Who Told You That?

Who Told You That? is an exploratory, community-engaged Black feminist qualitative research and public education project examining how inherited language, expectations, and silences shape Black women and Black gender-expansive people across the lifespan.

Through narrative collection, qualitative coding, and critical language analysis, the project documents how everyday words, warnings, beliefs, and unspoken rules influence identity, embodiment, emotions, relationships, responsibilities, and understandings of Black womanhood. 

As an Intergenerational Repair strategy, the framework transforms lived experience into collective evidence that can strengthen communal relationships, expose racialized and gendered institutional harm, and support cultural, policy, and structural change. It examines the language, messaging, and silences directed toward Black girls, women, and gender-expansive people and asks whether those teachings remain relevant, protective, or harmful as their lives and identities develop across the lifespan.

The framework also traces the origins and transmission of this language, identifying how it appears within families, communities, cultural practices, and institutions that claim to protect Black girls, women, and gender-expansive people but often fail to provide the knowledge, safety, autonomy, and support they need. By identifying where these messages come from and whose interests they serve, communities become better equipped to recognize similar patterns, demand accountability, and pursue change across multiple systems. The framework also incorporates an Afrofuturist practice of language-making by inviting communities to decide which words and teachings should remain, which must be refused, and where entirely new language is needed to support more autonomous and liberated futures.

The survey is open to Black women and Black gender-expansive adults, including those assigned female at birth or socialized as Black girls or women at any point. Share your experience anonymously and contribute to the Who Told You That? Community Language Archive.