Thot Leadership: Megan Thee Stallion’s Black Feminism
On reclaiming your narrative and identity from the hands of crusty-ass Generic White Men
In this post: On reclaiming your narrative and identity from the hands of crusty-ass Generic White Men.
Last week: What Black feminism offers us all as we bravely prepare to enter the holidaze.
Next week: How the Rittenhouse verdict wormed its way into my psyche, despite my best efforts.
Dear friends and fam,
It is with great relish that I introduce this week’s newsletter. It was quite fun to write. It's about how Megan Thee Stallion’s “Thot $hit” is a Black feminist antidote to the utter horror that is our ‘justice’ system and the toxic by-product of white nationalism: racist online trolling. (Spotify playlist forthcoming.) Then we’ll get to the bullshit part in next week’s NSFS, but suffice it to say the GENERIC WHITE MAN (GWM) is back at it ruul hard lately.
Content warning: I talk about rap, sex, and twerking a lot in this newsletter, so if you are tensing up just reading that, skip this week’s, there will be others that are more PG!
If there’s anything I learned from my misadventures in academia, it’s that sometimes, ya gotta troll the trolls. I’ll be writing more about that, and a bill of rights for grad student rights, in my other thing, Post-PhD’s newsletter for this Friday. But for now, in the context of my early misadventures of getting half-hearted death threats from white supremacist online trolls, I mean that phrase literally.
The Set Up:
The other week, in Post-PhD’s newsletter (and this one, I think?), I posted a youtube clip of the amazing conversation I had with Jessie Daniels (whose book Nice White Ladies, I’ve been reppin for weeks, so I hope y’all bring it to Thanksgiving). Because Jessie is a much bigger deal than me, some troll of a ‘journalist,’ watched our video, and wrote this article about it to the conservative outlet, The Daily Wire. Based on the lack of editorial guidance this article received, and the onslaught of rude ass comments on my youtube video, it's a troll haven. Besides being extremely poorly written, the article* gave me the best possible gift one can get: a pull quote about myself.
To introduce his readers to who the f I am, our main GWM Hank Berrien said:
“Allison Harbin, who recently noted that Megan Thee Stallion’s song “Thot Shit was the thought leadership we all need and deserve right now."
LIKE LOLZ I’m dead. When I read that, I squealed aloud with churlish delight, causing my girlfriend (who WFH as well), to get up and check to see if I was choking or laughing. Tbh, I’m still chuckling to myself. Here's where Hank got this info: my twitter feed.
Despite the fact that the grand majority of my tweets are about systemic racism in our nation’s public school systems, he picked the one tweet I sent off waiting for a subway while rocking out in my headphones. So what this dude perceived as a way to undercut my legitimacy as a writer/activist / whatever it is I do, was in fact, spot fucking on. Just not in the way he intended, of course. Allow me to explain myself (and my love of rap):
Why Megan Thee Stallion’s Song "Thot Shit" is the Thought Leadership We Need And Deserve:
Pointed political critiques about the legislation over women’s bodies can (and will) be accompanied by bare butts twerking. Such is the stuff of fine art, a mingling of worlds and realities.
To be a “thot” is a bad thing, an insult thrown at women and gay men (and hopefully some str8 men bc let’s be real, if anyone’s a thot historically, it’s them). To be a thot is to be sexually promiscuous, gross, immoral.
Megan explaining that this GWM had best watch himself.
But Megan Thee Stallion inverts this, claiming “thot” as a thing of pride, a sexually liberated woman who exists on her own terms and pursues pleasure from both sex and being desired. This is why, her brand of Black feminist thought leadership is precisely what we need now, more than ever, as white men continue to get away with horrific acts with zero consequences.
The opening shots of the music video for “Thot Shit” depict a white man sitting in an office, with a miserly grimace on his face and Cheeto crumbs on his lips. The camera pans to his old-ass computer as he types a Youtube comment for Megan Thee Stallion’s other music video for “Body,”: “stupid regressive whores should have their mouths washed out with holy water.” As he presses submit, he leans back and tells himself: “Good job, senator.”
We then watch this Generic White Male senator unzip his pants and stick his hands down them. But before anything untoward can happen, he gets a call.
Megan's ass taking out the trash.
It’s Megan Thee Stallion herself calling (duh) from a payphone (sure, there aren’t many payphones left, but we must forgive artists of historical inaccuracies when it advances the narrative).
The accompanying visual narrative confirms a sentiment of, “you troll us, disparage us, and jerk off to us, but no more.” Visually, she reclaims her sexuality and very personhood from the sticky fingers of a generic white man, saying, not only can you not have ALL this, but moreover, we will ruin you. Does it get much more delicious than that? YES, in this music video, it really does get better:
After the senator slams down his phone, he walks past his Black secretary, who rolls her eyes at him as he passes, and he leaves the building. When the senator steps out into the street, without skipping a beat (pun intended), he’s run over by a garbage truck, on the back of which, of course, is Megan Thee Stallion, twerking for Black women everywhere as she takes out the trash. Brava.
Thot Leadership (analysis):
The hyper-sexualization of Black women is something my dear friend and bad-ass colleague Dr. Tashima Thomas writes about in the context of art. This subject has been well theorized by every single Black feminist I’ve read to date (scroll to the bottom for reading recs). This fetishization of Black women reduces them to an object, not a subject. An object to be simultaneously reviled and mocked, but secretly lusted after. As a lesbian who is tired of running into str8 couples at gay bars who presume I want a threesome, I can, at the very least, relate to that about this music video. smh.
This is precisely why Megan Thee Stallion’s song “Thot Shit” is a feminist reclamation of the gaze and its power. And, it is important thought leadership that gives women a road map to reclaiming their narratives.
Is Megan Thee Stallion’s overt sexuality on display 'too much? That’s a matter of personal preference, not historical fact. Whether you like it aesthetically or not, the music video for “Thot Shit” is no different from the thousands of nude or nearly nude women who hang in the hallways of the world’s most famous museums: a nude(ish) woman reclaiming her power. Talk about a Black feminist answer to Manet’s Olympia. (there, see? Sometimes, I’m still an art historian, this one's for all y'all).
In conclusion, do as our fearless Thot Leader does:
Reclaim your narrative and identity from the hands of crusty Generic White Man senators-turned-internet trolls. Harness the power of collective coalition-building with workers across different industries, and you will prosper, while your haters dream sexually vivid nightmares about you. Or, in other words: troll the trolls.
I’m just following my marching orders. Next week, I’ll continue my delicious drag and address the f-ing travesty that is our nation’s ‘justice’ system. Also, email me your favorite white men drags, I love all y'alls' GWM commentary)
Keep on twerkin’ y’all,
A
*(but for real, if you’re reading Hank, get in touch I have a stellar track record with helping clients come into their own in their writing. I think I can help you out, if you work really hard, maybe you can one day graduate from writing for a small troll cave for a larger one!).
This is also a much too clever transition to announce that I’m taking new developmental editing clients for January, so if you need help finishing that peer review essay that you’ve been meaning to turn in, but need some outside perspective; let me know.
If you’re in the last haul of finishing your dissertation and think you might go insane, or keep finding yourself in the weeds for hours on an argument that will probably be a footnote, hmu. Happy to connect any interested parties with former clients so you can get an idea of how I work! Here’s a little bit about how I approach developmental editing and client work if you’re interested.
What I'm reading:
bell hooks' Black Looks: Race and Representation, in particular chapter 4: "Selling Hot Pussy." 1993.
Mikki Kendall's Hood Feminism: Notes from The Women That A Movement Forgot, 2020 is also phenomenal. She talks about Ratchetness as praxis and offers some amazing social analysis. Find Mikki Kendall on twitter: @Karnythia
Both of the above books were heavy influences in this week's newsletter, and I really cannot recommend them enough.
My favorite Afro-Latina Art Historian, Dr. Tashima Thomas, her thinking Black women's bodies and their representation, as well as the concept of "remix theory," were also heavy influences in this here post.
See Tashima Thomas' “Race and Remix: The Aesthetics of Race and Remix in the Visual Arts,” book chapter, The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.
Also, follow @DocDre on Twitter, the account is run by Andre Brock, an associate professor of media studies at Georgia Tech. His scholarship examines racial representations in social media, videogames, black women and weblogs, whiteness, and technoculture, including innovative and groundbreaking research on Black Twitter.