so much of what y’all think is care work is actually mammification.

y’all think care is predicated on if someone was nice to you or made you feel good, winked at your foolishness, nursed your ignorance or pampered your complicity; held you to their proverbial bosom through placation and passivity. that’s a patriarchal imagination of care.

and on the inverse: so much of what y’all think is mean is actually sapphirication—or produced through the angry Black woman trope

y’all think harm is predicated on if someone was mean to you, made you feel insecure, said something curt, assertive; challenged you, called you out

that’s also a patriarchal imagination of harm.

both of these are violent necessarily at the expense of black fem(me)s as they are, at once, always already both—a resource of care and an imago of injury—whilst immanently held outside of legitimate claim to either.