In late December, 2020, I sat several feet from the man who had been my step-father for 36 years, across the reflective surface of a hardwood desk from a somber man who owned the funeral home where my Mom was cremated.

Those ashes sat on said desk, in a nondescript green plastic box.

Mom died on December 14th from COVID. The ashes were hers.

When the funeral director exited for a few moments, my Mom’s widower noticed a framed lifetime membership to the National Rifle Association on the wall. He was enthused and energized. I remained numb with grief that I couldn’t yet fathom.

The funeral director returned, unmasked as he’d been the entire time, my Mom’s widower, also unmasked, launched into a lengthy exploration of Trumpism, MAGA values, and Q-Anon conspiracy theories. All I wanted were the several small pouches of my Mom’s ashes that I asked to be separated from the rest so that I and another family member could have our own tiny fragments of the woman who meant everything to us.

…the day after she died, her widower, on his way to my house, stopped at a local club to which he and they belonged to collect condolence money, smoke, and have shots. Indoors. Unmasked. I called him, considering he was late to the house where I and my immunocompromised spouse awaited, and when he revealed his shenanigans, I told him he could not come. He became angry. When I reminded him that, “My Mom just died from COVID,” after having gone to a super spreader event that had already killed a handful of other folks, his response was offense because *his* wife had died…

A week later, in that funeral home, he and the director discussed the new president and how everything was being set up so that “that monkey” could be coronated by trans Jewish aliens or some such hate-filled nonsense.

Misogynoir is a term, coined by scholar, writer, and activist Dr. Moya Bailey, that describes the praxis of hatred directed at Black women, in general, and Kamala Harris, in this instance.

…several months previously, at the same club where my Mom’s widower went for drinks and cash from the pockets of people who claimed to love her, Mom was consistently belittled and berated for reading, enjoying, and daring discuss Michelle Obama’s autobiography. Many, including her husband as the ring leader, referred to Obama as an N-word man. My Mom never told me this. I only learned well after her death from another family member…

Transmigogynoir is hatred of trans Black women. Please understand, it matters not that Michelle Obama is neither trans nor nonbinary and is, in fact, a cis woman. That added pile-on of hatred, dehumanizing her further in their minds, is at the rotten core of white supremacist racism.

I left that funeral home and have neither seen nor communicated with my Mom’s widower since. And, in the intervening years, I have severed relationships with handfuls of people who proved, across this entire still-happening pandemic, untrustworthy kyriarchy enthusiasts. People I neither trust nor respect. People who spread hatred and harm.

Today, Joe Biden officially stepped down as the Democratic nominee for the upcoming election in the United States, and we fucking NEED to address the misogynoir.

I don’t care if you like or don’t like Kamala Harris. I need you and us to be VERY clear that outright dismissal of a Black woman *is* misogynoir…and misogynoir is weaved into the very fabric of this so-called country, tracing all the way back to chattel slavery and, earlier, the European invention of whiteness and thus white supremacy and colonization that has dominated the world since.

We must address and fight this, and that battle must occur in our own homes, families, communities, faith organizations, schools, places of employment and leisure.

The battle is mine. And the battle is yours, particularly if you are not a Black woman.

This should all be so simple, yet entirely too many of us would rather make it hard.

Do the right thing.

-Greg