Let Womanism Disrupt Patriarchal Violence Against Black Women
I am Virginia-born and raised. Virginia’s history of patriarchal violence against Black women, as the former epicenter of the nation’s domestic slave trafficking and former capital of the enslaving confederacy, cannot be separated from nauseating headlines of lives lost in intimate patriarchal violence – Black women and children are being murdered by the men closest to them.
We honor the life of Dr. Cerina Fairfax, murdered by her husband. Our prayers are extended to Tiffany Terry, now injured and bereaved of her two children murdered at the hands of her partner. These are just two recent Virginia stories among many traumatized by a country-wide string of recent femicides against Black women. The way this patriarchal violence targets Black women specifically has been termed misogynoir. Faith Matters Network looks to womanist wisdom in the form of radical refusal of the patriarchal script that allows Black women to be harmed, their pain devalued, and their lives dismissed.
Womanist scholars have been pouring their intellect over power dynamics still plaguing us. JoAnne Marie Terrell invokes the story of her mother in Power in the Blood? to assert that Black women’s blood can never atone for the sins of patriarchal violence, and that our power to interrupt violence is sacred. Delores Williams reminds us in Sisters in the Wilderness that we can reconsider our investments in patriarchal institutions even as we may benefit from them. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple shows us that escaping patriarchal abuse is possible. Our tradition has always been intolerant of an abusive and femicidal status quo. The womanist tradition is one conceived by women who love women in all ways and forms. Our tradition centers and prioritizes women’s (and other gender-marginalized people’s) love for one another as our most reliable resistance technology.
My hope is for us to unite with our sisters in every war-torn wilderness across the globe to invest in one another first with prophetic vision toward rematriation. Let patriarchy figure out whether it functions without us taking it seriously. Having a prophetic call will be risky – there will be backlash. Those lashes won’t be nearly as brutal as those of patriarchy’s whip. Ancestrally, we know how to care for each other, which is the only way our refusal will be possible. Our liberation from patriarchy begins with our love for ourselves.
We will be tricksters in the face of a patriarchal paradigm. We will refuse to take it seriously. We will be here to support our community as we always have, hopefully, only after having loved ourselves, regardless.
Upcoming Event: Womanism Around the Table
We hope you will join us on Thursday, April 30, 6 – 7:15 PM ET // 3 – 4:15 PM PT for Womanism Around the Table with special guest Starlette Thomas from The Raceless Gospel who joins us to discuss how our trickster and humor tactics can disempower death-dealing systems of domination. Register here.
