White womanhood and black womanhood: but where were you??

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Summer Jamz: Giraffage - Tell me (Qrion remix)

If you're anything like me and words to music makes you too emotional, then you'll super appreciate
this. I've been in all of my feelings twice so music with words destroy me. This little diddy was in the related artist playlist attached to some song I was listening to. The important part though is that it's feel good and lyric free! Minus a word here and there but not relevant to life or heartbreak or whatever haha Give it a listen and dance around the house. Sometimes I listen to it walking to work and do a lil dance xD I enjoy it and this mix makes me happy so you should give it try. Have I ever steered you wrong?

Summer Jamz: Konvalescent

Y'ALL!!

Sorry to abandon you all but as you know, life sucks.

Good talk. So why am I here? Afropunk emailed me this morning (cuz I'm on the listserv :p) and I found out about a metalcore band made up of all black people.

WHAT?!

(me at my desk) 

It's no secret I love metal. I'm super punk too and all my life I'd been seeing scene queens, goth kids and emo as a white identity. So when I found others like me, I swooned. Well, this band just popped into my life and now I'm sharing it with you. YOU'RE WELCOME. Go check Konvalescent out here and give black metal musicians more representation and support. Because YES.  

'Because I said so': rebels without a cause or victims of slave mentality?

A few weeks ago my life partner woke up to go to the airport early but her GPS alerted her that it would take an hour and some change to get to there. She flies out often and I drive her most times, so we knew something was wrong. Turns out, a body was found on the interstate and they had shut it down for a few hours. We couldn't believe it.

Immediately, the folks of New Orleans, and in our panicked brains, started questioning what could've happened. And in this city, the immediate assumption jumps to foul play of some sort. Somehow we ended up hearing about another body that had been found. Another black girl, a few years older, being found on a different part of the interstate but the interstate no less. So then everyone started freaking out crying serial killer. But the technical definition of serial killer is 3 or more victims and over the span of a month, so it was too soon to tell. Not before long, the bodies were identified. The first girl's, Kayla, body was identified and finally we all had some questions answered. But what's more disturbing about the entire situation is how her mother responded to the news.

There's a video (and you can read the full news story here as well) of the mother giving this PSA about how teens should respect their parents, stop lying and sneaking around or essentially "this could happen to you".

Now... As I watched the video and listened to her go on about how her daughter was rebellious and etc, I just got angry. Like yes, this is sad. She probably should have not gone where she went for whatever reason but also blaming her own death on her actions in an attempt to "save the children" rubs me the wrong way. Victim blaming has never done anything for anyone except reinforce those shitty situations that no one wants to be in and further uphold hierarchical structures, ideals and systems.

People passed the video around and I just stopped talking about it because the whole thing just further made me upset. But along came For Harriet. They posted the video and out came the black respectable parents of "rebellious" children saying how it was good on that mom for showing tough love even in the wake of her daughters death.

I was HEATED.

Like all bad feminists, I read the comments and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Clearly some people shared my opinion and what I was reading was the backlash of people who felt her victim blaming was out of order. Then there was one comment. One that personally made me think about how I was looking at this situation and this mother's reaction:

"I wish parents would be more understanding and willing to communicate effectively with their children. Not saying that this mother didn't do those things. It's just a shame that many young black girls aren't given a chance because people deem them "rebellious".

This spoke so much life into me I could't help but see how people responded to it (despite my better judgement) because immediately after my older sister and myself became labeled as "rebellious" somehow our opinions, existence and behavior became irrelevant, invalid and everything we did was placed under that term. We were selfish and ungrateful, undeserving of a fair opinion or ability to defend ourselves against something that truly wasn't our fault. And because of that, it built this barrier of silence. In our minds we couldn't say anything to our mother. Not even if we were harmed physically or otherwise because it became a narrative of "I told you so".

But of course the responses were harsh. It was a black man who had voiced this opinion so of course women came from their corners setting their experiences as mothers of black children apart from his, somehow assuming he's no one's dad and how he won't understand until he has children of his own. Again, the plight of a black woman. My mother to this day refuses to have any conversations with me about disciplining children or even about advice for my sister because I don't have kids of my own so I "will never know what's it's like".

That sadden me deeply because I feel as a black women we are so quick to shut down our brothers when they try to speak up but we do also say how they're not here for us, and I do have mixed feels about that phenomenon. But this one time, I agreed with him. He really was just trying to shed some light from a different perspective: that of the teen who was killed. He even apologized as more comments came in, saying he wasn't trying to step on toes and he appreciated all these women sharing their experiences with him. I had to say something in his defense.

I said as a black woman, I remember being a teen and being called "rebellious". I wasn't trying to defy my mother or prove I knew everything. At 16 I admitted I didn't know a lot about life. But that's where the 'rebellious' streak came from: I wanted to know more about and experience life. But most parents believe because they're adults (and I do use that term very loosely) or because they pay rent and all the bills and make the decisions they know more about everything and before a healthy discussion or conversation is had we're told to sit down and shut up, go to our room, don't question authority, etc. 

Who knows where this child was trying to go. We're from the same city so I know how her mother cautioned her about New Orleans as "a dangerous city" and being "fast". Parents don't trust their black girls enough to make decisions or have mature in depth conversations beyond "something bad will happen to you if you don't listen" so what happens? Deception and surreptitious behavior. It wasn't until I told my mother that if she never let me make my own mistakes, I will never learn anything and will forever and always be dependent on her in life that she realized that maybe she was being a little too harsh. Yes this woman did her best but this girl also probably couldn't speak up in her own home. Especially with a mom so involved with religion like she clearly demonstrates. For all we know, certain things were off the table as far as conversations go. I remember not having several conversations with my mother because that's just not "what good girls do". We don't know her situation, we only know what her mother is saying and the parts the media is releasing. There could be a lot more going on here but I know victim blaming and saying that "oh my daughter had it coming" is not a good way to start any conversation with a child you want to listen to you with a humble mind and open ear.

Some of the key points I made were about communication, the 'rebellious' label, questioning authority and victim blaming. Let's talk about it.

There's only a few ways black parents communicate with their children. And depending on the gender you're being raised as in a back household there's only so many ways to receive it. Not to mention if you were raised in a low income home... As a socialized black girl in a poor household, single mom with a dad who barely called, communication was not something my mother did with me. I was told to get good grades or else. I was told not to get pregnant or I would be thrown out with nowhere to stay. I was told what to do and what not to do. Talking with my mother was not a privilege I, or from what I saw of my peers, something anyone my age had. We all laugh and joke about how our mothers asked us questions and then told us not to talk back but that's a very real reality that's indicative of how power relations in the black home works.

I've seen many black folks (including those on the status in which I'm referencing in this blog) draw comparisons between black parents and white parents. Black folks are always saying how they would "never talk back" to their parents because insert violent response here and white kids had had no discipline so that's why they are more likely to do the shit they do, like acts of terrorism. Even when it comes to spanking children. Black folks blame the lack of physical punishments in white homes on the reason white people act the way they act and do the things they do. I know, because I used to believe that myself. 

But I disagree. Even when trying to offer a simple explanation, my mother would cut me down and tell me I was talking back even though the question she asked was not rhetorical. And the reason white kids do the shit that they do has nothing to do with a lack of discipline, it's privilege. Partially lack of discipline but mostly privilege. I know plenty of white kids who got their asses beat by their mom. Whippings mean nothing. Our ancestors were physically punished or threatened with violence if we crossed a line hence why black people whip their children for discipline purposes. It's inherited. White kids do shit like mass murder and bomb buildings because 1. they're used to having their way and 2. the agency to express their anger and disappointment, so when they decide to take it out on others, they don't feel the fear of being reprimanded. 3. white children's behavior hasn't been pathologized or scrutinized the same way ours have. So this idea of universal parenting is a myth, we need to dig deeper here.

I'm very torn when it comes to physical discipline though. Since I know it's inherited behavior, I'm unsure of what we should replace it with. But I digress, when I was a child I didn't have agency to say mom, you're hurting my feelings or mom I don't want to talk about this. I was assumed to be a fuck up because I was a black girl and black girls are inevitably 'rebellious' after one and only one act of defiance. Now my mother would probably read this and disagree immensely. But that's a separate deep seeded issue she needs to confront with herself and not this analysis. My mother often based my behavior and punishment off of that of my older sister who had a more rebellious phase than myself. But I understand her. We had a cousin who had been going wild for some time so my mother took our cousins' behavior and automatically assumed that at some point we would also act out. Now for a long time, my sister wasn't doing anything. And for all intents and purposes even when she started sneaking out she still wasn't doing anything. 

I remember once she let me come out with her (mostly because if she went down, she wasn't going down alone and I was definitely a ride or die  for my big sis). This night she let me come with her, we went to her boyfriends house who lived in the same apartment complex. The issue with her sneaking to see her boyfriend was my mother and father had decided he was a 'thug' and would get my sister pregnant but I knew this dude. He was romantic and wrote my sister songs and love notes. They would argue and he would leave gifts at the front door to apologize. This kid was smooth and had no interest in knocking my sister up. Even if so, he wanted to be around. He had a mother equally as stoic as my mother. She was raising him and his younger brother alone just like my mother was raising us. He just so happened to be a young black boy who sagged his pants and lived in the projects for a chunk of his childhood. But he was harmless. 

Anyway, I witnessed being in a room with them as she was sneaking to see him. They played video games and listened to the Hot Boys new CD learning the lyrics to Juvenile's "ya dig". There was nothing going on. Even when she would sneak him in the house and I wasn't in the room, I remember they had sex once. Even then my sister immediately told me what condoms were, how to use them, their importance, she gave me info on STD's from her school's sex ed program, etc. She wasn't stupid by a long shot, she just wanted to spend time with her boyfriend. But she couldn't express that to my mother because my mother would've immediately thought they just wanted to do some horrible shit. She also didn't believe my sister had the brain capacity to be responsible in those decisions. Her lack of having conversations with us caused us to be like well... Why can't I? Am I inadequate? What is she keeping from me that I should know?

So when I had my first fuck up (in the form of a hickey on my neck that I hid poorly) she just knew I was headed the same way. She grounded me regularly. She did so so extensively one summer to the point my complexion changed from having not seen actual sunlight from the last month of school until the ending of summer. I was allowed to go over to one friend's house but that was soon cut short once she learned my friend knew of the hickey. Now I'm not excusing my behavior. I had no business letting that boy suck on my neck at all. The issue here is that my mother never spoke to us about boys until after we started interacting with them. Most of the things we knew about them were from media, literature and experience. It was a topic off the table and the assumption was our girl libidos would not allow us to want to be curious about them in any capacity. But even when we'd try to apologize and talk it out, she would close the door to us. We were made to sweep it under the rug unless of course she wanted to throw it back in our faces. But it was a topic untouched before and after and if you wanted to talk about it, it was on her terms. That was it.

And it's not that we weren't allowed to ask about it, there weas a certain implication that those questions were not to be asked. I also recall a time as a child my mother sat myself, my cousin and my sister down and taught us about menstruation. My mother is in the medical field so she always opened up avenues to teach us about "natural" occurrences with our body physiologically, but never behavior or social rituals or cues. And once she opened the window for discussion, ask all you could then because when the window closed that was it. But specifically after we had both 'gone bad' any questions we had were instantly assumed to be rooted in motive and were met with extreme resistance. "Why?!" she would say. And that is a giant stop sign to a black teenager who was raised with the fear of God in them at the hands of their mother/parent.

Any innocent thing we wanted to do was assumed to be out of deviance. There wasn't a fluid dialogue until we both had major milestones come our way. For me it was after I started self harming. Even then, she reacted with taking the lock off my door and making me go stay with my dad (which he didn't really want me there so after like 3 days he shipped me back). While home after that, it was literally walking on egg shells. I remember I was really into candles and I broke my favorite one in the bathroom and swept up but not as well as I thought. I cut my toe and yelled for my sister to bring me a band-aid. My mother immediately freaked out yelling "You cut yourself again?!" I was actually too hurt to tell her it was a simple injury. My sister had to tell her it wasn't self inflicted and she was overreacting. But after that I was considered a danger to myself. We never talked about it or acknowledged it again. She said it was something I obviously learned from white people on television and then threatened to have me institutionalized but my father disagreed. Now as I write this blog, I have still not talked to my mother about it because to her, it may as well have never happened.

Now I'm not saying my mother should've let us be wild. Clearly that's a counter narrative. These behaviors should've been a platform to open conversation about what we were doing and eventually lead to harm reduction. Instead we were told we were bad and were silenced.

There was never a moment where my mother wanted to know how we felt. She felt that were 'acting up' and 'lashing out'. We had feelings and emotions but as children we didn't have the right to be angry as we were considered to be ungrateful. This is a huge problem with black girls at home. We don't get separated from other black girls and we definitely don't get the luxury of thinking for ourselves. So certainly no one wants to talk to us about why or how we're feeling. No one EVER says that's the fault of the black parent. That's always the error of the 'rebellious' child.

Something we need to examine is our parents relationship with their parents. We have people like Tyler Perry saying how "old school" we need to be when it comes to parenting yet he has no children. As a woman who also does not have children, I'm immediately shut down because I haven't performed this ultimate act of womanhood but we believe this man who dresses as a black woman and completely mocks black womanhood. I have no qualms with gender identity, obviously. But his performance as a black woman and feeding it to black respectable populations is toxic. I'm also not one to fuel the flame of futurity because to be honest I don't like kids and I don't want them but we are poisoning our future generations being stuck in this Master/slave complex.

I don't know Kayla and her mother's situation. I just know I hear a mother victim blame her child for her own untimely and unexpected death. Yes this could've possibly been prevented as she didn't have to try and cross the I-10 late at night or whenever she did or it could've been foul play, we don't know. But blaming her death on her behavior and then witnessing how she said her daughter had a 'demon'... there's something deeper there to explore. And I'm not blaming parents for the actions of children. Clearly no one is perfect.

We just wanted to be kids and some of that could've incorporated talking. We need to look deeper in our relationships with our caregivers and look at their relationships with those who raised them. There won't be a clear cut answer but we can't find answers if only one person is talking. Yelling at that. We may find a better answer than shutting conversations out, beating kids for 'bad' behavior and more.

"We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."
-Epictetus

Summer Jamz: "The Thespian" - Alesana

I've been all over the angry rock, this is such a beautiful addition. A few days ago I introduced Alesana's newest album "Confessions", the third album in a trilogy about Annabelle Lee. Well this song is from the first album in the trilogy and this song is A M A Z I N G. Once again, Shawn Mike's voice illuminates and uplifts me into the clouds with this beautiful song about Annabelle's killer (I won't say anything beyond that) The Thespian. The video is a bit chilling and leaning towards racist (I have no clue if Dennis is supposed to be in black face or just dirty but wtf...) but the lyrics and story line will have you begging for so much more. If you haven't, I strongly encourage you to go get The Emptiness, A Place Where the Sun Is Silent and Confessions or make a playlist with all of them in order by album and track then listen to it either sober or high (I recommend high ayyye). It will blow your metal fucking mind!!!

The things you find online...

I decided I was going to blog about slang terms for masturbation because I love words and euphemisms. I love it when people are clever and witty and even more so can tell me where the origin of those words and turns of phrases they use come from. I also thought it would be a great way to keep National Masturbation Month fun and interesting but what I got was a whole bunch of sadness and sexism.

Of course I used the google machine because I'm still considered a millennial and research is a drag if I don't have to do it. And of course I stumbled on Urban Dictionary: the best and worst place to get what's hip, dope and happening with the kids these days. While sometimes I find it quite helpful when looking up things like yolo and U.N.E.N.O., it also functions like an actual dictionary with multiple definitions and example sentences (I wonder how parents haven't found this yet). It really is something special. When it works...

But it's also very telling of our up and coming generations in regards to what they value, what they're learning form/teaching each other, how far we've come in social justice, social agency and equity. It's so fascinating that I can look up something as simple as 'slang terms for masturbate' and get all of that from a google result. My find, you ask?

I am so sad for the world you guys... 

At first I was amused and my inner teenage self was already formulating ways to either work these phrases into conversations or manufacture conversation in which these phrases would be my responses (my inner child is aged between 12 to 17 years old). It included the classics like choking the chicken, spanking the monkey, bopping the bologna, cleaning your rifle, fisting your mister, polishing the rocket, just to name a few. 

You're probably reveled up in laughter or really highly pissed (or ambivalent, I don't know your life!) Either way, what's disturbing about all these phrases is that they're all referring to a penis being involved in some manner. It doesn't take a scientist to point out the phallic symbolism here... 

So basically what I got from this search is that only those who have penis's can/should/do masturbate. 

What prompted this was my sister writing "flick the bean" underneath my initial blog about masturbation. That phrase is kinda funny but it's still indicative to only a certain type of person with a specific set of genitalia. One of the main reasons certain actions and behaviors are frowned upon has a lot to do with the language we use surrounding it coupled with our knowledge and understanding of that behavior or activity. Beneath all these lovely (and by lovely I mean WHATTHEFUCKINGFUCK) terms were examples on how one masturbates. Brace yourself, this could get ugly: 

Definition 8: 

MEN: to slowly (or quickly) rub your penis until white stuff appears. Feels really good. 

WOMEN: to rub your vagina or clitoris. 

You can use dildos and vibrators, too. 

Takes longer than men

Do it in private please!

...

First of all: NOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPE

Reading these definitions were painful as hell. To know that there's some kid somewhere reading this somewhere believing this to be fact and telling their friends... And kids these days have SO MUCH ACCESS TO THE INTERNET with no advisory!!!!

One of the definitions even said that doing it too much causes heart attacks. C'MON! I just blogged about this.

Secondly, why so much transphobia?! I don't expect these kids to know any better but why hasn't people at least started teaching the basics about gender? NOT ALL MEN HAVE PENISES AND NOT ALL WOMEN HAVE VAGINAS. I just want to yell this in the face of so many people... If only they know the damage they were doing by perpetuating these kinds of conversations. I would've been totally fine with just basic instructions, gender aside. Not only men and women are looking up masturbation in search of how to get their feel good on. People also don't't get on the computer to be met with ignorance and hate speech but whatever, I'm fucking drunk... 

Third, can we talk about these instructions? "Rub your vagina or clitoris"? 

Allow me to take y'all to health class real quick... 

Do you see where that line is pointing that says vagina? Why would you rub that knowing there's something made for your pleasure? L I T E R A L L Y. I mean sure, rub whatever feels good to you but I went to nursing school and we talked about the clitoris for a bit. The clitoris is literally a bundle of nerves that serves no other purpose than to send pleasure censors throughout the body. DO NOT RUB YOUR VAGINA. There's also a huge misconception that all of what's being displayed in this image is called the vagina. CORRECTION. It's called a vulva and it consists of your vaginal opening. Even if there were only men and women in the world, we're still teaching the wrong shit...

Best part of that entire tutorial was the "takes longer than men" tidbit. Stop... I just actually cannot anymore... Here's a little something I scooped from Brown University's Health promotion: 

"You may have heard that it takes a lot longer for women to reach orgasm than it does for men. This is not entirely true. During masturbation, women and men reach orgasm in very similar amounts of time. On average, women reach orgasm in a little less than four minutes. For men the average time is between two and three minutes. The difference in the time it takes women and men to reach orgasm during foreplay and vaginal intercourse is greater. On average, it takes women 10-20 minutes to reach orgasm. Men reach orgasm after 7-14 minutes overall, but average two to three minutes after beginning intercourse."(educate yoself!)

Basically there's no difference in the time it takes for one to reach orgasm as it relates to gender. It honestly varies from person to person and your level of know-how. Mixed with a slew of other things but I digress. Really what's different is the muscles involved so please stop saying this. 

If I had to take the wildest of guesses I would say our author of this fine tutorial is identified as white, cisgender man, maybe doesn't actually know what's going on down there but...

...that is absolutely not my place to say or assume... 

All in all, let's start a new fun way of expressing this term. What I came across wasn't all bad. I saw manual override, teasing the weasel, walking the dog (which may or may not be problematic) and corking the bat. We don't have to come up with anything new and fun or anything to mask and cover what we do with ourselves. What I'm saying is that if we're going to continue this trend, why not reel some people in? Not shame them, tell them where to do it, how to do, what parts go where and all that. Do it how you feel, do it safely or don't do it at all.