Brown/Trans/Les Quotes

“The dismissal of feminism as too loud, too radical, and too misandrist happened during suffrage just as it happened during the second wave and the third wave and still happens today, despite how thoroughly lesbian feminists of all stripes have been relegated to the dustbin of history. So let me conduct an autopsy on the grand, decades-long, misguided heterofeminist experiment instead of further jabbing at everyone’s guilty consciences about how they treat those angry, ugly, unfeminine, man-hating dykes. It’s over, girl. You gave him everything he wanted, and his response was to demand even more, to find religion and talk about how nice it would be to have a tradwife who can’t vote or divorce him. Feminism cannot make straight men any promises that are more appealing than the depths of domination and depravity patriarchy has on offer, and the protracted, tortured, overdue reckoning with the fact that men demonstrate sex-class solidarity and will protect their collective sex-class interests—even if it means giving more powerful men more power over them—is what’s making women everywhere have a crisis of faith in feminism.”
― Talia Bhatt, Brown/Trans/Les

“The tale of Brown’s eventual exit from the party is an unsavory one. Regina Davis, who according to Brown “held together the proudest of our programs, our school”, had been hospitalized with a broken jaw after being beaten by several men in the Party. Brown had called Huey P. Newton to inform him of this, only to be euphemistically notified that he had indeed authorized her “disciplining”. This compelled her to inform Newton of Davis’ many tasks and responsibilities, as Brown was sure he didn’t realize how indispensable a role Davis played, or was otherwise ignorant of how much she oversaw. She impressed upon Newton that Regina Davis managed everyone from the teachers to the cooks, decided menus and purchases, spoke to parents—“She is the fucking school.” If Davis had asked a male member of the Party to carry out a task and been refused, Brown stressed that she was well within her rights to verbally reprimand him, and the retaliatory violence Davis had suffered was both disproportionate and alarming. Newton’s response was simply that he already knew everything Brown had told him. “The Brothers came to me. I had to give them something.” [Emphasis mine.] Televised or not, it seems the revolution will not be gender-inclusive.”
― Talia Bhatt, Brown/Trans/Les

“I would go as far as to call this a form of anti-intellectualism and epistemic injustice—that is, the devaluation of a knowledge-system, namely feminist epistemologies, in service of propping up hegemonic narratives. Because why is it that it’s always feminism that’s too reactionary, too rigid, too fragile and too homogenous and too frivolous to be a worthy pursuit for the colonized and imperialized? Why is it that discourses on race are assumed to contain within them no competing schools, no differing points of view or points of internal contradiction, but the existence of such within feminist disciplines is viewed as an invalidation of the whole subject?”
― Talia Bhatt, Brown/Trans/Les