man hater!

this is isaach de bankole. he's lovely. update: i think he and cassandra wilson have split. that's sad because i do like to see black couples "make it." on the other hand, i can now groupify myself and find his 50 year old fine ass.


i am a weirdo. for the longest time, i have had this inexpressible anger toward members of the opposite sex for what i believed were very justifiable reasons. i was fortunate to have a father who loved (and still loves) me, who was a prototypical "man" in the humanist, not stereotypical and caricatured, way and uncles who, too, were good and caring individuals that this chick could be proud of; but i didn't grow up in a vacuum. i grew up around, went to school with men who were not my brothers, father or uncles, and these men were everything the racist and biased media would have you believe they are:

i learned how to ride a bike pretty late in life. at 10 or eleven i had finally somewhat mastered the concept of pedaling continually without falling to the ground. one day, i felt especially skilled and was taking a short trip around the block when i encountered lindsey (fuck it, i won't change names). let's just say that i never rode my bike around the block again;

before my grandparents died, we (my mother, youngest brother and i) would go to alabama to visit them. these were good times, admittedly made more special by the lens of nostalgia. a huge part of the family would be there--usually all of my aunts, an uncle or two, and various cousins. my oldest brother lived in alabama so he too would be there. one day, i had the special honor of being cornered by one of his clearly older and drunk friends: "i'll only be 37 when you graduate from high school," he says. lesson learned: do not trust strange men;

on the way to the corner store (the corner store that i never before or after walked to alone because i wasn't stupid), a car of dudes passed. i suppose they thought i was cute or something. to show their appreciation, one of them threw a dollar out the car window;

walking home from school one day (i think i was a freshman) on valentine's day (how ironic), i wander into the home of one of my mother's friends. unfortunately, she wasn't home...but her nephew courtney was. teen aged boys are hilariously aggressive, often too aggressive. let's just say that his balls are still reverberating from the kicking they got that day.

why share these cheerful little episodes (i've got a million of them)? because i find it interesting that though we, black women, have these stories in common, so many of us are able to forget the lessons we should have learned from them and continue being the naive, pre-pubescent girls who didn't know better well into our adulthoods. too many of us think our salvation lies in men, and will do anything to get it from men, no matter their worth. too many of us are satisfied with being subservient and forget that there are many men (i use that term loosely) who don't have our best interests in mind; however it's better to be coupled up than to be alone-right?

i primarily watch the food network, pbs and re-runs of will & grace these days. anything else runs the risk of making me angry. that means no BET, no MTV, no VH1. i don't take public transportation anymore and rarely go out to events. this self incubation means that i have very little interaction with the world, which is good. i don't have to remember dudes yelling out their cars at me, dudes hissing at me from street corners, spurned strangers calling me creative versions of bitch. i can effectively forget that there is a whole new generation of abusers and overall useless males who will rape and abuse and generally lessen the well being of somebody else's daughters. that's fucked up too.

i don't think i'm difficult. i'm generally fun-loving. i can take a joke. however, i refuse to accept the position that others are happy with--the prone woman, adam's rib, ass and titties, walking semen receptacles, here only to satisfy the whims of men. i don't do misogyny. i don't do homophobia. i don't do stupidity. i don't turn the other cheek. i don't forgive wrongdoings that could've been avoided. i don't accept apologies. i don't trust you people.

so yeah. my issue with men is really the heart of of my perceived idiosyncrasies, why i'm an atheist, why i'm not paired up, why i'm so cold, and why i'll probably never have kids or get married. i'm still working out my issues with those other people who inhabit the earth.

oh, and i feel the need to say that i'm not a man hater. it's just that i know they can do better and i'm deeply, deeply disappointed. do better, assholes; but of course they won't until we force them to.

last note: read kola boof's stuff--Proof Magazine. sometimes, she's a little extra, but she gets it.