Radical Desire: A short analysis by Taryn Stevenson
Colonization usually goes for the head of the colonized body. The head of our body is community, respect, and love. Our will to be free beings has been snuffed out by colonist regime and status quos. Our will to express our love to ourselves and each other through creativity, gender, performance, sex etc., was ripped away from us as soon as our ancestors set their shackled feet onto American soil.
Think of the daily discourse you see or hear on a daily basis “Who are you feeding first, your man or your children?” , “Who pays the bill at dinner?”, “Why are men soft, sassy, etc.?” I like to call this type of discourse kindergarten gender studies. Conversations about gender that are so surface-level that they’re in the air and don’t matter in the grand scheme of things at all. This discourse is not only stupid as hell but incredibly divisive and dangerous to the black community.
Making up cultural boogeymen to prove a point that helps no one and leaves everyone more divided than before. The combination of decades of media changingthe way we love and the trauma from the centuries of being physically and sexually assaulted by the hands of slave owners, made us ashamed of ourselves and each other. Our boogeymen are the manifestations of the shame that we carry for being human beings who desire pleasure. We use these boogeymen to dilute our minds and push down our intrinsic wants and desires.
These thoughts and arguments aren’t the first time they’ve been had, but with the introduction of social media, you can’t stay in your own echo chamber of opinions you agree with.
Why are these kindergarten discussions the only ones held in the mainstream? Other than mainstream media being held up by a patriarchal system, the conversations that we hold between each other in seem childish and moderated by white people. Even the way that open-minded or liberal people talk about love and the branches of it between black people are talked about through the mouthpiece and language of settlers.
When I say love and it’s branches I mean that love is the trunk, (our ancestry and past the root) and the branches are sexuality, gender, spirituality, and community.
What are conversations or lives that we could lead without colonization having an unconscious hold on us? Why are we so ashamed to love ourselves and each other without restraint? Why can’t we ever enjoy ourselves without having to anxiously look over our shoulder, waiting for someone to ruin it? Is it possible to live with our minds with pleasure first and everything else second? And by pleasure, I don’t mean succumbing to the things that make you comfortable and ignorant. There’s pleasure in the breakthrough of knowledge and infinite pleasure in finally seeing how you as a colonized or oppressed person how much niggas have played in your face your entire life until now. There’s pleasure in studying and ideas finally clicking in your brain when you reconvene with your community. There’s pleasure in firing a gun.
Look into yourself and the people who look like you and lead with love first. There’s infinite pleasure in loving who you are without looking through the goggles of colonial standards of what a black ”man” or a black ”woman” should be. Blackness extends far beyond our labels of gender, and we should look deeper into our own identities without outside disturbances.
The opposite of invisibility is to be visible. Let yourself free to be visible to yourself and others. See those parts of yourself you were made to feel afraid of, and feel pleasure in it. See those parts in your comrades and feel pleasure from thecommunity you’ve built. There isn’t a high in the world greater than the connection you can build when you live your life through radical pleasure and radical desire.
