Don’t get me wrong, prior to joining MMATA in 2017, I was very aware that I was a double minority, but in my everyday life, one of them seemed to have a brighter light shone on it than the other. I am black, and I knew a lot of people wouldn't like me because of it. I knew that every day of my life, I was going to have to fight discrimination and racism. I knew that when I got pulled over by the cops, I’d have to keep my hands seen at all times. It wasn’t until I got into the scene that I realised being a woman is rare, and it comes with a lot of societal boundaries, expectations, misunderstandings, discrimination, and barricades. People expect us to be a certain way, and it’s bull!
I got into pop-punk, metal, and alternative music when I was around 14 years old. I remember my first show, in Atlanta, Georgia, at The Masquerade in 2016. I remember looking around and literally saying, “Where are all the girls? Where are all the brown people?” As time went on, the deeper my love for the scene got, and the more shows I went to – I was at shows non-stop, multiple times a week! It’s safe to say that I truly fell in love with the alt. scene. But show after show, I’d leave disappointed and sad. Not because the shows were bad, but because I never saw a girl on stage. I never saw a black girl onstage. I always counted the girls in the crowd, and of course, the male-to-female ratio was always drastically unbalanced.