After reading Taylor’s article, I realized that I wasn’t alone in my confusion about identity as a womanist or a feminist. The question has come up recently for me, and I wasn’t completely sure how to answer.

My three friends and I are currently in the process of creating a chapter of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization after organizing two large protests in downtown Chicago. We all advocate for equity and equality for all people, but there’s this unsure feeling on how to label the organization. Until recently, I would have called myself an “intersectional feminist,” and that label worked perfectly for me until I realized how redundant the label truly is.

The word feminism implies intersectionality and advocacy for all people. If your feminism isn’t intersectional, it’s not feminism. But this notion is always challenged when I am in these “feminist” spaces. The population of the room is always overwhelmingly white. And I simply do not fit into that category. Like me, all the other voices who don’t fit that demographic are silenced.

This is where I encountered womanism. In the beginning, BLM Chicago Youth labeled itself a “Chicago-based youth intersectional-feminist activist organization.” But that nam was quickly changed when we realized that not only was it a mouthful, but also that not all of us identified as feminists.

Maxine Wint, one of the other organizers, identifies as a womanist. She made it clear to us that as a black girl, she never found herself feeling comfortable in “feminist spaces.” And even if they claimed to advocate for the lives of black women, it was never really evident.

The rest of us completely understood and had also realized we’d had experiences similar to Maxine’s, that as black girls we were never completely accepted into mainstream white feminism. At that moment it became clear that I’d always been a womanist and now was the time call myself a womanist.

When we organized the first protest in July, it was so important for us to make it clear that four black teenage girls organized this event and were leading the protest. We wanted our faces to be seen and our voices to be amplified because too often the voices of black women in the Black Lives Matter movement are ignored

That, in and of itself, is womanism. As Taylor perfectly said, “Once I realized that I did not belong in mainstream academic feminism but rather in something more radical and real, I learned to make my own space, and to find and build new ones, with new sisters.”

And that is exactly what we did. We created a space, grounded in these “radical and real” movements of womanism and Black Lives Matter, where our voices as young black girls could shine, and be heard and respected.

To my surprise, people heard us loud and clear, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more. I agree with Taylor and would suggest that anyone explore womanism because it truly is worth knowing the feeling of being empowered and invigorated.  There is no feeling like it.

Natalie Braye ’18