Note: I miss my mother. She is a phone call away and lately those phone calls haven’t been made as often. When made, they are shorter. She thinks my girlfriend is always around, a specter she’d rather avoid. I didn’t tell her when we broke up, although she is usually the one who holds my […]
Author: crunkonia
Only Odd*: the Holiday Edition
“Only Odd” is borrowed from tumblr-speak, as in, “I can’t even… I can only odd.” Bloggers are often expected to react to major events. And though we often comply, the energy expended for such argumentation could also be used to finish manuscripts, start novels, knit sweaters or make passionate love as if the world wasn’t […]
Sex on Screen: An Intro to the Hella Brown Series (NSFW)
Porn is what’s hot in the streets (aka halls of the academy) now. There are brilliant scholars who historicize and build upon black feminist participation in conversations about pornography. And there are others who simplify the argument into a false then vs. now paradigm that presents our foremothers as prudes, not as the women who […]
We Want to Hang Out With You!
CFs Chanel and Asha ask that you hang out with us on December 11, from 8:00 pm to 8:20 pm. We also talk about our Feminism 101 for Girls project and the necessary steps to plan other events like this. We look forward to hanging out with you!
The Silliest Girl in Vagina Class, or Why Women’s Studies is Needed Now More Than Ever
In the past four years, I’ve developed a favorite pastime: taking advantage of all services covered by my tuition. To my delight, I discovered that my university offers free sexuality counseling. So after spending an hour with the local version of Dr. Sue, I was invited by my new sex therapist to join a three-week […]
Something to Cry About: Report from the Kitchen Floor (Trigger Alert)
One point on which Creflo Dollar and both his daughters agree is that he walked into the kitchen and said, “Why are you crying?” He already knew why. I imagine that he asked his question with a bullying tone; I imagine there was an unspoken threat behind the question, a threat with which too many […]
Skinny, Ashy Ankles: The New Black Woman Pathology
This just in: black women have skinny, ashy ankles. Black women have skinny, ashy ankles and the world needs to know. They are disproportionately represented in sales for Nivea, the thick cream marketed purposely toward black women’s bodies. They supply the band-aid brand with most of its sales, as they are the frequent victims of […]
Feminist Musings on Showing Up
It’s 11:30 PM. I have a baby with a cold. I have a looming, untouched exam prep list. I have a sink full of dishes. I have students writing me after 9:00 asking for “leeway” in tomorrow’s class. I have a headache. I have a backache. I have anxiety-induced insomnia. I have people. And when […]
Glowing in the Dark: Being Feminist At the Movies
Last night, we went to see Jumping the Broom, but this is not about that movie. I don’t have energy to waste on telling Salim Akil to do better (again); I don’t have enough energy to show the ways in which Tyler Perry and T.D. Jakes are cinematic bedfellows, conspiring in the dark to teach […]
It Gets Wetter: A Message to Women Who Frequently Have Horrible, Rushed Sex (NSFW)
Here’s a bold truth: I don’t enjoy penetration of any kind unless I’m wet enough to drown a dolphin. And this truth wouldn’t be a problem if sex weren’t always about penetration. One sex therapist put it best when she said, “If most women don’t have orgasms during ‘sex,’ but do have orgasms, perhaps we […]