Spectra Speaks
I was invited by a Caribbean feminist collective to participate as a virtual guest in their Audre Lorde appreciation event this past weekend. After weeks of fighting a winter slump, I ended my Skype session feeling nourished and optimistic, which has prompted some reflecting on the power of sister circles, even when they’re only experienced virtually.
Are you affiliated with a college, university, or high school who’s seeking speakers for the upcoming academic year? Are you a conference in search of an inspirational keynote speaker? A loyal reader of my blog? :) Check out my latest talk, “The Power of Storytelling: LGBT Rights, the Media, and the African/Black Diaspora” and help bring my love revolution to as many spaces as possible!
Love is absolutely a feminist issue, a recurring theme in various parts of the political landscape. But we’ve grown so accustomed to framing our discussions and ideas for progress around everything but love—instead, facts, figures, statistics, issues, enlightement or problematicness—that I fear we’ve inadvertently distanced ourselves from the most important part of any of this: our lives and experiences as people.
I decided to tweet about “The Culture of Naming” one evening, and am sharing the archive via this post. My main point was that naming can be as powerful as it can be silencing, and that we should consider the purpose of them before blanket use; for affinity groups, naming is essential, but for engagement/education, probably not so much. It’s a theory in progress. What do you think?
Growing up in Nigeria, the idea that improving the lives of women was a cause worth fighting for didn’t just come from organizations, or brochures, or formal programming; I had strong women around me who constantly put this into practice in the every day, including my own mother.
How about we — as global gender justice advocates — subvert the idea that women are perpetual victims by covering our collective resistance? How about we cut back on the sensationalism — the shock tactics and controversy we once deployed to get mainstream media to pay attention to issues important to us — and now spend time amassing a historical archive of positive happenings that could inspire legendary bed time stories of the many feminist heroes and heroines that have been paving the way to our liberation?
About Me
Meet Spectra: Queer Nigerian Afrofeminist Writer and Media Activist. Social Entrepreneur Nurturing Principled Diaspora and Women's Philanthropy in Media and Tech. Self-Care and Self-Love Evangelist. Idealist Warrior Woman. Big Dreamer. Big Thinker. Big Doer, Too.
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New Narratives, New Voices: Why I Hate the Word Diversity
But in my fight for “diversity”, I’ve often found myself pigeon-holed into choosing on one fight — the “people of color” fight — over others (sexism, immigration etc), and losing critical ground on those other fronts as a result.