I enter this conversation as a young man of color who is also neurodivergent; someone who understands marginalization, yet who also benefits from gendered privilege within a patriarchal society. Holding both truths simultaneously is necessary. While my lived experience includes exclusion and harm, it does not mirror the specific realities Black women face under misogynoir.
This piece is not an attempt to speak for Black women, nor to translate their experiences into more digestible language. Rather, it is an effort to reflect on responsibility, particularly the responsibility men hold in shaping the spaces, narratives, and silences that either reproduce or interrupt harm. Any insight shared here is informed by Black feminist scholarship, cultural critique, and attentive listening, and remains secondary to the voices of Black women themselves.
Misogynoir, a term coined by Dr. Moya Bailey, refers to the specific and compounded form of anti-Black sexism directed at Black women. It cannot be understood by isolating race from gender; the harm operates precisely because the two are inseparable.
Misogynoir manifests across:
Recognizing misogynoir as systemic, not merely attitudinal, allows for a deeper analysis of how it persists even in spaces that otherwise resist racism.
The Double Burden: Lived Experience and Narrative Expectation
Black women frequently carry a dual burden that is both experiential and representational.
On a lived level, many are expected to:
On a narrative level, media and cultural storytelling reinforce these expectations by repeatedly casting Black women as:
This duality often results in silencing, particularly when naming sexism within the community is framed as betrayal rather than truth-telling.
Media functions as a powerful teacher. It shapes how audiences learn to interpret tone, anger, vulnerability, and worth.
Across television dramas, workplace series, and family-centered narratives, Black women are frequently portrayed as hyper-competent and emotionally contained. While these depictions may appear affirming, they often deny complexity and interiority.
The repeated absence of softness, rest, or emotional unraveling communicates a quiet message: that Black women exist to endure rather than to be cared for.
In ensemble casts, reality television, and courtroom dramas, Black women’s assertiveness is often framed as aggression. Frustration becomes spectacle. Boundary-setting is depicted as hostility.
This trope conditions viewers to associate Black women’s emotional expression with threat, making it easier, socially and psychologically, to dismiss their accounts of harm, including misogynoir itself.
Romantic narratives frequently marginalize Black women by portraying them as:
These portrayals mirror and reinforce broader social hierarchies around desirability and value.
When misogynoir is discussed, especially in mixed-gender or male-dominated spaces, power dynamics remain present.
To hold space responsibly requires:
Holding space is not neutrality; it is intentional protection of dignity.
From a neurodivergent lens, it is important to interrogate how communication norms are enforced.
Black women, particularly neurodivergent Black women, are often penalized for:
Neurodivergence can sharpen awareness of how tone, pacing, and affect are policed. Still, shared marginalization does not eliminate gendered power. Solidarity requires restraint and humility.
A Call-In to Men: Responsibility Without Defensiveness
This work ultimately requires men, particularly men of color, to engage with misogynoir not as observers, but as participants within the systems that allow it to persist.
A call-in is not an accusation; it is an invitation to accountability.
For men, this can begin with:
Men do not need to center themselves in these conversations to be involved. Often, the most meaningful contribution is the willingness to step back, make room, and intervene when harm emerges, without seeking recognition for doing so.
A community cannot move toward liberation while requiring Black women to absorb disproportionate harm, both materially and narratively. Misogynoir fractures trust, weakens movements, and erodes collective integrity.
Confronting it is not ancillary to racial justice; it is foundational to it. This work is not about mastery or moral authority, but about sustained accountability, informed listening, and the refusal to prioritize comfort over justice.
Closing Reflection: Accountability as a Practice of Justice
Engaging misogynoir requires more than awareness; it requires sustained accountability. In my work as a disability advocate and self-advocate, I have learned that justice is not a collection of isolated efforts, but an interconnected practice; one that asks us to examine how power circulates through systems, spaces, and everyday interactions. The same structures that marginalize disabled people, neurodivergent individuals, and those whose lives fall outside dominant norms also enable the dismissal and devaluation of Black women.
Advocacy, at its most ethical, is not just about visibility or voice, but also about responsibility. It is about recognizing who is routinely expected to carry the weight of systems that were never built for their safety or care. Black women are too often asked to absorb harm quietly; within institutions, within movements, and within their own communities. When that harm goes unchallenged, it undermines the very principles of equity and inclusion that advocacy claims to uphold.
As a self-advocate, I am continually reminded that lived experience does not grant moral exemption. Proximity to marginalization does not negate the need for reflection or restraint. Instead, it heightens the obligation to notice where one holds influence, how one occupies space, and when silence becomes a form of consent. Accountability, in this context, is not punitive; it is relational. It is the ongoing work of showing up differently, especially when doing so is uncomfortable or unacknowledged.
This reflection is not an assertion of arrival, nor a claim to authority. It is an invitation to remain attentive; to listen without defensiveness, to intervene without centering oneself, and to understand solidarity as a daily, practiced ethic rather than a stated position. Justice is not advanced by intention alone, but by the cumulative impact of how we choose to act.
If liberation is to be meaningful, it must be felt first by those who have been asked for far too long to survive without being believed.
Ian Allan
Self-Advocate for The Arc of Northern Virginia
Ian Allan is a self-advocate with a deep commitment to policy literacy, systems change, and disability justice. Through The Arc of Northern Virginia, he works to ensure that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are not merely served by systems, but are actively shaping them.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, The Arc of Northern Virginia relies on private support from individuals, corporations, organizations, and foundations to fund our efforts. Your generous donations help make it possible for us to provide programs, services, and advocacy so that people with IDD can live “A Life Like Yours.”
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