Yesterday a group of black women protested topless in the streets of San Francisco. Even though topless protests are not necessarily new, yesterday’s protest was different. In tandem with the #sayhername campaign, women throughout the United States organized to rally against the continued dismissal of violence against black women in the U.S. If victims such as Rekia Boyd and Aiyana Stanley-Jones’s stories have been harder to hear, they, and many others would argue that it is mostly because America (and the rest world) hasn’t been listening.
The method of protest, in addition to the call to end the current state of violence against black women and girls in the United States has caused a lot of controversy, which is one of the many reasons they decided to block the city’s financial district during rush hour in the first place. A last resort.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Chinerye Tutashinda, founding member of the BlackOUT collective, notes that they were influenced by “traditions from Nigeria, Gabon, Uganda, and South Africa, from women who bare their chests and other parts of their bodies in protest.”
Black women, specifically throughout Africa have been using naked protests and genital cursing for centuries to express intolerance and other forms of resistance- referred to as the curse of nakedness. In Nigeria there is a stronger significance in protests by older women, or mothers specifically, who have the authority to question the acts of their “children,” while being on the verge of laying an everlasting curse on all offenders.
The importance of the history of this method has continued to remain evident in naked protests starting from the Aba Women’s riot of 1929 to those which have recently taken place in Nigeria and other parts of Africa . However, according to Barbara Sutton, the African context of naked protests can only be understood through an examination of African contexts of nudity, nakedness and dress- and it should be noted that even within Nigeria, understandings of the naked body varies between ethnic groups.
This instance of naked protest in San Francisco is particularly profound if we consider two things. It’s not the first time women in the U.S. have gone topless to make a point, but it is the first time in recent history that women in the west utilising the method have drawn attention to its African origin. Second, in milieu of cultural appropriation it almost allows us to consider the question- is this an example of good cultural borrowing?
While it remains unclear if the women in San Francisco were mothers, the point is not whether they utilised the method the same way as women in Nigeria or Gabon. Rather, we can consider the interconnected truths these women bare their bodies against. In December 2012 women in Ogun State used the curse of nakedness because they said hoodlums were invading their communities and the government was doing nothing to protect them. Similarly, in Kaduna this past September, women threatened to go nude if the government did not put an end to Boko Haram violence. While in Nigeria, and other parts of Africa the curse of nakedness in protest is usually a threat to go nude, rather than the act of going nude itself, one can see a comparison in terms of grievances from San Francisco all the way to Ekiti state. The women are saying our communities aren’t safe for us, our loved ones, or our children and this needs to stop, now.
As women in Nigeria continue to draw upon the method of protest with little interest from the general population, when women put their bodies on the line, we continue to hear: Is this effective, and what is the point? But we’re asking the wrong questions.
In contrast to #sayhername, the #freethenipple campaign in the U.S. is centred explicitly on the female body. While #freethenipple aims to “normalise the female breast”, the instances of black women utilising the curse of nakedness yesterday are not so focused on the corporeality of the body. More so, they reflect an intersectional awareness on global and local attacks on the black female body. A defence to the deaf ear on their subjugation, tormenting and suffering, in addition to the ways in which black female and trans bodies are simultaneously seen and unseen. Popular representation in the U.S. often highlights that interest remains in the spectacle of the black female body, rather than the reality of their existence in daily life.
What we have today is an example of the ways in which black women take heed to and draw from history. A way in which black women in the U.S. reflect the humanity of women throughout the globe in relation to the brutal and unjust experiences which they encounter everywhere. Even though this display of bravery is often dismissed, the nuances of the curse of nakedness illuminate its resonance in black women’s opposition to state sanctioned violence throughout the globe- something the world could hear, if we were listening.
