Stop Defending Domestic Violence

Defending Domestic Violence

So, what I’ve been able to gather from the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation is that if a woman “escalates conflict” with a man then it is perfectly within the man’s right to beat the shit out of her. No questions asked. And I’m not speaking in hyperbole here. The recent results from a survey done of Boston area teens regarding the Chrianna situation suggest just that many believe domestic violence is okay:

Corcoran’s program, housed in the Commission’s Division of Violence Prevention, surveyed 200 Boston youth ages 12 to 19, between Feb. 13 and 20, using the Chris Brown-Rihanna case to gauge their attitudes toward teen dating violence; 100 percent of those surveyed had heard about the incident. Among the findings:
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* 71% said arguing was a normal part of a relationship
* 44% said fighting was a normal part of a relationship
* 51% said Chris Brown was responsible for the incident
* 46% said Rihanna was responsible for the incident
* 52% said both individuals were to blame for the incident, despite knowing at the time that Rihanna had been beaten badly enough to require hospital treatment
* 35% said the media were treating Rihanna unfairly
* 52% said the media were treating Chris Brown unfairly

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In addition, a significant number of males and females in the survey said Rihanna was destroying Chris Brown’s career, and females were no less likely than males to come to Rihanna’s defense.

On one hand saying Rihanna is equally to blame for her face being bashed in is taking the personal responsibility meme to its natural conclusion: whatever happens to you is ultimately your responsibility, regardless of what it is. Not only that but many men (and women) feel it’s their right to beat the hell out of a woman at the slightest provocation. One of my favorite comments so far:

….the problem is that we are not teaching our daughters to be accountable for their actions….The same way if someone breaks into your home even if he does not have a weapon, you are going to put a bullet in his ass. If a bitch slap you, treat her like [a man] and bitch [slap] and stump her ass.

So since one of my favorite bloggers take on the situation is that “It takes two people to create conflict and those two people participated equally in the escalation of a conflict,” I ask what’s considered “escalation?” Let’s concede that Rihanna slapped up on Chris Brown. Obviously, many people feel that that was reason enough for her to get beat so badly that she was hospitalized.

Okay.

But what if she just looked at the text and then questioned him about it? Is that reason enough to get beat? What if she would have yelled and screamed at him? Is that enough to have your face smashed into the dashboard? How about questioning his authority? Is that reason for him to bite you?

The same blogger says, “Violence just don’t happen for the heck of it, something happened that made it reach up to such a point.”

Really?

How about the pregnant women who get murdered every year because their boyfriends or husbands didn’t want the kid? I guess the “escalated conflict” by getting knocked up and deciding to have the baby, huh?

Or the women who get smacked around because their significant other perceived they’d been “disrespected,” in some way shape of form and how about those chicks who have the audacity to disagree with their boyfriends or husbands…man they should just get their asses wailed on since they knew disagreeing would, “escalate conflict” and result in the royal beat down.

I’m seriously disturbed when there are so many justifications for beating a woman in generally and beating her so badly that her injuries required hospitalization in particular. When did we get here…again?

Was nothing learned over the past thirty years? Do we really believe that it is a man’s right to beat his woman for the slightest offense? I find all this quite sad and I will never cease to be amazed at how many women so readily agree with men when these type of incidents happen.

Is this the future I have to look forward to for my daughter? Are her future suitors going to believe it’s okay to smack her around if she steps out of line? I hope not, but after reading much of the commentary on the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation I’m not so hopeful.

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Sleep With the Thug, Marry the Good Guy

You Sex The Bad Boy Not Marry Him

Songs like this make me want to slap whoever writes them. Unfortunately too many women practice this kind of garbage. There’s a very simple rule to live by: You sleep with the thug. You marry the good guy.

And no, before anybody starts fussin’ I don’t literally mean a thug, I just mean a playboy, bad boy or however you want to refer to those men you know you have no business being with, though the sex may be good.

The lyrics are telling:

If I could… could forget him
I would… please believe me
And I know that I should throw the towel in
But baby it’s not… not that easy
You treat me so much better than him
And if I was sane there’d be no competition
But… but I’m in love with someone else
And I’m so sorry
I’m in love with another man
And I know it aint right

I can’t explain why it’s him and not you
But at the end of the day baby I just don’t want to
Cause he aint no doctor
And we always seem to fight, he got the perfect body
And sometimes he don’t even treat me right
Oh but when I’m with him, but when I’m with him
When I’m with him, aint nobody else like it
I’m so sorry baby that I have to do this to you
But I can’t go on pretending…
Cause I love him, I love him
And I’m so sorry… do you hear me?

Who the hell leaves a doctor for some guy who doesn’t treat you right, you argue with, and isn’t going anywhere? What…because you love him…yeah…okay. That isn’t love Sullivan is singing about. That’s lust mixed with a healthy dose of stupidity.

The kind of “love” Sullivan is singing about will have you knocked up, alone, with an STD while your man is off “loving” someone else. No woman in her right mind leaves the man who has been good to her, taken good care of her, is looking to marry her for the guy who the only thing he has to offer is that he has the “perfect body” and can blow your back out.

The difference between being a grown woman and still thinking like a child is knowing everything that looks good (or feels good) to you ain’t good for you. If you’re thinking long term then you know Mr. Dependable always wins out over Mr. Feel Good. As a matter of fact it wouldn’t even be a competition.

Grown women know, even if you sleep with the thug, you don’t break up with the good guy. You get thug-boy out your system and you marry your man. While I don’t advocate cheating, I advocate stupidity even less. To any woman who would find herself in this situation I’d say: Grow the hell up. Your future is worth more than a good lay.

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Turns Out, You Should Tell Him to “Put a Ring On It”

Tell Him To Put A Ring On It

Last week we learned about the six guidelines for women to get married according to John T. Molloy and the research he conducted for his book, Why Men Marry Some Men and Not Others. That post focused on guideline 5: Keep in shape, watch your weight, and take care of your appearance.

This week I’m focusing on the #1 guideline women need to follow if they want to get married and that is to “insist on it.” Turns out, you have to tell the guy to “put a ring on it,” or it’s just not going to happen. When

When Mollow looked at men who had dated a woman for years and didn’t marry her and then turned around and married the next woman he dated after a very short amount of time, the difference was that the second woman made the guy commit early on in the relationship. She put it on the table that being with her meant marriage and after a designated period of time if he wasn’t proposing, she was walking.

Molloy readily recommends women being up front with their expectation of marriage, setting a date for the commitment to happen and then walking if it doesn’t:

If you meet a man who has had a long-term relationship, make it clear to him that if he dates you for a certain length of time, you’ll expect a ring. If he doesn’t understand that, you haven’t done your job. Don’t think his affirmative response to such a declaration is a precursor to his making a commitment. He’s strung many women along, and he may try it with you. If after six months you don’t have a firm commitment, leave.

Time is not on your side in the marriage lottery and Mollow stresses time and time again that wasting your time in a going nowhere relationship or with a man who isn’t looking to get married is marital suicide. Don’t do it to yourself. There’s no shame in leting your sgnificant other know that, “look, being with me means marriage.” If he balks at the idea then you know you need to keep it stepping and send him packing. To quote Beyonce: If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.

You May Have A Big Butt, But How’s Your Health?

Have A Big Butt And Be Healthy

So many sisters pride themselves on their “Donks,” “Fatties” and “Big ol’ butts,” but the question becomes do those large posteriors also come with a side of dimpled thighs and flabby gut?

I get that black women’s butts are the things of lore, but you can’t focus on one body party to the exclusion of your overall health.

I hear (and know) many women who run around touting the gloriousness of their hindquarters yet are probably well into the obese category or at the very least grossly overweight.

Newsflash: we are more than our behinds. And our lives dictate that, not only do we look fly, but we’re healthy as well. We will get out hair and nails done and dress to the nines at whatever size we are, but healthy seems to bypass us.

It’s time we focus on out overall health and not just the greatness of one body part. You can be healthy and have a big butt too. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, let’s just focus on begin healthy first and let the behind fall where it may.

Sex: The Ultimate Relationship Deal Breaker

The Ultimate Relationship Deal Breaker

Sex in a relationship is a lot like the US at the UN – even if the rest of the relationship is great, if the sex is bad then there is no deal. I’ve heard many women argue that you can have a great relationship even if you’re not setting the bedroom on fire. I say those women must not know what good sex is really like.

There are a lot of things I may compromise on in a relationship: age, looks, height…but sex…that’s way too important an aspect of any relationship to settle for anything but the best. Some may argue that it’s possible to teach an old dog new tricks so to speak, but I don’t want to be in the teaching business. It’s one thing to teach you what pleases me, it’s another to have to teach you the basics.

I personally know of a few couples who are basically in sexless marriages and no, I’m not talking about couples who have been married for twenty+ years (not like that’s an excuse), but young recently married couples who are all perfectly healthy. It’s a situation I can’t even fathom and with money and sex being the number 1 and number 2 reasons for divorce in this country it’s not a situation I think those couples will be living for much longer.

Bad sex (or no sex) is just not an option. While no one is suggesting cheating is okay, if you’re not doing your part in the bedroom it is a surefire way to send someone out the door permanently or into someone else’s arm. Someone once asked me if everything else was perfect in a relationship and the sex was bad…would I stay? My response was simple: Hell No. In that scenario the relationship wouldn’t be perfect and we’d be better off as friends. If we ain’t lighting up the sheets, we can’t do much of anything else either.

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Getting Healthy is Not Something Only White Women Do

Getting Healthy Is A Black Thing

Too often in the black community we ascribe certain aspects of our life we need to improve to “something only white people do,” as if we’re somehow beyond or better than that thing. Unfortunately, when it comes to our health, too often it seems we only believe white women do certain things, particularly when it involves any physical activity, dieting or just simply pampering ourselves.

The gym, running, yoga…only white women do that.
Dieting, pilates, spinning….only white women do that.
Massages, Spa dates, facials…only white women do that.

You get the picture.

When did being healthy and taking care of ourselves become something only white women did? We have a right and responsibility to fully take care of ourselves–body and mind. While we regularly praise what the lord has done and will do for us, we would show him real respect and gratitude for the life he has given us if we full took care of ourselves, mind, body and our soul.

Caring for yourself isn’t relegated to race. We all have a right to be healthy and happy and we need to fully embrace that right

3 Reasons Why Marriage Isn’t the Answer

Marriage Doesn’t Automatically Fix Anything

Contrary to popular belief, marriage is not a panacea. Conventional wisdom dictates that if women just married and stopped having all of those out of wedlock kids, the black community would be okay. Problems solved or at least on the way to being solved. The problem with this way of thinking is it overlooks some very basic facts:

1. Lack of marriage isn’t the problem – Lack of economic opportunity is

What comes first: marriage or a job? The answer is: a job. There are large swaths of the black community, black males in particular, that are chronically underemployed or unemployed. The reasons behind this chronic unemployment is best left for another blog post, but the results are these men aren’t marriage material. Women won’t marry men who can’t hold down a well-paying job and by well-paying I mean above minimum wage. The greatest factor on whether a lower class/working class woman will marry her child’s father is if he has a job that will bring in a middle-class income.

Now you may argue why are women having babies from men who aren’t marriageable, they should just keep their legs closed and hold out for better. The reality however is that people meet, date and marry within their socioeconomic class. If these women weren’t dating and mating with these men who would they date and mate with? Are we going to suggest that a certain class of women (which make u the bulk of the black community) should not have children…ever? Are we going to penalize women because the many men in their class tier aren’t husband and/or father material?

2. Partnering while poor is difficult and doesn’t prevent your children from suffering the same ills as their out of wedlock peers

This is the one no one talks about when their touting the need for marriage in the black community. Kids who are born to poor married parents suffer the exact same ills as those kids who are born out of wedlock. If marriage was such an an inoculation to issues such as dropping out of high school and teen pregnancy than kids who were born poor, but to married families, would do better than their single parent counterparts. The reality is they don’t. The reason being it’s their socioeconomic status is the problem not their marital status.

Not only that, but marriages among the poor/working class have a much higher divorce rate than other socioeconomic brackets. Partnering while poor is difficult. The constant stress of money takes its toll on the marriage. So even if you do marry, have your child, there is greater likelihood that you will be divorced and end up as a single parent anyway. No one seems to talk about that aspect of marriage. People do divorce…then you’re a single parent…now what?

3. Among college-educated women who are working less than 10% of them live in poverty

The best thing that can be done for a low-income woman is not to have her marry her baby daddy, but to increase here earning potential through education and job training. Marriage to a low-income man does nothing to boost her lot in life, but can add stress and possible domestic violence issues because of the stress of having little money has on the marriage. However, education and job training greatly increases the likelihood she can create a better life for herself, her children and by moving up the socioeconomic ladder also increases the likelihood she can meet a marry a qualified partner.

So, as you can see, marriage really isn’t the answer, at least when it is not accompanied by economic stability. Saying “I do” is no guarantee that your kids are going to grow up and live happy healthy, middle-class lives. To really get marriage back on track, particularly in the lower classes you’d have to fix the economic problems first and then and only then can you begin to tackle the other issues that hamper marriage in the black community.

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The Mistress Speaks: I’m the Product of an Affair

Stories of Mistresses: I’m a Product of an Affair

Here is the final installment of our The Mistress Speaks series. The following is a story that was sent to me, unchanged, except for removing any identifying information. Enjoy!

I think neither one wins – being a side piece is never good and when it all balls down, the woman always thinks he will leave his man squeeze for her. They think they have the magic coochie – which is far from the truth. usually the other woman does everything the man doesn’t want his main chick to do. Yeah, the man chick my have his heart, but she doesn’t have his respect. I’m product of my mother being the other woman.

After my father got finish doing what he wanted with my mother, he left and never came back. My mother was left looking stupid and raising me on her own. I asked her, what did you think, by having me he would stay? She never answer, but I believe she thought she had something special and he would leave his wife and two kids for her. NOT!!

I disagree with my mother all the time, her favorite comment is a man will have many girlfriends but will only take one wife. I think that is so crazy and woman that believe that, doesn’t believe they are worthy of being the only one – they feel they have to lower their standards to have a man. I think NOT! I rather be alone and happy then be with someone who strays every now and then – turns around and buy expensive things for me to keep me happy.

Tiny is only dealing with TI because has money and she has nothing. What really bothers me the most is that she has not self-respect for herself that she will allow this man to go into her raw and have his kids, no dag on well, he is sleeping around. Condom or NOT, AIDS IS REAL!!What are you teaching your daughter and your sons. No one wins, the only one that wins, if the one that will not tolerate men cheating on them constantly and thinks it’s okay.

The Mistress Speaks: When the Man Catches Feelings

Stories of Mistresses: When the Man Catches Feelings

Here is the seventh installment of our The Mistress Speaks series. The following is a story that was sent to me, unchanged, except for removing any identifying information. Enjoy!

I’ve been the other woman, and when it all balls down, you lose who you truly are. Being the other woman only shows you how much you truly love yourself. I was tired of cheating men and giving my all and getting nothing in return. I just wanted to do me for once and play on my terms.

I went it knowing he had a girl on the side. She wasn’t his wife, so I basically didn’t care. We started out talking as friends, sharing advice, but there was always an attraction between us. It took us 11 months before we became sexual. What I wanted was discussed up front, and what he could give me or provide was discussed. We both were in agreement with the situation.

I basically had the same benefits his main girl. I had the dinner dates, out of town trips, getting bills paid, hanging out with his friend and mines, spending time at my place or his place. Holidays were okay too, I got gifts, sometimes the same thing he brought her. I guess it was easy thinking for him. I was fine with this situation for over year and half because it provided me a stress-free relationship. It was an easy-go-lucky relationship, no stress, no pressure and no foolishness.

This type of relationship isn’t for the weak or other motives; thinking he is going to leave his girl for you, usually it rarely happens. If he leaves his girl for you, eventually he will leave you for someone else. So be prepared.

The problem comes when one talks too much or become too emotionally involved. In my case, the dude became too emotionally involved. Calling too much, wanting to know my every move, wanting more and saying I love you. I cared for dude, but honestly, he wasn’t what I wanted. Not someone to settle down with, why because Karma is bitch! I kept my end of the bargain up, I did what I set out to do, deal with a dude on my terms and treat them like they treated us for change. I kept my feelings intact and I made sure I didn’t read into every word he said, dude will say anything while he is in you and the sex is good. When dude started acting like the girl, fussing, questioning and dropping by unannounced, I knew things had gone too far.

Even though I liked dude, cared for him, I had no strong feelings for him, wanting more. More and more I thought about it, I realize, because of my past experience I became the other woman to prove a point to myself. I became someone I didn’t like or ever wanted to be.

So actually no one wins in the end.

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The Mistress Speaks: I’m Young and He’s Rich

Stories of Mistresses: I’m Young and He’s Rich

This is the sixth installment of our series The Mistress Speaks. The following is a story that was sent to me, unchanged, except for removing any identifying information. Enjoy!

I’m young. Just turned 22 last month. I’ve had two major relationships, both with men who took care of me (one was a ball player, one was in the music industry). I simply can’t see myself being with someone who can’t satisfy me in EVERY way possible. I know it sounds childish, foolish, silly, selfish and every other negative thing. However, I’ve come to terms with that’s how I am. I’ve been raised with money so it’s difficult to accept anything less.

Now, let me get to the point. I’ve known my current man since I was like 11, he was around 23. No, there was most definitely not any R. Kelly-ish going on…he was just my first innocent crush. We fell out of touch for a few years and linked back up when I was 21. The chemistry was automatic between us. He is very wealthy and not married, but living with his girlfriend and their son. They’ve had relationship problems in the past, and I know that’s no excuse but I care about him. Normally, I would be on the other side of the spectrum of this whole debate, but linking back up with him has taught me a lot.

In my case, I’m dealing with someone else’ man simply because I care about him too. Is it because he was my first crush? Is it because he’s a provider? Is it because he’s gorgeous? Who knows?! All I know is, I’ve cared about him more than the two aforementioned.

It is what it is

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