There’s a HORRIBLE song, musically that is, that touts the virtues of being a promiscuous woman. We, as women of color, have been socialized to fall on either ends of the very limited spectrum. We either think of ourselves as freaks, a derogatory term that has become synonymous with Black women who believe their value is in their big asses. The rest of us think that any sexuality beyond heterosexuality union with our prince charming is bad and we live our lives trying to force men into that role or denying out sexuality and any expression other than the most conservative of behaviors.
Just a couple of years ago, I thought going to a swing club was quite possibly one of the nastiest things I could do. I turned up my nose at it and judged anyone who would go. I couldn't wrap my head around the concept that anyone that would have sex in public was worthy of my respect. Until I experienced a swing club myself. My first experience, I went with a friend who was going through some deep shit and she was going to go with or without me and I decided to go with her in order to make sure she didn't do anything crazy. We walked around and asked a lot of questions mostly but one couple invited us to watch them have sex in a private room. It was better than any porno I've ever seen because they were mad about each other and they were having sex for US. It was like having my own action figures that I could move and position any way I wanted. While the young lady was getting fucked, I was whispering in her ear. She held my hand when she came. That's a moment I won't ever forget. I went to several more swing clubs after that and found that even though I didn't have sex or participate, I enjoyed the experience I shared with people who were willing to share their experiences with me. I had two friends I would go with on a semi regular basis and we would "play" together. Did that make me a promiscuous freak? No. Are there women who go to swing clubs who are promiscuous freaks? Yes, by all means, but just because one engages in sexual expression doesn't define them.
It wasn't until I went to an all Black swing club that I allowed myself to experience group activity. It was so beautiful, so sensual, so natural, so erotic . . . I loved every second of the experience. There was something so spiritual about the entire thing. My friend was going down on me, making me cum like mad, and I was my usual very vocal self. A crowd gathered around to watch and I turned my head and kissed this guy who was lying next to me who happened to be fucking another sista at the time. It was mind-blowing. Before I knew what was happening, there were total strangers, men and women, lined up to give me pleasure.
Did that experience make me a promiscuous freak? NOT AT ALL. I have no regrets whatsoever. It was amazing. If I had two lovers whom I cared about, and my libido was resurrected, I would probably welcome the possibility of double penetration. I had a threesome with a two friends once, a man and a woman, and it was one of the most sensual experiences of my life. There was no jealousy, no hang-ups, it was three peers coming together to experience a level of intimacy that no words can describe.
Judge the person, not the act. It is not beyond my comprehension that a woman would be able to enjoy the act of being fucked in the pussy and asshole at the same time and NOT be a ho. Unfortunately, most women aren't sexually liberated, no matter how promiscuous or celibate they are. How the men who engage in the act perceive it afterwards has a lot to do with the maturity of the individuals beforehand and it has very little to do with the woman herself.
Copyright 2006 Scottie Lowe
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Only in Rio
Black men are going to Brazil in droves to experience uninhibited sex with the women there. To hear them tell the tale, the women there are BEAUTIFUL, putting us lowly American Black women to shame. To all the men who feel the need to travel to Brazil for "sex vacations," let me say to you, that if you find women with African features and brown skin so repulsive, women who look like your mother and sisters, aunts, and daughters, take your happy ass right on the fuck to Brazil and live there. If the only women you find attractive are biracial/mulatto European looking women, then I would invite you to pack your bags and move to Rio immediately.
This trend, for brothas to go to Brazil in search of sex with multiple mulatto, transsexual, underaged hookers, and MOVE there is yet another glaring example of how Black men are emotionally immature and piss poor partners in relationships because their priorities are fucked. It’s extraordinarily superficial and shallow to want women to use as sexual objects and to control. And you can best believe that they are doing more than having sex, there’s scat, bestiality, pedophilia and any perverse thing you can imagine going on in Brazil. Who, besides me, is going to identify the pathology of black men who are so emotionally immature as to want women to shit and piss on and fuck like dogs, or be fucked by dogs and consider that heaven as opposed to forming a relationship with a woman who is going to be supportive and work towards building a family and future together?
Black men who go to Brazil state that the women there “never question your judgment or threaten your authority.” Isn’t that their same argument about white women? Real men aren’t that insecure. What authority can you have if you need to pay women to sleep with you? How sound is your judgment if you can't see the beauty of the women who have sacrificed, loved, and supported you your entire life and you opt for women who only want your money? Men don’t expect unconditional acceptance, it's little boys need unconditional approval no matter how foul their behavior is. Us dumbass Black women are trying to be meet the impossible standards of these damaged men in order to find a partner when we need to be saying, “AWWWW hell no, you don't meet my standards.”
Copyright 2006 Scottie Lowe
This trend, for brothas to go to Brazil in search of sex with multiple mulatto, transsexual, underaged hookers, and MOVE there is yet another glaring example of how Black men are emotionally immature and piss poor partners in relationships because their priorities are fucked. It’s extraordinarily superficial and shallow to want women to use as sexual objects and to control. And you can best believe that they are doing more than having sex, there’s scat, bestiality, pedophilia and any perverse thing you can imagine going on in Brazil. Who, besides me, is going to identify the pathology of black men who are so emotionally immature as to want women to shit and piss on and fuck like dogs, or be fucked by dogs and consider that heaven as opposed to forming a relationship with a woman who is going to be supportive and work towards building a family and future together?
Black men who go to Brazil state that the women there “never question your judgment or threaten your authority.” Isn’t that their same argument about white women? Real men aren’t that insecure. What authority can you have if you need to pay women to sleep with you? How sound is your judgment if you can't see the beauty of the women who have sacrificed, loved, and supported you your entire life and you opt for women who only want your money? Men don’t expect unconditional acceptance, it's little boys need unconditional approval no matter how foul their behavior is. Us dumbass Black women are trying to be meet the impossible standards of these damaged men in order to find a partner when we need to be saying, “AWWWW hell no, you don't meet my standards.”
Copyright 2006 Scottie Lowe
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Myth of the Magical, All-Powerful White Man
Or Debunking the Fallacy of White Supremacy
I’ve come to understand that there are certain Black people who believe that white men have super powers, supposedly genetically-inherited, superior intellectual mind-control techniques that they use to oppress people of color around the globe. If I understand their assertions correctly, they believe that white men are capable of controlling the minds of brown people universally and conversely no one is able to get into their minds, no one is able to control them because everyone else is under their spell, hypnotized by their . . . whiteness I guess. Their whiteness is theoretically impenetrable and renders mere people of color helpless to combat their evil machinations. It seems that this small faction of Black people believe that white men possess genetic predisposition to rule the world and, oddly enough and quite contradictorily, they believe that it is the secret mission of white men to become Black, or at least commandeer Blackness because they feel jealous of it. I’m led to believe that they accomplish their mission with their superior intellect, secret societies, and agendas passed down from white brethren to white brethren to intricately know the minds of Black folks and to beat us at our own game. I’m here to say that NOTHING could be further from the truth.
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Cress_Welsing is the preeminent black scholar of these types of assertions. If she is not the originator of them, she certainly is the benchmark Black people use to quote and or paraphrase their “white supermen” theories. I think it should also be noted here that the vast and overwhelming majority of Black people believe completely differently than the above-mentioned theories. Sadly, most Black people believe in the fallacy of white supremacy but they don’t have a clue that they do. Most Black people say color doesn’t matter and sign on hook, line, and sinker for any cliché that white people cast at them. Most Black people wouldn’t know how to question the status quo if you paid them. That’s not because we are inherently stupid, it’s a byproduct of our enslavement where we were taught not to question white people or anything they tell us. People of color have to believe in the fallacy of white supremacy, lest you get those pesky minorities who try to buck the system and talk about racism and the inherent privileges white people have simply by virtue of their skin color.
First, let’s break it down and establish some truths in these fallacious white supremacist concepts. There is UNQUESTIONABLY a fallacy of white supremacy that dictates, rules, and poisons the entire world. It seems that the smallest population of people have been able to order, control, dominate, oppress, and manipulate the earth’s resources so that they control and “own” damn near everything. I say the fallacy of white supremacy implicitly because it is nothing more than illusion. It’s a fallacy that they are superior, it’s not a fallacy that they have been able to take their inflated belief in self and transform that into global domination. Does average white Joe or Sally believe that they are better than people of color? Yes, that’s how the game is perpetuated. Average white Joe or Sally has to believe that history started with their arrival on the planet, that white people are the originators of the arts and sciences. They have to believe that whites made every technological advancement. If they don’t sign on for the belief that whites were smarter, stronger, more capable, more civilized, more refined, more god-like than any other people, then the whole house of cards starts to fall. Average Joe and Sally White has to believe that there is something inherent about them that makes them better, that makes them more deserving of peace, justice, and liberty than anyone else on the planet. God is a white man thus white men have to be given more insight, more leadership ability, more spiritual stuff, right? The air white people breathe has to be more sacred, the land they live on has to be more consecrated, more blessed, more protected than anyone else’s land. Greece has to be the birthplace of the humanities, Columbus has to be the greatest explorer, Shakespeare has to be the best composer, Rocky has to be the best fighter, Jesus has to have blue eyes and blonde hair, and white people have to believe that to be true from the time they are born in order for the fallacy of white supremacy to thrive. White has to be right or the entire fallacy of white supremacy crumbles like a crunchy taco shell on Cinco de Mayo at an all you can eat Mexican buffet.
Ever watch the news right after some white person has gone on a killing spree and killed everyone they could? The neighbors all say the same thing. “Oh, he was so nice. You just don’t think something like that can happen in this neighborhood.” That, dear ladies and gentlemen, is the fallacy of white supremacy at work. It is the belief that crime only happens in Black/Latino neighborhoods. It’s the belief that Psycho Joe, as everyone in the neighborhood calls him, is a good ole boy regardless of the fact that he kills the neighborhood cats and drinks their blood because he has white blood. You see, whiteness equals good in this society. It’s what children are taught in school, it’s what’s reflected in the media, it’s the thread that’s woven into the very fabric of how the perceptions of how the world is viewed. White men who get to decide what is and what isn’t racist comes purely from the fallacy of white supremacy. It’s the notion that they don’t have to consider anyone else’s experience or perspective because what they see, and think, and believe has to be right.
Are there secret societies that have been formed to keep people of color oppressed? Yes. Do those men have super abilities, do they have access to mind control techniques that keep people of color hypnotized in order to exact their plans of global domination? Not exactly. What those secret societies posses are members who are egotistical and greedy and intent on keeping their illegitimate power. Their ego is born from this belief that white men are special, that they have rights and privileges no one else is deserving of. Their ego is what drives them to steal, rape, kill, and oppress. Their ego makes them narcissistic bastards who sit around and try to figure out ways to control the money and power so that it doesn’t get into the hands of brown, yellow, or (what’s left of) red people. It is nothing more than their ego that makes white men think that they have more inherent value than anyone else that has created this false sense of superiority. Their ego is greater than most white men but it’s certainly not genetic and it’s not indication that they want to be Black or have a need to oppress people because they feel insecure because they lack melanin.
From where did this warped sense of self originate? How did white people first come to believe that they had dominion over the colored people of the planet? I have no earthly idea. I can’t even begin to speculate. I do know that it has infected every country, every place white people have been for thousands of years. What I can do, however, is tell you how the fallacy of white supremacy has been able to flourish and metastasize in this country over the last 400 years. There’s no magic to it, there’s no genetics involved, there’s no secret societal agenda, it’s pure psychology. Understanding the mind and how it works holds the key to understanding how and why white people in this country have been able to dictate and dominate the minds of people of color for over four centuries.
Europeans saw the beautiful brown bodies of the indigenous people of the land that is now known as Africa and believed that they were inferior savages. They assumed they themselves were inherently superior and that is was their right to capture, kill, kidnap, enslave, and own those people. That belief, what they thought was truth and knowledge and undisputable fact, is what created the system of racial slavery in the US that has been unequaled in the world before or since. They believed that their skin was better, their hair was better, their features were more attractive; they believed that their language, arts, customs, religion, and practices had more validity than anything Africans could contribute. They had a deep-seated need to control and subjugate and veritably crush the wills of those people of color.
Africans who were enslaved, those who survived the middle passage were and transportation to the United States were emotionally, psychologically, spiritually healthy people. They were capable of making choices and decisions on their own, forming their own opinions, knowing what it was to be a human being outside of their enslavement. Slaves born in this country, those who never knew freedom, were never privileged enough to know anything other than what the system of slavery taught them. Slaves born into they system believed from birth that whites were superior, that Blacks were inferior, and that anything and everything that was good was white. Every black child born into slavery learned the same lessons, that white was right and that black was equivalent to evil.
Conversely, every white child born in this country was the beneficiary of being born in a system that told them that every thing about their life, their world, their entire existence that they were superior to anyone with color. (Rather, anything, because they didn’t see slaves as humans) The prevalence of racism and the systems, laws, and beliefs enacted during slavery set the stage for every white child to not only believe they were superior but it was validated (at least in their minds) because anything and everything of accomplishment was achieved by white people.
Fast forward and the beliefs held by the children of slave owners and the children of white people in general, whether they owned slaves or not, have been passed down from generation to generation. The key instruments in building a child’s self esteem are to shower them with praise and reinforce to them that they have an inherent worth. Having books, and TV shows and movies that show children people that look like them builds a sense of self. Reading children stories where all the heroes are white perpetuates the fallacy of white supremacy. Teaching children that God in heaven looks like them validates that white is the baseline, the standard by which everything else has to be measured. White children, never having read a book about Black people, never having heard a story of African accomplishment, never conceiving that anyone other than white people contributed anything to society will grow up with an inherited and false sense of superiority. White children never have to wait until the one night of the week when the “white shows” are on, they never have to wait for the white movie to come out. They have access to centuries of images of themselves that show them in a positive and healthy light. So while Blacks have inherited and passed down a slave mentality (even though we don’t acknowledge or admit it) whites have passed down a slave master mentality.
Slave master mentality is the mindset of white people who have never once had to question that people like them have been the masters of finance, industry, medicine and the arts. Slave master mentality is the mindset of people who have never once in their lives felt that their skin color was a liability, something that they had to denounce in order to be accepted. Slave master mentality is the belief systems passed down from generation to generation that allows white people to accept that the final authority, the last word, the law from on high is going to come from a person who looks like them. It’s that diseased sense of self, that inflated super ego that has created Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. It’s what lead Pat Buchanan to say, and moreover BELIEVE, that this country was built by white men. It’s that isolation from a world where people of color are equal, that inocular vision which creates the ego of white people who think that it’s okay to be racist, that they can say whatever they want, to whomever they want, without repercussion, without censure because they have a birthright to do so. The fallacy of white supremacy is perpetuated on the beliefs of white men who think that they have more right to money, power, and control than anyone else.
While I recognize and acknowledge that the pervasive and overwhelming mindset of white people in this society, EVEN those who claim to not have a racist bone in their body, is based on the fallacy of white supremacy, it is just that . . . a fallacy. White people are not truly superior, they have no super ability to understand the minds of people of color and mastermind techniques to keep us oppressed. What keeps us oppressed is our inability to understand and comprehend our history, our inability to be introspective and examine our dysfunctions and their origins, and our fear of admitting that we might be flawed (through no fault of our own mind you). It is far easier for us to worship a blonde haired, blue eyed Jesus than to change the belief that we’ve learned from childhood, passed down to us from our parents, and their parents and their parents before them that black is ugly and bad. What keeps them in power is their belief that they are superior. They believe it so they behave in ways that reflect their beliefs. They start wars, they dictate and manipulate, they work diligently to keep people of color from taking their power or from becoming equal because what’s been taught to them by their parents, what their great grandparents taught their grandparents is that white people have more value. Even if the message isn’t overt, even if the message doesn’t come from behind the percale softness of a poly-cotton white sheet, the result is the same. Any white child born in this society has been the beneficiary of an educational, medical, judicial, legal, and social system that has placed whiteness on a pedestal, as an entity deserving of worship and praise. When white people try to silence any discussion of racism, it’s because they believe that they have a right to say what’s valid, what’s true, what’s right in the world, that no other experience other than their own has weight. They see the world through white colored glasses. In that world, everything comes back to the fact that they have been validated, reinforced, and reminded every single solitary day of their lives that white people are great. They’ve never once had to live in a time or place where white people are not seen as the origin of everything good in the world.
So in order for white people, the few elites who do have global power and control, to remain in power, for them to maintain the status quo, people of color have to be complicit in their agenda. There has to be a population of Black people who believe that there are white men who possess super-human, secret Echelon infrastructure powers to control and dominate people of color. Once we accept that the fallacy of white supremacy is based on nothing more than the narcissistic, self-centered and childlike behaviors of men with inflated egos who have the same flaws, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities as everyone else, then and only then can we start restructuring a world where everyone is equal. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney can no longer be secret society masterminds but they are little boys who were told over and over that the Lone Ranger was good and that the injuns were bad. They cease to be keepers of keys to sacred texts that were created in ancient times to mesmerize the people of color around the globe to goose step to their tune of supremacy. It is in truth and understanding that we see them as individuals who were told that God was a white man and that they were literally created in his image and likeness. Left unchecked, the ego can be a dangerous tool. Understanding that illusion is the key to our liberation. The fallacy of white supremacy can be dismantled and destroyed with knowledge of self, re-writing our stories to include people of color, and dismantling the notion that white men are somehow in possession of tools that will allow them to control us. Every human being has the ability within them to crush the inflated ego of self and shine the light of truth, justice, and peace on the shadows of injustice that have plagued the world.
Copyright 2009 Scottie Lowe of AfroerotiK
I’ve come to understand that there are certain Black people who believe that white men have super powers, supposedly genetically-inherited, superior intellectual mind-control techniques that they use to oppress people of color around the globe. If I understand their assertions correctly, they believe that white men are capable of controlling the minds of brown people universally and conversely no one is able to get into their minds, no one is able to control them because everyone else is under their spell, hypnotized by their . . . whiteness I guess. Their whiteness is theoretically impenetrable and renders mere people of color helpless to combat their evil machinations. It seems that this small faction of Black people believe that white men possess genetic predisposition to rule the world and, oddly enough and quite contradictorily, they believe that it is the secret mission of white men to become Black, or at least commandeer Blackness because they feel jealous of it. I’m led to believe that they accomplish their mission with their superior intellect, secret societies, and agendas passed down from white brethren to white brethren to intricately know the minds of Black folks and to beat us at our own game. I’m here to say that NOTHING could be further from the truth.
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Cress_Welsing is the preeminent black scholar of these types of assertions. If she is not the originator of them, she certainly is the benchmark Black people use to quote and or paraphrase their “white supermen” theories. I think it should also be noted here that the vast and overwhelming majority of Black people believe completely differently than the above-mentioned theories. Sadly, most Black people believe in the fallacy of white supremacy but they don’t have a clue that they do. Most Black people say color doesn’t matter and sign on hook, line, and sinker for any cliché that white people cast at them. Most Black people wouldn’t know how to question the status quo if you paid them. That’s not because we are inherently stupid, it’s a byproduct of our enslavement where we were taught not to question white people or anything they tell us. People of color have to believe in the fallacy of white supremacy, lest you get those pesky minorities who try to buck the system and talk about racism and the inherent privileges white people have simply by virtue of their skin color.
First, let’s break it down and establish some truths in these fallacious white supremacist concepts. There is UNQUESTIONABLY a fallacy of white supremacy that dictates, rules, and poisons the entire world. It seems that the smallest population of people have been able to order, control, dominate, oppress, and manipulate the earth’s resources so that they control and “own” damn near everything. I say the fallacy of white supremacy implicitly because it is nothing more than illusion. It’s a fallacy that they are superior, it’s not a fallacy that they have been able to take their inflated belief in self and transform that into global domination. Does average white Joe or Sally believe that they are better than people of color? Yes, that’s how the game is perpetuated. Average white Joe or Sally has to believe that history started with their arrival on the planet, that white people are the originators of the arts and sciences. They have to believe that whites made every technological advancement. If they don’t sign on for the belief that whites were smarter, stronger, more capable, more civilized, more refined, more god-like than any other people, then the whole house of cards starts to fall. Average Joe and Sally White has to believe that there is something inherent about them that makes them better, that makes them more deserving of peace, justice, and liberty than anyone else on the planet. God is a white man thus white men have to be given more insight, more leadership ability, more spiritual stuff, right? The air white people breathe has to be more sacred, the land they live on has to be more consecrated, more blessed, more protected than anyone else’s land. Greece has to be the birthplace of the humanities, Columbus has to be the greatest explorer, Shakespeare has to be the best composer, Rocky has to be the best fighter, Jesus has to have blue eyes and blonde hair, and white people have to believe that to be true from the time they are born in order for the fallacy of white supremacy to thrive. White has to be right or the entire fallacy of white supremacy crumbles like a crunchy taco shell on Cinco de Mayo at an all you can eat Mexican buffet.
Ever watch the news right after some white person has gone on a killing spree and killed everyone they could? The neighbors all say the same thing. “Oh, he was so nice. You just don’t think something like that can happen in this neighborhood.” That, dear ladies and gentlemen, is the fallacy of white supremacy at work. It is the belief that crime only happens in Black/Latino neighborhoods. It’s the belief that Psycho Joe, as everyone in the neighborhood calls him, is a good ole boy regardless of the fact that he kills the neighborhood cats and drinks their blood because he has white blood. You see, whiteness equals good in this society. It’s what children are taught in school, it’s what’s reflected in the media, it’s the thread that’s woven into the very fabric of how the perceptions of how the world is viewed. White men who get to decide what is and what isn’t racist comes purely from the fallacy of white supremacy. It’s the notion that they don’t have to consider anyone else’s experience or perspective because what they see, and think, and believe has to be right.
Are there secret societies that have been formed to keep people of color oppressed? Yes. Do those men have super abilities, do they have access to mind control techniques that keep people of color hypnotized in order to exact their plans of global domination? Not exactly. What those secret societies posses are members who are egotistical and greedy and intent on keeping their illegitimate power. Their ego is born from this belief that white men are special, that they have rights and privileges no one else is deserving of. Their ego is what drives them to steal, rape, kill, and oppress. Their ego makes them narcissistic bastards who sit around and try to figure out ways to control the money and power so that it doesn’t get into the hands of brown, yellow, or (what’s left of) red people. It is nothing more than their ego that makes white men think that they have more inherent value than anyone else that has created this false sense of superiority. Their ego is greater than most white men but it’s certainly not genetic and it’s not indication that they want to be Black or have a need to oppress people because they feel insecure because they lack melanin.
From where did this warped sense of self originate? How did white people first come to believe that they had dominion over the colored people of the planet? I have no earthly idea. I can’t even begin to speculate. I do know that it has infected every country, every place white people have been for thousands of years. What I can do, however, is tell you how the fallacy of white supremacy has been able to flourish and metastasize in this country over the last 400 years. There’s no magic to it, there’s no genetics involved, there’s no secret societal agenda, it’s pure psychology. Understanding the mind and how it works holds the key to understanding how and why white people in this country have been able to dictate and dominate the minds of people of color for over four centuries.
Europeans saw the beautiful brown bodies of the indigenous people of the land that is now known as Africa and believed that they were inferior savages. They assumed they themselves were inherently superior and that is was their right to capture, kill, kidnap, enslave, and own those people. That belief, what they thought was truth and knowledge and undisputable fact, is what created the system of racial slavery in the US that has been unequaled in the world before or since. They believed that their skin was better, their hair was better, their features were more attractive; they believed that their language, arts, customs, religion, and practices had more validity than anything Africans could contribute. They had a deep-seated need to control and subjugate and veritably crush the wills of those people of color.
Africans who were enslaved, those who survived the middle passage were and transportation to the United States were emotionally, psychologically, spiritually healthy people. They were capable of making choices and decisions on their own, forming their own opinions, knowing what it was to be a human being outside of their enslavement. Slaves born in this country, those who never knew freedom, were never privileged enough to know anything other than what the system of slavery taught them. Slaves born into they system believed from birth that whites were superior, that Blacks were inferior, and that anything and everything that was good was white. Every black child born into slavery learned the same lessons, that white was right and that black was equivalent to evil.
Conversely, every white child born in this country was the beneficiary of being born in a system that told them that every thing about their life, their world, their entire existence that they were superior to anyone with color. (Rather, anything, because they didn’t see slaves as humans) The prevalence of racism and the systems, laws, and beliefs enacted during slavery set the stage for every white child to not only believe they were superior but it was validated (at least in their minds) because anything and everything of accomplishment was achieved by white people.
Fast forward and the beliefs held by the children of slave owners and the children of white people in general, whether they owned slaves or not, have been passed down from generation to generation. The key instruments in building a child’s self esteem are to shower them with praise and reinforce to them that they have an inherent worth. Having books, and TV shows and movies that show children people that look like them builds a sense of self. Reading children stories where all the heroes are white perpetuates the fallacy of white supremacy. Teaching children that God in heaven looks like them validates that white is the baseline, the standard by which everything else has to be measured. White children, never having read a book about Black people, never having heard a story of African accomplishment, never conceiving that anyone other than white people contributed anything to society will grow up with an inherited and false sense of superiority. White children never have to wait until the one night of the week when the “white shows” are on, they never have to wait for the white movie to come out. They have access to centuries of images of themselves that show them in a positive and healthy light. So while Blacks have inherited and passed down a slave mentality (even though we don’t acknowledge or admit it) whites have passed down a slave master mentality.
Slave master mentality is the mindset of white people who have never once had to question that people like them have been the masters of finance, industry, medicine and the arts. Slave master mentality is the mindset of people who have never once in their lives felt that their skin color was a liability, something that they had to denounce in order to be accepted. Slave master mentality is the belief systems passed down from generation to generation that allows white people to accept that the final authority, the last word, the law from on high is going to come from a person who looks like them. It’s that diseased sense of self, that inflated super ego that has created Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. It’s what lead Pat Buchanan to say, and moreover BELIEVE, that this country was built by white men. It’s that isolation from a world where people of color are equal, that inocular vision which creates the ego of white people who think that it’s okay to be racist, that they can say whatever they want, to whomever they want, without repercussion, without censure because they have a birthright to do so. The fallacy of white supremacy is perpetuated on the beliefs of white men who think that they have more right to money, power, and control than anyone else.
While I recognize and acknowledge that the pervasive and overwhelming mindset of white people in this society, EVEN those who claim to not have a racist bone in their body, is based on the fallacy of white supremacy, it is just that . . . a fallacy. White people are not truly superior, they have no super ability to understand the minds of people of color and mastermind techniques to keep us oppressed. What keeps us oppressed is our inability to understand and comprehend our history, our inability to be introspective and examine our dysfunctions and their origins, and our fear of admitting that we might be flawed (through no fault of our own mind you). It is far easier for us to worship a blonde haired, blue eyed Jesus than to change the belief that we’ve learned from childhood, passed down to us from our parents, and their parents and their parents before them that black is ugly and bad. What keeps them in power is their belief that they are superior. They believe it so they behave in ways that reflect their beliefs. They start wars, they dictate and manipulate, they work diligently to keep people of color from taking their power or from becoming equal because what’s been taught to them by their parents, what their great grandparents taught their grandparents is that white people have more value. Even if the message isn’t overt, even if the message doesn’t come from behind the percale softness of a poly-cotton white sheet, the result is the same. Any white child born in this society has been the beneficiary of an educational, medical, judicial, legal, and social system that has placed whiteness on a pedestal, as an entity deserving of worship and praise. When white people try to silence any discussion of racism, it’s because they believe that they have a right to say what’s valid, what’s true, what’s right in the world, that no other experience other than their own has weight. They see the world through white colored glasses. In that world, everything comes back to the fact that they have been validated, reinforced, and reminded every single solitary day of their lives that white people are great. They’ve never once had to live in a time or place where white people are not seen as the origin of everything good in the world.
So in order for white people, the few elites who do have global power and control, to remain in power, for them to maintain the status quo, people of color have to be complicit in their agenda. There has to be a population of Black people who believe that there are white men who possess super-human, secret Echelon infrastructure powers to control and dominate people of color. Once we accept that the fallacy of white supremacy is based on nothing more than the narcissistic, self-centered and childlike behaviors of men with inflated egos who have the same flaws, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities as everyone else, then and only then can we start restructuring a world where everyone is equal. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney can no longer be secret society masterminds but they are little boys who were told over and over that the Lone Ranger was good and that the injuns were bad. They cease to be keepers of keys to sacred texts that were created in ancient times to mesmerize the people of color around the globe to goose step to their tune of supremacy. It is in truth and understanding that we see them as individuals who were told that God was a white man and that they were literally created in his image and likeness. Left unchecked, the ego can be a dangerous tool. Understanding that illusion is the key to our liberation. The fallacy of white supremacy can be dismantled and destroyed with knowledge of self, re-writing our stories to include people of color, and dismantling the notion that white men are somehow in possession of tools that will allow them to control us. Every human being has the ability within them to crush the inflated ego of self and shine the light of truth, justice, and peace on the shadows of injustice that have plagued the world.
Copyright 2009 Scottie Lowe of AfroerotiK
Immature vs. Decent
This is like a bad broken record. "I'm a good black man, I have a job, I have an education, and the reason why the Black community if falling apart is ALL Black women's fault because they only want thugs and they are gold-diggers, etc." If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it 34,791 times. It's a glaring sign of emotional immaturity on the part of Black men and it's tiring. The fact that so many, many, many black men can't even say, “I don't know how to deal with my emotions because I've never been taught," is embarrassing. It's embarrassing that grown men can't even acknowledge that they have areas to work on without it being seen as if they've said something that makes them weak. Hey, this is life; it's not a competition to see who can die without admitting that they have faults. The men who blame Black women for their shortcomings are the men who are the least introspective, the most emotionally distant, and the ones looking for the woman who will not hold them accountable for their actions, who will tolerate their belligerent, uncompromising foul behavior and not say a word.
Women, you can keep quiet all you want, you can blame other black women but if you don't start speaking up and holding these men accountable then you deserve the sorry assed emotionally immature men that you get. If you want a partner who respects your opinion, who will have integrity when making choices that effect your lives together, who has come to terms with the hurt he's caused in the past and who is willing to make a very concerted effort to treat his relationships with more respect in the future, THEN YOU BETTER START SPEAKING UP. You better let your voices be heard. If all you can do is blame other black women for Black men's poor behaviors then you are as emotionally immature as Black men. I won't coddle, I won't cajole. Your silence equals death. Death of the hopes that black relationships will ever flourish.
A decent sista won't let you run in and out of her bed without a commitment. I decent sista won't let you get away not accounting for your whereabouts when you are in a relationship with her. I decent sista will not pretend that your lies are truth. I decent sista will not accept you stringing her along with romance and empty promises without giving of yourself emotionally. A decent sista won't be number two three or four in your life just because you are "honest" with her. A decent sista won't let you disregard her feelings when your actions put your relationship with her in jeopardy of failing. A decent sista put up with your constant need to argue, have the last word, and constantly be right. A decent sista wants a man who can outline his past mistakes and show how he's making efforts not to repeat them in his current relationship. To be a good man to a decent sista is a lot harder than just saying you are a good black man and then blaming Black women for the destruction of the Black race.
Men, ask yourselves, do you want a decent sista, or do you want a decent looking sista who will have a high paying job, cook your meals, not stress you over where you go and what you do, and who will let you buy all the toys and gadgets you want without ever asking for money for the bills and who will give you sex when you want it without having to work for it and who fulfills all your sexual fantasies like a damn Playboy bunny? That’s not the sign of a decent man.
A decent man wants a decent woman and a relationship with a decent woman takes a lot of hard work. It’s easier to blame women than do the work it takes to be a decent emotionally mature man.
Women, you can keep quiet all you want, you can blame other black women but if you don't start speaking up and holding these men accountable then you deserve the sorry assed emotionally immature men that you get. If you want a partner who respects your opinion, who will have integrity when making choices that effect your lives together, who has come to terms with the hurt he's caused in the past and who is willing to make a very concerted effort to treat his relationships with more respect in the future, THEN YOU BETTER START SPEAKING UP. You better let your voices be heard. If all you can do is blame other black women for Black men's poor behaviors then you are as emotionally immature as Black men. I won't coddle, I won't cajole. Your silence equals death. Death of the hopes that black relationships will ever flourish.
A decent sista won't let you run in and out of her bed without a commitment. I decent sista won't let you get away not accounting for your whereabouts when you are in a relationship with her. I decent sista will not pretend that your lies are truth. I decent sista will not accept you stringing her along with romance and empty promises without giving of yourself emotionally. A decent sista won't be number two three or four in your life just because you are "honest" with her. A decent sista won't let you disregard her feelings when your actions put your relationship with her in jeopardy of failing. A decent sista put up with your constant need to argue, have the last word, and constantly be right. A decent sista wants a man who can outline his past mistakes and show how he's making efforts not to repeat them in his current relationship. To be a good man to a decent sista is a lot harder than just saying you are a good black man and then blaming Black women for the destruction of the Black race.
Men, ask yourselves, do you want a decent sista, or do you want a decent looking sista who will have a high paying job, cook your meals, not stress you over where you go and what you do, and who will let you buy all the toys and gadgets you want without ever asking for money for the bills and who will give you sex when you want it without having to work for it and who fulfills all your sexual fantasies like a damn Playboy bunny? That’s not the sign of a decent man.
A decent man wants a decent woman and a relationship with a decent woman takes a lot of hard work. It’s easier to blame women than do the work it takes to be a decent emotionally mature man.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Is it a Question of LOVE?
I was asked to answer the following questions on love because, supposedly, I’m a thinker. Here are the questions and my responses.
1. What is love (to you)?
Love is a feeling, an emotion, a state of being where you care for someone else’s well-being, you care about their feelings, you want to make them happy, see them happy, you don’t mind sacrificing for them.
2. What is IN love (to you)? I don’t differentiate the terms love and in love simply because I don’t think there’s any quantifiable way to define how much one loves another person. We use the words love for family and friends and people we don’t want to have sex with and we use the words in love for someone to whom we are romantically attracted. I don’t love the little boy I baby-sit for any more or less than I once loved his father. Most people would get upset if I were to say that I was in love with a child but my level of emotion, concern, and the depth of my feelings is on par with the love I’ve felt for grown men. I want to see him smile, I look forward to seeing him, I miss him when he’s not here, I think of things to do for him that will make him happy. Those are the exact same things I once felt for his father. Because I have no sexual feelings for him, society says I’m not “in love” with him. I say society needs to separate romantic love from “other” love because we are so sexually repressed, because we don’t teach people how to love, only what it is to be loved. I LOVE my sister and I don’t think I’ve seen her more than a half a dozen times in my life. I still remember the first time I laid eyes on her, she was a grown woman . The feeling of wanting her to be happy and healthy, of wanting to protect her . . . it still brings tears to my eyes. I’m in love with her. My love for her is active and growing and alive.
3. Have you or anyone you know, mistaken LOVE for IN LOVE? If the assumption is that being “in love” is somehow real and true and that to only “love” someone means that the love is superficial or doesn’t have as much substance or validity as being “in love” then I reject the terms. I have fallen in love with men who I’ve later been repulsed by. I’ve loved men who have not deserved my love. I’ve loved men who have fooled me into thinking they were someone that they were not. I love men whom I once cared for deeply but have no romantic feelings for currently. Love can grow and evolve, the depth of one’s feelings can change and transform. Love is real. The baggage we apply to it is what makes it appear false.
4. Is conditional love natural or can it be inherited? I think conditional love is a manifestation of selfishness. Conditional love is only loving someone if they love you a certain way, if they only fulfill your needs in a way that is pleasing to you. That is a creation of a society that teaches people to love themselves, to only look out for number one. I think we teach our children conditional love by beating them, by withholding love from them when they misbehave, by not showing them healthy examples of love. I think conditional love is a sickness we’ve inherited from a society that is spiritually bereft.
5. Why is love so complicated when it suppose to be the most simplest of all acts and feelings? We live in a society of fear. We fear that if we love someone and we don’t get that love returned, that we have to hurt them back. We live in a society that teaches us how to be loved, to enjoy the feelings of someone treating us special but we don’t learn how to make someone else feel special. Love is complicated because we are taught models of love from our mothers and fathers, who most often were not together, who fought, who didn’t love each other, and who brought a whole host of other emotional issues to the table when they did. Love is difficult because it leaves us vulnerable and that is scary. Love is difficult because it takes work. Love is difficult because we fall in love with money and looks and superficial things that have nothing to do with true emotion and feeling. It’s hard to find love because first we need to love ourselves, and to do that, we have to take the bandage off our emotional wounds and really heal them and that hurts.
6. Is 'material' love a bad thing? If yes, then how can we 'de-love' it? If by material love, you mean love of things, I think that is purely a manifestation of Eurocentrism. Almost all indigenous, brown people loved the land, they loved their people, and they loved the Creator more than they loved things before the influence of Europeans. The importance of things, outside trinkets, stuff, money, belongings that give people a false sense of worth seems to stem from the people who think that they can take land, kidnap and kill people, steal possessions as their god-given right. The only way I can imagine to de-love material things is to see ourselves as truly spiritual beings, the way God intended us to be. If God is love, then all we are is love. If love is truth, then material things are the lie.
7. Is there really such a thing as self-love? (take your time on this one) I have to wonder why this question was posed as such. It seems to indicate that self-love is perhaps fictional or delusional. Self-love is not needing validation from someone or something else, it is holding yourself to a higher standard than others around you would. Self-love is making sure you don’t put yourself in harmful, dysfunctional situations. Self-love is very real. It is knowing yourself, your triggers, your weaknesses, it’s knowing everything about yourself, the good and the bad, and being comfortable in your own skin.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Communication, Romance and Intimacy
If communication is the recipe for a healthy relationship, romance and intimacy are the key ingredients. For most men, the concept of genuine, truthful communication in a relationship is an alien concept, let alone understanding the concepts of romance and intimacy. For most men, the idea of romance is equated to “game” or trying to get a woman into bed and the concept of genuine honesty is incomprehensible to many. Men have been convinced that crying, a natural, healthy, biological release of emotion makes a man weak. Reality check. If men weren’t supposed to cry, they would not have tear ducts. Crying is as natural as sneezing, it is necessary to help an individual process emotion, yet we have an entire population of men that think that shedding a tear means an individual less than a man. Black men in particular have been socialized for generations to deny their feelings and never taught to process or share those feelings with another person. To have feelings is to be considered weak or gay. When we look at all the false perceptions that are in place to keep men from being fully functioning, emotionally mature human beings it’s no wonder that the state of Black relationships is in such peril.
Being someone that has dedicated her life to showing Black sexuality in a healthy light, men often come to me to share their desires, secrets and fantasies when they have wives, girlfriends, and lovers that should be that confidant. Day in and day out, brothas come to me and share with me, a total stranger, their most intimate desires. They always seem to preface it by saying, “My wife would never understand . . .” News flash, your wife should be the first person you go to share your feelings and if she’s not, you need to re-examine your relationship and take the steps necessary to make that so. Your wife is your partner and your mate, if you don’t have a relationship where you can be open and honest with her, there’s something drastically wrong with that. Let’s assume that you married a woman with whom you share common ideologies, goals, and beliefs. If all of those things are in place, then you have the makings of fantastic communication and all that needs to be done is learning how to open up and share with your partner your thoughts.
The number one fantasy that Black men come to me and share as their secret desire is to be submissive to a (in most cases, Black) woman. We must be cautious how we use the term submissive in this particular case because mainstream society would lead us to believe that being submissive means being beaten and whipped and assuming an inferior position in some sadomasochistic exchange. While in some cases, that may be the desire, more often than not they mean that they want to put aside their satisfaction for that of their partner. Unfortunately, the term submissive is the closest term Black men have to describe their fantasies of catering to a woman’s needs. I hear it time and time again, “I want to satisfy my woman . . . her pleasure is more important than mine . . . I want to do whatever it takes to make her cum until she passes out.” Society would have us believe that a Black man is supposed to “kill it” to use his dick as a weapon and that pleasing a woman is of no concern. Imagine Jay-Z making a rap where he says that he gave a woman pleasure without concern for his own. That’s not going to happen in this lifetime because Black men have to live up to the stereotype that women are for their pleasure, not the other way around. Again, the absurdity of the concept and the extent to which we as a people hold on to it is causing us to perish.
When Black men approach me about their fantasies, they tend to be somewhat forthcoming with the details. Conversely, when I approach Black men about their fantasies their responses tend to be either, “I don’t have any fantasies,” or, “I have done everything that I want to do, I prefer the real thing.” When they do admit to a fantasy it’s the standard “threesome” scenario. Black men aren’t adept at expressing their fantasies or allowing themselves to creatively explore their sexuality. It’s only after intense and directed questioning that they can admit to having other fantasies. Conversely, white men tend to be able to describe in great detail their fantasies and have very involved and complex scenarios. Fantasies are a natural, normal part of our existence and allow us to experience different realities in a safe way. Going out and engaging in unhealthy behaviors rather than learning to express healthy fantasies is dysfunctional. Not being comfortable enough to share one’s fantasies with one’s partner and then going out to explore those fantasies as a reality with someone outside one’s relationship is unhealthy. We must, as a people, reexamine the guidelines that are keeping us dysfunctional.
There seems to be a tremendous difficulty in men understanding that women crave romance and intimacy, a reluctance to embrace any personal responsibility in creating romance and intimacy in their relationship and even a difficulty understanding those terms. There is a belief that men seem to have that is reinforced by a society that says that women have to do the work to keep a man, not the other way around. Men, understand this if you understand nothing else I say. If you want peace in your relationship, if you want your woman to treat you like a king, then the single-most easiest way to do that is to treat her like a queen. For every one step you make to make a woman feel special, she will take ten in return to make you feel special. Surprise her with a small token that lets her know you are thinking of her, that she crosses your mind during the day. It needn’t be something extravagant or expensive. There are more things than just flowers, candy, or a designer purse that you can give that will show her that you care. Sadly, men don’t seem to understand the erotic potential and possibilities of anything other than material gifts as indications of romance have been conditioned to, thus they are limited in their creativity and expression.
I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss Black women’s responsibility in fostering healthy communication and intimacy in relationships. Sadly, there are a great many women that will judge and condemn a man for sharing his thoughts and fantasies with her, no matter the level of honesty or intimacy he is showing. We’ve been conditioned to either view any expression of sexuality outside of missionary sex as vulgar, or conversely, we view sexuality as a tool of manipulation, source of income, or as recreation. As Black women, we’ve also been socialized to narrowly define manhood and equate it with sexual prowess and earning potential, not realizing that emotional depth and intimacy are things that men are capable of giving. We must be held accountable for our false perceptions and debilitating belief systems but the change must be partnered with Black men in an effort to grow together.
Getting a woman to be receptive to your fantasies is not as difficult as one might think. Increasing communication, romance and intimacy in your relationship is not an impossible task. The most effective way to introduce your fantasies to your partner is to get her to a heightened state of arousal and subtly introduce the new concept to her. She will be more receptive to any new ideas that are initiated during that time. Getting her to a heightened state of arousal takes work on your part. It means that you must be willing to ask questions about what arouses her, to set aside everything that you’ve learned about what turns a woman on, and set aside your preferences for the things that turn you on. The benefits will be amazing and you will lay the foundation for a partnership with outstanding potential.
Scottie Lowe is a regular columnist at Black Men in America and the founder of AfroerotiK. If you need some suggestions on what you can do to create more intimacy, romance and communication in your relationship, check out AfroerotiK for dozens of ideas or email Scottie directly with your questions.
Being someone that has dedicated her life to showing Black sexuality in a healthy light, men often come to me to share their desires, secrets and fantasies when they have wives, girlfriends, and lovers that should be that confidant. Day in and day out, brothas come to me and share with me, a total stranger, their most intimate desires. They always seem to preface it by saying, “My wife would never understand . . .” News flash, your wife should be the first person you go to share your feelings and if she’s not, you need to re-examine your relationship and take the steps necessary to make that so. Your wife is your partner and your mate, if you don’t have a relationship where you can be open and honest with her, there’s something drastically wrong with that. Let’s assume that you married a woman with whom you share common ideologies, goals, and beliefs. If all of those things are in place, then you have the makings of fantastic communication and all that needs to be done is learning how to open up and share with your partner your thoughts.
The number one fantasy that Black men come to me and share as their secret desire is to be submissive to a (in most cases, Black) woman. We must be cautious how we use the term submissive in this particular case because mainstream society would lead us to believe that being submissive means being beaten and whipped and assuming an inferior position in some sadomasochistic exchange. While in some cases, that may be the desire, more often than not they mean that they want to put aside their satisfaction for that of their partner. Unfortunately, the term submissive is the closest term Black men have to describe their fantasies of catering to a woman’s needs. I hear it time and time again, “I want to satisfy my woman . . . her pleasure is more important than mine . . . I want to do whatever it takes to make her cum until she passes out.” Society would have us believe that a Black man is supposed to “kill it” to use his dick as a weapon and that pleasing a woman is of no concern. Imagine Jay-Z making a rap where he says that he gave a woman pleasure without concern for his own. That’s not going to happen in this lifetime because Black men have to live up to the stereotype that women are for their pleasure, not the other way around. Again, the absurdity of the concept and the extent to which we as a people hold on to it is causing us to perish.
When Black men approach me about their fantasies, they tend to be somewhat forthcoming with the details. Conversely, when I approach Black men about their fantasies their responses tend to be either, “I don’t have any fantasies,” or, “I have done everything that I want to do, I prefer the real thing.” When they do admit to a fantasy it’s the standard “threesome” scenario. Black men aren’t adept at expressing their fantasies or allowing themselves to creatively explore their sexuality. It’s only after intense and directed questioning that they can admit to having other fantasies. Conversely, white men tend to be able to describe in great detail their fantasies and have very involved and complex scenarios. Fantasies are a natural, normal part of our existence and allow us to experience different realities in a safe way. Going out and engaging in unhealthy behaviors rather than learning to express healthy fantasies is dysfunctional. Not being comfortable enough to share one’s fantasies with one’s partner and then going out to explore those fantasies as a reality with someone outside one’s relationship is unhealthy. We must, as a people, reexamine the guidelines that are keeping us dysfunctional.
There seems to be a tremendous difficulty in men understanding that women crave romance and intimacy, a reluctance to embrace any personal responsibility in creating romance and intimacy in their relationship and even a difficulty understanding those terms. There is a belief that men seem to have that is reinforced by a society that says that women have to do the work to keep a man, not the other way around. Men, understand this if you understand nothing else I say. If you want peace in your relationship, if you want your woman to treat you like a king, then the single-most easiest way to do that is to treat her like a queen. For every one step you make to make a woman feel special, she will take ten in return to make you feel special. Surprise her with a small token that lets her know you are thinking of her, that she crosses your mind during the day. It needn’t be something extravagant or expensive. There are more things than just flowers, candy, or a designer purse that you can give that will show her that you care. Sadly, men don’t seem to understand the erotic potential and possibilities of anything other than material gifts as indications of romance have been conditioned to, thus they are limited in their creativity and expression.
I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss Black women’s responsibility in fostering healthy communication and intimacy in relationships. Sadly, there are a great many women that will judge and condemn a man for sharing his thoughts and fantasies with her, no matter the level of honesty or intimacy he is showing. We’ve been conditioned to either view any expression of sexuality outside of missionary sex as vulgar, or conversely, we view sexuality as a tool of manipulation, source of income, or as recreation. As Black women, we’ve also been socialized to narrowly define manhood and equate it with sexual prowess and earning potential, not realizing that emotional depth and intimacy are things that men are capable of giving. We must be held accountable for our false perceptions and debilitating belief systems but the change must be partnered with Black men in an effort to grow together.
Getting a woman to be receptive to your fantasies is not as difficult as one might think. Increasing communication, romance and intimacy in your relationship is not an impossible task. The most effective way to introduce your fantasies to your partner is to get her to a heightened state of arousal and subtly introduce the new concept to her. She will be more receptive to any new ideas that are initiated during that time. Getting her to a heightened state of arousal takes work on your part. It means that you must be willing to ask questions about what arouses her, to set aside everything that you’ve learned about what turns a woman on, and set aside your preferences for the things that turn you on. The benefits will be amazing and you will lay the foundation for a partnership with outstanding potential.
Scottie Lowe is a regular columnist at Black Men in America and the founder of AfroerotiK. If you need some suggestions on what you can do to create more intimacy, romance and communication in your relationship, check out AfroerotiK for dozens of ideas or email Scottie directly with your questions.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Untreated Wounds
Haunted Past and Untreated Wounds
There’s a man. He has a terrible secret. His shame and pain haunt him. His secret eats at his very soul; it has shaped his consciousness and the way he views life and he’s formed his identity around his unhealed wounds. When he was a young man, someone stole his innocence. He was sexually violated. He has hidden his secret and he’s denied it. He’s tried to suppress his memories and he’s even convinced himself after all these years that it didn’t happen. He says to himself, “I should have fought harder, it couldn’t have happened. In fact, it didn’t happen at all.” However, the pain is still deep inside. The thoughts plague him and everyone one of his relationships has been affected. He lashes out, he tries to hurt people, he keeps himself closed off, he lies. He refuses to address his past and he can’t figure out why his life isn’t happy, why he can’t seem to cope like other people can.
There’s a woman. She suffered so much abuse, so much daily terror, she internalized it as natural. Her sexuality is wrapped up in feeling like an object, in feeling used and abused. She’s never known her body to be hers, since she was a toddler. She’s never experienced autonomy nor pleasure unless it was at the hands of others molesting her body and raping her of her dignity and self-respect. She is so numb inside she doesn’t even know what pain feels like. Pain and abuse have become her pleasure. She can’t even perceive of a healthy relationship and is drawn to relationships that reflect her painful life as validation that everyone is meant to hurt her. She has no reason to deny her past, however, because it’s all she knows, it’s all she can conceive of so she has no point of reference for anything else. She gets outraged and lashes out at individuals who try to suggest to her that she needs to deal with the pain and the abuse. To her, everyone else is fucked up for not seeing things through her lens of hate, pain, and abuse.
She’s different that the other woman that was sexually assaulted as a child. This young lady only had it happen once or twice. She doesn’t think about it, she only has vague memories that come once in a while. She tells herself it was no big deal because it wasn’t like it was a stranger, it was someone she knew, maybe even someone she was attracted to. Every man that she’s had to fight off, that wouldn’t take no for an answer she justified it by saying it was her fault for sending out the wrong signals. Her relationships with men have been cyclical; she tries to form healthy relationships but she ends up with men that only want her for sex or who don’t take the time to really get to know her as a person. Her identity is wrapped up in being attractive to men; she needs to feel beautiful to feel whole. Tired of having men use her for sex, she decides that she’s going to beat them at their own game. She decides that she’s going to be the sexual aggressor, that she’s going to get hers and fuck anybody else, literally and figuratively, that stands in between her and her pleasure. She tries desperately to use men, but only ends up used again because her feelings get in the way.
Is there any wonder we can’t heal our relationships? We have been violated, abused, used, raped, and we never discuss it. We don’t heal from the sexual devastation that has shaped our personalities. We can’t heal unless we talk about it, and sometimes, that’s not even enough. Our subconscious mind, the mind that exists beyond our waking thoughts, is so used to the pain, that it’s made adjustments in our personalities where the pain becomes normal. The deep, oozing, weeping, puss-filled emotional sores from our sexual past haunt us and the cycle can’t end. The violated are going on to violate, the abused are become abusers, of themselves and the people in their spheres. What, short of a miracle, will heal these haunted pasts and untreated wounds?
There’s a man. He has a terrible secret. His shame and pain haunt him. His secret eats at his very soul; it has shaped his consciousness and the way he views life and he’s formed his identity around his unhealed wounds. When he was a young man, someone stole his innocence. He was sexually violated. He has hidden his secret and he’s denied it. He’s tried to suppress his memories and he’s even convinced himself after all these years that it didn’t happen. He says to himself, “I should have fought harder, it couldn’t have happened. In fact, it didn’t happen at all.” However, the pain is still deep inside. The thoughts plague him and everyone one of his relationships has been affected. He lashes out, he tries to hurt people, he keeps himself closed off, he lies. He refuses to address his past and he can’t figure out why his life isn’t happy, why he can’t seem to cope like other people can.
There’s a woman. She suffered so much abuse, so much daily terror, she internalized it as natural. Her sexuality is wrapped up in feeling like an object, in feeling used and abused. She’s never known her body to be hers, since she was a toddler. She’s never experienced autonomy nor pleasure unless it was at the hands of others molesting her body and raping her of her dignity and self-respect. She is so numb inside she doesn’t even know what pain feels like. Pain and abuse have become her pleasure. She can’t even perceive of a healthy relationship and is drawn to relationships that reflect her painful life as validation that everyone is meant to hurt her. She has no reason to deny her past, however, because it’s all she knows, it’s all she can conceive of so she has no point of reference for anything else. She gets outraged and lashes out at individuals who try to suggest to her that she needs to deal with the pain and the abuse. To her, everyone else is fucked up for not seeing things through her lens of hate, pain, and abuse.
She’s different that the other woman that was sexually assaulted as a child. This young lady only had it happen once or twice. She doesn’t think about it, she only has vague memories that come once in a while. She tells herself it was no big deal because it wasn’t like it was a stranger, it was someone she knew, maybe even someone she was attracted to. Every man that she’s had to fight off, that wouldn’t take no for an answer she justified it by saying it was her fault for sending out the wrong signals. Her relationships with men have been cyclical; she tries to form healthy relationships but she ends up with men that only want her for sex or who don’t take the time to really get to know her as a person. Her identity is wrapped up in being attractive to men; she needs to feel beautiful to feel whole. Tired of having men use her for sex, she decides that she’s going to beat them at their own game. She decides that she’s going to be the sexual aggressor, that she’s going to get hers and fuck anybody else, literally and figuratively, that stands in between her and her pleasure. She tries desperately to use men, but only ends up used again because her feelings get in the way.
Is there any wonder we can’t heal our relationships? We have been violated, abused, used, raped, and we never discuss it. We don’t heal from the sexual devastation that has shaped our personalities. We can’t heal unless we talk about it, and sometimes, that’s not even enough. Our subconscious mind, the mind that exists beyond our waking thoughts, is so used to the pain, that it’s made adjustments in our personalities where the pain becomes normal. The deep, oozing, weeping, puss-filled emotional sores from our sexual past haunt us and the cycle can’t end. The violated are going on to violate, the abused are become abusers, of themselves and the people in their spheres. What, short of a miracle, will heal these haunted pasts and untreated wounds?
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