A mess of shady feminism, pressure for perfection and the ferocious fightback of fascism with Lebo Mashile (Part II)

00:00:00: We shifted the political landscape, you know, centering LGBTQIA plus people, centering differently abled people, centering body positivity, centering black women, centering dark skinned women, centering all sorts of people who have been kept out, centering language.

00:00:17: I mean, so,

00:00:18: you

00:00:18: know, this is the price that we're paying for that.

00:00:24: What

00:00:25: the actual...

00:00:32: Welcome back to my two-part conversation with Lebo.

00:00:35: If you missed part one, take a beat and a breath and rewind back and have a listen.

00:00:40: In that episode, we tackled Lebo's journey to becoming a feminist, the effect of the Soweto uprising on her movements and childhood, how trauma gets passed down like trinkets and holding on to different parts of yourself with kindness.

00:00:55: Also, we looked at the cannibalization of women's bodies as well as a feminist refresher course on intersectionality and misogynoir.

00:01:05: It's a wild conversation where we weave in and out of levels journey as an

00:01:08: activist

00:01:09: and just have a bunch of conversation.

00:01:12: Go back and immediately listen if you have not listened.

00:01:15: But for those of you who do what you told, it's time to slide into part two of the conversation, which has feminist failures, The American condition and how it has affected black women, the long road to changing people's minds.

00:01:29: And sometimes you gotta tussle, right?

00:01:31: You gotta tussle.

00:01:32: And of course, her latest offering, women's labor.

00:01:36: And lastly, the oops my bad section, cause you gotta have that.

00:01:40: Or else is it even a collection of episodes?

00:01:43: No.

00:01:44: So settle in and enjoy.

00:01:50: You have basically managed to create like an entire world around yourself in which you can like live and you can maneuver and you can be safe from like all the nonsense out there.

00:02:00: And there is a lot of nonsense and I also love also going and finding the nonsense.

00:02:04: That was my thing.

00:02:09: I am an expert.

00:02:10: You're like I'm gonna go find the

00:02:11: smoke.

00:02:12: I'm gonna go.

00:02:12: Let's go.

00:02:13: Where's the smoke?

00:02:14: Where's the smoke?

00:02:16: Smoke?

00:02:17: Is that you?

00:02:19: Actually, do you know?

00:02:20: What mischief

00:02:21: am I getting up to?

00:02:22: What mischief were you getting up to?

00:02:23: Oh,

00:02:24: I mean, there's trails and trails of bodies there on social media.

00:02:29: The mayhem that I have caused.

00:02:32: Oh, guys.

00:02:33: And they will come for me too.

00:02:34: But you know what?

00:02:35: I mean, that's what I appreciated that about Twitter until it became X. You know, Twitter is... It's never been kind.

00:02:43: It's always been a war zone.

00:02:45: But it also has been the place where you could legitimately fact check.

00:02:51: What kept me on that platform for so long was that it was such a wonderful place to be able to deconstruct what was happening in media.

00:02:58: You could take a new story and go to Twitter and go to your favorite thinkers and say, okay, what is Tiffany thinking about this?

00:03:05: What is so-and-so thinking about this?

00:03:07: What's that one thinking?

00:03:08: And then construct.

00:03:10: what the real narrative is.

00:03:12: You know, my favorite Black feminist thinkers of my favorite contemporary Black feminist thinkers, I found them there on that platform.

00:03:20: We

00:03:20: really did find some

00:03:22: real minds on Twitter, hey?

00:03:23: Oh my God.

00:03:24: And they'll do the threads

00:03:26: and

00:03:26: they're just like, so today I'm going to be talking about.

00:03:29: and then they do.

00:03:31: tweet one of thirty-five and you're like locking.

00:03:33: Hey, we're about to be taken on a journey.

00:03:37: And I think those are the politics that shaped, you know, the, the, the error that we are coming out of.

00:03:44: I mean, now we're entering this white supremacist fascist bullshit that we, you know, that's a whole nother thing.

00:03:49: But let's, but before, right?

00:03:52: This is the price we're paying for that.

00:03:55: We're paying for the decade plus.

00:03:58: of having all these radical marginalized voices coming to the fore, shaping the narrative, talking back.

00:04:07: to the mainstream, deconstructing what's happening around us, centering people who have never been centred before, that we shifted the political landscape, centering LGBTQIA plus people, centering differently abled people, centering body positivity, centering black women, centering dark skinned women, centering all sorts of people who have been kept out, centering language.

00:04:37: This is the price that we're paying for that.

00:04:40: The white supremacy is like, you are not going to take me out.

00:04:44: You are not going to change the architecture of the world from your fucking account.

00:04:50: Like, you know, because apparently a dying animal is the most ferocious.

00:04:53: And

00:04:54: white supremacy and fascism has gotten

00:04:57: ferocious.

00:05:02: I was in the US for two weeks.

00:05:04: Oh, my gosh.

00:05:04: Welcome

00:05:05: home, by the way.

00:05:08: But also, but also, but also.

00:05:10: So I went to, I went to the New York Black African Literature Festival.

00:05:15: Shout out to F.A.

00:05:16: Paul Asino, D.D.

00:05:18: Lopeshonuga, the curators of the Lagos International Poetry Festival, which has been going for more than a decade now.

00:05:27: The Nigerians are so badass.

00:05:29: You'll never hate me.

00:05:30: You'll never make me hate Nigerians, guys.

00:05:38: Because you have the hustler spirit.

00:05:41: You have that hustler spirit.

00:05:42: Game recognises game, we get in there, etc.

00:05:45: But they are so, I mean, they

00:05:47: are next

00:05:49: level.

00:05:49: You're my father used to say, I don't often quote myself.

00:05:54: Halfway into the conversation.

00:05:56: She has a father.

00:05:59: Once upon a time,

00:06:00: I had a father.

00:06:06: My father used to say,

00:06:11: I

00:06:12: love it, I love it so much.

00:06:13: My father used to say, if you go to a country and you don't see Nigerians leave, it means black people can't survive.

00:06:19: Yo!

00:06:19: Facts!

00:06:20: That's

00:06:21: such facts!

00:06:21: Facts!

00:06:23: Facts!

00:06:23: If you go to a place and you want food, you want hair products, you want stuff to tambisa on your skin, you want shape batter, you want what you go, please can I have the African shop?

00:06:33: Where's the African shops?

00:06:34: Who's the African shops?

00:06:36: Where's Africans, Nigerians?

00:06:38: Yeah, yeah.

00:06:39: Yeah, yeah,

00:06:40: I didn't think about that.

00:06:41: There are the four runners of black people.

00:06:42: They clear the land and then the rest of us can get in there and do what we gotta

00:06:46: do.

00:06:47: Turn up third.

00:06:48: I feel we turn up.

00:06:49: It's it's Kenyans South Africans.

00:06:51: then go and set up like shop, right?

00:06:52: And we're like you guys are doing too much.

00:06:54: then Kenyans come and you don't know what we're doing.

00:06:59: We're not a helpful nation,

00:07:00: but you're there with PhDs.

00:07:01: We're there with PhD and

00:07:03: funding.

00:07:04: I love it though I like it.

00:07:08: I'm

00:07:08: a fan.

00:07:09: The day I go to a hair shop, an African food shop, or anything like that, and it's owned by a Kenyan, is the day I'll be like, okay, we've shifted.

00:07:16: But you will go

00:07:16: to some policy-think tank in Switzerland, where they are discussing the biggest hair-work developmental and mass.

00:07:27: Thirty Kenyans with PhDs at every level.

00:07:30: Apparently, Coke South Africa at some point was being run.

00:07:33: The MD was at Kenya.

00:07:34: I'm

00:07:34: not surprised.

00:07:34: Because

00:07:35: why not?

00:07:35: Because why not?

00:07:36: Why not?

00:07:37: You see,

00:07:37: that's how us we come.

00:07:38: We come through institutions.

00:07:41: You don't know.

00:07:41: You come with facts.

00:07:43: Fact-finding mission.

00:07:44: You get in there.

00:07:44: Fact-finding.

00:07:48: I don't even remember what I was asking.

00:07:52: Wait, you were saying... Oh,

00:07:52: I was saying Niger.

00:07:53: Okay, let it go.

00:07:54: Let in the New York Black

00:07:57: African... Now we're going to have the festival to leave all of this in.

00:08:03: So, this festival took place in Harlem, curated by Nigerian poets, which is incredible.

00:08:11: Poets as organizers.

00:08:14: It's hard to find poets who can manage things.

00:08:16: I will not

00:08:16: lie.

00:08:17: This will probably get me cancelled in poetry circles.

00:08:20: Poets

00:08:21: as

00:08:21: organizers, no.

00:08:22: You need your poet friend or somebody's bae.

00:08:29: Hey!

00:08:30: Hey!

00:08:30: Hey!

00:08:30: Somebody needs to do a PhD on that, on somebody's bay.

00:08:33: How much of the poetry scene has been built by somebody's bay.

00:08:37: The institution of somebody's bay, who comes in with actual managerial skills to come and hold the lives of creative people together.

00:08:47: Nigerians though, got it on lock.

00:08:50: They organize themselves a poetry festival and then create... another one there in the north, in the global north.

00:08:57: I'm like, what?

00:08:58: So we get to New York, and it's in Harlem, which is also just amazing.

00:09:05: And it's in a part of Harlem called Little Africa.

00:09:16: As a Kenyan,

00:09:16: I know how people

00:09:17: don't take it well when people speak ill of your country.

00:09:21: KOT, Kenyans on Twitter.

00:09:22: I don't know if they're still called

00:09:23: Kenyans on Twitter,

00:09:24: because it's X. Anyway, that's not the point.

00:09:26: KOT is

00:09:28: not to be messed

00:09:29: with.

00:09:30: We come from people who speak badly about our country in ways even the CNN could not comprehend.

00:09:36: We will get

00:09:37: that global apology.

00:09:39: So I'm going to this next bit with

00:09:41: a little bit

00:09:42: of caution because Levo is speaking about the United States in this current climate and Levo is speaking about it with gravitas and I am here for it because low-key we

00:09:52: all have some opinions right now.

00:09:54: I'm just like, this country is a scam.

00:10:01: But then at the same time, you still have all these incredible artists and creatives and immigrants and feminists, our people who are living and working and organizing and trying to survive through this.

00:10:15: You also see the onslaught of this kickback of white supremacy and fascism, particularly on black women.

00:10:23: Black women are

00:10:25: the

00:10:25: highest.

00:10:26: They're the segment of the population in America that has the highest level of education.

00:10:31: Black women hold more degrees than anybody else in the United States, right?

00:10:37: And that's been true for about a decade.

00:10:39: Oh,

00:10:39: wow.

00:10:39: Yes.

00:10:40: So a lot of this, the kickback against DEI is the kickback specifically against black women.

00:10:47: Since Trump came to power in January, all those state agencies that got shut down, USAID, Three hundred thousand black women lost jobs in the federal government.

00:10:59: I saw that.

00:11:00: And then you think about black tax and the ripple effect of one, because black life there, what it looks like in a material sense is not that different to what it looks like for us in a material sense.

00:11:10: If you knock down a black woman, a black single mother, how many people fall?

00:11:16: That's generational.

00:11:18: You're killing a whole tribe.

00:11:19: You're killing a whole nation.

00:11:20: It's generational.

00:11:22: So you think about, you know, this instability that we have and the ways in which black people are being targeted, specifically there in the West.

00:11:33: And then you think about how we're also being driven towards these stupid social media wars, how the xenophobia is being amplified,

00:11:41: how

00:11:43: the anti-blackness amongst ourselves as black people is being amplified so that we don't see our struggles as pan-African.

00:11:53: So that we don't act and think and work collectively.

00:11:56: Divide and conquer.

00:11:57: Yes.

00:11:58: Oh my gosh.

00:11:59: Yes.

00:12:00: Because when you see it live, like up close, it's like, oh, this is an extermination project.

00:12:06: This is a part

00:12:07: date.

00:12:08: Like being there in America.

00:12:09: Yeah,

00:12:09: yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:10: Being there, dude.

00:12:10: I was like, oh, this country is depressed.

00:12:12: Like you feel it.

00:12:13: I mean, it's still America.

00:12:15: Like it's amazing.

00:12:16: I mean, so it's, you know, the infrastructure has its things, it has its perks.

00:12:19: It has its shiny.

00:12:21: It's still very shiny.

00:12:22: And there's still such incredible people who are there.

00:12:24: And there's still incredible opportunities for people there.

00:12:26: But

00:12:28: there's something dark happening

00:12:29: there.

00:12:29: You pay a heavy, heavy, heavy price.

00:12:32: Even in the streets, I was like, Oh, these people are depressed.

00:12:36: I mean, I felt that in Oakland, that people are sad.

00:12:42: In Harlem, I just got the sense of people are under excruciating pressure to survive.

00:12:49: People are in hyper-survival mode, and we're being conditioned.

00:12:53: to be desensitized towards poverty that is literally on our doorstep, that is literally at our feet.

00:13:01: I've seen so many instances of not even being desensitized, but being trained to hate poverty, where it is a moral failing.

00:13:09: And

00:13:09: I feel like that has become, especially with the rise of these like bros who are like, if you wake up in the morning and you grind.

00:13:15: Hustle culture.

00:13:16: Yeah, hustle culture.

00:13:17: Grand culture.

00:13:17: You're five, five, thirty.

00:13:18: Oh my God.

00:13:18: You

00:13:18: should make like, ten thousand.

00:13:19: You should own a property.

00:13:20: Yeah, I know.

00:13:21: But like, ten, fifteen, you should own two houses.

00:13:23: You should have two small businesses.

00:13:24: Right?

00:13:25: Make money in your sleep.

00:13:26: Right?

00:13:26: Yeah.

00:13:27: When did you, when did you have breakfast?

00:13:29: It was always the question.

00:13:36: Getting your coins is a real thing and that is tied deeply to the value of your labor.

00:13:41: So, story time.

00:13:43: I was in the Uber on the way to record this episode, minding my own business when I opened up Instagram and a visual of Lebo in a bra filled like my whole screen, right?

00:13:53: It wasn't what you think.

00:13:55: It was her latest offering, women's labor.

00:13:58: The caption reads, women's legacy is keeping people alive and keeping the world running.

00:14:04: Yet we are underpaid.

00:14:05: Our labor is undervalued across sectors.

00:14:08: Stressing about money whilst flexing this hard is the pattern I am undoing.

00:14:12: Being indispensable yet devalued is disrespect.

00:14:16: What would happen if we took our labor away?

00:14:18: What would happen if we worked as hard for ourselves as we did for everyone else?

00:14:25: So tell me about the

00:14:26: short story.

00:14:27: So in my relentless addiction to social media, which goes in cycles and waves and cycles and waves, I think the pandemic made me realize that all screens are TV.

00:14:41: you know, when I realized that,

00:14:43: oh,

00:14:44: the phone screen is just television.

00:14:46: Okay.

00:14:47: So then I was like, fuck, I've got like, fifteen years worth of twenty years worth of skills that I can bring to this thing.

00:14:51: And then something clicked and I was like, fuck, I can work, right?

00:14:55: I think what is exciting about how social media is evolving and how the visual landscape of social media is evolving is seeing how many young black creators are able to just make an imprint on our culture, you know, without the kind of barriers to access that existed when I was starting out, right?

00:15:19: So even though I was lucky to be in the sweet spot of Yovo, and I really was lucky, you know, it's not everybody that gets to experience that kind of confluence of energies, right?

00:15:31: Being in Joburg at that time and my proximity to media allowed for me to be able to make the jump.

00:15:36: But I wouldn't have made the jump if I didn't have skills and I didn't have some... to back me up, right?

00:15:39: And I wouldn't have been able to sustain it without the skills.

00:15:42: What is interesting now is that these kids are acquiring all these skills.

00:15:47: on the same device, right?

00:15:49: There literally is no barrier to access, you know?

00:15:52: You are the writer, you are the producer, you are the creator, you are the face, you are the brand, you are the business, you know?

00:15:59: So a couple of months ago, I started working with a new stylist, creative director, Peyton Bason, and I've been thinking really differently since working with him about how to use this platform, you know, for visual storytelling, you know?

00:16:13: I think for a long time, I thought about Instagram as just like Kind of like a place to deposit little flyers of my life, you know?

00:16:20: This is what's happening.

00:16:21: This is what I did.

00:16:22: This is how I looked, you know?

00:16:24: A bit of the day.

00:16:26: A bit of the day.

00:16:27: What do I mean?

00:16:28: I'm cute.

00:16:28: Oh, my friends are cute.

00:16:29: Oh, Tiffany.

00:16:29: Oh, you guys are all like... But now I'm thinking about it as... more of an archive, you know, and that the platform itself lends itself to creativity, you know.

00:16:45: It lends itself to kind of like documentary filmmaking.

00:16:48: It lends itself to editorial.

00:16:50: It lends itself to a different way of capturing what it is that I do.

00:16:56: And also realizing that there is a powerful relationship between poetry and visual language, you know, that poetry is such a wonderful vehicle for short form storytelling, short film making, because it's abstract.

00:17:13: What a poem does in a couple of lines or in a couple of minutes or in a couple of stanzas is what a novel does in hundreds of pages.

00:17:19: You know what I mean?

00:17:20: It's a world in and of itself.

00:17:22: So to translate that world into visual content is really, really interesting, especially in the era of AI and all these things that we can do with visuals.

00:17:33: really exciting.

00:17:34: So I'm interested in exploring more of that.

00:17:40: I'm interested in working with creatives who are challenging me to see what already exists in my body of work in different ways.

00:17:51: So this was just one aspect.

00:17:54: The campaign is called Women's Labor.

00:17:57: And then for the Queers and the Thames and the Dolls, we've got Dolls Labor.

00:18:02: Dolls Labor.

00:18:03: Women's Labor and Dolls Labor.

00:18:06: Love it.

00:18:07: Because

00:18:07: we keep the world going

00:18:09: and we underpaid, you know?

00:18:11: We are the ones being erased.

00:18:13: We are the ones who are keeping people together, who are holding people up, who are pouring our creativity into these very same platforms.

00:18:24: We're the ones who are references for people, but they won't say that they're referencing us.

00:18:29: We're teaching people, but they won't say that they're taught by us, right?

00:18:32: So our labor is everywhere.

00:18:34: It's all over.

00:18:35: It's everywhere.

00:18:36: What happens when we name that?

00:18:38: What happens when we attach the true value of that labor?

00:18:44: What happens when we withdraw that labor?

00:18:46: What happens when we say I'm not giving you that labor anymore?

00:18:48: I'm pouring all that labor into myself?

00:18:54: What happens in our families?

00:18:56: What happens in our relationships?

00:18:57: What happens when black women stop being donkeys?

00:19:02: Shit falls apart.

00:19:03: Shit does fall apart.

00:19:05: Really quick.

00:19:14: Release yourself.

00:19:15: Sometimes you need to put down the weight of being and doing too

00:19:20: much.

00:19:21: And in the spirit of that, let me put down the weight of the segment popping up randomly somewhere in this episode.

00:19:26: Yeah, I know it's a little late, but here it is.

00:19:29: Oops, my bad.

00:19:31: The part of the podcast where we hear about people's feminism and when it was not perfect, but also how they pivoted and did better because they knew

00:19:40: better.

00:19:41: I said it in previous episodes and I will say it again.

00:19:44: We aren't always on point.

00:19:46: We're not averaging on a hundred percent.

00:19:49: Sometimes we're getting a failing grade and that's okay because we are human.

00:19:53: In this iteration of Oops My Bad, Lebo tells us about how she left homophobia behind and muses on how even we as feminists can sometimes be a little fucky.

00:20:11: There's a lot that I've had to unlearn.

00:20:13: There's a lot of fuckery that I had to really... dig deep and let go of homophobia.

00:20:19: I think getting into the industry and being exposed to so many queer people was an education on its own.

00:20:27: I didn't know what a trans person was.

00:20:30: I didn't know what a non-binary person was.

00:20:35: Working in creative spaces was a major education.

00:20:41: And also about the... with regard to the power of queer people in the creative industries.

00:20:48: If you're gonna be homophobic and try to be an artist, your career is going nowhere.

00:20:53: You better open your mind.

00:20:55: It's really funny that a hip hop has been able to get away with so much homophobia for so long, for so many decades, because I'm like, who are the,

00:21:02: what are we?

00:21:02: are the gays

00:21:03: who are doing the A and R, and who are doing the PR, and who are doing the fashion, and who are doing the, they're listening to the sky.

00:21:09: and promoting you, this is so strange, you know?

00:21:13: So yeah, my ideas about queerness, my ideas about transness, my ideas about gender as a binary experience, all of that is shit that I had to unlearn and shit that I'm still actively unlearning.

00:21:30: Also, I think, I think unlearning the idea that Black women have to be perfect as well, you know?

00:21:39: We come to these politics, I think, because, a lot of the time, because of trauma, you know what I mean?

00:21:44: You don't wake up one day and decide, let me learn about oppression.

00:21:48: No, you are oppressed, so you have to learn about oppression, because you're trying to survive your own oppression, you know what I mean?

00:21:55: So by virtue of the fact that you are oppressed, you're gonna be fucked up, right?

00:21:59: So, I mean, also realizing that, Black feminists are capable of violence and jealousy.

00:22:09: and harm, and that harm is done in these communities.

00:22:13: But that is not like emblematic of what the community is all about.

00:22:19: Any more than the harm that men do to each other is emblematic of what men do when they come together, right?

00:22:26: Human beings are violent.

00:22:27: People do shitty things to each other.

00:22:29: Feminists are not exempt from that.

00:22:31: And just because you embrace feminism as a philosophy, as an ideology, it also doesn't... Embracing feminism as an ideology is not a substitute for the healing work that you have to do on yourself, right?

00:22:44: Oh, that's

00:22:44: a hot take.

00:22:45: Yeah, so being a feminist, I thought for a long time, another example of fuckery, I thought for a long time that, oh, but, you know, I've done all these alternative therapies and modalities and, you know, I'm an artist and I'm always working through my feelings.

00:23:04: That's not therapy.

00:23:05: It's therapeutic.

00:23:07: That's not therapy.

00:23:09: That's not therapy.

00:23:11: That's not sitting.

00:23:12: and mining yourself and looking at yourself and being held accountable and looking in the mirror.

00:23:18: And I'm not saying that therapy is perfect either, because therapy also has its own nonsense and its own baggage, and you really have to be deliberate and clear and intentional about choosing your therapist and the values that that person has.

00:23:34: You need to know them and choose a person who has values that are aligned with yours, because harm can also be done in therapy.

00:23:41: particularly for black feminists.

00:23:42: I think black feminists need to, black feminists, queer folk, marginalized people, we need to deal with ourselves as kind of, as like precious and vulnerable goods.

00:23:51: We need to deal with, you know, you need to treat yourself like you are your own little egg, you know?

00:23:56: And you wouldn't throw your egg to a white supremacist, right?

00:24:01: So why am I in therapy with somebody without understanding what your race politics are?

00:24:05: If I'm here to be processing, if I'm here processing racial trauma or gender trauma, you know what I mean?

00:24:11: So that's a whole nother thing.

00:24:12: But yeah, being creative is not a substitute for your own therapy work.

00:24:21: Being a healer is not a substitute for your own healing work for the prioritization of your own inner excavation.

00:24:32: I mean, it's tough.

00:24:36: At times, I have struggled with the way that our culture is shifting more and more towards a kind of... It's like an incessant war zone.

00:24:54: There's no space to hold ideas that can be contradictory, you know?

00:25:02: And for me, what makes art strong is when it's able to hold things that cannot be held together.

00:25:14: That's when you really get new perspectives.

00:25:17: When you see humanity in something that you never thought you would see humanity inside of.

00:25:21: So how can the same thing that I am chasing, looking for in my art be the same thing?

00:25:29: that is, there's no space for it in my political life and in activist circles, you know?

00:25:41: That's a tough one.

00:25:43: I feel like in this moment, the freest place that I have is my art.

00:25:48: I feel like that's the place where I can really speak my voice and say who I am, you know?

00:25:56: Change is inevitable.

00:25:58: It's optional.

00:26:00: From hot takes to creative spaces, Lebo explains that good art will always push you outside of your comfort zone and make you delve into new ways of viewing the world and yourself.

00:26:12: But people won't always be the best at accepting a shifting world.

00:26:19: Because change is inevitable, make sure you take the option to grow from the changes.

00:26:26: It will make you better than the day before.

00:26:28: and help you reach your full potential and purpose.

00:26:31: I choose the platforms that I participate in very, very carefully.

00:26:38: You know, I don't do a lot of media anymore.

00:26:40: I don't do a lot.

00:26:43: I used to think that... People were just suffering from a lack of information.

00:26:49: and if you just expose people to more and if you just shin if you just if you just if you'd know know people don't care.

00:26:57: They don't.

00:26:58: they genuinely don't care.

00:26:59: They like being stuck.

00:27:01: people like

00:27:02: they like to know what they know.

00:27:03: They like to know what they know.

00:27:05: and and if you are a creature who likes to grow and who likes to evolve and who likes, who's not... I mean, change is hard for everybody, but I think if you live a creative life... we have a different relationship with change because we always have to make something out of nothing, right?

00:27:24: You always have to cross over that threshold of creation to arrive at the destination where you have the thing that you were seeking out, right?

00:27:32: So we are always on this journey of discovery, of knowing, of changing, of evolving, of letting go, releasing, acquiring new, you know, at least in our work.

00:27:41: Insofar as our work is concerned, that's an important part of the creative practice, you know?

00:27:46: But it's not necessarily something that other people people honor in life, right?

00:27:49: It's not necessarily a principle that is honored or a principle that's even understood or a practice that these are not tools that are readily available to people that were not taught these tools, you know, of how to integrate change into our lives.

00:28:04: People respond to change in violent ways.

00:28:08: And I've seen this over time.

00:28:10: I've seen that people, you know, you introduce a new idea into the space.

00:28:14: First people ridicule it.

00:28:17: Then they will, like, ignore it.

00:28:20: They'll pretend like it doesn't exist, like it didn't happen.

00:28:23: Then you really irritate them when they respond violently.

00:28:26: They respond violently.

00:28:27: Like, violently, violently, outlandishly violently.

00:28:31: Kicking

00:28:31: back, pushing back, just

00:28:33: a lot.

00:28:34: Then they change.

00:28:35: And when they change, they change quietly.

00:28:38: You just see the idea, I've seen this happen over and over and over and over and over and over again.

00:28:44: The things that I get dissed for, the things that I get maligned for, the things that I get attacked for, somehow, somewhere there's an evolution in thought, in the space, in the community, and then magically five, ten, twenty years people arrive at the same conclusion.

00:29:01: But they don't come back and say, oh, you were right.

00:29:03: Oh, no, they never do.

00:29:04: They just diss you for whatever it is that you're saying right now.

00:29:09: It'll always be something

00:29:10: new.

00:29:10: It'll always be something new.

00:29:12: So I'm learning to love my inner weirdo.

00:29:14: Okay.

00:29:15: You know what I mean?

00:29:16: And also to love and to love my darkness.

00:29:20: And to love even the part of me that is wrong.

00:29:23: Like how do you create without failure?

00:29:27: How?

00:29:29: How?

00:29:30: How do you test ideas without fucking

00:29:33: up?

00:29:34: How do you get to the good poem without the bad poem?

00:29:37: You need the bad poem.

00:29:37: You need the bad poem first.

00:29:39: Nobody has to see it, but you need to write it.

00:29:42: Do something badly.

00:29:43: Do it very badly until you do it well.

00:29:48: And I think because we are under so much pressure as black women, even starting out... Oh, I'm so sorry for all this... I'm getting over flu.

00:29:58: This

00:29:58: is now a medical podcast.

00:30:03: After we discuss my flu, we'll talk about perimenopause.

00:30:06: Oh, nice.

00:30:07: No,

00:30:11: I mean... Oh, yes Loving to... You have to go through the things.

00:30:17: Oh, you've got

00:30:18: to go through the failure.

00:30:19: You've got to go through... You've got to write the bad poem.

00:30:21: You have to do the gut stuff.

00:30:23: There's so much pressure on black women to be perfect straight out of the box because we're coming with so much pressure already on us, you know?

00:30:30: We are born stressed.

00:30:31: Black children are born with higher cortisol levels.

00:30:34: Can you imagine?

00:30:35: Can you imagine?

00:30:36: We are literally born with higher cortisol levels than white children.

00:30:39: We're

00:30:39: born stressed.

00:30:40: We're born stressed because our mothers are stressed because their mothers were stressed because their environment is stressful.

00:30:44: It's stressful.

00:30:46: Because history is stressful, you know?

00:30:49: So you're carrying that.

00:30:50: We don't enter the world of work clean.

00:30:53: We enter the world of work with black tax.

00:30:55: We don't enter the world of work being able to fuck up and fail and figure out and, oh, I'm broke and I'm couchsurfing and I'm... Even if finding

00:31:04: myself.

00:31:05: Even if you're doing that, the stakes are

00:31:07: higher.

00:31:07: So high.

00:31:09: You should be doing it at some crazy astronomical level of perfection that allows you to be able to monetize it immediately.

00:31:15: Yeah, you should have been doing Airbnb if you're couchsurfing.

00:31:18: That's how you should have come up with Airbnb by couchsurfing.

00:31:22: You write a poem, where's your hit book?

00:31:23: Where's your hit book?

00:31:24: Yeah, you know, like, so we have these, we place these, these crazy, crazy expectations on ourselves.

00:31:32: And, and how do you grow?

00:31:34: Like, you won't even attempt to try new stuff if you can't fail.

00:31:40: You know, white people fail.

00:31:42: They fail.

00:31:43: Men

00:31:43: fail.

00:31:44: They fail again and again and their failures are repackaged.

00:31:48: They write to build whole philosophies and build institutions to their failures.

00:31:53: But you have to be perfect straight out the fucking

00:31:55: box.

00:31:56: Answer me when I talk to you.

00:31:57: Don't you eat every day?

00:31:58: Yeah.

00:31:58: Nigga, as long as you're in my house, you put a sur on the end of it when you talk to me.

00:32:02: Yes, sir.

00:32:03: You eat every day.

00:32:04: Yes, sir.

00:32:04: Got a roof over your head.

00:32:05: Yes, sir.

00:32:05: Got clothes on your back.

00:32:06: Yes, sir.

00:32:06: Why you think that is?

00:32:07: Because of you?

00:32:09: Hell, I know it's because of me.

00:32:10: As a bisexual candidate for black sheep of an African family, I have to keep my game right and toyed.

00:32:17: I must get the degrees and do too much.

00:32:20: I must be on a jet plane and be asked, where are you going now for work, my baby?

00:32:25: I must write for the big platforms and have the TED talks.

00:32:28: But one thing I was blessed with is a smart mouth and a really loving family who lets Tiff

00:32:35: be Tiff.

00:32:36: I think that the pressure being off in a sense, well as much as it can be within an African family, has helped with my ability to build the world that I personally and professionally occupy.

00:32:47: I remember when I failed my international law module.

00:32:50: Shout out to UCT law.

00:32:54: And my whole family had already bought tickets from Nairobi to Cape Town to come see me graduate.

00:32:59: I was on the edge of my own life.

00:33:01: I was just like, oh my gosh, I didn't know what to do.

00:33:05: I kept the secret for like, I think a week and a half.

00:33:09: I said nothing as people asked me for visa letters and et cetera.

00:33:13: I said nothing.

00:33:15: I kind of shut down because I was so freaked out.

00:33:18: But the kindness that my family gave me in the face of that failure was incredible.

00:33:24: For example, the patriarch of my family, my uncle, who says like six words a year, was like, you know what?

00:33:31: It's

00:33:32: fine.

00:33:32: We'll just all come out and hang out.

00:33:34: And then he then proceeded to spend an inordinate amount of time sitting at Wimpy.

00:33:39: reading the newspaper and just generally minding his business.

00:33:42: My cousins were like everybody loves a good new outfit and spent a lot of time at the mall.

00:33:47: My mother was the most engaged and locked in one because she proceeded to call my international law professor and be like, what is going on?

00:33:57: Is this something that we can not resolve maybe with an extra paper?

00:34:01: He then proceeded to put my business on blast and say, no, ma'am, because this course has been spanking your child since the beginning of the year.

00:34:12: So to give a little bit of context, I had failed the entire course by one percent.

00:34:16: So my mother was like, you know, this is something.

00:34:18: maybe if we rejigger the marks, we like recount, maybe she missed a point in like an essay.

00:34:23: No, no, no.

00:34:25: Anyway, the man exposed my business, but everyone still came.

00:34:28: And the point of this sort of like random little story was to say that Despite everything, the kindness and the support allowed me to really bounce back from this failure.

00:34:38: And fast forward to this present day.

00:34:41: And here I am coming to you live from this podcast with an accomplishment or two under my belt.

00:34:48: Look, I'm all right.

00:34:50: The kids will be all right.

00:34:51: They do not have to be perfect.

00:34:53: Because, you know, they really will be alright.

00:34:56: And I understand there's a lot on the line when you send offspring into the big wide world, but the world isn't kind enough without heat from home.

00:35:07: Now, don't you go through life worrying about whether somebody like you or not?

00:35:20: You best be making sure they're doing right by you.

00:35:23: You understand what I'm saying?

00:35:24: Then get the hell out of my face and get on down to that A&B.

00:35:29: So I'm falling in love with my imperfections.

00:35:37: I'm falling in love with my darkness and my quirks, you know?

00:35:41: The fighter that I've had to develop into the Pumasilue, the girl who had to jump out because I had a big ass and a funny name and had to learn how to talk shit real fast, you know?

00:35:51: I love that girl.

00:35:53: That girl has helped me survive.

00:35:55: That girl has had my back.

00:35:57: I love that girl.

00:36:00: All my little mental illnesses, my little friends, I love them.

00:36:03: I love... My depression teaches me when a situation is fucked up.

00:36:09: My depression is the gauge.

00:36:10: That girl comes out and she says, I'm not happy with this life.

00:36:15: You're not listening to me.

00:36:16: My soul is not happy here, you know?

00:36:18: My anxiety teaches me what I need to look out for.

00:36:21: My anxiety teaches me also what makes me happy.

00:36:24: The other end of the spectrum of anxiety is excitement, right?

00:36:28: So anxiety can also be triggered by something that can potentially bring you immense joy.

00:36:34: So that girl also has her place as well.

00:36:36: You know what I mean?

00:36:37: They're there with my little babies that I'm taking care of inside of myself.

00:36:42: Oh.

00:36:48: Sorry.

00:36:49: Isn't it a nice way to think?

00:36:51: Because then when these things come up, it forces me to create the practice of... Now with intention holding that memory you know holding the memory of that trauma You know what?

00:37:05: I mean that moment of being unsupported that breakup that that dragging that whatever it was right.

00:37:12: Holding that space for myself and saying you know, but I got you girl and you got through that.

00:37:18: In fact, you're the shit, baby girl.

00:37:19: Survived and thrived.

00:37:20: Yeah, and you're so cute.

00:37:22: Oh, my God.

00:37:24: You are so fucking adorable.

00:37:25: Look at all the shit that you did.

00:37:27: Look at what you were doing, and you're still standing, babes.

00:37:30: And people are alive because of you.

00:37:32: You did that, girl.

00:37:33: You did that.

00:37:34: Right?

00:37:35: Right?

00:37:37: It's so sweet.

00:37:38: I love, I mean, I think this is the part where, you know, re-parenting, it's so... It's satisfying.

00:37:47: I didn't... I was pouring all this love into my kids, but I didn't know how to pour it into myself until I realized that I can do that.

00:37:56: Okay.

00:37:58: Right?

00:37:58: Yeah.

00:37:58: I can also treat little me inside, you know, the same way that I would treat my kids.

00:38:04: With

00:38:04: kindness, with love, with care, just holding that.

00:38:14: Love yourself, kittens.

00:38:16: That's actually the vibe of this episode.

00:38:18: Love all the good, the bad, the chaos.

00:38:21: Embrace the hidden parts, the ones that you are told to shy away from, as well as the ones that show up best in the world.

00:38:28: So there's not much else to say at the end of this and putting some big old wrap up here feels really really forced.

00:38:35: So what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave you with Lebo.

00:38:38: Again, because this episode was my gift to all the black girls out there.

00:38:42: Everyone else, you know you can stay for the magical blessings too, as long as you have a kind heart.

00:38:53: I want to write a poem about pretty black girls who don't relax and lie their dreams away.

00:38:58: Voices that curl the straight edges of history.

00:39:03: Hair-thin slices of a movement turning the world kinky.

00:39:07: I respect the disciplined silent screamers who expose the holes.

00:39:12: Emily Dickinson, I am climbing through to your wooden shed of isolation where the robin song robbed you of your sanity.

00:39:20: Perhaps you revere people to your own detriment.

00:39:23: I do too.

00:39:24: But when I enter your hallowed hearth, please don't turn me away.

00:39:28: I want to show pretty black girls how to look at their hearts with eyes blaring at full blast the way you did.

00:39:35: Maybe together we can build a bridge to the promise in their faces and pull them towards poems written by pretty black girls wearing crowns of change.

00:39:47: I was twenty-four years old when I was twenty-three or twenty-four when I wrote that poem and I was standing on the balcony of my mother's house in Yoval and I was looking at these two girls walk

00:39:54: past

00:39:55: and they saw a guy walk up the road.

00:39:57: and you know like how I mean black women.

00:39:59: when we are just being ourselves and we're in ourselves we're just like magical and effervescent.

00:40:03: and so they had all this attitude and swag and they were loud.

00:40:06: and then they saw this man cross and they changed.

00:40:09: Oh.

00:40:10: Their demeanor changed their attitude changed and I was like oh my god this is what we do.

00:40:15: So it inspired that poem.

00:40:17: That poem, this poem is a set work.

00:40:19: Kids learn this poem.

00:40:26: Do yourself a favor and check out Lebo's short film, Women's Labor, which you can find on her Instagram.

00:40:31: And also just like check out Lebo's entire body of work.

00:40:35: It is powerful.

00:40:36: Also have a look at the resources around Sowetoa Prizing, intersectionality and misogynoir that we have linked in the show notes.

00:40:45: So...

00:40:46: It's about that time to leave, so shout out to the Global Unit for Feminism and Gender Democracy of the Heinrich Bohr Foundation that is hosting this delicious podcast and offering.

00:40:58: And also shout out to my magical team, Ray and Sheldon, for that apocalyptic post-production.

00:41:05: and also just supporting my chaos.

00:41:07: Sometimes it gets real chaotic behind the scenes.

00:41:10: So,

00:41:11: till the next episode, wear pajama bottoms as part of business casual.

00:41:15: Moonlight as a birthday clown for extra cash.

00:41:18: Or comment, are you serious right now?

00:41:21: Underneath your ex's inspirational posts.

00:41:24: Because

00:41:25: it's

00:41:25: all chaos anyway, and this is not the apocalypse we signed up for.