A virtual study group for women

Not A
Good Woman

A study and challenge of how racialized patriarchy constrains, restrains, and harms women.

From the time we are girls, we are slowly shaped into what society calls a good woman.A woman who is respectable, self-sacrificing, morally disciplined, and oriented toward the needs and comfort of others. Over time, these expectations begin to feel natural, as if they are simply part of who we are, rather than the result of a long process of socialization.But the good woman is not natural. She is a carefully produced role, shaped through centuries of racialized patriarchy that teaches women who we are allowed to be, what parts of ourselves must be restrained, and what forms of power, anger, sexuality, ambition, or refusal must be suppressed in order to remain acceptable.In this sense, the good woman is not simply a cultural ideal. She is a patriarchal woman, a woman who has been trained to internalize and uphold the rules of the system that constrains her. Interrogating this role is not a small personal exercise but a political necessity, because the idea of the good woman has long been used to discipline women into compliance, reward silence and self-sacrifice, and punish those who step outside the boundaries of what society deems respectable.Not A Good Woman is a study and collective inquiry into how this role is constructed, how it operates across race and social position, and why dismantling the idea of the good woman is essential if women are going to live with greater clarity, autonomy, and power.By the end of this study, I want women to hear the phrase good woman and recognize it for what it often is: not praise, but a disciplinary label used to keep women small, obedient, and contained.

Because the truth is, you are not a good woman.You are a whole woman. You are a wise, complex, instinctive, powerful, and far too alive to be contained by the narrow expectations prescribed by these structures, woman.