I call myself 'Single Black Female' because these are the official social categories I occupy.
'Single':
I am not and do not consider myself single. I am in a happy relationship with my best friend. I love him more than I have ever loved Anything, Anyone, Ever. I wear the ring he gave me for our two year anniversary on my ring finger. We're planning on getting married and having babies. I need him around because (1) I need help...um...conceiving and raising said babies and (2) The (aforementioned, seruously, Anything Anyone Ever) Love. The fact that I can write these blog posts on his computer, with him beside me and that I can talk to him about the stuff I post here, that he reads the posts, is testament to the fact that I can trust him with My Stuff, and that we can hash this stuff out, together.
This blog is me fighting. For me, and for us.
We're not married yet, though. So on forms, I tick single. It is an arbitrary label in a world that only affords me two. And I'm not married...yet.
'Black':
Where to start. On forms, I tick that I am 'Black African'. I am trying to figure out what this means, given that I move, live, work, learn and love in mostly white spaces. Watch this space on this.
'Female':
Again, a favorite of mine on forms. I identify as female, as woman, and as a feminist woman, I try to live my life in a way that negates societal definitions of womanhood. That doesn't mean negating womanhood, though, and I hold fast to it. Thus the label 'female', here, is a stand in for the label 'woman'.
We clear?
Ah, officialdom. Is that not the great evil that we all rile and some labour against?
ReplyDeleteI cannot help but think the more one uses these official categories without protest, the more power they continue to have. Each of the categories can be contested, as you point out, but only insofar as they are actually contested.
Do you need these categories to give a point of reference, or, on the other hand, are you entitled to the loneliness of singleness as long as you have an man with you share your (singular and plural) stuff. Or the blackness Biko's black consciousness. Or the anger of first wavers.
I think you are something more than a collection of the officialdoms categories, and that your uniqueness should not be down-played for fear of losing commonality with readers.
But then perhaps I just rile more than most. Or because of my privileged position I've never really understood the difficulty of truly subverting the status quo.
But there is a sense in which my claiming of these labels is a political act. Labels are dangerous, especially when reified through officaldom. But I am also reclaiming my blackness, my femaleness from the clutches of offcialdom (which tends to define narrowly), am I not?
ReplyDeleteI don't know. The problem may be that you cannot claim anything on your own. You require others with whom to create meaning. If these others don't get that you are subverting the official narrowness of the terms by claiming greater scope (you) for them, then you will not have succeeding in subversion. Rather, you would have limited 'you' to the dogma. Perhaps if the tone of the claim were more clear others are less likely to fall into the assumption that youa re 'playing the victim', and get it that you are only 'PLAYING' the victim.
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