One of western modernity’s greatest cruelties is the fact that couples are expected to raise newborns alone. I’ll never understand it and it really is an impossible thing
In other cultures you give birth and a flight of female relatives descends upon you to take care of you (make you food and do chores) and help with the baby. You don’t just soldier on in a two bedroom apartment with only a partner who works full time. It is totally absurd
What I’m trying to say is this is not normal. Humans have been giving birth for millennia and nobody was excepted to do it alone. It’s not normal to expect someone/a couple to raise an infant alone.
I don’t know who’s to blame. Obviously capitalism and it’s insistence that you can replace the functions of the extended family/community with products, gadgets and sheer will power. The lie that everything is a competition and that “good mothers” don’t need help.
Humans are herd animals because we need lots of help. It’s not just because we’re social and it’s fun to have bants and jokes. It’s because we literally need help to make it through this life cycle called being human.
I’m speaking as a person who used to spend weekends with newborn women in my family as the only daughter of the only son. I was 12-15, helping my cousins as best I could with newborn stuff. They also were staying with their mothers during the baby’s first few months.
When you think about it like that it’s truly a miracle that western marriages survive at the rate they do. A newborn can destroy a single persons psyche never mind a whole ass marriage. I can’t believe anyone makes it out alive raising a baby alone.
When I lived in a European city I used to hear my neighbor sobbing alone with her baby. I thought to myself, if this is “civilization” then I don’t want any part of it.
I’m working on a longer piece that will expand thinking on this to include the practice of Botsêtsi, Stoler’s theory of culture as a toolset + literary things. In the meantime I don’t know what organizations to point to, but if you wanna buy me coffee cash.app/$Siyandawrites
YouTube is succinct

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More from @SiyandaWrites

1 Jan
I’m on episode two of #scenesfromamarriage and I’m 100% okay with physically fighting this tiny red headed woman cause she sounds CHILDISH
When this girl said “you’d make fun of him” I really almost flinched from the force of the pure stupidity of this character #scenesfromamarriage
Oh
My
God - every word this woman says….#scenesfromamarriage
Read 5 tweets
25 Apr 21
In November, the @nytimes published an article about efforts in Asia to fight back COVID. They mentioned specifically 3 countries (Hong Kong, Korea and Japan) and outlined long histories of policy implementation by health officials in these nations trying to combat infections
In the article, an epidemiologist from Hong Kong university is interviewed, an infectious disease specialist at Korea university in seoul is quoted, and there is a direct statement from the president of the Japan medical association. (this is important)
The strategies of local officials and leaders are outlined and nuance is applied to the successes and failures that officials in #hongkong #southkorea and #japan face in fighting back this deadly disease.
Read 22 tweets
21 Jan 21
How. Please tell me how. I’m begging you please. How can you talk about the economic “success” of countries like England, US and France and Spain and so on without once — EVEN ONCE — mentioning slavery, colonization, theft and corruption. Please I just want to know how sway.
I’m not trying to be edgy. I genuinely want to know why people talk about Christianity, western culture, strong institutions or whatever as being behind their “success” without mentioning - I don’t know - decades of free money. Free labor. Free resources. Paid for with brutality
Then when you bring this up it’s like you’re some kind of radical activist or whatever when it is pointing out simple, honest-to-god economic theory.

If you don’t pay for something then you can accumulate as much as possible. That feels reasonable, right?
Read 10 tweets
19 Jan 21
Watching the Tiger Woods doc, I just felt intense pity for someone who seems to have willingly starved themselves of Black camaraderie and its many joys.
Its difficult to comment on an adult's life, one I know quite little about. But imagine spending your whole life without the counsel of your kinfolk. That's the true tragedy to me.
Watching the doc with my Af-Am and Af friends, we just kept shouting "all you needed was one Black friend. just one!" The friends he had in that doc were really something else
Read 10 tweets
8 Nov 20
Last month it was “the Africans have strong genes” now they’re saying this. What if I told you it’s much simpler?

You were outgoverned and outpolicied by the countries you presume yourself superior to. It’s not that deep fam.
How long will you punish yourselves with this stuff? Instead of learning something from others that could save your own country’s life?

No! it has to be something *cultural* and *genetic* because otherwise you would have thought of it first, right? What a tragedy
You can’t just sit down and study what Asian health ministries did; what African healthcare systems did - no! You’d rather your people died thinking they are better off than those “s*hole countries.” This is very very sad.
Read 5 tweets
28 Oct 20
I truly cannot fathom how an academic can go into an interview and claim that social media is responsible for college aged people’s depression and not mention even once the weight of staggering student loans. Like...am I crazy?
How do people go on public forums and talk about anything else but the economic life of generation z? I heard this social psychologist blame “safe spaces” for increased depression in college aged people. I almost fainted.
We’re talking about a generation of people who may never get out from under their student debt. By 2015 Americans owed a total of 1.41 trillion $ in loans for school. Then this guy’s gonna go on radio and say talking about microaggressions is making people soft. Wtf is happening
Read 8 tweets

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