I hope you don’t mind if I add my 2p to this debate. I keep seeing this point that blackface is “worse” than womanface - indeed, womanface is not a thing - and I just want to say:

I knew I was female before I knew I was Black.

In my home growing up, my oppression was 2-fold: https://twitter.com/Bon_QuiGirl/status/1274329921586958338

I was the youngest, and I was a girl.

I learned what that meant when I compared the freedom of my brothers to my sisters.

I was shown the perniciousness of racial inequality, but it was the inequality of the sexes that I saw first.

And those were my first fights. /

I was born female, but I wasn’t born Black. That’s the political description put on me to explain me.

At home we were Jamaican/Indian. We kids were Welsh (nobody was taking that from us).

Without the outside looking in, we were just ourselves, no descriptor necessary. /

But. Outside the home - outside our *selves* - we were whatever the context demanded.

Historically, culturally, politically, even musically - we couldn’t just be the sum of our existence, there had to be some explanation, some reason for the way we presented.

I am what I am/

but when I am *seen* I have to *say* what I am, else I *become what you see.*

I knew I was female, and still I know, when my body responded and rebelled in the way that it does.

I knew I was Black when I became aware that it meant something politically to fight for freedom. /

But the freedom I fight for, that I fought for before I even had words, with every ounce of my being and every instinct I hold, is the freedom of females to make their own choices independent of men.

Yes, even Black men.

I am not a Black woman only.

I am a woman//