she was stupid for saying anything at all. her words had done nothing. she never told again.

that little gurl that was me. thank god she still tried to write words when they should have been so easy to give up and not believe in. but they were all she had. words. writing. sometimes just the writing. i can remember years of not being able to find the words i had buried and i would just sit and write my name over and over and over again. i could not find the secrets. i would not write the secrets. but i would write. i still wrote. i have always written, even when i couldn’t find anything to say. and i have the little gurl to thank for that. she held that love. she didn’t let words die. she didn’t let writing die. she breathed life into it constantly as it constantly tried to kill itself.

we need to prepare a place for our children to live. a place where shame is not birthed nor welcomed. a place where gurls can peacefully sit with their legs open, even if they wear dresses. a place where they can walk down a street alone in the dark just to think about a poem. a place where they don’t have to fill their pockets with rocks and make hiding places of their bodies for mace, pocket knives, guns or ice picks. a place where they need not care how soon or how much their bodies grow or how much of them to hide.

we want children to live in a place where monsters and boogeymen do not exist. a place for our children to nurture a healthy imagination. a true imagination. not just fantasies that attempt to mask the truths that are difficult to know.

that little gurl inside me needs me to prepare a place for gurls who tell their stories and their secrets. who fill their arms with one another. she dreams us to live in a village where womyn walk and skip, hand in hand, with the little gurls they had been. and we don’t tell those gurls to be quiet. and we don’t push those little gurls into corners. we don’t hide them in another room when company comes over.

she wants me to tell you we are a package deal, just like when one desires the love of a single womon and she tells you immediately… this is a package deal. you get me, you get these kids. well, you get me, you get this little gurl and every other being i have ever had to be to survive and nurture my life until today. i won’t kill any of them to live in a world that fears them because they may fear themselves.

she needs a place to live where she can tell someone she wants to live. and i need a place to live where i can tell someone, i have not been ruined.

we need a place to live, where we can live together. and we are preparing a village where we shall build a house. and we will seek a community of other gurls and womyn. and we will live there. and we will grow powerful. and we will use our power to build other villages of gurls who do not know shame and who do not take on the guilt of oppressors that pretend to be family. pretend to be protectors. pretend to be love.

we need to prepare a place where she can scream all the things she knew, that she knew she should never have known. where she can say all she has to say and not be called names. nasty. fast. disgusting. shameful. too grown. brooding. we need a place to live where we can vomit the things we’ve been forced to eat and not be blamed for the meal. for the sickness. for the fact that our body violently heaves and throws it back out.

i am asked what does restorative justice looks like to me? i have not fit the two words together yet. i can talk about restoration and what that looks like to me. it looks like the erasure of shame. the creation of a world where his rape is his rape. and not mine. it looks like the eradication of the idea that i must waste another inch of my lifeline trying to stand in front of trains that will never ever stop.

rapists are going to rape. pedophiles are going to victimize children. what i believe can be restored or my idea of restoration lives in the ideas of what we can create together with the power we amass once we have done away with the burdens of guilt and shame. in my opinion, that is a true example of what restoration might mean.

and what of justice? i am not sure i have any idea of how any true justice might be attained. i have little experience with justice. i have no just reference of justice. i am not sure i believe in true justice as it relates to incest and child sexual abuse. i can only tell you that i wish i did believe in it. perhaps one day i might.

but in the meantime, what can be restored and what can be transformed? the gurls and womyn who live these lives in shame and unbearable silences. like me. this is where my dreams are born.

e nina jay is a lesbian/womon/activist/writer of African descent, who uses poetry as a tool of survival & to break silences around all forms of violence against gurls & womyn, with particular focus on the intersection of gender, violence, race & poverty. as a survivor of rape & incest, e.nina.jay believes womyn & gurls can create powerful community to fight against the violence & constant degradation that weaves itself into every facet of our lives, using art, voice and education to empower & build strong resistance & community.

October 18, 2016

Fast by Kai M. Green

October 18, 2016/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

By Kai M. Green

There was once a little Black girl who liked digging holes in the mud. She liked to feel the slime of worms. She reveled in the feel of the damp grit beneath her fingertips. Dirt did not bother her. It was only that she knew if she got too dirty she’d probably get in trouble for messing up her school clothes. This little Black girl liked play with the boys. She liked to take off her shirt and run around the yard like the boys. She did not think that she was a boy, but she had never been told that there were certain things that she would eventually have to become. Black girl. The becoming was a lesson. The becoming required a disciplining of the body. The becoming required a naming of the body, a naming that made what was hers both sacred and a burden, a naming that made what was hers not hers at all. The becoming made her mother afraid. Black mother wanted baby to play, but Black girls play is often interrupted by other things. Black mother never wanted those other things for her little girl, so she tried her best to protect her baby’s body.

Black mother took Black girl to the doctor because she baby be growin’ and bubblin’ over.

Her chest be becomin’ breasts. Black mother frets over not having more time. Too fast. Training bra becomes a necessary armor for her kindergartener. Her baby’s body was becomin’ the ground upon which many battles would be fought. Black mother had already been a battle ground body, she too had once become a Black girl and then woman. Black mother’s body had already been made to bend and break and hold and birth somethings that she would have rather not birthed. She wanted to protect her Black girl baby. She wanted to keep her whole and clean, but she knew the world did not care about the sacred text that was her baby’s body. The world was too big and too cruel. The world was also too small and too close, like family.

Black mother decided that the only way to keep Black girl safe was to wrap her up in chains, chains like Jesus, Bible, silence, secrets, and ancestral scars. She longed to keep Black girl from unsolicited touch, those who might harm her, some of the same people who harmed Black mother. But, chains failed at slowin’ Black girl’s body growin’. The chains did create a distance though, between Black girl and herself, her own body which she could no longer touch without fear or shame. Black girl’s battleground body become burden, become this thing that she didn’t ask for, inherited. Her body grew fast, and as much as Black mother tried to keep her, she could not.

When it came out, what had happened that summer, three years after her Black girl body first started to show signs of becomin’; When Black girl came to Black mother and told her all of the things that had happened to her Black girl body, Black mother responded with a question: “Did you like it?” Black girl was confused by the question, but responded “No.” She knew that the question was used to evaluate if she had become fast like her cousin, who was five years older. Black girl wanted more than anything to be good, so she learned to love being good, but never learned to love what she liked. What she liked, she didn’t know how to name after that moment. Healing for Black girl came in the form of learning how to name what she liked, learning how to ask for what she liked and believing that she deserved to have what she asked for.

Black girl is a childhood survivor of incest and sexual abuse. When Black girl told Black mother what was happening there was nothing done to remove her from the situation, so she learned to live with it. She learned to appreciate the moments when her abuser was nice to her. Black girl basked in those sweet moments knowing that they would always come with a side of cruelty. She still remembers what it felt like to be slapped hard across her face. There were never any bruises because Black girl’s skin was dark and she could take just about anything, she believed. There were no visible traces, the traces were all much deeper than skin could ever reveal.

Black girl would go on to remember that summer every day for the rest of her life. After that moment migraines, depression, and shame become hers. She tried her best to reverse the stain of beingfast. She became good. But good is not free. And protection is not the same as discipline. Black girl and Black mother’s body had been disciplined, but it was rare that they were ever protected. Black girl had to reeducate herself. Every day when she remembers that summer, she also affirms her own right and power to protect her body and spirit. Black girl carried shame and guilt as she grew and moved through many emotionally abusive adult relationships. She learned to seek out partners that affirmed her insecurities. They kept her in her place, kept her unhealthy and un-healing. They kept her feeling ugly, as if she didn’t deserve care. Abuse felt a lot like love to her, because of its familiarity, it kept her. Black mother wanted to keep Black girl safe, but the body can’t be disciplined into safety. The worlds around Black girl bodies must be reshaped to be able to hold her, fast as she may be—So, quit slowing her down, she was made to fly!

Coda

But the question that we were all to respond to in this forum is: What does accountability look like after Black girl done become?

After recounting Black girl’s tale [which is not just her own, but of course, it is also her mother’s shame, her auntie’s denial, her cousins’ tears, her play cousins’ confusion—there are too many Black girl battle ground body stories—] the question we are left with is: what does accountability look like when you are the only one who remembers what happened? What does accountability look like when you remind your loved ones of that thing that happened, that was not love, and they say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and walk away? How does silence fill your mouth after that? Your body remembers. Your Black girl spirit remembers. You know what happened and you want to heal, but there are no apologies to be had. You are forced to swallow an inherited silence that your Black family has built as a wall of protection.

So what does accountability look like in the face of deep forgetfulness? It might look like walking away. It might look like a refusal to stop asking for those who were there to bear witness—tell the truth!

In the end, I don’t know what an accountability process for Black girl would look like. I know some things though. I know accountability requires responsibility. Those who have harmed must learn how to say “I have harmed, but I am not harm,” “I have acted like a monster, but I AM NOT a monster.” Those who have harmed have to commit to becoming better. Our Black families and communities need our people, and we need them to be well. Currently, we do not have enough tools or even language to articulate an effective model of accountability that does not replicate a carceral imaginary. Accountability requires an abolitionist ethic. We must ask ourselves: Do we seek healing or punishment? The answer of course for most survivors fluctuates—respect that.

We must ask: What is the relationship between accountability and transformative justice?

Justice that transforms harm into something else, like Black love, is hard work. This kind of justice changes both individuals and systems of oppression. In order to envision and create this new world we sometimes have to suspend our notion of reality, which is always steeped in history. What we have experienced can sometimes confine our imaginations, so we have to work against that non-creative force. This work requires intentionality. What is accountability for Black girls’ whose bodies re-remember family secrets that were supposed to be kept buried—forgotten? But like ghosts, they rise. You must remember and affirm your truth in spite of forgetfulness.

Accountability looks like more struggle; after the harm has been done, after the PTSD, after the nightmares, after all that. Accountability looks like an investment in the healing of the harm-doer. We desire for harm-doers to cease harm, but accountability asks something else of those that have been harmed. It asks us to believe that the harm-doer can be different and do better. Accountability initiates transformation in the lives of those who were harmed and those who have harmed (sometimes one person can be both). Accountability moves us towards a world where Black girl won’t have to inherit Black mother’s trauma. Black girl and Black mother no longer lean into the farce protection of respectability politics, body policing, religion, and covering up—they can’t [be] fly all bogged down like that!

So, I’ll repeat it for re-memory’s sake: The worlds around Black girl bodies must be reshaped to be able to hold her, fast as she may be—So, quit slowing her down, she was made to fly!

Author’s note: This is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, tentatively titled, A Body Made Home. I want to thank everyone who has supported me in writing this piece. It was a particularly challenging task and forced me to go places I hadn’t gone before. These kinds of journeys are best if not taken alone. I thank Nkiru Nnawulezi, JeNaé Taylor, and Micah Hobbes Frazier for helping and holding me as I moved through writing this peace. I especially give gratitude for Aishah Shahidah Simmons as she has not only made space for us to share our testimonies of survival, but she has pushed us to imagine and create new Black futures where Black girls and women soar beyond scars.

Kai M. Green is a shape-shifting Black queer nerd Boi; An Afro-Future, freedom-dreaming, rhyme slinging dragon slayer in search of a new world. A scholar, poet, and filmmaker, Dr. Green earned his Ph.D. from the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity with specializations in Gender Studies and Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California. He joined the faculty of Feminist Studies of UC Santa Barbara as Assistant Professor of Queer Theory in Fall 2016. He is currently at work editing, along with C. Riley Snorton and Treva Ellison, a special issue of TSQ on Black Studies/Trans* Studies, and, as sole editor, a book collection entitled Black Trans Love is Black Wealth.

October 18, 2016

“The Least of These”: Black Children, Sexual Abuse, and Theological Malpractice by Ahmad Greene-Hayes

October 18, 2016/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

By Ahmad Greene-Hayes

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ –Matthew 25:40

On Friday, August 26th, Georgia pastor Kenneth Mack was arrested on one count of aggravated child molestation. This same “pastor” preached homophobic sermons and said the Pulse victims deserved to die. Yet, he is a child molester and a rapist. Mack, however, is not an anomaly; in fact, he represents much of what the church stands for: hypocrisy coupled with holiness or hell theologies that conceal unethical sexual acts and demonize marginalized bodies.

Mack, like so many others who wear sacred collars, desecrate churches and the gospel with their unrelenting commitments to sexual violence. Without doubt, our society perpetuates rape culture, but many of the church’s religious leaders prey on those who often cannot pray for themselves. They also theologically nurture and coddle those who violate children, women, and queer folks, and we must reckon with the reality that survivors of sexual abuse sit in pews and preach in pulpits, often with their harm doers in plain view.

Yet (Black) churches are largely silent. Indeed, the collective silence—from adults, from the village, from the elders—is deafening even as childhood screams, hollers, and pleas to live unbothered and untouched by the perversion of child sexual abuse blare the silences.

Several visual texts, such as Kasi Lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou (1997), Michael Schlutz and T.D. Jakes’Woman, Thou Art Loosed (2004), Tina Mabry’s Mississippi Damned (2009), and Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer (2012), explore the everydayness of child sexual abuse in black communities. Most recently, Greenleaf (2016), on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), delves into the topic of CSA (child sexual abuse) in a black mega church community in Memphis, Tennessee. Winfrey, a child sexual abuse and rape survivor, plays the role of Mavis McCready and gives her niece Grace the push she needs to expose all the lies and sexual traumas hidden in the physical and psychic archives of the church’s history. One such task is bringing her Uncle Mack to heel for sexually assaulting her sister Faith (who committed suicide), and several other girls in the church and the Memphis community. Like most Black churches and Black families, however, no one in the fictionalized account wants to talk about sexual violence, just like no one is talking about the real-life Mack mentioned in my opening.

Child sexual abuse in Black communities is an epidemic. Black Women’s Blueprint reports that 60% of Black girls have been raped before age 18, and studies show that one out of six boys are sexually assaulted. And we know without doubt that many of these assaults happen in churches or with proximity to churches and church people. As such, I have several questions…

What do we do when the violence is found among those who are “sanctified”?

Where is God when (Black) children are sexually assaulted? Or perhaps a more poignant question is does God condone the sexual violation of children? “God Help The Child,” prays Toni Morrison, but God does not help the child when the child is victim to child sexual abuse. How can Emmanuel, or God with us, bear witness to such pervasive and unchecked evil and not be moved to act justly on the behalf of the child survivor? And if God is on the side of the oppressed, as James H. Coneand others have argued, where is God when (Black) children are hurt by those who introduced them to “God”?

With regards to child sexual abuse, my work as the founder of Children of Combahee and as a scholar of religion has three aims. First, I am building a canon of thought in the study of Black religion and theology that names sexual violence as sexual “deviance,” and reconsiders longstanding pathologies which situate homosexuality, gender nonconformity, womanhood and other marginalized sexual/gender identities as not only “deviant,” but subservient to Black malecisheteropatriarchy. Second, I am deconstructing the myth that queer subjects—both within and outside of the Black church—are queer because of sexual abuse, and am offering new ways of thinking about “pathology” and “perversion” within the Black church. Third, I contend that lived experience, personal testimony, and psychic realities are both worthy and befitting of critical theological attention and engagement, in part, because most survivor narratives never make it into academic or church archives, even as the assaults and the remembrances and effects of the assaults are archived (or repressed) within survivors’ minds.

It is important to note that many of the terminologies used in my written and vocal work are terms that are never spoken in many Black religious spaces. “Consent” is assumed, but it is never taught. “Rape” is alluded to but it is never acknowledged. The “survivor” is shunned, while the overcomer is praised. These terms, however, function as guiding principles in the fight to end sexual violence. I believe wholeheartedly that Black sexuality, gender identity, and sexual violence cannot be freely and expressly understood or discussed within Black churches, until the church catches up to the mainstream discourse on human sexuality (and even the mainstream discourse lags behind those who are survivors, queer, trans, women, and femme). These words are prominent in social justice spaces, antirape organizations, and in other medical and legal entities, but they are often absent from the church, even as survivors fill pews and pulpits.

If we believe that the Black church is a central site of influence in many Black communities, though scholars like Eddie Glaude have argued, “the Black church is dead,” we must continue to question why “consent,” “rape,” and “survivor” are not a part of the Black churchgoing population’s vocabulary. We must also evaluate whether pastors and leaders in the church have the tools to work through sexual violence theologically, ethically, and within cultural context.

Call me heretical but I do not believe that the Bible is a reliable resource in this regard, lest it be consulted through a womanist queer theological lens. I also contend that sexual violence cannot be eradicated until the church acknowledges the way it sanitizes Biblically-sanctioned rape, even as it manipulates scripture to demonize queer and transgender people, to subject women and children to patriarchal men and leaders, and to protect and cover the tracks of rapists.

Victim shaming and queerantagonism are active evils in the life of many Black churches. My work calls them both into question, not to pathologize survivors and/or queer people, but to understand how white supremacy, capitalism, neoliberalism, and the workings of the State have altered the ways Black people wrestle with racial-sexual terrorism.

Many survivor-activists have pushed Black churches to think about its complicity in the rape and sexual assault of countless women, men, children, gender nonconforming, queer, transgender, and poor Christians and non-Christians, and yet, the Black church continues to turn a blind eye to the reality of racial-sexual violence. Monica Coleman’s The Dinah Project—both the book and organization—intervenes in a history that registers unchecked sexual violence and illicit sexual behavior as standard, if not normative, alongside patriarchy and cisheterosexism.

Every congregation contains victims of sexual violence. Every church with women, men, boys, girls, or the elderly contains victims of sexual violence. Whether an individual confides in the church leaders, family, or friends, or chooses to remain silent, there is no church void of the people whose lives are changed by experiences of sexual violence. Because every church contains persons affected by sexual violence, the church must respond. Because sexual violence affects every aspect of our communities, including our religious and spiritual lives, the church must respond. Because silence is a response of tolerance, the church must respond (Coleman, 4).

If the church is filled with so many survivors of sexual violence, why then does the church lack urgency and conviction in the fight to eradicate the unholy and perverse reality of sexual abuse?

Perhaps it is because (Black) churches are more concerned with the sexual practices, behaviors, and orientations of its constituents that are nonheterosexual, nonnormative, and/or disruptive to puritanical notions of sacred, holy, and virtuous (see Kelly Brown Douglas, 1999). Among many things, “the politics of respectability” as defined by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and “the culture of dissemblance” as told by Darlene Clark Hine (pdf) explicate the ways Black church people have used silence as a means of protection from white racial-sexual terrorists. To mitigate the effects of white supremacist violence, many African Americans do not address intracommunal violence, and in some instances extracommunal violence, because they do not want to portray the race in a negative light or they want to be race loyal, or even race first, everything later. These patterns are deadly and send a loud message that racial justice takes precedence over the justice that every individual deserves in regards to their bodies and psyches—regardless of age, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, religion, or any other marginalized identity.

The inability (or unwillingness) to address sexual violence as an evil that pervades home, church and community is steeped in larger cultural “norms,” though abnormal, of cogitatively dissociating one’s lived experience—in Black flesh—from one’s embodied and experienced sexuality. In other words, the inability to address violence and trauma as it relates to Black sexuality can be traced back to the plantation where rape and torture were codified by law and the theologies of the master class. In some ways, the contemporary Black church—which grew out of enslavement—mirrors the plantation of times past, and survivors are pushing the church to consider its reinscription of master tactics—that is , attempts to abuse, silence, marginalize, shame, victimize, and dehumanize marginal subjects, or as Jesus said, “the least of these.”

Until Black churches are honest about human sexuality and our collective discomfort with it, sexual violence will remain unchecked and accountability will be nothing more than a goal to be obtained in the afterlife. But if we believe Jesus’ words, “thy kingdom come and thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we must also believe that God is looking to the church to conjure justice for survivors right now. Indeed, hell is a present reality, and heaven is too far.

If you are interested in joining the fight against CSA in Black church communities, please consider registering for Children of Combahee’s upcoming town hall on Saturday, October 29th at the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, New York.

From Pew To Pulpit: Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse Speak: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/from-pew-to-pulpit-survivors-of-child-sexual-abuse-speak-tickets-27079126396

Ahmad Greene-Hayes is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Religion at Princeton University, where he is also pursuing graduate certificates in African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include Black religion(s), African American Pentecostalism, queer theory, Gender and Sexuality in the Black church, and 19th-20th century African American religious history. He is a Mellon Mays fellow and holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Africana Studies from Williams College. Using oral histories, performance studies, and other archival materials, his senior honors thesis entitled, “Black Pentecostal Touch: Sexual Abuse, Queerantagonism, and (Un)holy Hands,” examined how Black religiosity, within the context of Black Pentecostal churches, responds to gendered and sexualized Black trauma. Currently, he also serves as the founder of Children of Combahee, a newfound initiative to end child sexual abuse in black churches via the Just Beginnings Collaborative. He is also the founder of #BlackChurchSex on Twitter and writes regularly on race, gender, sexuality, politics, and religion at TheRoot.com, Ebony.com, The Feminist Wire, and other outlets.

October 18, 2016

How I Built Community While Researching Accountability by Aunrika Tucker-Shabazz

October 18, 2016/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

By Aunrika Tucker-Shabazz

How do you search for what is intentionally hidden?

How do you look for what does not want to be found?

I stared at the keyboard and with each term combination, my hesitation grew. The anxiety towards what I might find grew and grew.

~~~

When I met Aishah Shahidah Simmons she was the Sterling Brown Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College. To me and all of the students who engaged with her while she was at Williams, she was Professor Simmons. It was spring semester 2016 and I recently returned from a semester abroad. Being her “research assistant” was all I knew I needed to be on campus to go to classes, make my money, and mind my business. I didn’t think it would be too difficult a task; I had researched her while abroad, reading through her biography and watching youtube snippets and I thought she had a pleasant disposition though sometimes abrasive. But no-nonsense, for sure.

So when I met Professor Aishah Shahidah Simmons and finally introduced myself, hastily at the end of our first class together on Black Women Filmmakers and Writers, she was perhaps exactly as I had imagined and simultaneously wholly revitalizing: open-spoken and straight to the point with subtle variations in the face that told all one needed to know about how she felt. She expressed a desire for clarity, constructive community, and most of all – accountability; the syllabus certainly foretold how accountable she would hold us. Her demeanor expressed how accountable we could hold her.

I knew we would get along then.

~~~

All I knew was that I needed to be her research assistant and I wasn’t quite sure what that entailed. I was out of my depth, for sure, but I wanted to do a good job no matter what. After all, two of my most respected professors – Drs. Rhon Manigault-Bryant and James Manigault-Bryant — had recommended me for the position. I had to do a good job just to make sure I didn’t discredit or disappoint them. It didn’t matter what she would ask of me, whether that was paper pushing or making copies of important womynist documents or searching through databases of some deep artistic material only attainable and applicable to an elect, I would do it. I expected our first meeting about her research to be similar to all other meetings where professors hand down the law and liberty and dictate hours of contact and other formalities, widening the gap between researcher and assistant.

Professor Simmons instead brought me in. She spoke of her background and her very non-traditional trajectory in academia and filmmaking. She spoke of her previous film NO! The Rape Documentary and sometimes went on a tangent. She asked me about my family and how my time studying in Senegal affected me. She told her story, saying the words, “I am a survivor of incest and child sexual assault, and this next project #LoveWITHAccountability speaks to that,” and I thought then how unprepared I was to work for her.

When she first told me the next project was focusing on child sexual assault, and she asked me to take notes about specific terms, and write down dates that worked for us to meet again, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I had done literature reviews before and child sexual assault was just another topic. I didn’t know what I was doing, and as I redid and reformatted the first document I sent to her – in fact at every step in the project hereafter – I realized more and more the nuances of what I was researching.

“Search combination after combination, across multimedia platforms, throughout history and up to the present,” she told me. “In the future, if you have questions, just ask and don’t hesitate to contact me,” she added and as the search, catalogue and analysis of literature and scholarship on child sexual assault continued to grow, I would come to rely on her heavily for guidance in how to bring shape to the topic as well as what conclusions to draw. In the conversation that changed everything, she told me to look for what wasn’t there and report on that.

~~~

`Child sexual assault Child sexual abuse Child molestation Family sexual assault Family sexual abuse Family sexual molestation Black children sexual assault Black children child sexual abuse Black children molestation’

There was no language for what I was looking for: most disciplines employed pedagogy that was wholly incomplete, and most lay-websites and non-profit organizations seemed too well-armed with binary dialogue to apply the research being done. Personal blogs and sites utilized inflammatory, provocative language, speaking to the multitude of negative constructions with which CSA, its survivors and aggressors live but speaking to the various testimonies of loss and survival so many people had to share. But there was so little! Hours upon hours and hours spent searching all combinations of the terms and I’d still only turned up one half-full excel spreadsheet.

Some searches returned gems and turned up five or ten books and articles investigating the long-term consequences of child sexual assault on health, social and emotional development, risk-behaviors and decisions, as well as family dynamics, while others produced articles only marginally related.

The research left me with several questions. I was out of my depth; I had no frame of reference for how to become approximate to the topic of child sexual assault. I didn’t know how to care and what to do to help. I was confronting a taboo subject and the scarce research findings reflected as much. But in my conversations with Professor Simmons, and reading the literature, I became so much more well-informed along the way: I learned about the conditions that might incubate child sexual assaults; I learned about the cognitive and social obstacles children must face in order to come forward and use a voice and agency that was taken from them. I learned about the tyranny of silence. The long-term influences on decision-making and long-term effects on relationship evaluating, the struggles and successes of building and maintaining a healthy self-concept and image, and survival techniques of child sexual assault survivors that adapt in adulthood.

Professor Simmons helped me to operationalize what it meant to survive trauma, as a non-linear process, and the key contributions of a community that collectively cares. I knew she was doing honorable work and I, for my part, was helping her. So many times she emphasized accountability, responsibility. Accountability and love, with love, from love and I had no idea what she meant. I thought I did.

~~~

If I developed as a researcher with Professor Simmons, then my progress and development socially and emotionally do not compare. I began this project thinking I was objective and that was the best way to be: I could type in those key words over and over and read the results and testimonies and I could remain attached. But I couldn’t. I began this project, I realized a couple months ago when I first started thinking about what to type, believing I was at the point Professor Simmons was living in: forgiveness and desiring to love with accountability. I discovered I was all but impartial and rather ill-equipped to view survivors and aggressors in an equally loving manner. I demonized the aggressor and called them monsters and thought, “how could they?” and “how could anyone love them?” The more I learned, the more this solid boulder of negativity would coalesce in my stomach and explode in my brain – I, neither a survivor nor aggressor.

Every meeting I had it on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she still managed to be repulsed and if maybe I was too far from this margin to understand the dynamics; I bit my tongue because what if I, in my infinite ignorance, managed to say the wrong thing and offend? Professor Simmons kept emphasizing this “role of the community,” and “accountability,” and “responsibility,” and I would look at her and wonder how she could not be angry and boiling and bitter and hate.

I wondered, “how do you not hate?” Throughout our conversations she answered, working with a Black feminist licensed clinical psychologist, one of her teachers, Toni Cade Bambara, sistren, her cultural work, vipassana meditation and sistren, I knew then that if following that truth was healing her and kept bringing her back to this honorable work, that indeed we were no longer student and professor, but mentor and mentee in an intergenerational sisterhood. It was then, at the end of the semester, that she went from Professor Simmons to Aishah.

I understood the scope and the breadth with which Aishah needed to work and in the beginning, and I constantly thought she would “find me out” as one of the people needing her work the most. How ironic? In the beginning I was worrying how to best produce work she might incorporate into her project, and by the end I was strategizing on how to best implement her work into my life, yes specific to child sexual assault in Black communities, but also in attempting to answer the larger question of how do I forgive those who trespass against me and yet exercise a restorative, comprehensive form of justice that allows the process of loss and recovery to take place without marginalizing another?

What are ways we can do this as a community?

~~~

By the end, Aishah challenged me to access healing without hurting and I remembered again how unprepared I was to work for her.

Aunrika Tucker-Shabazz is a rising senior with a dual major in Education Psychology and Francophone Studies and a concentration in Africana Studies at Williams College. Her research interests include migratory subjectivity, self-determination and rhetoric, and race-based economic discrimination in housing practices. As a Pohlad Scholar, Questbridge Scholar, and co-editor of the Williams College Africana Magazine Kaleido[scopes], Aunrika has expanded her cultural rhetoric studies into West African Francophone communities. After completing her undergraduate degree, she plans to pursue a doctorate in Social Psychology and Stratification. She worked as a research assistant to Aishah Shahidah Simmons in Spring 2016.

#LoveWITHAccountability FORUM