Friday, Friday, glorious Friday!

I had a weightier topic in mind for today, but I have already emotionally shifted gears to weekend-mode. So iCan’t and iWon’t go there until Monday. However, I do have something bearing heavy on my heart and I need to share. Has anybody seen my childhood? Oh, there it is on YouTube, rolling through the hood and smoking trees:

ARE YOU SERIOUS? “Mr. Calvin from 227″?  Gain Green Records??? And really, Christopher Williams riding shotgun in Ed Hardy Couture? What did I do to deserve this? Some people should make a comeback, but others need to stay gone so that I might preserve the image I had of them in my heart.  That said, can we get Bumper Robinson into a safe house? I just can’t bear the thought of Clarence ending up on a Smack DVD doing hoodrat things with Tevin Campbell. Christopher still looks good though.

If you’d like to catch up on my latest work, here’s a recap. I’m grinding hard in these internets:

A Modest Proposal+ The Second Worst I Ever Had: Support the Struggler, so that she may continue to provide wicked social commentary…and tragic date stories such as this one (appears right here at home, baby)

Bottom Heavy- What if you’re a Black woman, but don’t have a “Black woman’s body”? (via Clutch)

Can Sex Really Be Casual?- My take on the age old debate for my new ”Girl On Top” sex column ( via Madame Noire)

Cease and Desist: Flo Rida- Flo Rida makes Bryant Gumble look like Jay-Z. I want him gone. (via Blind I)

Over Concious- ‘Concious’ is a silly word for rappers, let’s let it go. (via Soul Train)

Support Kevin Powell for Congress- I have a lot of respect for this brother and I urge you to take a look at his campaign and get involved (again, right here at The Struggler)

Thanks to everyone for their support this week and always! Have a great weekend and I’ll see you Monday for a discussion of the fallacy of “reverse racism”. #nosuchthing

This post originally appeared on May 12th, 2010. As the campaign draws closer, I would like to urge everyone-particularly my fellow residents of Brooklyn’s 10th Congressional District-to check out Kevin’s website and consider donating or getting involved with the campaign. This is a great young brother who has been an advocate for the people and voice for many years now. He has been a big inspiration to me as a writer and budding media personality and I am excited for his campaign. This is a great opportunity for the people of Brooklyn and the Hip-Hop community to make a change we can not only believe in, but feel and see on a local level.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a fundraiser and birthday celebration for writer/activist Kevin Powell, who is again challenging incumbent Ed Townes to represent the 10th Congressional District in New York. My interest in Powell’s campaign is twofold: I’m not only a huge fan of his writing and activist work, but I’m also a resident of the central Brooklyn area he wants to represent. And I definitely think the brother represents a change we need around these parts.

Powell describes himself as being “in love with people” and this romance has guided his decision to again attempt unseating Mr. Townes, despite the hospitalization of his mother this past winter and the many challenges in opposing a man who has been in office for 26 years. The author of 10 books, Powell was a founding Vibe Magazine staffer and has had a successful career as a speaker, writer and organizer.  Having not seen his own father in 35 years, he  has managed to thrive despite being from what he calls “the sort of background that stifles a lot of us“.  His Jersey City childhood was “materially poor, yet very rich” and his mother, who only has a grade school education, introduced him to the importance of political engagement in his boyhood by both voting regularly and taking the time to write to local officials when she was displeased.

Powell has been a Brooklyn resident since 1990 and admits to being detached from local politics until the second half of the decade. When he began to ask people about Ed Townes, he soon found out that the Congressman was a “Wizard of Oz type figure” who had little physical presence or positive impact upon the central Brooklyn communities he represents. Today, only 30% of East New York high school students will graduate in four years. Ed Townes has been in office longer than I’ve been alive and yet he has no major legislation tied to his name.  It should be noted that he DID,  however, sign legislation to continue the war in Iraq, has received a lot of lobbyist money (including from the tobacco lobby), miss some 1,000 votes since 1993 (he spends most of his time in Florida and DC) and closed his Bed Stuy office because of mice infestation. Townes seems to have arrived at that place in a politicans career where the people are here to serve him, not the other way around. Unfortunately, generations of older folks tend to go out and reelect these people who they are familiar with, without taking the time to question the things that they aren’t getting from them. And we younger people tend to have a political apathy that is embrassing on a number of levels.

The candidate oozes the sort of charisma and ease in public speaking that is the calling card for most successful politicians (he got a good round of laughs when he intoned “Forty is the new forty. Let’s act our age.“), but he doesn’t seem to be selling snake oil or a self-serving agenda. Powell explained that he works to see life “through the eyes of the less fortunate” and that he feels in his “DNA a deep sense of social justice.”

I was greatly impressed by Powell’s explanation of how and why we cannot sit back and wait for President Obama to be all the change we have waited for in this country. He described how the election of Ronald Regan in 1984 brought with it a very carefully orchestrated paradigm shift on the part of the Republicans. They “penetrated the minds of the youth” via the spread of college Republican groups and “changed the spiritual conversation of the country” with the work of the Christian Coalition. The creation of Fox News, to inform the public as they saw fit, also furthered their agenda.

While most of you reading this, like me, take great issue with the Republican Party’s agenda, Powell makes a great point in calling for the same level of widespread transition of thought and action: “We are going to have to create a movement of progressive, multicultural people. Because our progressive multicultural president can’t do it (all) by himself…Change is a process, it doesn’t happen overnight.”

Powell, who describes himself as a “pro-feminist, anti-sexist American male” stated that he and his activist comrades (including writer and public relations maven April Silver of Akila Worksongs) are already doing the work of an elected official and that not a day goes by without people of Brooklyn reaching out to them for some sort of help.  ”Imagine if we had the resources that the Congress people have” he said. Resources that Ed Townes does not seem to be using for the greater good of the people of central Brooklyn.

The event was hosted at Dame Dash’s The Dash Gallery @DD172 in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. Dash, who served as co-host along with designer Mark Ecko pointed out the poignancy of Powell being in a space essentially created by Hip-Hop, surrounded by images of the Black Panther Party and describing his journey to this candidacy. A journey that has been largely shaped and grown by Hip-Hop culture, as he is a member of what are now the elder statesmen of the Hip-Hop generation.

To be frank, I believe in this person and that’s the only reason I’d take the time to write this. A longtime follower of his career, Powell is no longer the angry young man he appeared to be through the lens of MTV’s “The Real World” some 18 years ago. He is approaching his campaign with a level of righteous indignation, tempered with love and a profound sense of peace.  Powell has a deep demonstrated to helping others, with a focus on women and Black males I find to be quite admirable. He’s not some lifelong politico, but a member of the Hip-Hop generation who has grown up essentially before our eyes in to the sort of leader Central Brooklyn is crying out for.  This is a person who I feel bests represents my interests in Congress and the interests of my community.

For more information about Kevin Powell and his campaign, please check out his website, which details his platform and gives you the opportunity to both sign up to volunteer and donate.  You can also connect with him via Facebook and Twitter.

As we left off yesterday, I found myself chatting up a dude in the mall who wasn’t really my type of hype.  To recap: neck tattoo, tight Armani Exchange threads, Drake ringtone= the three strikes that SHOULD have put him out. But no, silly little me keeps on going.

Now, this fella is a chef at a soup kitchen; he got the job through the as-seen-on-TV trade school he attends. Not usually along the lines of the men I usually date in terms of academic background, but I wasn’t tripping about that. What was…special, however, was when he said that his long term goal was to be a “home chef”. “Oh, like a private chef for someone well off?” “No, like Rachael Ray and some of the chefs on the Food Network. They shoot them at their house. Like a document.”

Run that back, please.

“Like, you know. A document, that’s how they film them.”

What’s worse: that he was trying to say “documentary” and called it a “document”? or that he thinks cooking shows are really taped in someone’s house? Or the “Find Your Love” ringtone? Le sigh.

I wasn’t tripping off the as-seen-on-tv certificate program, but this dude wasn’t quite functioning at grade level. In fact, I peeped a few other misused words and awkward grammatical erros that just didn’t fit a 30 year old man who would be hanging with Young Toldja.

I mentioned that I was hungry and that I needed to go grab dinner and he suggests one of my favorite local restauraunts. Huh, that was kind of a surprise…so was my agreeance to go. Perhaps he was just a little nervous, right? (Document.) I decided to give a brother a chance.

We both needed to stop at the grocery store in the mall first before we ate. I enjoyed the fact that two girls in the Pathmark saw him and said “Daaaaamn.” He was a very good-looking guy. I wondered again “Why can’t he find a woman?” It started getting clearer. Now, my greatest pet peeve in life (aside from Flo Rida) is people who can’t use the self-checkout. He picked up some milk that had a coupon attached and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how to remove it, scan it and put it in the coupon slot.  I was displeased.

He pulled out an EBT card to buy his groceries. Strangely enough, I knew he was going to do this. It’s a recession, lots of people are getting benefits. Hell, if I qualified for food stamps, I would be first in the line. Eating beaucoup lobster and shrimp off all the tax money I pay to NYC any darn way. But, the EBT card still got filed in the “something aint right” pile.  He’d mentioned earlier that he lived with an aunt and I…yeah. 30, no kids, essentially living at home and getting EBT benefits. Something just ain’t right.

We walk the few blocks toward the restauraunt and he doesn’t offer to carry my bags, which are heavy. And remember: I have a cane. He mentions that he had “just ate”, but was happy to chill with me during my meal. Translation: “I’m not paying for your food”…which was more than fine with me. At this point, I am all the way turned off and continuing simply for the sake of the story.

During our agonizingly long 45 minute meal, he manages to ask me if I really thought people were born gay (“If they are, that means that God is not perfect…isn’t God perfect?”- asked like a 5 year old child speaking to his mother),  if God was real and if so, how were we supposed to believe in something we hadn’t seen (again with the childlike tone). He also implied that the world might be coming to an end if a good man like him couldn’t find love.

Here is the awesome part: we went on this “date” without exchanging contact information. So when I was done eating and had paid for my food, I shook his hand, wished him well and kept it moving. He looked surprised, but I’m sure he’ll just chalk it up to those pesky days ending.

Is there a moral to this story? Not necessarily. There very well could be a Jersey Shore-attired emo dude with a  Drake ringtone who could somehow be super awesome for me. However, the 3 or 4 times that I have stepped so far outside of what I find to be attractive or appealing…I’ve fared about this well. I like what I like and I know what I gel well with: whip smart guys who are well-read and use words correctly and are way too cool to ever have Aubrey on the ringtone. And you know what? That’s not a bad thing. While I’m not saying I won’t ‘give a brother a chance’ anymore…I’ve been reminded that there is a line between stepping outside of one’s comfort zone and just wasting time. Document that.

PS: To be fair, this STILL does not top the worst date I ever had.

PPS: If you haven’t already, consider The Beautiful Struggler Campaign for Giving. No, for serious.

Someone hit me up not too long ago and asked “I see you writing for all these different sites now. Are you blogging full time?”Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. While I am very grateful to be getting other work from five other sites that I am honored to contribute to (and that this site has grown so much in terms of readership), I am not able to do this as full-time work at this point. I could keep me and Mother Toldja’s cell phone bill paid with what I get from writing, most months, but that’s about it.  I’m not complaining, because I love what I do and I am very grateful that 5 years of grinding with virtually no assistance or major co-signs for the first 4 are starting to pay off in terms of exposure.

However, I do admit that the number of posts I have obligated myself to do, in addition to keeping up The Struggler and my 9-5 are taking a toll. Sadly, this site is the one that suffers most; even if the check involved is tiny, I’m not going to leave the other sites hanging because that effects other people AND my professional reputation.

All that to say, I have what I believe to be a modest enough request. I am asking readers of this site to make a donation $1 or $2 per month. While I feel kind of weird asking, I also know that I have spent countless nights up until 2am trying to get these posts done. This is a lot of hard work! And I do feel that folks appreciate it. And what’s a buck or two a month?

If you would be so gracious as to participate, that would be super awesome! There is a donate button at the bottom of the home page that links to my PayPal account. Or, if you are interested, please send an email to sister.toldja@thebeautifulstruggler.comand we can set up the monthly dollar thang that way. I appreciate your support of this site and I hope to be able to continue to provide the laughter, head-shaking and thought-provoking commentary for years to come!

With that out of the way, I thought I would tell you about an unfortunate dinner date I had a few weeks back. I was hobbling along in the Atlantic Center Mall, when a nice looking fella stopped me to inquire about my walking stick. Now, he had on a bunch of Armani Exchange gear (which I consider to be kind of corny, in a Negrodian Jersey Shore sort of way) and he had his name tatted on his neck (which…I mean, I love tattoos, but um…that doesn’t really do it for me right there). But he seemed nice, so I looked past it. You hear that, Steve Harvey? I looked past it.

The convo got a little lengthy to the point where I had to sit down and it was on a bench in the Atlantic Center that I learned that this man wanted a girlfriend more than life itself. And this, my friends, was my first red flag. The next: when his phone rang with Drake’s “Find Your Love”.  Yes: a FULL GROWN MAN WITH A DRAKE RINGTONE. I started to wonder if he was the guy from this video. I got panicked. Why do I have to know about his desperate search for love withing five minutes of meeting him? Why does he have a Drake ringtone? And, um, NECK TATTOO OF HIS OWN NAME? How did I arrive at this place and why couldn’t I walk away?

To be continued…

I.

Me: Hello?

Mom: (chipper voice) Hi, it’s your mother! I was just calling to say ‘hi’ and, also, that you are just absolutely despicable for the way you treat your mother. You haven’t called me in two days. You are the worst daughter on the planet. Oh, you do me so wrong!  Your. Own. Mother. Unbelievable! So, anyway, how are you feeling?

II.

Me: Mom, do you know what Wikipedia is?

Mom: Of course I do.

Me: Well, I’m listed on Tyler Perry’s Wikipedia page.

Mom: What did he say about you?!?

Me: You don’t know what Wikipedia is, do you?

Mom: …no.

III.

Mom: I used to have a large gay following when I was younger.

Me: A following? Were you a performer?

Mom: No, these were people I hung out with and guys I worked with when I did make-up.

Me: That’s not a following, Mommy. Those are friends.

Mom: You just don’t understand. I was fabulous.

A few minutes later:

Mom: Sometimes I am jealous of drag queens. I wish I could do that.

IV.

Mom: I have had a revelation.

Me: A revelation?

Mom: Well, I should say, I’ve been thinking. I feel that I have had enough of Chicago. I think it’s time for me to to move. I’ve been seeing signs.

Me: Is that so? And are they pointing you towards New York?

Mom: Maybe.

Me: To live with me?

Mom: It’s something to think about.

Me: Are these the same signs you saw pointing you to DC when I was at Howard?

Mom: You’re mean.

V.

Mom: If you have a baby, you have to stop drinking, you know that right?

Me: I know, for nine whole months and while I breastfeed.

Mom: No, you have to stop for longer than that. I didn’t drink until you were in Kindergarten and I didn’t really start back until you were an adult.

Me: That was you being ‘super mom’.  And I love you for it. But I am a drinker. My friends with kids drink and my friends parents drank when we were kids.

Mom: You can’t be drunk in the house with the baby!

Me: That’s where you fit in.

Mom: Excuse me?

Me: When the baby is old enough, we’ll leave him with you when we have date night and stuff. That’s what grandmothers do.

Mom: But what if I’m going out? You don’t know what I do.

My hair is…special. It’s about 10 different textures at any given moment and I’m growing out my hair color, so that I might ruin it again with a new color in the future. A wrong turn in the hair aisle can take me from early-Kelis wild to DeBarge drippy. So when I recieved a pitch from Mixed Chicks to review their line of products for the site, I couldn’t say yes fast enough!

Mixed Chicks creators Wendy Levy and Kim Etheredge

Mixed Chicks makes hair products primarily targeted at folks with what is considered to be “mutli-ethnic” tresses. Your cousins have a word for that sort of hair; it rhymes with “hood” and they should be ashamed of saying it in 2010. Regardless of your background, the line is suitable for natural hair that is on the curly and/or wavy side. The signature product is the leave-in conditioner, which I reviewed along with the shampoo and deep conditioner.

The shampoo did a great job of getting all the heavy product residue out of my hair! I didn’t love that my hair didn’t feel so soft after shampooing and that they use sodium laurel sulfates . However, I’ve gotten sucked in to this natural hair “co-wash” phenomenon and I only use regular shampoo once or twice a month, so I would definitely use this one again. I only had to wash it once to get it good and squeaky clean!

The deep conditioner was fabulous! I left in on my hair when I ran to the grocery store and my hair was like butter when I rinsed it out. I gave it a good towel drying and then put in the leave-in conditioner, which is their daily use product. It was too hot for the dryer, so I put my hair in about five braids and let it air dry. When I took them down, my curls were so springy and perfect! I seriously haven’t seen my hair this…managed since I had my teeny weeny curly ‘fro.

I definitely give Mixed Chicks two thumbs up, all the way up. My NYC massive can grab their products at Rickys and the rest of you can check out the official Mixed Chicks website to order online, check out before and after pics and find other stores that carry the line!

Thanks to the folks at FYI PR for the samples!

The first post from my sister in struggle and sass Saida Grundy, who will be appearing here from time to time, is a response to “Dating While Feminist: An Anatomy of an Intellectual Affair” (via Crunk Feminists Collective).

Blog begets blog, and this will be no exception. More typically, however, feminist stances posted to the internet(s) give way to counter-bloggage and commentary retort from those on the outside of our movement. The patient amongst our sister-comrades may even take noble attempts to explain to our foes the histories and social contexts of Black feminist politics that we already knowingly share and understand amongst each other. The less patient among us– say… me– usually just take to internetthugging because my patience for male patriarchs and their allies is limited if not expired.

 So, from the outside, it may be surprising to witness feminist dissent amongst feminists. And yet, this is where I find myself–in ardent disagreement with my feminist community over the sexual consequences of feminism in our romantic lives. 

Without any intention to misrepresent the post’s point, I will summarize briefly the bulk of this lament: The author is a smart and rising feminist academic. The author is a heterosexual and still has a pulse, so she sometimes finds herself attracted to her male intellectual peers and colleagues. These male colleagues often engage the author in deep intellectual discussion(what she describes as “an intellectual affair”) and yet do not reciprocate sexual interest in lieu of presenting said author with the almighty friend card. Where this may seem typical to the experiences of adult professionals across the board, what has been argued here is that this lack of sexual interest coupled with shared intellectual stimulation constitutes a “mind-f*ck” in which feminists in particular are repeatedly used for mental exercise but not considered as candidates for sexual pursuit.

As a homegirl, I can “get” the former complaint, that women—particularly women involved in the incestuous f*ckfest of academia—often navigate the very ambiguous territory of dating within the profession and have to brace ourselves for rejection. But my feminism takes issue with the latter—the notion that our feminist identities and intellectual depth have somehow muted our sexual desirability to men, and, perhaps more disturbingly, that men’s unreciprocated sexual interest while maintaining intellectual interest is somehow “using” us.

­Such a take on feminist ‘dating’ has me doing something I have never actually done before: defending men. While I do understand the hurt feelings that come naturally with any unidirectional romantic interest, I just can’t help but think that men are damned if they do, damned if they don’t on this one.  While there is a valid point to how our political presentations of ourselves make us more or less desirable to potential partners (i.e. nothing makes me lose my erection faster than a man with pronounced homophobia issues) I refuse to think that in the history of heterosexuality a man has ever said to himself “I would totally bag dat if she wasn’t so SMART!”

What black women feminists and non-feminists alike more often encounter with our male colleagues is unwanted sexual advances that place us frequently in positions of disempowerment and compelled feelings to play nice and take it lest we get labeled man-haters. What happens more frequently is the harassment of our lesbian sisters for violating the heterosexual contract and being unavailable to male pursuit. What we regularly encounter are men who fake feminism for the aims of lowering our guard against them (and hopefully, our pants). And yes, what we unfortunately still face is the humiliating real life old school Anita-Hill-Pubic-Hairs-on-a-Coke-Can style sexual harassment in the workplace. It is politically irresponsible to bemoan straight men keeping it above the belt without taking account of the hurtful and devastating consequences that their sexual entitlement has caused black women.This is real exploitation. A man not giving up the penis after intense scholarly debate is not.

Feminism has gifted me the quite pleasurable experience of being able to date smart, kind, and thoughtful men (even within academia!) and enjoy them sexually and intellectually.  But the sexy part? That was all me. I choose and navigate my sexy inasmuch as I am conscious that it still plays to conventional male heterosexual desire.  I won’t give feminism credit for my desirability outside of a brief shout-out for allowing me to feel more in control of my sexual power. But I most certainly won’t have it blamed by my sisters for stifling theirs. To claim that feminism somehow negates our allure to men smacks in the face of the daily exploitation that even feminists face because of our sexual desirability.

**I am going to be a guest on Abiola Abrams’ LSD: Love, Sex and Dating tonight at 10pm EST! You can watch it live at Shovio.com! I will also be Tweeting a bunch throughout. Please join us!**

Happy Black Girl Day! (What’s that? Click here for answers!)

My theme for HBGD this month is gratitude. When I started writing about 5 years ago, I wasn’t really sure what the end result would be. I knew I wanted to be an essayist, but I’ve never taken any writing classes and I didn’t see how I could really become a legitimate writer. I didn’t quite know how I could get people to read my stuff, either. I just kept at it until things started to gel and I managed to figure out some things about shameless self-promotion and marketing.

Fast forward to now and things are looking promising. The site traffic here is pretty darn respectable. Blind Iwas the first site to ever put me on and I’m still part of the team (much love and respect to the fam) and I also contribute for Clutch, Soul Train, and Essence Online.Plus, I’m part of The Fresh Xpress network and I have a new column debuting very soon (more on that in a second).

All of that came from people supporting me, challenging me, sharing my work with others, sending me hate mail, telling me they were going to start dating one of my friends and then dump her to spite me and prove a point (ok, only one batsh*t crazy reader did that), encouraging me, telling me to hang it up, etc, etc. I’m still rather poor, but I am seeing my dreams come in to fruition and I am very, VERY happy for that. A lot of people have a blog just to have one and no shade to them, but my social media/online presense is more than just “Oh, I just wanna share my thoughts” or some way for me to make new friends. I bust my as$ to keep up this site and my other writing and it means a lot to me that people enjoy what I do. So thank YOU for everything!

I am also grateful for freedom. My entire life, I’ve been known as a little bit of a rebel or someone who marched to the beat of her own drummer.  When I was younger, I had some awareness of this and I didn’t like it. I didn’t change to conform, but I resented the occasional discomfort or dissonance that occured. As an adult, I don’t worry much over those things and I realize that a lot of my ‘out of the box’-ness is my committment to freedom. I am bound by certain loyalties, as most of us are, and I do subcribe to and/or play along with plenty of social mores. But I’m not chained, lovelies, I am free. I use my voice, my body and my life as I see fit. “Free, Black and grown“, as Star Jones would say. And I love it! 

Speaking of feeling free, I am embarking upon a new path in my writers journey and freedom is certainly the name of the game with this here. I am going to be doing a sex column for Madame Noire: Girl On Top. It will be a super fun adventure in s*x positivity*: I’ll share some stories, tips, advice, interesting info making s*x fun! Stay tuned!

Happy Black Girl Day, everyone! Take the time to talk to a sister today and let her know why you are grateful for her presence in your life. Take a moment to examine why you are a Happy Black Girl and appreciate that part of your existence. We have so many spaces to mourn, make sure you make some room to celebrate!

PS: DC folks, the lovely PBG is hosting her monthly HBGD happy hour! Go and have three gin and tonics on my behalf!!!

*I know that some of y’all have trouble with the site getting blocked at work, so I am trying to be careful with words that can be caught up by content fiters.

The other day, Professor Mikhail Lyubansky (a scholar who actively challenges racism and who I have a lot of respect for) asked me my thoughts on the following video clip:

For those unable to view it, the clip shows a Black man explaining that “every 45 seconds, a Black man enters an elevator and some stupid White b*tch clutches her purse for dear life“. If there were pictures in the dictionary, this fella’s would go next to the “non-threatening” entry. However, I don’t doubt that he has experiences a whole lot of purse clutching in his day.

I had seen this while ago and told him that I thought it was spot on. While I don’t know what it feels like to be a Black man in that situation, I know how it feels to be a sister and have some simple White woman clutch her bag in an elevator, on a crowded street or in even in Whole Foods WHEN I HAD A CART FULL OF HUMMUS AND OTHER UPPITY PEOPLE FOOD! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A BOUGIE BOHO WITH A CART FULL OF HUMMUS AND TOFU SNATCHED SOMEBODIES PURSE???And I can attest that those very words have gone through my head: “stupid b*tch”, “stupid White b*tch” and all sorts of variations on that phrase.

In fact, my senior year in college, I told a middle aged White purse clutcher “If I were the sort of person who snatched purses, I wouldn’t be robbing someone broke as you. I could probably buy you, stupid b*tch“. Now, we both know that last part is a lie (it’s still The Beautiful Struggler, not the Beautiful and Class Mobile…for now!), but I looked like I had more than she did. I had on a pretty dress, my face and hair were popping and I was full of Howard pride. How dare this woman treat me like I was some no count thief simply because I was Black?

The professor was surprised that I was okay with the B-word (you can check his Twitter stream for his response and thoughts: “I’m not trying to equate racism with sexism…or “bitch” with the n-word. Just exploring the complex dynamics of racism.”) and it set em to thinking about my use of the B-word, which is somewhat liberal but not excessive IMO. I don’t think calling some one a “b*tch” automatically implies sexism the way that a non-Black person calling someone the N-word does.

I think the b-word is one that we need to wield with caution. I don’t mistake female strength or aggression with being a b*tch, nor do I think it’s the appropriate utterance every time a woman does something wrong. I’ve called men ‘b*tches’ and women ‘assh*oles’ and it didn’t mean that the former was acting ‘like a woman’ or vice versa. When I watched that tape, I didn’t feel like the man was attempting to use patriarchy to reassume power or lash back at this woman. I felt like he called her the same word that I would have used in that situation.

The biggest problem with b*tch is that there is no universally accepted definition. It certainly CAN imply that the speaker has issues with women, but that isn’t always the case. For example, when someone uses it when they refer to a random group of women as b*tches, that’s not quite the same as “This b*tch has been smiling in my face and sleeping with my man for the past 5 months“. And, as Joan Morgan pointed out, it’s “extremely telling” when you have a group of people that use ‘b*tches’ when they mean woman/Black woman and ‘n*gga’ in lieu of man/Black man.

We have the same issue with n*gger too; some of us want it to go, others want it to be a term of endearment. However, the history of n*gger is very clear: it was widely accepted as a synonym for ‘Black person’ and had the ugliest of connotations. It wasn’t used to refer to a certain kind of Black person, it was ALL Black people. Where as b*tch has typically meant a woman with some sort of unseemly qualities. I just can’t co-sign the notion that it is the same for a Black man to call a woman a b*tch as it is for a White woman to call a Black man a n*gger.

As I was getting in my homegirl’s car last night, a driver who was zooming down the street at a red light hit the open door, only missing me by inches. She seemed to be high on something and got an attitude with me, stating the whole thing was somehow my fault. When my friend and I finally got ready to drive away, she looked at me and exclaimed “That stupid b*tch almost killed you!” What would she have said if the driver was a man? Perhaps ‘assh*le’ or ‘motherfu*cker’. But does that mean she has bias or hatred towards her own gender? I’m going with no. I mean…the b*tch almost killed me!

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