Cisgender Women Pay Attention!

Posted on February 8, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

This essay is specifically directed to cisgender women. I have heard all of the debates about that term “cisgender.” For the record, I am a Black cisgender woman which means I was assigned the biological designation of “female” at birth and identify as a woman.

I am not a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. I am a feminist who welcomes anyone, cisgender or transgender, who identifies as a woman and who is trying to help us women out. I welcome the guys too. The more inclusive you are, the more you learn.

Too often, we cisgender women assume that transgender women’s problems and issues (i.e. access to healthcare, safe housing, safety from violence, the ability to play sports, and etcetera) have nothing to do with us. We could not be more wrong.

I recently read a fantastic and disturbing essay on Substack by Kira Rosa titled “The Dismantling of Reproductive Rights is More Insidious Than You Think.” It is her analysis of how cisgender women’s right to control their own bodies has been steadily eroded over time.

What caught my attention in her essay was her analysis of Felon 47’s Executive Order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” I know that’s a mouthful.

The order is designed to make trans women disappear by virtue of eliminating any accurate human definition or category for them. You’re either male or female which is biological fiction. This leaves intersex individuals in the lurch. I encourage you to do your own research about intersex individuals and also research what hormone therapy does to and for a transgender woman’s body.

When you consider that less than 1 percent of the US population is transgender; along with the fact that only 10 transgender athletes currently play on the collegiate level, you should know by now that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to meet a transgender person in your lifetime. You may meet them, but you may never know they are transgender.

The Executive Order says virtually nothing about transgender men. Trans men are ignored because the point of the order is to restrict and control all women’s reproductive choices.

Rosa pointed out that the language in this executive order establishes that a person is formed at the moment of conception. The order insists that anything blocking or interfering with the process of reproduction is against this order. In other words, she argued that this anti-transgender order can just as easily be used as an anti-abortion and an anti-birth control directive against cis women.

Individuals who seek to control the reproduction of cisgender women use people’s biased and misinformed opinions about transgender women as litmus tests before they place restrictions on cisgender women.

Felon 47 and Republicans have used transgender women as their political football for years now. They are obsessed with cis and trans women’s bodies. Yet, this obsession begs the question: Exactly how do they (or you) know whether a woman is transgender or cisgender?

I have had transgender friends and students, but I did not always know they were transgender until they told me. I have also met many cisgender women who looked like men to me. So I stopped making any assumptions about gender based solely on appearances over 30 years ago.

Right wing nuts will eventually insist that there is only one way to absolutely determine whether a woman is trans or cis; that proof will most certainly require that their genitalia be examined.

So, are we prepared for our little cisgender, but tom boyish, daughters to have to drop their panties for anyone who demands it? Are any of you willing to expose yourself on demand? Do these kooks in the Republican Party really think they will easily get away with this?

Republicans, Felon 47, and huge numbers of White Christian Nationalist wackos want cisgender women to believe that transgender women are their enemies, or worse, that trans women are actually men just waiting to sexually assault you when you use a public toilet. I urge you to research what happens to the penis of a biological male transitioning to female.

It is these hyper-masculine Republican kooks who are the ones that cis and trans women need to be afraid of. Let’s face it, anyone obsessed with another person’s genitalia is up to no good. Anyone obsessed with controlling a woman’s reproductive organs has an agenda.

The hard truth is people classifiable as “white” are disappearing. The world has always been majority people of color. Right now, however, the average ages of peoples in countries in Southeast Asia and in Africa range from 20 to 30 years of age. The average age of a European is 44 years old with one of the lowest birth rates in the world.

The negative reactions to transgender women, birth control and abortion are not anchored in any religious beliefs coming from the political and religious Right. They don’t give a damn about cisgender or transgender women of color. They only care about whether white cisgender women reproduce babies. Trans women are seen as not reproducing babies, but that’s not always true.

Let me paint another scenario. Imagine you are a cisgender woman or girl who, by ordinance of Felon 47, has to be either physically inspected by some government-appointed matron or carry some card verifying that you are a cisgender woman before you are allowed to enter a women’s public restroom to simply urinate.

Imagine the requirements for receiving a gender identity card are achieved by having your DNA, your genitalia, and your hormones tested. God forbid you are a cisgender woman whose body naturally produces high levels of testosterone. Two cisgender women athletes were disqualified from competition at the Olympics because their bodies naturally produced more testosterone than the Olympics deemed acceptable. And that’s the problem.

Felon 47 and his henchmen (and women) not only want to invalidate the identities and lived experiences of trans women, they want to create a single standard for who and what a cisgender woman is when there is no one-size-fits-all definition of what a woman is. Women come in a variety of shapes and sizes with bodies that generate different levels of hormones that vary throughout the year, and vary from one woman to the next.

What’s next? Do they throw menopausal cisgender women under the bus because they no longer have the capacity to reproduce or because their hormone levels have certainly dropped since they were in their childbearing years?

Are cisgender women slowly losing the right to determine our own gender identities without the interference of men in power who don’t have a clue what being a woman means to each woman individually? Do we cisgender women attempt to deny gender dysphoria (look it up) as a real condition in some vainglorious attempt to deny womanhood to transgender women who we don’t always understand?

We lose nothing by protecting the rights of transgender women. But we could lose everything ignoring our connections to trans women and the policies that affect their health and well-being, and ours.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

Additional Resources:

I wrote a little micro-history about various gender identities in world history. If you would like to know more. Just click anywhere in this paragraph.

For a brief explanation of what gender dysphoria is, click anywhere in this sentence.

All blogs written by Leslye Joy Allen are protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. Postings or blogs placed here by other writers should clearly reference those writers. All Rights Reserved.

No Contradictions

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

When I started to hear negative commentary about Kamala Harris’ racial and ethnic background, I started reevaluating how “White Supremacy” works again.

Many people are completely unaware that when the Greek explorer Herodotus named the continent “Αἰθιοπία” (romanized as “Aithiopía”), his definition included the continents of Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Herodotus’ term literally means “Land of Burnt Faces.”

Those kinds of cross-cultural connections and collaborations do not help white supremacy to flourish which is why you rarely hear anything about them. The objective of white supremacy is to make certain that peoples of color look to white folk, and white men specifically, for acceptance, guidance, deliverance, and redemption, but not to each other. Sexism works exactly the same way. A man, not a woman, may rule you and grant you favor in some screwed up patriarchal world as sexists imagine it.

African-American scholar W. E. B. DuBois’ heir apparent Vijay Prashad noted that many Indian men arrived in the USA in the late 18th and 19th centuries, married Black American women and disappeared from most histories. Suraj Yengde, both in his books and in his portrayal of himself in Ava DuVernay’s masterpiece film “ORIGIN,” noted that we must find reconnections with each other. His research on Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar is fascinating.

Ambedkar was a Dalit, or as he was once called, an “Untouchable.” He wrote India’s constitution. He earned two doctorate degrees and when he came to the United States he wanted to meet his fellow American untouchables. So, he visited Harlem where the Black folks lived. (FYI: Martin Luther King, Jr. was introduced as a fellow “untouchable” when he visited India.)

This is exactly what Shyamala Gopolan-Harris did when she left India to go to school in the United States. She gravitated toward communities where she was less likely to be mistreated. So, she headed to Berkeley, California which was a hotbed of activism—there were Civil Rights protests, anti-Vietnam protests, the Free Speech Movement and the work of the Black Panther Party in nearby Oakland was the world that her daughter Kamala Harris grew up in.

I bring this up because we know so little about our early histories and connections. I don’t bring this up with any foolish idea that everyone is going to suddenly start singing “Kumbaya” and start getting along all the time. Yet, we know more about what Prashad accurately identified as white power structures that, during the late 20th century, deliberately created the myth that “Southeast Asians” were a model minority, a minority he emphasized that was designed as a weapon against Black Americans.

Felon 47 and his minions have lined up a small cadre of Southeast Asians to serve in his administration to do two things: 1) make the administration look less racist than it is and, 2) to also entice India, which now has a larger population than China, that its population is seen somehow as superior. South Africa did damned near the same thing during apartheid.

When Black Americans visited South Africa during its apartheid era, Black American visitors were given passes written in Afrikaans that translated into English as “Honorary White Person.”

Now, the fact that I personally know at least seven Southeast Asians who identify quite accurately as “Black,” does not matter. The fact that so many folks on the continents of Africa and Southeast Asia have near identical DNA doesn’t matter either. When I read the book “A Passage to India,” I noted that an Indian character in the book was described as a “little Black man.” It was the first time I ever saw such a description of anyone outside of a specifically African or African American context. My point, however, is much simpler.

We Black Americans can continue to roll our eyes at the brown guy wearing the turban at the local gas station and vice-versa OR we can recognize and identify our participation in upholding white supremacy while its foot remains situated on both our necks. Before you bother to tell me about the guy at the gas station that you don’t like, remember that he is an employee and all you are is someone pumping gas. White supremacy makes all of us its pawns.

If you are honest, you also remember that moment when you got bad service at a Black-owned business and thought to yourself that you got bad service because the business was Black-owned. The fact that there are, were, and will be folks who simply are not good at customer service regardless of their race or ethnicity or nationality did not enter your mind. That kind of thinking is white supremacy in action too.

Kamala Harris knows this better than anyone. She knows who she is and she didn’t need anyone to tell her who she is. The fact that anyone dared define her speaks not only to their arrogance, but also to their presumptions that they actually have such a right to do so.

She was perceived by some folks as a contradiction and by some folks as having split loyalties. The only thing that actually requires split loyalties is white supremacy. It cannot thrive or survive without its clear contradictions. Let me write that again—It cannot survive or thrive without its clear contradictions. It functions with the assistance of the people who it is designed to either oppress and/or control and/or regulate. Repeat that until you get it. So, no contradictions.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

Dr. Suraj Yengde (as “himself”), Dr. Gaurav J. Pathania (as “Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar”) and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (as “Isabel Wilkerson”) in Ava DuVernay’s film “ORIGIN.”

#25May2017 #June20and21

Posted on May 22, 2017 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

This is a short blog…because, well, finishing a dissertation is serious business. There are two dates that are important that I would like to highlight for you. The first date is May 25, 2017 which is African Liberation Day, but also the launch date of Africans Rising, a continental and global movement spearheaded by its launch director, South African native Kumi Naidoo. Naidoo daringly states that one of the first problems the continent has is a leadership that will not make room for the young; and young Africans are no longer simply willing to point their fingers at the harsh and lasting damage from past European colonization and exploitation, but also at African leaders who hold power too long and often. I invite you to visit this organization’s website. Read the magnificent Kilamanjaro Declaration and sign on to this movement of continental Africans and members of the vast African Diaspora. Join us on 25 May 2017 by wearing something red and turning off all of your electronics (lights, etcetera) for at least a few hours to acknowledge the millions of Africans across the continent who do not have electricity. Visit: Africans-Rising.org and read more about this beginning. You can also watch a video of one of the most brilliant minds on earth: the anti-apartheid activist, feminist and environmentalist Kumi Naidoo here. This is worth every minute:

The second dates for you to remember are June 20 & 21, 2017 which is the premier of season two of Queen Sugar. The Ava DuVernay-created show is a revelation. Never before has such an honest portrayal of a Black farming family been shown on television with their virtues and their flaws and their humanity in tact. So, I encourage any and everyone to watch the two-night premiere on the OWN TV network or app on June 20 & 21, 2017. You can watch a trailer for the second season right here.

Think. Stay Engaged. Àṣé.

This blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

Remembering “Dumba Nengue: Run For Your Life”

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen

I remember the first time I had to read a book called Dumba Nengue: Run For Your Life, Peasant Tales of Tragedy in Mozambique. I was glad that the book was so very short compared to my other readings. Originally written in Portuguese by Lina Magaia–who held nothing back–and published in Mozambique, it was an instant best seller. Lina Magaia told the brutal truth. Published in English by 1988, the title comes from a Mozambican proverb that means, “You have to trust your feet.” At only 108 pages, I assumed that reading the book would be a breeze. It was not. Midway through it I was sick to my stomach at how easily revolutionaries could descend into absolute depravity and madness. Reading about the actions of South African-backed Mozambican revolutionaries in the mid-to-late 1970s was hard to swallow.

One of my classmates admitted to our professor that she simply could not finish the book. I understood. The one thing that struck me in the book was how easy it seemed to be for revolutionaries to take hostage, abuse, torture, and sexually violate females of all ages. Indeed, one of my classmates, a young White woman studying on a historically Black campus, researched and wrote about rape as an act of war. Her conclusions were as terrifying as they were valid. I thought about this book when I learned of the kidnapping of over 200 (or over 300 girls) in Nigeria by some group of thugs known as Boko Haram, whose name translates to “Western education is a sin.”

Now, some folk will argue that this tragic episode in Nigerian history is an example of some of the damage done to the nation’s native population by European imperialism and racism. Others will argue that Boko Haram’s activity is the result of their adaptation of a radical form of Islam. This group, they will say, are merely proceeding according to what they believe is an accurate interpretation of Sharia law. Yet, the very notion of “females as property” has been overwhelmingly universal in most places, give or take a few exceptions; and this notion has created more abuse and oppression of girls and women throughout human history than perhaps any other kind of ideology. Even further, this kind of oppression and abuse has never been fully addressed by the entire human family. Sexism is alive and well in every corner of the globe. It cuts across racial, ethnic, religious and geographic boundaries with a frightening swiftness and regularity. WE do not get to blame any particular thing or anybody or any particular group for this one. So I will leave you with this:

I remember once hearing my late Mama promise to rip the lungs out of someone who had physically threatened me. When I asked her would she do it, she replied, “Yes, only if I did not have a loaded gun that I could empty into them.” I am also grateful that my Dad was never a hypocrite when it came to females. I once overheard my late Dad say to a young man, “If you wouldn’t want it done to your daughter or sister or mother, then don’t do it to any other woman.” Enough said.

I am praying for the safe return of all of the abducted girls in Nigeria to their families. Yet, as an old African proverb says, “When you pray, move your feet.”

Leslye Joy Allen is a perpetual and proud supporter of the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog, or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly and visibly stated as the author.

American Black Music 101

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Ph.D. Candidate

Back during the very short time that I was a music major, several of my instructors and professors commented on my unique ability to hear damn near anything and explain exactly what instruments I heard, along with my INABILITY to reproduce it in performance. I always earned an “A” in aural studies. I laugh loudly now because my old piano teacher said I would make a great musicologist, which is, among other things, a music historian. I never practiced piano much, but I could always tell you the story behind the song or something about the life of the composer.

At the same time, no one needs to be an accomplished musician or be able to read music to identify a Blue Note—those often flatted third, fifth and/or seventh notes that became the signature of Black American music—in order to feel and absorb the origins of that Blue Note. The origins are deeply rooted in the African American experience. The rhythms of Africa, the melodic vocal and verbal patois of Black Americans severed from their ancient drums met the European scale to produce something as authentically American as Negro Spirituals, Field Hollers, Work Songs, Ragtime, Jazz, along with our Soul-Sauce-sprinkled-on-Jewish-folk-melodies that gave us Tin Pan Alley, and indeed American Popular Song.

All things American are deeply infused with the Black experience, so much so that it is hard to know where one or the other begins and where it all might end. The Black slave in the field handed a musical gift to the White American composer; and both have more in common with each other because of this infusion than one might think. Only the blighted soul has problems giving the Motherland Africa much praise for some of the creation of so-called American popular music, music that came from the hearts and souls and longings of her transplants in the New World.

So this blog is not just about your ability to know, but about your ability to feel and to hear how much things change yet remain the same when the roots are acknowledged and claimed. All you have to do is listen to the following Trinity of songs that cover over one hundred fifty years of music. All you need is a soul and a pulse to understand. Àṣé!

“ROLL, JORDAN, ROLL”

“ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE”

“HAPPY”

Leslye Joy Allen is a perpetual and proud supporter of the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Tag Archives: Africa

American Black Music 101