Black mamas are sitting in prison awaiting trial for being too free. For bringing Black children into a world that fears and punishes them. For writing bad checks to feed their kids. For defending themselves in a world that assaults them daily. For protecting their family members. For crimes they haven’t even been tried for—with bails set too high for their families to pay—forced to wait while the court system pressures them to take guilty pleas for crimes they didn’t commit so they can go home on probation.
What time is it? It’s time to get them out.
Kylie-Anne Kelly can’t remember the exact moment she became her boyfriend’s one and only, his what would I do without you, but she does remember neglecting her own needs to the point of hospitalization.
[…]
After three years together, when exhaustion and anxiety landed her in the hospital and her boyfriend claimed he was “too busy” to visit, they broke up.
"Boys know by late adolescence that their close male friendships, and even their emotional acuity, put them at risk of being labeled girly, immature, or gay," Way writes. "Thus, rather than focusing on who they are, they become obsessed with who they are not — they are not girls, little boys nor, in the case of heterosexual boys, are they gay."
[CW mention of abuse and rape]
“Why are you depressed?” my mother asked me when I responded truthfully instead of lying with a simple, “I’m doing fine.” […] And then more men used my body like a glove and they used my kindness as a balm for their own wounds, and they used the home I made for myself to shelter their needs, and then I kept trying and it got harder.
Women came together over coffee and cake, sharing what they could. These meetings, while less overtly political than later lesbian activism, did something amazing: In an era where being out could lead to serious legal and social consequences, they helped American lesbians realize their collective strength.
Stigma blocked my ability to feel valued as a real person in our society; I felt that people saw me as trashy and my body as damaged goods. Feelings like that are reinforced when society judges teen moms for not marrying or staying with their partners. And too many of us are conditioned to accept a predestined fate of poverty and failure. These are the ways in which stigma creeps into our lives and rarely leaves us. The pervasive messages about how harmful teen pregnancy is and how promiscuous and irresponsible teen moms are, a characterization rarely used to describe teen fathers, promote discrimination in the very places teen parents should feel safe, like our doctors’ offices and our schools.