My Arms are “Too Short” to Box with the Devil

My Arms are “Too Short” to Box with the Devil

Young man—
Young man—
Your arm’s too short to box with God.

Young man—
Young man—
Smooth and easy is the road
That leads to hell and destruction.
Down grade all the way,
The further you travel, the faster you go.
No need to trudge and sweat and toil,
Just slip and slide and slip and slide
Till you bang up against hell’s iron gate.

From James Weldon Johnson’s poem The Prodigal Son

Everyone has been talking about the rapper Too Short in the past few days.  It seems the genius creative minds at XXL magazine decided that he should be featured in a series of videos talking to young boys, giving advice I guess as to how to “keep it real” or whatever the popular saying of the day is.  Well, keep it real he did and Mr. Short prepared and presented a step by step guide to adolescent and pre-pubescent young Black boys on how to “go for the hole.”  He laid out archaic and violent instructions on how to seemingly find her clitoris and make her orgasm although he wasn’t clinical in any way.  Rather, he simply suggested that these young boys molest young girls, ramming their hands between their legs in search of some mythical “spot” that will be the prize.  The response to the video from Black women has been tempered but disturbed.  The overwhelming response from Black men has been, “Hey, what do you expect from Too Short?” 

Here’s what I expect from Too Short.  An apology.  I expect him, or someone with a modicum of intelligence in his close proximity, to issue an apology that explains how he understands now that his words are going to put young girls at risk for being assaulted and how he never really understood until now that he had been socialized to see women as objects and not human beings.  I expect him to show he’s sorry by working diligently to alter his perceptions and grow and evolve as a man and to make sure NO girls are assaulted because of his misguided advice.   

Here’s what I expect from XXL Magazine:  The IMMEDIATE termination of Vanessa Satten, the white women who is the Editor-in-Chief at XXL who not only thought it was a good idea to have Too Short handing out fatherly advice to young Black boys but who authorized the publication of a video that taught them how to rape young girls.  I expect XXL to be held accountable by creating videos and articles that speak to the issues of violence against women and girls and to teach boys NOT to rape, molest, assault, or denigrate women solely as objects for their pleasure. 

Here’s what I expect from Black men.  I demand your outrage.  I demand that you not just dismiss this as “boys being boys” mentality and you speak up in horror and disgust that not only Too Short and XXL magazine but Black society as a whole has allowed women’s (and girls) bodies to be violated with no little or no repercussions.  I want you to empathize, to put yourself in the shoes of the young girl pushed against the wall with an aggressive and sexually immature stronger male pushing, prodding, and poking your private parts looking for “the spot”.  I want you to hurt for your daughters, sisters, nieces, and all young girls who have ever been subjected to such treatment. 

When I was in high school, I was SKINNY and unattractive and boys didn’t like me.  I craved attention from the opposite sex and one day after school when Greg Sheffield showed me attention, my heart sang.  I thought he wanted to be my boyfriend; I was that naïve.  He lured me to a laundry room in the apartments next to the school and within minutes, he was pushing me against the machines and pulling down my pants and ramming his fingers in me as hard as he could.  I ended up on the floor with him on top of me, hurting me, and wondering what I did to deserve this.  I don’t remember if I cried or yelled or asked him to stop.  Apparently, whatever I did, I didn’t respond the way he wanted me to and he got frustrated and called me names and left me there, lying on the floor, half-dressed, sore, and confused. 

I’m a woman.  In many ways, “I’m Every Woman,” as the recently departed Whitney Houston sang.  I’m a Black woman who loves Black men despite the fact that they might not love me the way they should at times.  I’m a woman who has been the victim of sexual violence and abuse; I’m a woman who wants to heal the rift that exists between the genders, and I’m a woman who is passionate about her struggle to address Black sexuality in a way that is healing, transformative, and enlightened.  I’m also a woman sickened by the patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny that persists in the Black community to the detriment of our beautiful, young Black girls and our Black boys.  Raising boys to be sexual perpetrators not only hurts the girls upon whom they inflict their violence and aggression, it stifles the boys and prevents them from ever fully becoming, whole, complete, fully integrated human beings capable of loving, sharing, and committing to a real relationship. 

The time to address the misogyny and sexism in hip-hop is about ten to twenty years too late.  Black men are so used to seeing women as things to acquire, not people with feelings that it doesn’t even bother them when things like this Too Short debacle occur.  They are accustomed to being socialized to think that their manhood is in their penis.  If we don’t take drastic measures to address this problem we are doomed as a subsection of society.  We cannot continue to have men believing that their manhood is measured in the number of women they bang and that women exist to satisfy their lusts.  I’m tired of fighting with Black men to show them that women ascribing to stereotypes of Black men being big-dicked sexual savages is not only detrimental to the women they violate, lie to, cheat on, and use, but to them and to our community as a whole.  It’s an exhausting fight to get men to see that they need to evolve past the notion that sex validates them.  I can’t fight anymore with men who don’t care that women are objectified and oppressed by a culture that doesn’t care if we are used up and spit out as long as they get a nut.  My arms are too short to box with the demon of sexism and misogyny that tells little boys that it’s okay to use little girls on laundry room floors and step over them like a piece of lint that can be swept away like insignificant trash. 

Copyright 2012 Scottie Lowe

The Culture of Rape

The abuse of women’s bodies, our spirits, is so accepted, so ingrained in our society that rape isn’t even seen as anything abnormal.  Black women’s bodies especially are seen as objects to be used and abused by men.  We’re supposed to take it, like it even.  If we as a culture, society, and community don’t do something to stop this NOW it will be the end of us. 

Fate is a mother fucker.  I get into an argument on Facebook today, on someone else’s page mind you, and someone else, an “innocent bystander” as it were, starts fanning the flames, trying to provoke the disagreement.  The instigator sends me a friend request.  I accept, not thinking anything about it more than he’s someone who likes what I have to say.  He sends me a private message, asking me if I used to live in the apartments in downtown Atlanta.  In that first few seconds, I couldn’t imagine how he would know me like that.  I didn’t really think anything about it, but I didn’t panic or anything, I just responded, “How do you know me?”  He responded by saying, “You probably don’t remember me.  We met in the summer of ‘99.  You took me to your apartment. Wow, small world. LMBAO.” 

My home is sacred to me.  I’m very cautious of the people I invite into my home.  When he said, “You took me to your apartment,” I think I knew who it was before I even went to his profile.  At this point, time is moving in slow motion.  Going to his page, pulling up his pictures, opening the albums that show his face . . . everything is taking light years.  Sure enough, it was the face of the man who raped me, whose name I hadn’t previously known.  Jason Mass is his name as it turns out.  I confront him.  I say that I do in fact remember him, that you are the man who raped me. 

He wasn’t even a man at the time, he was 19 or 20.  I was in my early thirties. I was not attracted to him in the least even though I shouldn’t even have to mention that fact.  We met at Atlanta’s Underground Mall outside the Haagen Dazs store.  I saw him there a few times.  I’m guessing he was a student at Georgia State.  He could have just been hanging out there, I don’t know.  I didn’t really inquire too much, he was far too young for me and I was not at all interested in him.  I was nice to him; we might have even had lunch in the food court once.  I’m not sure. 

One day, he asked me to come to my apartment.  I told him no.  He kept asking, saying he just wanted to hang out with me.  I told him that we could hang out in the club room of my apartment building but that we couldn’t go to my apartment.  We watched TV for a while and I told him that I was not interested in him, he was far too young for me.  He wasn’t my type at all.  He said that didn’t matter, he just wanted to hang out with me, he wanted to see what sort of music I listened to, he said he thought he could learn from me.  He wouldn’t take no for an answer and I really thought I had made myself clear that I wasn’t interested in him. 

Finally, I told him that we could go to my apartment to check out my music.  I didn’t own a TV at the time so I had a super duper extensive music collection.  I honestly believed he saw me as a mentor or semi-mother figure.  There was nothing remotely sexual or romantic between us and I thought he was a harmless kid.  We went to my apartment and he was impressed by the Black art, all the books; I wasn’t a kid and I wasn’t ghetto so he probably hadn’t been exposed to very many homes that were like mine.  I showed him my balcony and that’s when things started to go terribly wrong.  We came back inside and he started to try to kiss me, grab me, hold me.  I started pushing him away.  He took out his dick.  I remember it so clearly, like a movie in my head.  It was almost like he was in a trance.  He was stroking it, telling me, “I love my big dick, I’m in love with my big dick.  I have such a big dick, don’t I?” It was like he was hypnotized by his own penis.    I told him to get out, I was trying to make it to the front door and he pulled me to the floor and we fought.  We fought and fought and fought.  We fought until I couldn’t fight any more.  I cried out, I said no, stop, NO.  We fought until I had no more strength in my body.  I lay there, in tears, while he raped me, unable to fight any more. 

So, here I am, on Facebook, and I’ve just accepted a friend request from the man who raped me.  I’ve written about him before, years ago, in my efforts to reclaim my own personal power.  I didn’t know his name but I would identify him whenever I spoke of the instance when men have violated me.  I confront him, in my haze of confusion, anger, and disbelief.  I say, “You raped me.”

He responds by saying, “Rape?  Don’t say that.  It didn’t go down like that.  We didn’t even get a chance to finish because you said stop.” 

Finish?  Finish?  Perhaps he wanted a second or third time to rape me but I most certainly had finished.  I informed him that we had fought, that I didn’t want him, that I said no, and he had raped me.  At that point, he gets an attitude with me, like I’ve offended him, saying, “Are u fuckin' kiddin' me?!  om fuckin' g!!!”  At this point, I’m scrambling to block him before I explode in anger and outrage. 

This wasn’t my first time to meet up with him.  The first time was as FunkJazzKafe, one of Atlanta’s premiere music events, a few years later.  We were both going in the backstage door in a dark, not heavily traffic parking lot.  He said something to the effect of, “You probably don’t remember me but . . .”  I turned around and looked at him and I knew him immediately.  I think I said, “You’re the guy who raped me,” but I’m not sure.  I got so scared I just turned around and ran away, shaking and crying and terrified.  The second time, I had my hands full of groceries and I was coming home and he was coming out of my neighbor’s apartment two doors down.  It was all I could do to open the door and get inside and I was terrified.  He took my sense of safety.  He took my sense of peace in the world.  He took something from me that was no his to take.  He stole a piece of my soul.  He’s walking around, not a care in the world, no remorse, no guilt, seemingly no consciousness at all that he RAPED me.  I think I knew that if I ever did have a chance to meet him again, he would deny it but I didn’t think he would send me a friend request, like I was going to be happy to talk about old times.  There’s something delusional about a person who doesn’t even realize the hurt that they’ve caused. 

I can’t describe to a man the fear that consumes you when you come face to face with your rapist and you know he could do it again.  Most men will never know that sensation.  He felt justified in violating my body.  He felt he had a right to take it without my permission.  We fought.  Not a tussle, not slap and grab, but I’m yelling NO and pushing and kicking and trying to punch and bite and do anything I can to get away and somehow, in his head, he thought that was foreplay.  He somehow interpreted that as perfectly acceptable to force himself inside me as long as it felt good to him. 

This god damn obsession society has with dick size, specifically black men’s dick size, is breeding rapists.  Objectifying women and this willingness to see us as things to be used by men, for men’s pleasure is manufacturing rapists.  Mothers raising their sons not to take responsibility for their actions is creating a nation of rapists.  Fathers teaching their sons to measure their manhood by the number of women they fuck is Rape 101.  This shit has to stop.  IT HAS TO STOP.  I don’t want another black girl to endure what I did.  I don’t want another black woman to know the sort of fear I felt.  There is a culture of rape that let him think that without any foreplay, romance, no attraction whatsoever, that he had the go ahead to force himself on me and that I would like it. 

I’m going to speak truth to power.  I’m going to continue to address the pathologies of this diseased and sick society that treats women like things to be used and thrown away.  Don’t feel sorry for me and tell me how you wish you could take the pain away.  Do something.  Confront men when they talk about women like things.  Confront the men you know are rapists, make them admit what they did.  Don’t waste your empathy on me, I’m going to be okay. 

Degrading Women

Everyone watches porn.  Porn has become a staple in most people’s daily lives in fact.  Not too long ago, porn was only something for “dirty old men” and perverts.  In the not too distant past, you had to go to a store to rent a video, buy a magazine and hide it in your closet, or go to a seedy theater with sticky seats to view erotic images.  Today, most people, male and female, have porn websites bookmarked on their computers and they check in daily for some sort of stimulation, whether it be pictures, videos, stories, chatting with other people, or a host of other options available.  You can have porn downloaded on your phone and be a member of a virtual porn world; you can have access to porn 24 hours a day if you are so inclined.  Porn has become so commonplace, so much a part of our daily lives that we don’t even realize how much the constant access to it has changed us and our perceptions about sex and sexuality. 

Porn has evolved since its early days.  While still very much geared towards and created for men, there are very few women who don’t get aroused by porn today.  It wasn’t all that long ago that FREE porn on the internet was a rarity; most porn sites were pay sites and most free sites were just teasers to direct you to a pay site.  Today, one needn’t pay anything to access full length videos, webcams, and communities with other people who have the same preferences and fetishes you share. Women are seeking out porn as a viable career, they are producing and directing it, they are complicit in the objectification of the female image. 

What hasn’t evolved is our collective sexual maturity.  People still aren’t comfortable with their sexuality.  Our sexuality is still steeped in shame, lies, and self-deception.  Women are still lying about the number of partners and experience they have; men are still in denial about their practices and preferences.  We are still ruled by Victorian mores and conservative guidelines that are unnatural.  Sex is, or it should be at least, a tool for communication, a meditation, an expression of love.  Sex should be about two people coming together and exploring their passion for one another.  Sex has become about the power exchange that makes women into nothing more than objects for men’s arousal, frustration, and release.

There can be little question about the fact that the daily consumption of porn desensitizes people.  Whereas we once were aroused by just the act of two people having sex, scintillated at what can only be considered tame, now, we need to see people doing more extreme and deviant things in order to maintain our same level of arousal.  Whereas we could once could get off on seeing a solitary image, now, we need to see hundreds of images, in search of that illusive image that will get us off; we need to see hours upon hours of porn to get a nut. 

Today, without question, porn is largely about degrading women.  Exploited, abused, punished, brutal, disgraced, humiliated, tortured, gagged, and forced are very common tags for porn, so much so that we don’t get offended or even blink an eye when we see them.  Even rape is eroticized in porn.  If a clip isn’t promoted as particularly brutal, it’s nothing to see a woman being slapped, spanked, spit on, gagged, and roughly fucked in almost every scene.  Women are routinely subjected to being called a bitch, slut, and a whore during sex, shown doing things that no self-respecting man would ever do if the situation were reversed. 

What effect does seeing these types of images do to a sexually immature nation?  First and foremost, we accept this sort of treatment as normal, we never question it being sexist or misogynist, and we become aroused by seeing it.  Men, who learn everything they know about sex from a computer screen, NEVER see images of seduction, intimacy, tenderness, or love-making.  They assume all women want to be treated like a slut, called names, abused, and pounded like a nail during sex.  Women want to emulate the images they see, they want to be considered sexy so they adopt the persona of the video slut, begging for more abuse, aroused by being treated like shit, without regard for or even awareness of their own desires.  Sex has become about the degradation of women and no one seems to care.  Everyone is too concerned about pretending that they don’t watch porn, that they are sexually frigid and intolerant of any sort of sexual expression.  We are on a high-speed, runaway train careening towards sexual dysfunction and porn that degrades women is the fuel. 

As one of the only unapologetic, card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, true feminists left, (and as a woman who consumes a fair share of adult material) I have made some shocking and uncomfortable discoveries about my own tastes and preferences in porn.  I have always been a staunch advocate for, and creator of erotica for couples.  I write stories that appeal to both men and women; I will not objectify or degrade Black women in any of my work.  I have never in my life dominated a woman because I can’t bring myself to oppress, even under the auspices of sexual roleplay, the already oppressed.  All of that being said, I too, have become victim to the plague of porn desensitization.  I have watched, sought out, and been aroused by images of women being degraded.  I am aroused by women (and men as well, but for this conversation we will focus on women) who are proud of their depravity, who revel in it, who are unapologetically ravenous in their need to be degraded. 

While I can say that I’ve never been victim of the unknown force that entices women to want to be degraded or humiliated during sex, admittedly, there are times when seeing a woman dominated sexually pushes all my buttons.  I have to admit that because most of the images of women doing obscene and perverse things are of white women, my “fetish” if you will is limited to women who look nothing like me.  Seeing white women degraded is arousing because I can completely distance myself from the act, I can objectify them as “other” because it becomes arousing to know that they would so readily display themselves doing any manner of unspeakable acts for pleasure.  I can get off on white women doing things that relegate them to nothing more than filthy whores who will do anything, no matter how depraved, and enjoying it.  Do I think my preferences are healthy?  No.  Am I okay with them for the time being?  Yes.  Most people won’t even acknowledge what gets them off in the privacy of their homes in front of their computer screens.  The simple fact is that I’m willing to discuss it publicly and that I’m at least aware that my fascination isn’t the most healthy expression of sexuality. I feel comfortable in knowing that I am aware of the issue, addressing, and working on it.  That is more than most people can say. 

Where does that leave the rest of America, the ones who aren’t as self-aware as I am nor are they cognizant of their own misogynist behaviors?  Well, men are now socialized to think that seduction and romance are unnecessary, that women are only deserving of being treated like objects.  Women have never been socialized to have a voice to ask for anything other than being spanked and/or abused.   Behind closed doors, in the glow of the computer monitor, the degradation of women is being eroticized day in and day out, and it has become the norm.  It is my strong belief that the degradation of women is symbolic of the destruction of our society.  If women can’t be seen as equals, as objects worthy of adoration and exaltation, the very foundation upon which relationships are formed is shaky.

You’s a punk mother fucking bitch

Yeah, you punk mother fucker, thinking you all that. 
You ain’t shit bitch, that’s right I called you a bitch. 
You talk shit all fucking day about how you all this and that and you ain't got shit to show for it ‘cept halitosis. 
You stand on the corner, grabbing your dick, but everybody know you ain’t packin. 
All that hot air you blow is just mental farts to compensate for the fact that you ain't jack. 
Whaaa, whaaaa, whaaa, you bitch and moan how everybody is trying to keep you down. 
You keeping yourself down by spending 18 hours a day fucking with XBox when you should be getting a job. 
You got babies over here and babies over der, not taking responsibility for any of em. 
And you cry how you are such a good black man and you can’t find a woman who will support you when you don’t do anything worth supporting. 
You’re lazy, dumb, broke and black, you ain’t good for nothing but a roll in the hay and sometimes not even that. 
You can’t eat pussy, you don’t last long, all you do is pump a few times to get yours and you’re gone. 
You smoke weed all day and you live in your mama’s basement.. 
You’re a loser bruh and it’s fact, you ain’t nothing but a punk ass little bitch mother fucker and there’s no doubt.

These are the lyrics to a new song I’m working on. It’s for all those men who defend offensive rap lyrics by saying that it’s not about ALL Black women. For all the men who don’t speak up about the offensive rap songs that degrade Black women, this goes out to you. It’s not about ALL Black men, just the ones that refuse to defend the honor of Black women by defending misogynist (c)rap. Put a beat to it and I got a platinum single right der. Now you know how it feels.

Be careful who you idolize

Last year, during the Katrina horror, when Kanye West said that George Bush didn’t like Black people, the number of Black people who put him on a pedestal was off the charts. I stood as the lone person who refused to give him any accolades. First, it doesn’t take any genius to figure out that Bush doesn’t like Black people. He stated the obvious, big shit. Second, his popular Golddigger was out at the same time, reinforcing to all of America that poor black men are in fact niggers. In his Katrina benefit song, he called the people of New Orleans niggers. What the fuck sort of message is that sending to white people who you want to have compassion for those victims of racism? You get no props if you are promoting Black women as gold diggers and you get points taken away if you are using the N word in a song and urging white people to sing along at your concerts. Kanye West is far from a scholar or an activist, he’s not even remotely articulate and yet Black people lifted him up as some sort of new school voice of the oppressed hero. I got all sorts of grief when I challenged people to think seriously about whom they gave praises to and of course I was attacked and people defended him by saying, “He’s not calling ALL Black women golddiggers . . . The N word has changed, it means something positive now.” When you start making excuses for your make shift idols right off the bat, that’s a clear indication that they don’t have what it takes to be idols in the first damn place.

Now, we have Mr. West, saying in Essence magazine, that the only attractive women are mixed and he refers to biracial and light skinned women as mutts. Nice. While I’m sure he speaks for a great many Black men, and his sentiments reflect a reality that we don’t want to discuss, Mr. West, and his color struck fans are nothing more than little nigger slaves on the plantation, repeating what the massa told them to believe. Biracial people are not more attractive than dark skinned people. We have been SOCIALIZED to believe that biracial and light skinned people are more attractive because the slave master gave them the stamp of approval, declared them to have more value.

“Well, I can’t help what I’m attracted to and I’m attracted to light skinned women, it’s not my fault.” “You’re just jealous, you’re just hating because you aren’t light.” Those are the number one uninformed, ridiculous statements I hear from men in response to any discussion that stems from the glorification of light skinned women. You can’t help what features you are attracted to in a person but your preferences are shaped by the messages that you were given. Your grandmother told you how pretty that little light skin girl was, you saw how people ranted and raved over the little girl with “good hair,” you sat around with all the little boys in the neighbor hood and looked at pictures of porno mags with white women in them, it stands to reason that you would grow up and be attracted to women with white or damn near white features. Acknowledgment of that fact is the first step towards correcting your misperceptions. But do Black men really find dark skinned women attractive? No.

Black women are ugly. Wide noses are ugly, big lips are ugly, dark skin is ugly. Isn’t that what massa told us? Did African men see African women as ugly prior to our enslavement? No, of course not. It’s only after we were told by the slave master that mulattos and octoroons were the prettiest that we started to believe that. It’s then that we hated the features that made us beautiful. Kanye West and all those who think like him, and there are many, are convinced that light skinned women are the most attractive women and there’s nothing anyone can say to convince them otherwise because they believe that Black is ugly. They run off to Brazil to find the perfect mixed mutt, they use women like toys who are dark because they wouldn’t be seen in public with them.
And Black women are falling right in line with these dysfunctional men. Light skinned women believe that they have more value because they are light. They voluntarily identify themselves as redboned and yellow, as if that’s a benefit. Dark skinned women try to compensate for not being light by proving how sexual they are, how big their asses are, how willing they are to accept any ole trifiling behavior Black men dish out in an effort to show how supportive Black women can be. We raise our daughters to believe the diseased mindsets of the slave. Ninety seven percent of all media shows Black men with lighter skinned women. And then we act shocked when Mr. West calls light skinned women mutts and wonder how he could have said something so crass.

What Mr. West has done is articulate his self hatred. He hates women with features like his own. Until we can rid ourselves of this diseased perspective as a people, until we can recognize how detrimental it is to continue with the beliefs of the slave master, we will be forever enslaved. Kanye West is not worthy to be praised, he’s not even worthy of celebrity. He’s a minstrel bucking and dancing for Mr. Charlie who happens to have a very public platform. Unfortunately what comes out of his mouth is ignorant. It’s a sad commentary on a society that lifts up the dysfunctional as some sort of spokesperson and everything that comes out of his mouth is diseased. Maybe one day, Black America will celebrate someone who actually has something intelligent to say out of his mouth.

And he will rule over you

The entire concept of men being entitled to rule over, objectify, to control women is flawed from the get go. This whole concept of men being granted some special god like power by virtue of their penis is the lie that started the fall of man, not some mythological woman eating an apple. A penis grants no one any greater importance, no superiority, no special powers, a penis is not a leadership wand to be waved over women to control them. Testosterone gives men more physical strength but that, in and of itself, is only one tiny thing on a list of gender traits that doesn't equate to superiority UNLESS you've been conditioned to think that force and aggression have more value than nurturing and intuition. Sadly, that's been the pervasive thought form for 1000s of years and it's created this imbalance that prevents us from healing. We can NEVER heal as a people if Black men think the world revolves around them and Black women feel as if their identity is enhanced if they have a man.

Let's take a look at a Creation story from traditional Africa BEFORE enslavement and Christianity. God, The All There Is, was not a man, God was a powerful force, no gender attributed to it, just spirit and energy. In this story, God created man and woman as brother and sister, equals. Now, think about it for a minute. Man and woman are equal, there is no curse on women, there is no sin, and women aren't inferior. Who would benefit from creating a situation in which men had dominion over women? God? I can't imagine the Creator of All, The Most High God being that insecure with his own manhood that he needed to create woman to own like a pet, to control. That's a really insecure God, don't you think? That sounds more like a characteristic of a person who is lacking confidence, who wants to assert themselves and control everything. Who does that sound like? God did not create us in his image. White man created God in his.

Left is not better than right. Hot is not better than cold. Up is not better than down, and man is not better than woman. Until we can get that basic concept in our heads and in our hearts, we can't even come to the table to discuss black relationships. Think about it. If we sit down at the table and one person assumes that they have more power, that their word is final, that they hold no obligation to compromise with the other person, that's not going to be a very healthy conversation, is it? I don't need to tell you why Black men's sense of masculinity is so fragile and so easily threatened. During slavery, Black manhood was stripped away from our men. Not just their ability to objectify women as they pleased but the ability to walk with dignity, to make choices and decisions on their own. Manhood was redefined for them and it came to mean how big your dick is and how many things you could possess, women being one of them. That's the mindset of most Black men today. If the TRUE definition of manhood was left on the shores of Africa, where men and women were compliments and not master and slave, then we can't even speak in a healthy language when we get to the table of reconciliation until we shed ourselves of our false beliefs.

If you take a look at the men who are the most outspoken and the most argumentative about Black relationships, they are the men that INSIST that women are at fault for everything. If only Black women would stop tolerating such bad behavior from men, if only Black women would carry themselves in a more feminine manner. It's Black women who try to emasculate them by not letting them be the head of the house and damn those Black women for asking for money. That's nothing more than articulation of a belief that women are supposed to serve the needs of the Black man without considering that they have needs of their own. The head of anything needs to demonstrate leadership. A penis alone isn't a evidence of leadership so if the head of the household is only appointed as such because he has a Y chromosome, that is a doomed relationship. If that household can't take the strengths of both partners and compliment the weaknesses of both partners, regardless of gender, then you are fucked.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with concepts that you can’t digest so I’ll hold off until later to discuss how Black women suffer from a belief in man as superior and how it disables the conversation at the table of reconciliation.