Read on Twitter
This is long overdue. But the anti-Blackness, transmisogyny, and ableism perpetrated and enabled by @/a_busy_woman is abhorrent and cannot be tolerated in any space that claims to be communist, including the spaces I've been a part of on here.
This behavior is endemic to asian communist twitter and urgently needs to be combated in our public and private interactions.
Demands that she reflect on her anti-Blackness and transmisogyny went ignored as she blocked Black trans lesbians and instead allowed her friends to say reprehensible things about a Black trans nonbinary woman. Extremely violent things were said in defense of @/a_busy_woman.
This was gaslighting and abuse on a large scale that should NEVER have been tolerated, especially not by anyone who calls themselves a communist. Recently, her tweets using the n-word resurfaced, but no apology has been issued.
@/a_busy_woman has not been held accountable for her personal transgressions or her use of an anti-Black slur. She is now deactivated, but while on here she built a following of ~11k by using AAVE and posting about Asian communism. An apology is the very least of what is owed.
Anti-Blackness in asian communist twitter circles has been allowed to exist and proliferate in countless ways, and I feel the need to address a few that pertain to the situation that unfolded with @/a_busy_woman.
1. Dismissing criticisms of our anti-Blackness as anticommunist, “overly online,” or “parasocial” behavior, as if these dynamics go away in the “real world.”
2. Drawing attention to the anti-blackness of our political opponents while failing to reckon with our own.
Anti-Black Asians like Douglas Kim and dotori_muk were called out without hesitation, but we cannot reserve criticism for the most obvious and unapologetic displays of anti-Blackness from Asians.
3. Uninterrogated transmisogyny in our analyses of patriarchy, race, and class. To perpetuate transmisogyny is anti-Black and an analysis of patriarchy divorced from transmisogynoir is a total misunderstanding of it.
This is especially relevant to the discourse on desirability that has taken place on here, in which the contributions of Black trans lesbians has been misrepresented and violently manipulated to the benefit of nonBlack, transmisogyny-exempt nonlesbians.
4. Evasions of accountability by hiding behind friends and networks that enable anti-Blackness. Even worse, hiding behind Black theory that we’ve misunderstood to deflect criticisms.
5. Overburdening Black/trans/women by letting them do the work of theorizing and organizing without supporting them materially. Asian communists should be using our networks to get fundraising chains going and meeting Black peoples’ needs.
6. Reading Black theory and the intellectual output of Black people on here, regurgitating it without citation, and distorting Black peoples’ understandings of Marxism, gender, labor, etc.
Most importantly, it is necessary to acknowledge that I have been complicit in exacerbating the anti-Blackness of Asian communist twitter by failing to confront my social circle about @/a_busy_woman's behavior as well as neglecting to condemn these patterns on a larger scale.
The inherent performativity of posting all of this on twitter is also something I am uncomfortably sitting with as I express these thoughts.
People like me can easily gain a following of hundreds by making very basic posts about Sinophobic media narratives and double standards when it comes to China.
And it’s my responsibility to use the platform I earned quite effortlessly to speak to my followers about the anti-Blackness and transmisogyny that are not just pervasive amongst the Asian left, but frequently the lifeblood of our poorly and violently formed politics and praxis.
NonBlack asians, myself included, *have* to do the bare minimum of holding our friends accountable, and grapple with how anti-Blackness has informed our politics, identities, experiences of gender and sexuality, and national liberation movements.
I am also reiterating the calls that have previously been made by others for @/a_busy_woman to be held accountable.
To be clear, these demands included
-that $125 is sent to a Black lesbian in need (a pledge that was never fulfilled)
-that more $ is sent with additional income over time
-that she deplatform herself so her account and its sizeable following can be used for fundraising instead.
-that $125 is sent to a Black lesbian in need (a pledge that was never fulfilled)
-that more $ is sent with additional income over time
-that she deplatform herself so her account and its sizeable following can be used for fundraising instead.
