I was scrolling Twitter getting my daily laughs and stumbled upon this tweet on the timeline:

Me handpicking the parts of toxic masculinity that I like and that benefit me:

insert gif of Beyoncé risibly selecting options on an Nintendo DS

Another woman’s reply to her tweet:

getting the mixture just riiiiiiiiiiight:

insert gif of Salem the cat stirring a potion

In general I always find the women of “black twitter” to be the most jovial and honest about everything we discuss daily on PPD. They approach this stuff with a level of irony and light heartedness.

There’s a book titled “Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay where she explores what it means to want certain options for yourself as a woman, but also, for example, unapologetically find yourself attracted to masculine men.

Speaking from a USA lens, in general I find black women or really any group of women who still self identify as hyphenated — “Irish-American” “Italian-American” “Polish-American” “Chinese-American” “Texan-American” etc. to be pretty darn pragmatic about all of this.

But I digress, here are my questions:

  • How do you define “gender equality”?

  • Do you find your definition at odds with your desires?

  • Do you find this “hypocritical”?

    Here are my personal answers:

  • I view it as having the option to do what I want understanding there still may be consequences to that. As long as there are no institutional blockers. For example yes I should be allowed to work wherever I want if qualified. Yes this may mean I may out-earn many men potentially making them less attractive to me for the longterm.

  • Not really. But I typically never feel bad about wanting what I want. I’m just realistic that my desires are particular and I’ll have to make concessions in some aspects and be okay with it. C’est la vie!

  • To me no. To someone else? Maybe.