I am in a group chat with some badass women. These women are strong and doing some phenomenal work within our communities, and they are some of the IG Latinx celebrities that we love to follow and cheer on. They are brown, they are down, and they do not back down from anyone. And this year has inadvertedly become the year we stop putting up with no-good shit partners that keep fuckin with our energies.
I think that being around strong women reminds me a lot that I too am strong, and that I too am capable and that I too am worthy. Strong women keep me in check and they keep me accountable. However, the amount of strong women partnered with shitty people astounds me so I keep coming back to this very important question: has masculinity really ruin our partners abilities to hold us and all our strength???
I come from strong women who learned to appear and give into their partners enough so as to not appear threatening, yet I feel like my abuelos and my uncles and even my dad could still see that fire behind their eyes. Even that fire alone was threatening, and they tried to control that. For example, my dad cuts my mami down a lot. My dad tells her to not wear open toed shoes. My dad controls aspects of my mami that need not any input outside of her own. I think it is because my mami is so strong and perfectly capable that he manipulates whatever he can to put her in “her place.”
My friends are all kicking ass and taking names. They are all employed and fully capable of taking care of themselves, and have found partnerships in people who could not keep up or did not want to have to stay in a pace that measured up to their phenomenal partnering. Warsan Shire writes about women who are difficult to love, and I feel that poem in an intergalactic level. I have always felt like I have needed to simmer down, speak less, appear less threatening lest I find myself alone.
This year me and my friends are determined to not simmer down, to glow, to speak more if not too much, to be as threatening to as possible. I am fearful of what this could mean, because I already feel unapologetic and intense – but I am more fearful of what it could mean to stay quieter and to accommodate masculinity and accommodate submissive versus dominant narratives. I want to live in a world where I can exist fully and if that means relinquishing a part of me I was never given the tools to live without then so be it. If living this into my full self means I am threatening then bring it because I am about to scare everyone into their own realities.
I am in a group chat with some badass women. These women are strong and doing some phenomenal work within our communities, and they are some of the IG Latinx celebrities that we love to follow and cheer on. They are brown, they are down, and they do not back down from anyone. And this year has inadvertedly become the year we stop putting up with no-good shit-partners that keep fuckin with our energies. This year, we will push our partners to accept who we are, we will partner up, or we will not partner at all.
