Author: moyabailey
An Essay for Donny
Excited to have this piece in the 3rd issue of Afropiq!
On Kamala Harris, Misogynoir, and the Future of the Left
I feel like humans always resist. Humans find a way to imagine and move things a little bit. Always. And if we stop thinking about things happening in our lifetime, then I think that really opens up the possibilities. So, in spite of this, I am hopeful, because I do think that even in moments where things seem really dire, there’s so much that has been illuminated and so many people have been forced to question their assumptions. And I think that puts us in a better position going forward. So, all is not lost. There are things to learn. And there’s always possibility when we come together and try to imagine together.
We Don’t Need Misogynoir to Critique Kamala Harris
Harris has and should be critiqued. However, there will be critiques grounded in questions of her actual political résumé and those grounded in misogynoir; distinguishing between the two is essential for those who want to make an informed decision when voting in November.
Misogynoir in Medicine
On June 24, 1983, Byllye Avery welcomed busloads of Black women to the campus of Spelman College in Atlanta. She was in a state of disbelief. The women had traveled from Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania — even as far away as California — for a three-day event billed as the First National Conference on Black Women’s Health Issues.
Dara Mathis for NYT Times
The year I was born, 21 days after I was born, a historic conference took place at my future Alma Mater. I picked today to make known my effort to further the work with my documentary, Misogynoir in Medicine. I hope you will join me and the team in creating a film that considers Black women’s health as a critical issue for our life and times. Check out our website to learn more, support the work, and see a little bit of what we have in store.
#MisogynoirTransformed Book Tour
Did I mention I wrote a book?
An important grad school hack that I learned after grad school is that you can and should listen to authors talk about their books via book talks! I’m still angling for a Misogynoir Transformed C-SPAN appearance but in the interim, please enjoy this conversation I had with Lee Pierce of the New Books Network!
Also, while you listen, sign up for one of my forthcoming book talks! Would love to hear your questions during any Q&A.
Provocations for the Journal Catalyst’s 5th Anniversary
I was invited to be on a panel with some really wonderful feminist STS colleagues to offer provocations in celebration of the 5th Anniversary of the journal, Catalyst. Here are my remarks, part poem, part prose, part pathos.
Ma’Khia is such a beautiful name. I hate how I learned it. #SayHerName
— moyazb (@moyazb) April 21, 2021
Yesterday I Tweeted “Ma’Khia is such a beautiful name. I hate how I learned it. #SayHerName”
This tweet has more than 30,000 likes. I don’t know what to make of this. is this an outpouring of support for a dead Black girl? For her name? A shared hate for why we know it? What remains of this beautiful girl beyond her name and tiktok hair tutorials?
That 20 minutes after Ma’Khia Bryant became a hashtag, the man who made George Floyd one was found guilty does not move me. I did not breathe any easier knowing that this man would go to prison. A cop in prison is not justice nor is it accountability when the system that put him there remains. And what remains of George Floyd? A hashtag? A hashtag I might study as part of a digital humanities STS project to show that hashtags do some work, create some openings and fissures in a system that would bury us not knowing we were seeds.
What remains. What, remains. What, remains?!
Did you hear about Tree and Delisha Africa?
What remains to bury? No remains to bury but remains for a co-ed to learn forensic pathology on. Science built on the literal bones of those most marginalized. Does forensic science bring them back? Make the bombing that that made them bone any less devastating?
It feels not enough. Not enough for George Floyd and not enough for Ma’khia Bryant. Not enough for Tree and Delisha and those who survive them.
Scholarship cannot undo extrajudicial killings.
I wonder sometimes if the academy is busy work for those who might otherwise get to the business of creating something different. As I was told by an indigenous elder, your land acknowledgement is cute or whatever but don’t do it if it let’s white supremacy relax. What remains if the naming of the Wampanoag, the Pawtuckett, the Massachusett, doesn’t result in concrete care or collateral for another way of relating to those who survived colonization and are still here?
How do we move from performing solidarity at the top of a talk to embodying it in the type of research we do? How much of my energy should go into jumping through the hoops of academia, even if we figure out how to do our research in a more just way, when we know that ultimately capitalism is not sustainable? At what point do we abandon our computers for lives off grid?
Can STS answer this question? At what point do we know enough to say that new scholarship, research, new words and terms, have not slowed the march towards the end of the anthropocene? That some of us are getting there faster than others? What remains?
Delivered 4/22/2021
Misogynoir and Meghan Markle
In case you missed it, I tweeted,
So #misogynoir almost cost Meghan Markle her life. She thought of dying by suicide because of the misogynoir she was experiencing. She has all the class and color privilege and still felt this way. Think about the reality for other Black women.
moyazb
The tweet went viral but sparked some questions about whether Meghan was actually a Black woman if she identified as mixed race. 280 characters was not enough so I was grateful that my quick pitch to the ever effervescent Evette Dionne, THE EIC at BITCH, was successful.
Identifying as mixed race, or biracial, or as a “woman of color” didn’t protect Meghan from the British press or the living legacy of hypodescent. Additionally, these terms aren’t mutually exclusive from Black identity. Separating people who have historically and currently been read as Black into a distinct racial group because they also have a white parent does not end racism, nor does it mitigate misogynoir. My tweet was a call to consider how much worse the experience of negotiating misogynoir is for Black women with different facial features, darker skin, and less wealth than Meghan Markle.
Moya Bailey, Misogynoir Nearly Killed Meghan Markle
You can read all about my thoughts on the situation and what it means for Black women like Meghan (just in case you weren’t sure where I landed).
Additionally I had the privilege to meet the brilliant Blair Imani who, in addition to mentoring me on the finer points of that new (new) social media, invited me on her series, #SmarterInSeconds.
I also had the opportunity to talk about this topic more on The Special Report with Areva Martin and other fabulous panelists. You can watch the video here.
My book will be out May 25! Please pick it up at your favorite independent bookstore or mine.
Black (Femme) Genders Panel by Black Feminist Futures
This conversation gave me so much life!
The Imagination Desk Interview
Moya Bailey is a Black queer feminist scholar, writer, and activist. She is the co-author of #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice and has a new book, Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance, coming out May 2021. In this conversation, we talk about online communities of support and activism, racial inequalities in medicine, the healthcare system, artificial intelligence, and Moya’s term misogynoir, which describes a specific form of discrimination experienced by Black women.
The Imagination Desk