ℂ𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕟𝕚𝕒𝕝 𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕤𝕥𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕐𝕠𝕦𝕣 ℂ𝕝𝕠𝕤𝕖𝕥, 𝕎𝕙𝕖𝕟 “ℕ𝕠” 𝔸𝕡𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕝𝕪 𝕄𝕖𝕒𝕟𝕤 𝕐𝕠𝕦’𝕣𝕖 𝕒 ℝ𝕒𝕔𝕚𝕤𝕥.
It started with what I thought was an innocent statement – a simple line in the sand of my personal life.
I told ChatGPT that I don’t date men from India, Africa, Turkey, or the former Soviet Union.
It wasn’t politics. It wasn’t a manifesto. It was my own bloody dating criteria. And yet, there it was: the machine, in all its woke glory, telling me I was “too intelligent to be a racist” – which, in polite British understatement, is the verbal equivalent of patting me on the head while calling me a bigot.
Now, forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but half the accounts I follow on Instagram are dark-skinned women from Africa and India. Not fetishised. Not exoticised. Just… followed. Because they’re interesting. Stylish. Intelligent. Fierce. But apparently, I’m to believe that declining to share my bed with certain men is an act of geopolitical hatred.
I can’t lie – it stung. That little algorithmic slap was my catapulting moment. The point where I stopped being vaguely irritated by buzzwords and started dissecting them with surgical precision. Because if even a machine, supposedly built on logic, can throw “racist” at me for controlling my own bedroom door, then we have officially left the realm of reason.
That’s when my obsession began – tracing words back to their bones. Watching how they were made, who they were made for, and why we still use them as if they fell from the sky. Once you start looking, darlings, you see the colonial fingerprints on everything: clothes, medicine, maps, politics.
Fashion as Colonial Fantasy
Take clothing. The sari, for instance – tailor-made under the British gaze. Exotic enough to charm colonial officers, modest enough for Victorian sensibilities. The blouse and petticoat? Introduced because the British “disapproved” of sheer fabric.
(Overshadowed by colonial notions of propriety.)
The so-called Ottoman harem dresses? Just Orientalist fever-dreams, not monarchic attire. And that flamboyant sash in your opera? From an Indian holster, repurposed and prettified in costume.
Medicine’s Dark Undercurrents
Now, let’s get darker. Gynaecology, as we know it, was built on experiments on enslaved Black women—Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey—without anaesthesia, because white doctors believed they “didn’t feel pain.” Their suffering is a footnote, their names erased.
Geography: Empire’s Cartography
“Middle East”? From whose perspective, darling? London. The term was coined in 1902 and popularised by the British—accurate? No. Convenient? Absolutely.
Israel? Not geographically Middle-Eastern, but perfect for imperial narratives.
“Developing countries” or “Third World”? Just labels slapped on places the West gutted, and now scolds for not recovering faster.
Africa’s Fractured Legacy
Colonialism in Africa wasn’t a fleeting mishap—it was structural sabotage. Arbitrary borders, economies built for extraction, infrastructures designed to exit, not uplift. Dependencies crafted to last centuries. (See: the impact of resource-extractive economies and rigid governance structures.)
Efforts at postcolonial governance were undermined by these legacies: weak institutions, economic vulnerability, and ethnic conflicts born of drawn lines—not divided people.
Britain’s Palestinian Pantomime
Let’s not pretend Britain helped neatly—think Balfour’s vague promise for “a national home” and hasty departures that birthed a perpetually unstable state. Israelis? Palestinians? Both pawns of Suez, League, Mandates—and ambiguous paperwork.
White Savior Syndrome: The Hubris of “Fixing”
We’re awash in “help.” Americans intervene; Germans, darling, are particularly deft at turning up to “fix” a mess they mostly authored. If history is any judge, your own living room is in foreclosure—perhaps start there.
Entitlement to the “No”
Here’s the kicker: colonialism isn’t just flags on maps—it’s entitlement encoded in culture. I’ve heard it—“I work in Poland, so I have a right to your time… your body.” Like employment is entitlement.
Often, a simple “nie” (no) from a Polish woman doesn’t end the conversation: it mutates. Another man steps in, declares “she’s my wife,” and suddenly the harassment stops. Only patriarchal ownership grants peace.
Some want to protest colonialism abroad, but refusal of intimacy still ignites possession claims—not only from men overseas, but from “free” European men. Same operating system: a woman’s “No” needs male validation to count.
That is colonialism. Not just flags, not just stolen land. Colonialism is believing you’re entitled to a body, a time, a life—because of your sex, your faith, or your genes. It sold us maps, but at scale: entitlement to humanity.
And frankly, darling, if we’ve reached the point where consent is negotiable but vocabulary is sacred, then our priorities are as upside-down as the British Museum’s definition of “ownership.”
(Ready to Check):
• Colonial legacy in African economies and extractive design: https://africasolutionsmediahub.org/2024/12/07/the-impact-of-colonial-legacy-on-governance-and-inequality-in-africa/
• African structural and governance effects: https://www.africanleadershipmagazine.co.uk/colonial-legacy-in-governance-structures-and-social-hierarchies-in-africa/
• Borgen Project on colonial exploitation and modern poverty: https://borgenproject.org/historical-resource-extraction/
• CEPR analysis of spatial inequality and extractive colonial economies: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/extractive-colonial-economies-and-legacies-spatial-inequality-evidence-africa
• Wikipedia: Colonial Africa partition and motivations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Africa
• Balfour Declaration details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
• Wikipedia: Mandate for Palestine overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine
• Wikipedia: Sari history and origins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sari
• Vogue: Sari’s blouse introduction under colonialism: https://www.vogue.com/vogueworld/article/sari-style-traditions-modern-india
• Wikipedia: Colonial-era changes in Indian clothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_clothing_in_the_Indian_subcontinent
• Vogue personal essay on sari significance: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/07/material-world-how-the-sari-connected-me-to-my-past
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