Decolonizing the Coochie: From the Hottentot Venus to BBLs

In this episode of Coochie Business®, Dr. Abigail sits down with Africana Studies professor Dr. Derrick “Dr. kNOw” Lanois for a layered conversation on womanism, Black history, reproductive narratives, and collective liberation.

What is womanism — and how is it different from feminism or Black feminism?

How have historical stereotypes like the “Hottentot Venus” and Jezebel myth shaped how Black women’s bodies are imagined today?

And what might healing, Sankofa, and imagination have to do with reproductive freedom?

Together, they explore:

• Womanism as a Black women–rooted social change framework
• Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and communal responsibility
• The historical construction of Black sexuality and reproductive stereotypes
• Colorism and respectability politics
• The power of history in shaping liberation
• Black love, heterosexuality as learned behavior, and redefining relationships
• Afrofuturism and the role of imagination in building new traditions

This episode moves beyond statistics and policy into philosophy, history, and embodiment — asking not only how we dismantle systems, but how we build commonweal.

If you’re interested in Black reproductive justice, womanist thought, Black history, embodiment, and decolonizing love, this conversation will stretch you.

Connect with Dr. DL

@DL_PhD (Instagram, X/formerly Twitter, TikTok)

Episode Mentions

Layli Phillips (now Layli Maparyan) – “Womanism: On Its Own” (Introduction)
The foundational framework for today’s conversation. Womanism is presented as a Black women–rooted social change philosophy emphasizing anti-oppression (both named and unnamed), communitarian responsibility, spirituality, and harmonizing difference.

Patricia Hill Collins – Black Sexual Politics
Explores Black sexuality, stereotypes, and power — including discussion of Sarah Baartman and the historical construction of Black women’s bodies.

Ida B. Wells – The Red Record
A historic anti-lynching text that challenged rape myths and exposed racialized violence in the late 19th century.

Deborah Gray White – (Work referenced on stereotypes and Black women’s history)
Dr. Lanois referenced White’s scholarship in connection to the Missouri Press Association president’s “liars, thieves, and whores” claim and the formation of Black women’s club movements.

Sarah Baartman (The “Hottentot Venus”)
A Khoi woman displayed in European “freak shows,” whose exploitation shaped enduring stereotypes about Black women’s bodies.

Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist leader who participated in early women’s rights advocacy but later took positions that created tension around Black women’s suffrage.

Mary Church Terrell & Ida B. Wells
Black women leaders whose activism addressed racism, sexism, and violence.

Carter G. Woodson
Founder of Negro History Week (which became Black History Month), underscoring the importance of studying Black history.

Send questions to questions@coochiebusiness.com

Send stories to stories@coochiebusiness.com

Other inquiries: info@coochiebusiness.com

Dr. Abigail on Substack

Get on Dr. Abigail's calendar

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for personal medical care.

Transcript

0:11

You are listening to the Coochie Business Podcast where coochie owners, lovers, and advocates come to deepen their Cliteracy That's coochie literacy. I'm Dr. Abigail, your coochie coach and curator of these coochie conversations. And today's episode is a ride because we're talking black history. And Coochies. Mm-hmm. Yep. In the same breath, I'm joined by Dr. Derek, Dr. kNOw Lanois professor of Africana studies historian, podcaster, filmmaker, Pan-Africanist, black nationalist, black separatist, and womanist. And in this conversation we go deep into what womanism is. And what it's not. We talk about Layli Phillips framework, including anti-oppression as being against both named and unnamed oppressions. We talk about how stereotypes like the Hottentot Venus, Jezebel narratives and respectability politics shaped how black women's bodies have been imagined and treated over time and still. We talk Sankofa, which is going back to fetch what we need and perhaps why history, especially black history is being fought over right now, and we even get into black love heterosexuality as a learned behavior and why defining our relationship expectations out loud might be the real medicine. This episode is layered historical, political. Embodied and yeah, we got jokes too, so let's get into it. Hi DL. Thank you for joining me today. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Seriously. I think it was in a conversation with you, just checking in, that you mentioned(as I was resurrecting the podcast) about a hundred years of Black history. And then, a few weeks later, I'm asking you to be on the podcast talking about Black history! And Coochies! Yes. Womanism in particular. Let's just get into it. Right? Let's get into it. Let's get into it. So you, you do a lot of things. I do a lot of things. You do a lot of things. You know a lot of things. And, and thank you for filling out the questionnaire. I really appreciated that. Even though I know you personally, I didn't know a lot of these details about you, so it really helps frame this conversation we're gonna have. When I ask you who you are and what you do, you named a number of things. That last thing we're gonna dive into. Okay. But I'd like for you to give like a one sentence on these other identities. So, you said that"I am an African American history and studies historian. I'm a podcaster and documentary filmmaker. I'm a Black nationalist. I'm a Black separatist. I'm a Pan-Africanist. I'm a womanist. And again, who you are is part of the work you do. So I wanna start with this question. Who are you? So that we understand this conversation that we're about to get into. And so the, the other thing that I didn't name or mention is I'm a, you know, from the south as well, right? And, and so your listeners are finding out that before me saying it, because my voice, uh, met them first. When, when I introduce myself to students, I tell them here are,'cause I need them to know where, um, where I'm coming from. And so I'm a Black nationalist, and so there's two ways to do Black nationalism, and I'm for both of them, but I understand the limitations of one. Right? And so the Black nationalists want to have their own nation. And so for people of African descent from the United States. And, and, but then there's the Black separatist, Black nationalists like me, who understand we as a people might not be ready for that form of Black nationalism. And so we create our own communities, our own institutions, our own banks, all those kind of things that serve our community. And we live in those spaces as well. And so we'll be, uh, I guess to, to make a visual representation of it will be the Amish in major cities throughout the south and around the country. And so when we have our own everything and our economic system and all those kind of things. And I even talk about how Martin Luther King Jr. In his last speech was a Black separatist, and that's the reason why he died the next day. You never heard that portion of his speech. Um, so that's the Black nationalists and Black separatists portions of it. The Pan-Africanist. It is an interesting moment that we're in because there are these diaspora wars that are taking place on social media and through podcasts where you have people who are not in tune with our history enough to know how asinine it is, the distinctions that they're making or whatnot. But I'm a Pan-Africanist, and the way I tell students I define a parent Africanist, is this: you must be, someone who believes all people of African descent, no matter their locale, are connected to one another and have a responsibility to each other and the homeland, right? And so that's the simplest definition. And so I have a connection to every person of African descent, no matter where they located. And we all have a responsibility to each other. We also have a responsibility not to the nation state that we might be, uh, in, but to the homeland or the continent of the motherland. And, and so that's that. And then the last one, the Womanist, is the one that we will be talking about in great detail today. And I should say that I was introduced to womanism by Layli Phillips is, uh, the name that she had at that time. She's now married and is the president of the University of Liberia. Uh, she is, um, uh, Layli Marapan, uh, now. And she introduced me to womanism and it felt like home to me. And let me see if I can do this without reading the five characteristics that she said. And so, anti-oppressionist. Uh, vernacular, communitarian, um, spiritualized and non-ideological. Are the five characteristics and we probably will be getting into what those mean, but the one that stood out the most to me was anti-oppressionist is. And, and the reason because she defined that, is being against both named and unnamed oppressions. And all of us can be against racism and sexism, uh, homophobia and and et cetera.'cause those things have been named, they've been identified. Being against unnamed oppression, which means in every interaction that you have with anybody, both as a person who holds power.'cause that's also shows the dynamic that all of us hold power and all of us can be oppressed, right? And so even though oppressed can hold power over other people that are oppressed. And so what I tell students is me being a parent, child abuse has been named. But what I'm about to describe is not child abuse. Me calling my son in from another room to get a remote control that's in this room, because he's my son. That is power demanding My son call all adults, sir or ma'am, and for no one to call him sir. That's power. And it has no name. And so my parenting style is based on the womanist parenting style where we have conversation about things. I've apologized to my son and I call my son, sir. Although I don't demand that he calls me sir, nor do I demand that he call me by my title, being dad. I'm a whole human being, and that's one of the roles I play in his life. Now, he's not comfortable calling me Derrick or DL yet, but he has the option to do so. First of all, I knew better than asking you do anything in the sentence, oh, well, I, I thought each one of'em was a sentence. And secondly, I love how you made that laaa all of them, but especially the way you made that last one personal. I love the example you gave with your son there, to embody what is womanism and one of the ways that womanism shows up in real life. Thank you for that. So so. That's who you are, what you do, why it impacts, and how it impacts all of the things that you do. So as an opening statement before the first question in this regard. Womanism is a Black woman rooted social change framework. It prioritizes, harmonizing, it is absolutely those five pillars that you mentioned, and anti oppressionist being one of the main ones that's there that I love as well. But if someone doesn't know exactly what is womanism, how would you explain it in human terms like you did with your son, and how is it different from feminism, and why does that difference matter? Okay. I'm gonna begin with the last question first.'Cause the second, the, the first question's gonna take a longer. And I think she did, Layli did a great job. And, and, and what Layli asked was, what's the difference between feminism, Black feminism, and womanism? Okay. And so she used the familial representation where she talks about the relationship between feminism to Black feminism and womanism is that of a cousin. They have the same grandparents, but they're being raised in different households. Right. So what we would call in our community first cousin. Right? They first cousin. But Black feminism and womanism are like sisters. They're being raised in the same house, but they got different, they're different personalities. And the thing that, and I'll, and I'll say why I'm not a Black feminist anymore. Uh, I taught at Spelman at one point and they have this class called"African Diaspora in the World" where every fresh woman and transfer woman must take this class. It's dealing with the history of African descendant women particularly, but people in general. And these seniors told me that I shouldn't teach that class because I'm not a, a woman. And that from a Black feminist standpoint, my role in that space is for me to be non-sexist. Once I am no longer sexist, I have no role in that movement. Whereas womanism has, which is going to help us go to the, to the second part of the question. But womanism is a larger piece. And so all feminism is trying to, is is the, the gold is the to end sexism, right? That's all of them. And because of the particular intersectional experiences of African descendant women. You get Black feminism, although I think white feminism is the one that should have a title, especially in the United States. But that's a whole nother conversation if you wanna get into that history. Uh, and so going to womanism and saying what it is, I think Layli does a, a great job at the end of the introduction, where she asks the question of who can be a womanist and, and, and she goes into who can be a womanist. But here's what she, I think helps, uh, us understand it in ways that are really important. She says that one must begin with oneself. She then tells us that womanism ab hores or hates race, but loves ethnicity. Hates race, and loves ethnicity, because race is rooted in domination. Whereas ethnicity, and she gives this long list of things that's really important. And I'm not gonna remember all of them, and I don't have an article pulled up in front of me, but she names history, epistemology, metaphysics, art, architecture, and she names all of these components of what human experience is that connects us outside of a European deciding to name us African or Black or Negro or whatever that other differential, statement was. And so when we became othered by Europeans, we were, but we was already connected before that through this history, this culture, uh, epistemology, right? And, and that's the reason why we have these things called African retentions and these kind of things. And she then goes on to add one little piece about culture, meaning that culture, there should be traditions. And when those traditions no longer serve us and or become oppression, we need to get rid of them and start new traditions. And so she says, and I believe this: to be a womanist is the simplest thing is that every place that you connect yourself to, so you be, because you begin with self. I am. And then you name all the things that I am. I am an, uh, person of African descent who's from the south, who's heterosexual, who's a father, and so forth. All those social constructed ideas that I am. And then I have a responsibility to each of those. And so I, I, I named myself, I then named all those communities. By naming those communities, I have responsibility to those communities to be all the things that a womanist is supposed to be, that then connects me to all humankind, right? That then connects me to all living beings on this planet. Then connects me to the planet itself. I got a responsibility to the planet and then it, uh, then to the universe or, and then all rams of creation, therefore out outside of that. And so now from self, I now understand that I have a responsibility from self and everything that I say that's important to me, to all humans, to all living creatures, right? And so that's what a womanist is, that we, we are concerned with everyone all the time. And we want the betterment for everyone. But it begins with beginning with self and identifying self, right? So I'm not gonna be one of these people that's gonna be like, oh, to end racism is to end my identifying myself as a intersectional being. What I want to end is the isms that comes with my intersectional space. So basically what you're saying that it's not about competing ideologies, but this harmonizing. Yes. The word that she uses. Mm-hmm. So that, like you said, the commonality, bringing it more is more than just these ideologies and these identities, right. And responsibility. Right? Like she used the word common weal or communitarian. And so then there's this idea of common weal, like there's a couple of states that are not states. They're common weal. And one of the states is, I mean, right now is Virginia is the common wealth of Virginia where everybody is connected to each other. And that's what love is, right? And so if we wanna break it down in a, in a, I guess, layman way, I love all the things that I am. I wanna protect all the things that I love and I have a responsibility to all those things. And so I need to make a world where all of those identities and senses of self can flourish. And because I want, you know, I wanna have grandchildren, I wanna have great-grandchildren. I need to have a planet to, to live on. Thank you. Now you also teach gender studies and sexuality studies, so I wanna pivot and bring in some of that into the conversation. Okay. As we're talking here about womanism. So, if womanism is rooted in Black women's lived experiences, which includes our bodies, our fertility, our sexuality, our maternal histories, how has Black women's reproductive experience been shaped historically? What narratives about Black women's bodies linger in our systems today or in our society that you can see? Well, let's deal with the stereotypes, right? And these stereotypes unfortunately, have taken so much root in our imagination that we believe them to be fact. Okay. Uh, and so we begin with the hottentot Venus or Sarah Baartman. And, for people that don't know the hottentot Venus or Sarah Bartman, she was a Khoi. I might be mispronouncing that, so I'm gonna spell it, kHOI, woman in the southern part of Africa, um, uh, which now encompasses South Africa. She was kidnapped and instead of being placed as an enslaved person, she goes to what was known as like a freak show. Uh, and a freak show would include anything, that was supposedly abnormal. Patricia Hill Collins has this book called Black Sexual Politics, and she does a great job of defining, not only the word freak and how it has changed over time, but also placing, uh, Sarah Bartman into this conversation surrounding Freak. But it literally was called a freak show. And, and so she was where they literally put her genitalia, uh, and her body on display like a, it's like a circus. And they, and she didn't have to perform or anything, she just had to exist. She was described as having this larger than life buttocks that was supposed to be indicative of all African descendant women. And she also was supposedly had this large clitoris that, that then flame, through this display, her and African women and African descendant women, uh, love for sex. That they can't just get enough of it. Right. And, and so, um, they ended up, when they used her all the way, used her, they quote unquote freed her in Europe where she turned to prostitution and then, uh, contracted a venereal disease and dies. But her freak show doesn't end there. They then, uh, carve her up, take her butt and her clitoris or vagina, and put it on display in a French museum up until the 1990s, where they then put her remains inside of, uh, the archives or down below. And then once Nelson Mandela is elected president, they finally returned those parts her to South Africa where she could be properly buried. And I think that's indicative of the history of African descendant women and their, their relationship to their coochie, their bodies, their buttocks. And, and if I wanted to foreshadow or move forward really quickly, when we now look at BBLs, as the defining idea of African descended women. And so the white person's imagination about what we look like, because one of my professors said that the, the research is showing that Sarah Bartman body was not as big as they, you know, as the caricatures that they've created, that she was about a hundred something pounds and that like, like a buck oh five type of pounds, not, you know, uh, about, so she barely a hundred pounds and that she did not have the extremities that they had or shaped in, but that's their imagination. So the reason why that's important is because now we have young people, and even older people now, unfortunately, who are changing their bodies through plastic surgery to fit a white man's imagination of who we are and our understanding of beauty. And so that is a very important conversation because Europeans created the idea of African American women, and African descendant people, women in particular, being whores. And so I'll also bring up this stereotype and then we can go from there.'Cause I'm gonna have a question that I ask students after that. The Missouri, and so if you wanna read about this, it is the subtitle is"In Defense of themselves. Um, her name is, uh, Deborah Gray White, but I'm, I'm blanking out on the title of the book. But anyhow, in her book, she tells about this, the Missouri Press Association President. So the Missouri Press Association President with no facts, no data, no science, he said all African American, or Black, women, all of them are liars, thieves, and whores. All of them. Liars, thieves, and whores. And this is how the National Association for or of Color Women is started the NACW. The NACW has, you know, people like Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, and, and a whole bunch, it's the Club Women's Movement. They formed to fight against this idea. But here's what the problem is with that formation and that we still see today, is that they publicly went against the Press Association president's ideology, but in private, when they created these clubs, they tried to teach Black women how to act because they believed the press about Black women that wasn't part of a certain class of Black women. So they really did believe Black women wore whores and they need to be trained up in how not to be a whore. Right. And, and, and this is where. Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells, and this is a, a watered down version of this conversation, but this is where one of the places that Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells do not get along, and how Ida B. Wells did the record, red record and her fight against lynching because he knew who the real rapists were and she knew who the real rape victims were. But an African American woman in the United States could not be raped because she loved sex so much that she always said yes. Which gets into other stereotypes of the, under the, um, tragic mulatto, but more importantly the Jezebel. Where the Jezebel is this temptress, and these white men are put under this hoodoo that he couldn't resist her. He didn't want to have sex with her. She, she, she, uh, tempted him. She seduced him. And that's the reason why. And so Ida B. Wells does the work she does because the, the stereotype. The imagination had real impact for African American women and why they're being raped. And so that's the reason why Ida B. Wells did what she, the work that she did, because this idea was that and that, uh, and that's the reason why looking at men, uh, that's the reason why the buck is only a rapist of white women because he could easily have sex with Black women. He doesn't want them. Everybody can have them. He wants white women. And, and he, that's the reason why he becomes a rapist.'cause no self-respecting white woman would ever want a Black man. You said so much. That's why they call you Dr. kNOw, actually explain for the listeners, why do they call you Dr. kNOw. And how did we, uh, spell it? All right. And so I got this nickname when I was getting my second master's in journalism. I know a lot, so KNOW, but I'm quick to say no. And so, um, the, my homegirl, she said, yeah, he's, it's lowercase K, capital N, capital O'cause I'm very emphatic with my no's, and lowercase w. and so it's Dr. kNOw. And so, and I love that because I am quick to say no, but, but I do know what I'm talking about. So I, I heard you make a point about this question that you ask your students, but before you ask that and share about that, since you know a lot and we are in this a hundred year period for Black History Month, what would you like for listeners to know about this period right now? And then anything that you could tie in, you know, everything coochie related about what healing as a political act or how this womanist framework applies and the thread of it over the years of Black history. So the 100 years of, of, of Black history, um, the thing that it, that this moment is calling for is for us to understand how important our history is in changing the world. And now we've had all these African proverbs and ideologies, right? The sankofa meaning go back and fetch it. That we can't move forward until we understand where we came from. Or I'm, I'm gonna mess it up. The, the lion will always be, no, no, the hunter will always be the hero in the lion's story or something like that, right? Until the lion gets his own story, you know, um, tell his own story, right. And these things have been important. But look, understand how important your history is because people like Donald Trump and the right wing conservatives are not going after English. They're not going after sociology as a field. But they are going after history, um, generally, but African American history specifically because that's how powerful it is in our understanding of how to create a future, right? And so this hundred years of Black history, we are back at a place where Carter G. Woodson wouldn't even recognize because here's what the problem is: our own community no longer wants to learn our history. Where Jewish people say never forget, we can't wait to not talk about it. And then the ones that do pick it up on social media, they're not good African American historians'cause they're not historians at all. And they don't, they, they, they will mess it up in a minute and come to bad conclusions based on their wrong information. And so, um history is an interperative field, but we gotta interpret facts. Their problem is they're not interpreting facts, they're interpreting something that was misunderstood meant right, or it didn't even exist in the first place. And they're going with that. And so that's, that's, that's the problem, uh, with that. And so I'll say that, um. As far as healing, I think the very nature of teaching African American history. One, as they say, ain't a new under the sun. So we've been dealing with these questions for hundreds of years. Why are you trying to start all over? And one of the things that I think this is where healing could come in at, through this. I'm gonna give you, um, A, A or B, uh, Dr. Abigail, I'm gonna give you an A or B uh, choice just to make this faster. Do you believe colorism is because of slavery through white people or through Black people? I'm gonna say A. Right. And a lot of people say A, and it's not A, it's B. Particularly free Black people. Free Black people in the south. And now I can give that lesson because it, you know who colorism impacts the most? African American women. African descendant women. It impacts, I, as a dark-skinned man, won't ever be excluded. Then, or now. A hundred years ago, I wasn't gonna be excluded and I'm not excluded now. Whereas a dark-skinned woman is still hurt being told she's, you know, she's cute to be dark-skinned. Right? And so that colorism comes out like, as I can tell that history, but that's one of those places that a lot of, there's, there's psychology books written on it and all this other kind of stuff. There's people with PhDs who do not understand African American history and don't understand that come from the free Black population in Charleston, South Carolina. The free Black population in Charleston, South Carolina named themselves of color because they didn't wanna be associated with Africans because Africans were enslaved and they didn't, they were free. So it had to deal with slavery, but it had nothing to do with what Malcolm X made us believe of this house negro field negro bull crap. And so, because we had that ideology we've created a foundation that is, uh, I, I was listening to the three pigs story earlier today. Our foundation is made out a straw. And so when that wolf comes, it can huff and puff and blow it down because it's not rooted in our actual history. And so that's where our healing can come from because one of the things that womanism teaches us is that our ethnicity and ourselves, is, is where we got to begin at. And part of ethnicity is understanding our history. All right. You better preach. Got it. So I have another question for you, but was the question from your students that you were referencing earlier? The question I ask all students now and, and I will ask your, uh, community as well. None of us can answer this. Well, I got the answer. Either you're living up to the stereotype or you're fighting the stereotype, but you can never be free. Because the stereotype already existed, and so even in your rejection of the stereotype, it ain't making the stereotype disappear. E if even, and that's if you was cognizant of the stereotype in the first place.'cause like I said, we getting all these BBLs damn near dying, who was it? Kate Michelle almost caught a flat and damn near died. But. I'm sorry. Um. She did got a flat goddammit. Um, and, but'cause she, she, she thought that's what a Black woman body was supposed to be. So she didn't even know it was tracing back to the Hottentot Venus. Like, like I said, looking at the work of Patricia Hill Collins, she talks about a Beyonce talking about bootylicious and that becoming a real word in the Oxford dictionary. Right? And so, we are either living up to the stereotype or we're fighting the stereotype. Them the only choices we've had until we, and, and, and I guess I say one more thing: is that African Americans in the United States have had an abolitionist movement. We've had a civil rights slash human rights movement. But you know what? We have not had? A decolonization movement. We're still very colonized in our minds in the way we think and act. And because of that, we hadn't even questioned the system in real ways that was given to us in the first place. I hear you there, honestly. I hear you there. So either we're living up to the stereotype of fighting the stereotype. Okay. Does womanism allow room for pleasure or is it strictly resistance? Oh, of course it allows for pleasure. Of course it allows for pleasure. So much so that so Dr. Abigail says she's a womanist and I say, I'm a womanist. And I say, as a womanist, I get to, as long as I inform the ladies I'm sleeping with, that I am sleeping with 10 different other women. Right? As long as I do it in an anti-oppressionist way, that's about common weal or communitarian, right? As long as I'm doing it in those ways, especially anti-oppressionist, I, I say I get to do that. Dr. Abigail says, well, she's gonna say, I, I heard from Dr. kNOw that we either living up to or fighting these stereotypes. It sound like to me, trying to live up to the stereotype. One of the things that as a womanist is that we would then have dialogue. It, it is rooted in this idea where we will have dialogue, not in trying to get Dr. Abigail to try to change me into the womanist that she wants me to be, or for me to try to change her into the womanist, but through that dialogue where we can come to some understanding for common weal. Right. And that's where like the question of what pleasure, what joy, what freedom are, we get to then have these conversations. That's where we, where we can lose the history of versus. we have so much history of versus. WEB Du Bois versus Booker t Washington. Martin Luther King Jr. Versus Malcolm X. WEB Du Bois versus Marcus Garvey. Right? We got two. Uh, Mary Church Terrell versus Ida B. Wells. We need ands. And through womanism when we get that dialogue where we can be a and, because at the end of the day, we all fighting for freedom. How you incorporate freedom, how you see it is different than how I see it, but we all are on the same road. Now we can't have a Clarence Thomas.'cause his understanding of freedom is against our, like, what freedom is. But not as long as you're working actually for freedom. Yeah. Your road is different than my road. And I can understand that. We don't have to agree. And so just a quick thing, Glenora Hudson wings, right? She created this one called Africana Womanism. Africana womanism would see being gay as a sin because of their spiritual belief system. But she doesn't believe in oppressing gay people. Right. So to say it's a sin. A lot of things are sins, like having sex outside of marriage is a sin that a lot of Christians do, right? And so, saying it's a sin is not oppressive. En acting laws to then target, you know, them, is oppressive. And so the dialogue between an Africana womanist is, and someone like that's following Alice Walker understanding of womanism, that that's not as spiritualized as Glen Nora Hudson Weems is. They're still going to be able to find common ground and have that conversation. And one is not going to then pick up and say, oh, you know what? I'm a, I've been converted into Africana womanism. I really appreciate that you brought in that dialogue because with that example you gave the way my eyebrow raised up. You was gonna get me. Not at all. So continuing with that, let's talk about Black love, because February also is, we can get into a lot of debates about Valentine's Day and the history of that and, and the capitalism, but Black love and capitalism and all of that right. But specifically, you have a framework and I want you to unpack, you know, share a little bit about your thoughts that you shared with me earlier about heterosexuality as a sexuality that we don't talk about often, and Black love in particular. So, and I will plug this. It has to come out this week, the last week in February, where I am partnering with a former student and we're doing a podcast called HBCU Love. And the reason that's important is because this conversation is really important. She, uh, undergrad majored in psychology and she's going on to grad school to get her marriage and family therapy degree, and we already know what degrees I got. I position myself in this conversation. I've learned gender studies and I really, really love self-help books. Self-help books help me unlock all types of things about being in long-term, loving relationships and how to be in community with Black women and all this other kind of stuff, right? Like self-help books were helping me in those kinda ways. And then gender and sexuality classes and ideas also had a major impact. Self-help books are awful at making us bear down and understand how much gender ideology is in our love relationships. Right? They don't answer the question of gender as a socially constructed idea. If Dr. Abigail says she wants a alpha male, that means she's signing up for a certain type of man who understands who he is, only through a certain lens. And only through a certain performativity, whether he can perform it or not. Okay. Whether he have the means or not, right? He might be a thousandaire with million dollar ideas, and that's the problem, right? And then in gender and sexuality studies, they do a great job of us understanding the social constructed nature and performativity of gender and sexuality, but they don't do a good job of us understanding how love operates and our love relationship operates. And so I want to merge those two things because one of the things is that, when I started dating, my ideology was shaped differently than my friends because I wasn't raised in a household that believed in gender. And so that messed me up. Because now all of a sudden I didn't, I never got messages about what it meant to be a man. I got messages about what it meant to be an adult. What it meant to be a Black adult. And what it meant to be in long-term loving relationships, but not as a man. Nor did I get messages about women that then said they were less than and all this other kind of stuff. And so that messed me up. And so it made me start thinking about heterosexuality is not as easy as we think it is. It's, it's learned behavior that we don't ever talk about, which is then is messed up. I'm not gonna say too much about this, but I'm, I'm, this is what I'm gonna say about it. I know men who are married who says that them loving their wives has nothing to do with them being faithful or having fidelity in their relationship.'Cause they then will say, I'm building with my wife. I'm having sex with that young lady. And they're separating those two things. And so when he says, I love you, his love and his understanding of love has nothing to do with fidelity. And so oftentimes we don't ever have the conversation of how did you define love and where did you learn love? How does it look like for a woman? How does it look for a man? And then even if you do ask these questions, then people will say, well, I learned love from my parents. Well, guess what? I wasn't around your parents. That's not a definition that I can work with. And so too often we are having conversations using the same words, but with different definitions as well as different understandings. And then the inability to be honest about what we actually mean. Because I couldn't, I, I date African descendant women only. Okay? I date African descendant women only. And so somebody literally asked me, just the other day for me to imagine being in a, uh, an ethical non-monogamy relationship. And I'm like, I can't. Because as soon as I say them words to a African descendant woman, that's a no. Right. Now, when I tell, like I said, we're colonized. When I want to say, well, you know what? That's your colonized mind that makes you believe monogamy is about ownership, not ownership of the whole him, just his penis. Right? The only place we care about monogamy, we don't ever tell people not to go share their genius with somebody else. Their, their personality, their funness, like we don't never their knowledge. You can share every other part of you with the whole world, except for your private parts. Ain't that asinine. Damn. Okay, keep going. And so, um, heterosexuality is this learned behavior that we never talk about, never define, and we all act on it. And because of that, and lemme go and be honest to your audience. More than likely I'm autistic. I, I've been having a conversation with my friends'cause I don't understand his behavior at all. And so I get it, but I don't get it right. I now,'cause I, I, I'm like, so if, if Dr. Abigail tells me she's looking for X, Y, and Z, but she's dating somebody that's A B and C and I'm just like, I, I thought you were looking for X, Y, and Z, but you dating A, B, and C. Or when, when they say, I want an alpha male, but I wanna be able to be independent. No, that ain't how that work. I wanna be taken care of. What? Only, the only man on this planet that wanna take care of you is gonna be an alpha male Who buys into that sexist ideology. Because let me tell you now what my mama taught me: all adults go to work when I leave to go to work and nobody staying at home, right? And so if you an adult, and that's what she was saying, if you an adult in my house, you gonna be working. If I'm going to work, you gonna work. So I don't want to ever take, I, you know, the only people I take care of my children, I'm I, so I don't enter into, but, so the men that wanna take care, you, they also wanna tell you what to do. They wanna tell you how to dress right? They want to tell you who you can talk to because they want to tell you stuff. They're not looking for a partner. Now, if you okay with that. I can't tell you if you, you, but if you okay with that. But don't, don't date a man who believes in that and then say, well, he can be the head of the household, but I'm gonna be his neck. And I tell students all the time, I can look around without ever using my goddamn neck. When you got a broke neck, they put this thing on when you can't. And so I'm, I don't need your goddamn opinion. But I also tell students this, and then you can open back up the questions and stuff. But, surrounding this, right, because, because Christianity is so deeply involved in this idea of head of house all and all that, and I'm like, everything that got a head got a ass, so which one are you being? Because you already said you ain't gonna be the head. And so that's the reason why I wanna have a conversation surrounding heterosexuality because there's some things that we need to discuss. And so now, this is before poly amory relationships got into the public world. Okay? So this is 15, 16, 17 years ago. And so I was introduced to polyamory through the L-B-T-Q-I community where they had to define everything because their world is already seen as abnormal. Because their world is already seen as abnormal, they have to define all parts of their relationships, and that's something I wanna take, I think heterosexuals need to take in. We need to define all parts of our relationship out loud and openly, and not take in assumptions because we see it as normative. The other thing that they innately understood that I, I think is really important is that because of this, and polyamorous, meaning multiple loves that you can exist actually love more than one person simultaneously. And that's our problem. Our problem in heterosexuality is we got a whole bunch of songs that said Love would've brought you home last night, right? Where like no one has ever said that I can only love one child. And so I'm only going to have one child. I can only love one parent. And so all y'all that got two parent households, you like, Hmm, one of y'all finna lose out. Right? But, but, and, but I also, and I, and I, and I will stop talking after this. I also don't believe in the hierarchy Europeans have given us when it comes to love. Europeans have, this is how crazy Europeans are because they categorize everything and they included love. And so they named all forms of loves. And so you agape, right? Platonic. But they, and so romantic love, they, they, and they created a hierarchy and they made romantic love at the top of this little pyramid. And they saying that love is so different than any other love. Where if you looking at it from an African or even Eastern perspective, there's only one love and it's not in competition with anything. And so if you then understood what love looked like and it is not so drastically different than what you've experienced your entire life, you're gonna stop looking for butterflies. Because when you see your parents, you didn't get butterflies. Oh, I've got butterflies. I know these, they the right parents for me. I get goosebumps every time I see my parents. Right? Once you understood that love is not outside of you in this romantic space, like, you know, uh, so you, so that's the, the, the groundwork. So we're capable of multiple loves simultaneously. Then it makes us have to be honest about what we are actually attracted to and what we need in a partner. And then how these things change over time and place and how me and my partner can renew ourselves. But to then tell someone they can't love more than one person at a time is just asinine. And you creating a space that then says, because I can't have it, it makes it even look more delicious. Well, there's that. There's that. Thank you for defining polyamory too, for those who, um, might not have known. And that was really powerful. The invitation to define all parts of our relationship. Out loud. In ways that the LGBTQIA community has maybe by force had to define theirs. Yep. So I'm gonna bring us back to womanism and wind it down a bit here. Okay. Where do you see womanism misunderstood? Or have you seen it misunderstood? I do, especially when it comes to my research. I look at Black men specifically, and everyone, when they see the word"womanist" or"womanism," they have a knee jerk reaction and say, why can't it be called manism. Right? Now, if we understand where womanism comes from, it comes from when they were saying she was being woman ish. So it would've been manish. And we've heard, you know, you being Manish, you, you trying to be too ground now, sit on down, you ain't grown folks business. And so that's where the term comes from. But, thinking that womanism and that men are outside of anything woman related. Right? And so all of a sudden I'm talking about these men being womanists in all of their ways that they would be woman ist. In fact, I'm going to argue that the first womanist person actually was a man. That's gonna be one of my new articles. He gives a speech in the 18th century where he shows himself being understanding intersectionality and womanism, and he's a man. And that's okay, right? But there is this backlash against me doing men and using a womanist framework. And I said this in conversations with people, I walked away from Black feminism as a lens to look at Black men, because under a Black feminist lens, every man is gonna come up short just by the very nature of the way that it is thinking. Womanism is not the same. Every body, especially of African descent, should be, if you're a pro African, you want all people of African descent, no matter what other intersectional identity that they have, be successful. So that means women, that means children, that means gay, that means trans, that means poor. That means rich. That means all of us. That means whether we in the south, right? Or we in the so-called North or West or Midwest, right? We want all of us to be successful, to have long life, to be happy, to be able to experience joy, right? We want all of those things. And so all those intersectional identities, and so if you're pro-Black or pro African, that's what you should be, but that's not how our history has worked itself out. We've continued to tell women, like there was a slogan in the late seventies, early eighties. It said, all the Blacks are men, right? All the feminists are white. But some of us are brave. Because Black women didn't fit in any of those spaces. And so as we think about this a hundred years of African American history, leaving out Black women has been a huge detriment to us as a people because we allowed us not to learn important lessons from there. Leaving out any of us, children, um, like I said, women, gay, whatever. Leaving them people out is a problem. As a womanist, like I said, the first characteristics of womanism is anti-oppression. Black power didn't give us anti- sexism. It didn't. The so-called civil rights movement did not give us anti- sexism. The Black Feminist club women movement, a womanist movement, whatever title you wanna put on it, it didn't give us, anti- class. It didn't even give us anti- sexism, right? But these pro-Black or pro African movements have not tackled that first anti-oppressionist in totality. I was watching something about African descendant people in history. What we don't do is look at how Frederick Douglas' life lived. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, runs away. Becomes big on the abolitionist trail, which is the, uh, going through the integrationist model, right? If you wanna look at it, these different models. So he's not a radical, but he does participate in Seneca Falls where the rights of women are talked about. But in the 1860s, right? Where we don't talk about people like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Caddy Stanton, who then become racist and say, white women deserve the right to vote before Black men because of their whiteness over Black men's maleness. Someone who had participated in the abolitionist movement, who had been enslaved and understood oppression, who was at Seneca Falls, who then became a sexist and said, no, Black men have earned this through their blood and dying. Earned it. Before he died. He dies in 1895, and that's the same year that Booker t Washington gives his Atlanta Exposition speech. And the next year is when the Supreme Court does the separate but equal with Plessy versus Ferguson. And so that's in this one man's lifetime that he ended up in a worse position than he started out in. Right. And so, for the people that don't know, and the reason why, this is why I kept on talking about he's an abolitionist. The abolitionist movement is what led to first wave feminism. And so a lot of people don't know that maybe. And so that's why him being an abolitionist, that then led the first wave feminism that led to Seneca Falls that then lead to him being sexist by saying, Black men have earned this. Black women are only ones that said both should get it. Both should get it. But then they also then voted for Black men if they had to vote between the two.'cause they, you know, understood their positionality. But they said both should get it off the top. So there's that. So that's my answer. What is an abolitionist? Yeah. And what is Senal Falls? So abolitionism is the fight against chattel slavery and the wanting to end chattel slavery. And so some people today have picked up the language that their abolitionists in the 21st century, because what we don't want to hear is slavery has taken on a new name. More importantly, we do it to ourselves now through capitalism and these colonized understandings of what's important in the world. Seneca Falls is going to be the location where, I'm bad with titles, but it's basically where women draw up their declaration of women's rights and where things like owning property and being able to inherit property and the right to vote are going to be narrowed down. It's like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for women. Thank you for that. And just as a note, all these gems that Dr. kNOw is dropping will be researched and links will be included in the show notes. Final question. What, we've talked about a lot of things. Yes. You know, we've gone on a journey. You've told some stories, you've shared just your humor and sense of self. What do you want, what do you most want listeners to walk or roll away with today? Is that the ideal of Sankofa, that the only way we can move forward is to look back for us to really understand how did we get here, where we can deconstruct those things, right? Like I said, as a womanist, keep traditions that support us and get rid of all the ones that don't. By making new traditions, nobody should be eating soul food in 2026. That stuff is killing you, literally. But taking the talent of African descendant people in their culinary arts, right? I am a, uh, a plant-based person. I don't call myself a vegan, but there's vegan soul food. Not that it's good for you either, but you know, we can take that genius and apply it. We can even research the fact that what we call candied yams, it's sweet potatoes. Which means what we need to get our hands on that our ancestors couldn't get their hands on was the actual yams that were in Africa. Right? So that is where like we can learn these things and not to say that it's bad to do something, right? Like I, I see search now where it was started in 1990, well, it started in, in in 1991. That didn't seem like much. And so I'm like, why the heck you got on your trademark started in 90, in 1990, but now that it started in 1990 and we now in 2026, that seemed like a distance. And so something, brand new... Apple been around only a short amount of time. Microsoft been around only a but, but now those names seem they're 50 years old, 40 years old, right? Or, and more. And so when they started these, lets start some new traditions that we, we can go to. And I guess the last thing that I would say that we didn't touch on is our imagination. By going back and understanding our past, it gives us the ability to have an imagination about our future. Because every enslaved person who was born into slavery, not born on the continent, born into slavery, could imagine something that had never experienced, which was freedom. We cannot imagine what our freedom even looks like, so we allow other people to fill our imagination with their understanding. And so I do a lot of work around Afrofuturism where I,'cause I like sci-fi and post-apocalyptic movies and these kind of things where they solve, especially if it's based in the future and space and all that kind of stuff, where they solve the race problem. They never teach us how. So each and every last one of us who could be actively working as a woman is to fight against these oppressions, we're not, because we were saying some days it's gonna get better magically. Because that's what Disney showed us in Black Panther. That's what Disney showed us in. There's a Durag superhero that I'm having a whole conversation with my former students about right now, because that's, that, that, that's where we are because I'm like, did the Durag become radio or active and bite him? Is he out here spreading waves everywhere? But that's neither here nor there. But they're allowing us to take our imagination, which is taking our history. So that's what I wanna leave us with. Thank you. Powerful words. Sankofa. Womanism. Imagination. Freedom. Perhaps the liberation that we're working towards isn't only about dismantling the system, but also building this common weal. Yeah. Thank you so much Dr. kNOw, DL, for being with us today, for teaching us, for dropping these gems. This was amazing, especially at this time. Black Love, Black history month. A hundred years of it. I just appreciate you. Thank you so much. No, thank you for having me, and find me anywhere, and I have these conversations with you. And where can we find you? On all social media, Instagram, formerly Twitter, as well as TikTok: DL_ PhD. That's DL_ PhD everywhere. That was my conversation with Dr. Derek Lanois If you're sitting here thinking, whew, that was a lot good because it is today. We talked about womanism as a framework that begins with the self and expands outward into community responsibility, common weal and the world we're trying to build. We talked about how stereotypes don't just live in textbooks. They live in systems and relationships, and sometimes they, even in what we've been taught to desire and we ended with Sankofa, the reminder that going back isn't about nostalgia, it's about liberation. Because if we don't know how we got here, we can't decolonize what's in our minds, can we? And we can't imagine what freedom actually looks like. So if something in this episode sparked you, challenged you, or clarified something for you, share it with a friend that you know can handle a layered conversation. Of course. Make sure to follow the podcast and if you like, what's happening here. Leave a review. It helps us to get new eyes on the show and check the show notes for a list of all the resources that Dr. Dl mentioned and you can find him on social media at DL_PhD p everywhere, and we'll include that in the show notes as well. This is Coochie Business, and I'll see you in the next episode.