Although we don't all necessarily have to be bedfellows, talking honestly with other women (black, white, straight and gay alike) about our deepest uncertainties about self is pretty radical, writes Kimberley McLeod in a piece for xoJane.
Loving another woman is a revolutionary act. I'd heard it before but didn't quite grasp the gravity of that notion until I recently caught myself confidently staring back at my reflection in a full-length mirror. My broad, uneven shoulders taking up most of the glass's width, the remnants of the day's makeup still at the corner of my eyes.
I was naked, imperfect — and beautiful. And it wasn't always this way.
Over the years, time after time, woman after woman, I grew more accepting. The fact that they saw past my flaws and saw beauty in those same imperfections was the greatest lesson and gift in self-acceptance.
I once half-seriously joked to a friend that every woman should experience sleeping with another woman at least once in her life. Despite my personal views on sexual fluidity and belief that everyone (men and women) is bisexual to some degree (Kinsey scale, anyone?), there's some truth I hold to in that declaration.
"Loving relationships among Black women do pose a tremendous threat to systems of intersecting oppressions," Black warrior woman and scholar Patricia Hill Collins writes. "How dare these women love one another in a context that deems Black women as a collectivity so unlovable and devalued?"
Read more at xoJane.
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