This is not an exaggeration and this is not clickbait. For the past three days, I have been receiving harassment that continues to escalate because I said I was not interested in watching the movie I Love Boosters because the subject matter felt too triggering for me. That should have been the end of it. Black women should be allowed to be human. We should be allowed to have emotions, boundaries, discomfort, and personal limits without it turning into harassment campaigns, public dog piles, and racist attacks. But somehow, me expressing that a subject matter did not feel good to me escalated into white supremacists and anti-Black trolls attacking me online. What makes this especially disturbing is that the door was opened by a Black man, and other Black men joined in. This is a pattern Black women know intimately. In our community, we are expected to perform endless labor. We are expected to support, uplift, defend, promote, and emotionally carry everyone else. But the moment a Black woman does anything other than praise a man, support his work, or protect his ego, she becomes a target. Her feelings stop mattering. Her humanity stops mattering. Her boundaries become something people feel entitled to punish her for. Multiple Black women creators also came forward and said they experienced similar behavior from him dating back to 2018 when Sorry to Bother You was released. So this does not feel isolated. It feels like a repeated pattern of hostility toward Black women who are not responding the way he wants them to. What also stood out to me is the difference in grace. If you scroll through his content, you will notice he seems far more capable of engaging non-Black critics with nuance and restraint. But when Black women speak critically or establish boundaries, the response becomes ridicule, hostility, gaslighting, and public pile-ons. And this is bigger than internet drama to me. Black women are being harmed every single day. Black women and children are disappearing every single day. We should not be subjected to harassment or put in danger because a Black man’s ego was bruised or because he could not accept a simple boundary from a Black woman. Ultimately, I think part of the reason this spiraled the way it did is because there was truth in what I said. Maybe at one point he was an activist who genuinely cared about the community, but you cannot aggressively market and defend a capitalist product while claiming to stand completely outside of capitalism. A movie is still a product. And instead of admitting that the film may simply not be resonating with audiences, he is spiraling and acting as though one Black woman having an opinion is somehow responsible for its performance. I know projection, insecurity, and misogynoir when I see it. - @kiandriademone