Krista Kurt

                            CUNY, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

                                                    ENG 201-04

                                         Professor Lyndon Nicholas         

                                                Due: 03/23/2024

                                      Cover Letter

            In this essay I will be giving my critical analysis of the films “Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2” by Quentin Tarantino using a feminist and psychological lens. I will touch on themes of chauvinistic cultural norms, hetero relationship norms being almost identical to “pimp culture”, how women are objectified as commodities under patriarchy, and or triangulated and pit against each other being used as pawns by men. I will touch on the psychological toll domestic violence and narcissistic/psychopathic abuse takes on survivors, how in many cases attempting to leave an abusive relationship can become fatal, how children become involved/ harmed by a high conflict divorce or the separation of their parents, how child custody can be weaponized by abusers and how this is all a misogynistic system designed specifically to keep women controlled, in fear and subordinate to men. After reading this essay you will see how the protagonist of the film metaphorically represents many women who are survivors of narcissistic abuse, domestic violence, high conflict divorces/custody battles and or human/sex trafficking. You will also see how the film shows the domino effect of children being dangled like carrots for leverage or attachment by abusive men and become objectified, sometimes even harmed, when women try to end the relationship. This essay also shows the rampant culture of misogyny, chauvinism, male supremacy and patriarchy that is fundamentally identical to “pimp culture”, and how many hetero relationships between men and women tend to have an unequal power dynamic where the woman is assumed to be property of her man and a subordinate; where she has to “get down or lay down”, which essentially translates to- ‘do what I want you to do, or die’.

Using a Feminist and Psychological Lens to Analyze How Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2 Represents the Way Abuse Psychologically Changes Survivors of Domestic Violence While Empowering Women Fighting Against Domestic Violence and High Conflict Custody Battles Involving Narcissistic Abuse in The Justice System and Family Court:

                 “Wiggle your big toe” – Uma Thurman’s character ‘Black Mamba’ in Kill Bill Vol. 1

            In the film “Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2” directed by Quentin Tarantino, Uma Thurman plays Beatrix Kiddo, a woman who attempted to escape a psychopathic abuser, Bill, while pregnant with his child. The movie begins as a scene in a small chapel in the middle of nowhere in a mid-western dessert where Beatrix was marrying a different man, the scene showing her pregnant belly in the wedding dress. It seems quiet enough, safe enough that maybe she has finally escaped and can happily move on, but we know escaping a psychopath or narcissist is never that simple and, in many cases, fatal. Homicide is one of the leading causes of death for young women and about 90% of cases are committed by their spouse/romantic partners. Women who are pregnant or have given birth are more likely to die from intimate partner violence and most commonly by firearms (cdc.gov, Petrosky, Blair, Betz, Fowler, Jack, Lyons, 2017, 66(28); 741-746). This grim real-life statistic is identically depicted in the first scene of the film showing the protagonist, Beatrix (Uma Thurman), as a pregnant woman in her third trimester ready to give birth who is shot in the head by her abuser for trying to leave the relationship.

When a woman attempts to leave an abusive relationship her chances of being killed dramatically increase, in fact the chances increase by 75% within the first two years of separation (jbws.org, 2022), making the first 18 months after ending an abusive relationship the most dangerous. Leaving the relationship is the most common and likely time a woman will be killed by her abuser. This is the main reason many women fear leaving their abusive relationships and feel they can’t escape abusers who use violence as coercive control tactics, which is what keeps these women in bondage.

Also, many abusers attempt to use pregnancy to trap their victims which could have very well been the case for Beatrix’s character in the movie. Perhaps Beatrix always wanted to escape Bill, and he impregnated her under the impression she would be trapped, and the child can be used as a weapon against Beatrix to further abuse and control her- which is what many women experience in high conflict divorces and custody battles against their abusive partners (cdc.gov, Petrosky, 2017). In many cases abusive men target the children and use them as weapons against women to maintain control and wreak havoc in their life. When an abuser loses control of the woman, for example when the woman ends the relationship, he tends to target the children instead to continue the abuse through the children – since that is the only way he can have any control over her.

While getting married, Bill shows up to Beatrix wedding with a few other women and his brother, which could metaphorically represent the abuser/narcissist’s family of enablers, ‘flying monkey’s’ that he recruits do his bidding and the women he has affairs with that he uses to triangulate against his victim, (Beatrix), to help him further abuse her. They kill everyone at the wedding in a massacre and Bill shoots Beatrix in the head while the “other women”, and Bill’s brother, stand over her lifeless body with faces of contempt. This scene reflects how abusers will involve their family members to assist with abusing the victim, and how abusers tend to also manipulate other women that they cheat/have affairs with to attack and further abuse their victims. They pin women against each other and turn the women that they cheat with into their ‘flying monkey’s’, (think Wizard of Oz), and alliances. Many survivors of narcissistic/ psychopathic abuse and domestic violence can relate to being further gaslit and abused by their abuser’s family members, and or other women that their abuser is having affairs with. In many cases family members and other romantic interests of the narcissist/psychopath will defend the narcissist’s/psychopath’s behavior and blame the victim for being abused. These toxic family members can also be used as witnesses in courts to lie on behalf of abusers and defend abusers from facing legal accountability for their violent actions, and in many cases even help abusers get full custody of the children.

After Beatrix was shot in the head by Bill, she survived but was in a 5-year coma. She woke up with a flat stomach to realize her baby was gone. She didn’t know whether she lost the baby or if Bill had taken the child from her, but she was full of rage and seeking revenge, like most survivors of abuse who suffer with CPTSD/PTSD. She wanted revenge on all of Bill’s “side chicks” and his brother for attempting to kill her, and not only because they attempted to kill her, but also because they were all an accomplice in losing her child. When Beatrix wakes up, she realizes the hospital employee, Buck, was making money off her by letting men have sex with her in the coma. She then starts getting flashbacks of Buck raping her while in the coma saying, “My name is Buck, and I like to fuck”, (Quentin Tarantino, 2003). The entire movie shows subliminal undertones, (really overtones if you’re paying attention but this is not always obvious to everyone that watches the film; perhaps some of these themes may go over a few heads), of toxic masculinity and the culture of patriarchy that glorifies women being tools used by men, the impact of misogyny on women and the depths of “pimp culture”, (treating women as commodities and possessions vs human beings with autonomy), in our society. Bill is a man who has a team of many women willing to “work for him”, however they are not prostitutes but assassins highly trained in combat and martial arts. This could be symbolism for a trafficking ring and the dangers of escaping a sex trafficking ring, or it could simply be a hyperbole representation of “the fighting”, (maybe figurately and or literally), that survivors of narcissistic abuse and domestic violence must partake in when ending an abusive relationship/ marriage.

 The fighting in the film could represent metaphorically the obstacles women are faced with and the tribulations they are up against, whether it’s the abuser’s family, friends and or girlfriends, they can even represent the family court and the narcissist’s lawyers and the judge who sides with the abuser just off misogyny alone. Or it could potentially represent Bill as a head of a trafficking ring and the other women could be “working girls”, or other prostitutes in the ring who work for Bill, (since they are shown in the movie somewhat as a parody of Charlie’s Angels, where Bill is their boss, they all work for Bill), but there also seems to be romantic and sexual undertones as well between the women and Bill. Perhaps Bill is a ‘Romeo pimp’, a seducer, ‘a Mack’, and he is skilled in manipulating many women into being obedient to him while also fostering an emotional connection, or dependency in the women who “work for him”, (who he is clearly also having sex with…).

 Beatrix in this scene pretends to still be asleep when Buck sends a “john”, (a man who pays for sex), into the room to get his rocks off on her lifeless body. The man gets on top of Beatrix, strokes her face and says, “Wow pretty like an angel” (Quentin Tarantino, 2003), Beatrix then bites his tongue out of his mouth causing him to start bleeding out and he then becomes hysterical, bleeding out uncontrollably until he eventually dies. Beatrix, unable to move her legs due to muscle dystrophy from being in the coma so long, (she tells herself to wiggle her big toe to make her regain feeling in her legs and feet), somehow she gets on the floor waiting for Buck to return with a knife she took out of the dead man’s pocket in her hand ready to defend herself.

Buck comes back into the room unsuspecting, and Beatrix slices his ankle with the knife, causing Buck to fall onto the floor. She repeatedly slams his head into the wall shouting, “Where is Bill?”, (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) which Buck, who is just a sleezy hospital employee, pleads with Beatrix that he does not know Bill or who she is talking about. She kills Buck then steals his car keys and hospital scrubs to disguise herself and escape the hospital without being detected. She then makes it to his car, somehow crawling all the way to the parking lot to Buck’s car from the hospital room, which she finds out to no surprise is called “The Pussy Wagon”. This scene shows the resilience of domestic violence survivors and how strong they must be to fight against the narcissistic/psychopathic abuse they’re enduring. It also shows how PTSD and CPTSD can cause heightened paranoia, (which is hypervigilance), which can put survivors in a mental state where they start to believe that everyone they encounter is involved with or connected to their abuser. For example, Beatrix screaming for the hospital employee, Buck, to tell her where Bill is when he most likely has no idea who Bill is, but after realizing she was being raped by him while in the coma, her fight or flight response caused her to react violently assuming he was also involved with Bill, without a second thought. Nope, he wasn’t one of Bill’s accomplices just another man who happens to also be an abuser, and under patriarchy, misogyny and chauvinism a large majority of men are more inclined to treat women as if they are disposable objects or less than human. Necrophilia is a real problem where men sexually assault women’s corpses and Buck profiting off Beatrix being sexually assaulted while in a coma shows how women are treated as commodities for sex in our society.

So, although he too abused Beatrix, he was not affiliated with her abuser, which also shows how prevalent abuse, degradation, and dehumanization towards women occurs in our society and how it is almost seen as “the norm”; sometimes even praised and encouraged. CPTSD/PTSD from psychopathic/narcissistic abuse causes survivors to become hypervigilant, paranoid and distrusting of everyone, irrationally believing that everyone is also a flying monkey helping their abuser, even if that’s realistically not the case. It also shows that survivors of domestic violence tend to be revenge seeking, become more violent and aggressive partaking in reactive abuse (fight or flight response), and start having homicidal ideation and fantasies of killing their abusers. This movie provides that satisfying fantasy to survivors of abuse who can relate to having homicidal thoughts towards their abuser. This can even be empowering, healing and give survivors of domestic violence feelings of “justice being served”.

            After Beatrix escapes, she goes to one of Bill’s “working girls”, or “side chick’s” house, Vernita Green, who is played by Vivica A. Fox, to kill her. During this scene we see Vernita copping pleas in her nice suburban home begging for Beatrix not to kill her because “she is a mom now and has changed since then”- ‘since then’ being when she came to Beatrix’s wedding to help Bill kill everyone including her. Beatrix then explains how, due to her and Bill’s murdering spree at her wedding five years ago, she has not only been in a coma for the last five years due to being shot in her head, but she also had lost her child. Which makes Vernita realize

that Beatrix has no empathy for her, and in fact telling Beatrix that “she is a mother” will only enrage her more, triggering Beatrix’s PTSD into fight mode.

This scene, again, shows how PTSD/CPTSD causes issues with rage, hostility, aggressive behavior and thoughts of seeking revenge in survivors of domestic violence and narcissistic/psychopathic abuse. After killing Vernita Green in front of her child with no remorse, Beatrix then goes to visit Bill’s mentor and business acquaintance to find out more information on where Bill may be located, and he happens to be an old and well-respected pimp. The scene makes this known by him flat out saying and showing he has prostitutes and is in the business of sex trafficking women, which is even further depicted in the scene by showing one of his scantily clad “working girls” with a nasty scar vertically cut through her entire mouth. He starts boasting and showing off the scars that he inflicted on his “property”, (the girls), as punishment for their disobedience, another display of our culture of misogyny and how patriarchy combined with capitalism breeds an environment of “pimp culture”. This toxic masculine behavior and violence towards women is almost second nature in our society due to the severe generational social conditioning of seeing women as inferior to men, as if that is just a “biological fact that everyone must accept”. The everlasting resistance to feminism in our society, which is simply equality for women and a movement for basic human rights, also shows us that a large majority of society is deeply conditioned by misogynistic ideologies.  

In this scene, the violence Bill’s ‘professor pimp’ uses against his women when “they don’t listen”, shows us the ideologies and belief systems about women that were instilled in Bill by this mentor. It also shows us the company Bill keeps are pimps and abusers, possibly hinting at Bill overseeing his own trafficking ring, (or assassin ring as displayed in the movie, either way he has a bunch of women working for him). This also shows us the glorification of misogyny, pimp culture, how pimps and abusers are praised, and victims/survivors are devalued and discarded. It also shows us that violence against women is normalized and even systematic, and many of these abusive narcissistic/psychopathic men are in positions of power with money and resources, who stick together ultimately to uphold patriarchy since it allows men to continue to disproportionately abuse and exploit women.

            Throughout the movie of both Vol. 1 & 2, Beatrix goes on a mission fighting against Bill’s brother and all of Bill’s multiple women around the world, which shows us that misogyny and patriarchy are global issues that occur on a large scale. Again, these women could potentially be metaphors for his ‘working girls’, maybe Bill’s character is a metaphor for a pimp, but they can also simply be women metaphorically representing his affairs and “side pieces”, since many abusers partake in infidelity. She kills all of them but doesn’t stop until she finds out exactly where Bill is, because that is who she wants to seek revenge against more than anyone.

Again, many women in high conflict divorces, custody battles or women who are escaping abusive relationships with narcissists/psychopaths, find their selves fighting against their abuser’s enabling family members and the women that he was having affairs with. A man having multiple women is praised in our patriarchal society and it’s almost expected as a “normal” part of heterosexual relationships/marriages. Women are expected to tolerate infidelity, yet women are also expected to never partake in it.

In the final scene, Beatrix finally gets to Bill’s house and sees her 5-year-old daughter, who of course Bill knew would lead Beatrix back to him. Bill used their child as a weapon to keep an attachment between him and Beatrix, and this scene represents how many abusers will use the children as coercive control weapons to hoover and love bomb their victims, or to keep them in bondage/ break the woman into submission. Beatrix, however, kills Bill, (hence the title of the movie), and rides off into the sunset with her daughter. This emotional and relieving scene shows us that after all the abuse, after fighting with Bill’s family and his many love affairs, and fighting hard to get her daughter back out of his clutches, to be rid of her abuser once and for all, Beatrix gets “justice”, in her way, (in the way many survivors of narcissistic/psychopathic abuse wish they could). This powerful ending gives women who are dealing with these situations the inspiration to keep fighting. It can empower survivors to be resilient and overcome their trauma, showing the protagonist of the movie, Beatrix (Uma Thurman), in a role of strength rather than as vulnerable and weak, (which is how most victims of violence are portrayed).

This film can validate the complex feelings of rage and the homicidal ideations that many abuse survivors suffer with due to CPTSD/PTSD. It can also validate many women’s experiences living under a patriarchal society of misogyny and the way violence by men against women disproportionately affects women in society. This film also shows that even after all the trauma, fighting and suffering that Beatrix had endured, she was still able to have her ‘happy ending’ and get justice against her abuser in the end, which I believe overall is a powerful and meaningful message for many women who watch this film.

References

Petrosky E, Blair JM, Betz CJ, Fowler KA, Jack SP, Lyons BH. Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women and the Role of Intimate Partner Violence — United States, 2003–2014. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2017;66:741–746. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6628a1

Jbws.org, Jersey Battered Women’s Services, First 18 Months After Leaving An Abusive Partner Are The Most Dangerous, article on Sania Khan, United States, 2022

The First 18 Months After Leaving An Abusive Partner Are The Most Dangerous

                This essay is for anyone who is passionate about justice for children and women in the family court system who believes in reform. This essay should be able to persuade you using emotions and factual evidence to show that this is a pressing crisis that needs more attention from lawmakers. The main strengths of this essay are using real life case scenarios that have occurred in family court causing harm to children and protective parents who try to help them. This piece touches on issues with custody battles when an abusive parent is involved and how the court system exacerbates this issue. You will learn that often family court is complicit in putting children in harm and even causing fatalities that are avoidable. After reading this essay you will realize how the family court system is used as a weapon by abusive parents to further abuse children and protective parents who try to get justice and some of the ways we can make changes to fix it.

                  

                                                    

            Hundreds of children have been killed due to the failures of the Family Court in the United States. The Family Court is the only court that has no oversight board to make sure ethics are being followed. There have been several whistleblowers within the Family Court who have come forward regarding egregious corruption, especially regarding cases involving domestic violence and child abuse. Too many times, women and children alike have come forward to testify that they were in danger and a misogynistic Family Court judge made a poor judgement in their case that caused irreparable damage or worse- was fatal.

            The Family Court is also the only court that doesn’t appoint you an attorney if you cannot afford one unlike criminal or traffic court. Retainers for family court lawyers start at $2,000-$4,000 so if you are low on funds, you may be out of luck in fighting for child custody or protection for your child against the other parent. Another fault is many times when a protective parent reports abuse, they are the one who instead becomes ostracized from their child and is accused of being “hysterical” or “mentally unstable” for bringing the accusations to the court in the first place. According to USA Today, over 940 kids have been killed during custody battles. A lot of people within the family court are not knowledgeable about narcissistic abuse and the dangerous patterns this personality disorder presents in custody battles. Many lawyers are well versed and experienced in dealing with high conflict custody cases and divorces involving narcissistic parents, but the judges are nowhere near up to speed.

            I have a friend who many years ago when her sons were under the age of twelve, (which is the legal age a child can testify on their own behalf in court), her abusive ex-husband had convinced the courts she was mentally unstable and took full custody of her kids. He ended up grooming and sexually assaulting both children multiple times orally and anally for years. A medical examiner found anal fissures in the boys and a forensic psychologist evaluated them for very abnormal hypersexual behaviors that concluded they were in fact being sexually abused by their father. Child services, the forensic psychologist and the medical examiner all provided detailed reports with sufficient evidence to show that the children were sexually abused but the judge still ruled in favor of the father keeping custody. It wasn’t until the boys were old enough to testify for themselves that the judge finally removed them from the abusive father’s custody and placed them back with their mother. They are now in her full custody and are both teenagers, however the irreparable damage that has been caused cannot be undone and these boys will have to deal with this severe trauma for the rest of their lives.

            This brings me to the next important element that fails children yearly in the United States which is the incompetence and corruption of the Child Protective Services organization. According to a story done by CBS News on June 14, 2019, hundreds of children in America that were reported to be in potential danger to Child Protective Services die every year from neglect, maltreatment or abuse. In 2017 there was an estimated 1,720 children who reportedly died from abuse or neglect and over 25% of those children’s living situations were reported to Child Protective Services. I also have a friend who was a survivor of sex trafficking and the man who sex trafficked her was hired by ACS in New York City as a caseworker. This is a true story this was in 2023. He no longer holds the position but this is a real life example of the type of people that Child Protective Services hires to be caseworkers involving child abuse and neglect. Imagine a man who abused and sex trafficked women to be the final say on whether a child is in danger or being abused? You don’t have to imagine it because this is the reality. The lack of compassionate and competent case workers and social workers being hired by the agency is something that needs to be investigated more. Hiring guidelines surrounding any field involving children, especially something as sensitive as child abuse, needs to be a lot stricter than what is currently allowed. Not to mention the biases of many case workers such as sexism, racism and ableism that interfere with case workers being objective in their evaluations and assessments of children who are potentially in danger.

            There are several measures that can be taken to reduce cases such as these. A major issue is that many people fear reporting family court judges for misconduct to be disbarred due to fear of a poor ruling in their custody case. People will avoid reporting judges because they do not want the judge to retaliate maliciously in their custody hearing. This is due to a lack of oversight of the Family court and its mishandling of so many cases. Most courts and legal institutions in general all have an oversight board that can monitor and hold corruption accountable. Family court basically operates freely without there being any “HR department”, if you will. There is no oversight committee or oversight board separate from the Family court that you can report mistreatment or injustice to. Basically, if you report a judge for misconduct, you are reporting them to the exact family court that they serve at. Meaning it is not a separate unbiased organization responsible for investigating the judges, but it is the Family court itself whom this judge has been serving at for most likely decades and has an overwhelming bias in that court. How can the Family court investigate itself objectively and fairly without nepotism interfering? How can a proper investigation of mishandling custody cases be executed justly and fairly when it is that exact corrupted court doing the investigation? The corrupt court is obviously not going to give the most honest and fair investigation, which ultimately lets this corruption persist and continue to fail hundreds of children across the country.

            Another way these cases can be reduced is not only by having an oversight board to hold judges accountable but also to make sure judges are as educated about narcissistic abuse and patterns of abusive behavior as the forensic psychologists or medical examiners are. There needs to be more awareness in the family courts of coercive control, tactics that narcissistic abusers use in custody cases to further abuse the children and the other parent and having better insight into the patterns of narcissistic personalities so judges can have better discernment in these high conflict cases. Judges try to be impartial and make sure both parents are getting equal rights to their children. However, in cases where there is child abuse, or the child is in imminent harm, the rights of the parents need to be the last concern. The safety of the child and what is best for the child should always supersede parental rights. Many narcissistic abusers will weaponize their 50/50 custodial rights to continue to abuse the children. They manipulate judges with the argument of “fairness” and as a “parent” having equal access to the children also by manipulating the judge that they are the more “mentally stable” parent. This tends to work considering the parent who is a victim of the abuse is experiencing PTSD or symptoms of trauma and may very well appear less stable or emotionally well compared to the cool collected charming narcissist. However, with more knowledge into the ways abusers use the Family court to maintain control over the children, judges, social workers and forensic psychologists can work together to make sure the safety of the child/children is being prioritized over the parents’ rights to their children. Children are not property; they are vulnerable human beings who lack rights over their own autonomy in custody battles where they aren’t even legally able to testify on their own behalf until twelve years old. Under twelve they are considered the property of the parents and parental rights become more prioritized than the child’s right to safety and autonomy. If we reduce the importance of parental rights and focus more on the potential signs of abuse/ harm, coercive controlling behaviors and domestic violence, then abusive parents will be less likely to weaponize their parental rights in family court. There are many ways we can improve the family court so abusers cannot continue to use the system to harm children. With all of this being said, there is a silent crisis occurring in custody hearings in the United States that requires lawmakers’ immediate attention towards reform. The safety, lives and well-being of too many children depends on it.

                This piece of literature seemed like a dissertation regarding the depiction of revolutions, ideas about autonomy and civil rights movements in animated films specifically Pixar. At first, I wasn’t sure what side of the fence the author was on in terms of being for or against revolutions until I realized they were using a lot of sarcasm or writing from the perspective of the movie writers’ portrayals of revolutions and the messages being conveyed by the writers’ regarding revolutions. The author was writing through a Marxist/ economic lens, also a feminist theory and queer lens and finally a structuralist lens breaking down each part of a movie by its symbolism, its language, hidden and subliminal meanings and deconstructing in detail everything in the film. I chose this piece over others because the first one I looked at was too wordy and would require me to stop every minute to research each word in a dictionary which would make the reading experience a bit too overwhelming and harder for me to understand. This one was written in a more understandable context that wasn’t overly pretentious. Maybe I am not very smart, but a wise man Albert Einstein once said, “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. I didn’t feel like spending extra time deciphering a superfluous amount of SAT words while at the same time trying to engage with the content to write a reflection. I need to be able to understand what I’m reading. I didn’t look through all of them, but I liked the topic because me and my daughter watch a lot of people analyze animated movies and their meanings through different lenses some similar to what the author wrote about in “Animated Revolt and Revolting Animation”.

                I have seen a few other people speak about the revolutionary themes in movies like Toy Story, Chicken Run, Monster’s Inc, Finding Nemo and The Bee Movie which the author wrote about all of these. That made it more enjoyable for me to read because I could see the similarities in perspectives but also this author showed me a completely different perspective that I didn’t consider was a main point of these movies. The author states that in these movies they make feminist movements, Marxist revolts and queer lifestyles seem childish, nothing more than fantasy, naïve, unrealistic, utopian and abnormal or against what is “natural”. The author goes into describe how these movies uphold heterosexual norms, patriarchal standards and that capitalism is the “more logical” and “better” structure in comparison to any alternatives. The author called the movies the Pixarvolt genre where these animated films play with themes of more diverse and queer characters, defy gender roles and patriarchal norms, concepts focused on community verses individualism and showing the exploitation of the labor force and how capitalism is not the best and only functional system that humans could or should live under. However, the author makes a point that putting these revolutionary messages in animated films makes these concepts seem like they are only fantasy, out of reach in the “real world” and that these are the ideals of optimistic children and not “logical wise adults who know better” than to take any of these concepts seriously. It almost reduces these ideas of revolution and worlds outside of white heterosexual patriarchal capitalist norms as “child’s play”.

                I never realized that I use all lenses in my writing because I like to be diverse and be able to see things from all perspectives not just one. I often care more about inclusion and don’t want to miss the entire picture or accurate understanding of something without taking all the lenses into account. For example, we can look through a feminist or queer theory lens however without a critical race theory lens, that considers the racial aspect of feminism and homosexuality, it is missing an entire populations perspective and experiences rendering it not truly whole or accurate. A White feminist lens is not the same as a Black feminist lens, same goes for trans, queer and homosexuals, their racial backgrounds make each lens very different which is why I think it’s important to use multiple so not to exclude important pieces of the puzzle and bigger picture. There are a lot of nuances and details that can be missed when only looking through one lens. Also, economic lenses are equally important because class differences and wealth inequality will also play a role in that nuance whether looking through a racial, queer or feminist lens. Obviously wealthy people who are of all races, sexualities and genders will have a vastly different life experience and lens than those who live in poverty or are working paycheck to paycheck. Then comes the psychoanalytical lens that contributes as well for example how queer people, women and Black people tend to have more issues with mental health and trauma compared to heterosexual white middle class men or affluent white men in general, including queer white men who have more of the privilege to be openly queer without the same stigma that Black men have, since toxic masculine behavior is often projected onto Black men since childhood and even encouraged. There is a lot more stigma for Black queer and trans people than there is for the white queer and trans community. All these lenses need to be considered when understanding certain literature but of course there are times when not all lenses are applicable or even presented in the literature. It’s all about discernment and understanding the main focal point and message that the author is trying to get across to their audience.