Trigger/Content Warning for discussions of sexual violence, racism, misogynoir, transmisogyny, murder, general white liberal feminist nonsense
Nasty
Like y’all wasn’t just deploying that
to talk about Nicki Minaj’s ass
or Kim K’s tits (she’s not actually white, you know)
Now it’s cool to be nasty
if you’re white, not too poor,
and especially if you’re cute, right?
Not like when you called me nasty
for acknowledging I have an STI
or when you called my friends nasty
because they had to correct your -isms
Nasty is what you call those
“fresh” and “too grown”
little Black and Brown girls
your man has been eyeing
Nasty is why Indigenous women are raped
at three times the rate of white women
But you’re gonna reclaim the word
for your empowerment
as if your power was ever really in question
Like when you reclaimed “slut”
on the backs of migrant teen girls trying
to cross the border and deemed unrapeable
because it was just payment for their travel
and those babies could have been anyone’s
Or like how both these words are used as an excuse
to murder trans women because men
are embarrassed they found them attractive
before they realized
they’re just nasty sluts
How are you gonna lay claim to a term
when your kink has always been called cute
but Vanity was shamed for wearing lingerie
and Janet had to lay claim to a right
to sexual agency on her own damn terms
and shamed for a white man pulling down her top
While the First Lady’s body is critiqued
and she’s asked to answer for Beyoncé’s dance moves
You literally erase Black women
to replace them with a white image
while ignoring the raped and disappeared
First Nations women just around the way
But let us tell you we traded something
for some food, we had a few too many partners
for your taste, we made a success of our plans
got too uppity for your comfort
and you’ll be real quick to remind us
we are the nasty ones
But I hear some y’all made enough money today
to pay three or four months of my rent
and it’s a learning curve for you to understand
why commodifying our words is not ok
and did you even donate to my GoFundMe
like, ever?
Cuz I know too many queer people of color
going hungry right now
that have been called nasty more times than you
You can’t reclaim words that never hurt you
and you can’t hurl words at us
that you call your own when it suits you
