MAN UP! WOMAN REVEALED PT. 2

OK. Now to the two incidents that caused my world to be thrown into complete chaos. 

The first- I was out drinking with two males at the local watering hole last night and one of the men had just had a great argument with his wife of 10 + years. Now, this man is an African who has lived in the USA, well traveled and pretty well to do. Our other companion is an African-American man who is visiting here in Ghana for the first time and a great friend of the first- he’s single {I will resist getting to much into this at this time but feel free to read my other blogs for enlighment on this particular species}. 

Anyway, we are all chumming it up and the discussion is basically around how it seems to be the other married man's understanding that women were put on the planet to drive men crazy and that the single guy at the table actually has made the wiser choice in his estimation- no ball and chain. Of course I’ve heard this before…hell- I may have even said it before so this statement didn’t raise any alarms. His next statement however was going to do to me what the red pill did to Neo- yes- right down the rabbit hole. 

So then my married compatriot with the conviction of a saint looks over his wine glass and says to us “no matter how high a woman reaches- she will always lay underneath a man!....after all she is a woman”. I laughed. I laughed hard. What a foolhearty thing to say in a fit of anger- you know like calling your little brother a “dookie brain” because he snitched on you and got you in trouble {although giving credit to the children-they don’t actually believe that thier brain is made of dookie}. 

As I finished up my chuckle I looked up to see something extremely odd that flipped my script- he wasn’t kidding! He was as serious as a heart attack. To him, he just dropped some gospel truth on the congregation and my shock came with the realization that I have up to this point been an unwitting member of this church-God forgive me. 

The next statement that I make will of course cause a row {and you know how I really hate to do that} but it has been true in my experience- most men think this way in some way, shape or form . Fellas don't deny it- the gig is up and most women know this anyway. 

Most men are conditioned to think of women as a different species to be considered mysterious, unpredictable, emotional and not to be trusted. The religious stories that we receive don’t seem to aid much in rebutting these erroneous ideas and in fact may indeed be the source of most men's deep distrust of woman. 

I mean, according to King James, Eve was basically created as an afterthought. It seemed everything was pretty much done in creation and then after some time Adam got bored with the redundancy of paradise {this is clearly before the advent of organized sports and strip clubs} and God took pity on him and whipped him up some eternal entertainment- voila!- Woman. 

Anyway, back to our drink up. It was in that moment that I realized that I have been hearing this from men for years! I mean many years. But for some reason, this is the first time that I allowed myself to believe that THEY ACTUALLY BELIEVED what they were saying. Since i've been in Africa i've had several men tell me this...and up to this point i really hadn't taken it seriously. I just figured that someone caught a stone in his soup last night..chipped a tooth and was vexed when we met up.....How was I to know that this thought is as much as part of the male psyche as corn is to cob? 

I used to think men were just belittling women this way in moments of frustration in order to vent with the “fella’s” and build enough comradie for the cause that is marriage to give him the strength to man up and get back in the ball game with his head on straight. Guess what? That could not be further from the truth and the state of relationships and the contribution of the majority of men to the cause of that state bares this out. 

The majority of men, whether they have mentally articulated to themselves or not, actually believe that the problem in their relationships is caused by the fact that they are in relationships with the eternally damned….and that it’s really their goal to Tolerate this necessary evil until 'death do us part'. 

And lets be clear- what generally passes for " tolerate” in the mind of most men usually lies in- between the legs of a less demanding secondary lover who herself has allowed herself to be relegated to his own living breathing external “coping mechanism”. I’m trippin!

Of course, I had little faith that Mr.Single at the table was going to add any sanity to the madd circle, Mr.Single was bobbing his head and smiling to the sermon like the holy ghost had descended on our table....for a minute there i thought i was going to have to catch him in the aisle and fan him if he caught the spirit any harder.

After the marriage rant ran down, my two guest took their leave and there I was left alone at the bar to ponder on my new revelation. After my last sip of wine I sondered home to my wife with a poor puppy dog look on my face. As I collapsed on the bed I briefly mumbled my experience and the wide sweeping implications of my revelation. I fell asleep quickly- the thoughts were to many. 

Ahhhhh, fresh up in the morning yawning I headed to breakfast with friends as I had successfully placed last nights events firmly in the back of my mind. I got into a great conversation with a very intelligent and forward thinking teen age girl about relationships and her view on them. As she was completing her great soliloquy her six year old brother walks in the room and she immediately remembers something that he has recently told her. 

So she say’s “ marcus, tell Hasira what you told me a few days ago about when you get married”. This six year old boy gave us all a wily smile, took a deep breath and said the following: “ When I get married I want 20 children…10 boys, 10 girls- and when we go on vacation me and all of the boys are going to ride in business class and all the girls are going to ride in economy so I won’t have to beat or be bothered with the girls”. Did anybody else see that black cat? Damn Morpheous!

Now first of all I was amazed at how thought out his idea was for a six year old but what really took me a back was his confidence in relaying the story and to boot it was in front of his mother and sister. It was at that moment I had another AHA moment- As males, from a very early age we are inoculated with this idea that "woman" is something to be tolerated-at best, but she's hazardous by nature. 

However, this six year old showed me something else that's another jawbreaker:Women are the ones raising these boys and just like the mammie on the plantation of yesteryear women are actively participating in and indeed nurturing these beings that will ultimately oppress them. Just a second the room is spinning again! 

Far from being victim, women are raising their sons to pass on the torch of sexism. Ladies, you don't see it? Need some assitance? No problem. Here is a list to assist you:

5. Don't Sugarcoat it- Just as mom's make sure we get the strawberry robitusen- so to do mom's not tell us when our father's thoughts are garbage. The first time you hear your son saying something as foolish as this 6 year old- blast him! {no, i don't mean beat, i mean educate him thoroughly}. 

4. Your own thoughts-- that's right, I said it. Most women are unwiting transmiters of this mind numbing virus. Get yourself checked- I can assist with this!

3. Identification-As a woman, you should be able to point out the things that your young man should look for in a mate as he grows up. Even if your son is only in grade school, you can teach him the kinds of ladylike behavior that nice little girls should be displaying. But since you're the first woman that your son will ever have contact with, setting a ladylike example at home is imperative.

2. Be clear If you married an idiot, Ok, that's a bit harsh, I mean if you married a man who has not yet been reformed into a PMM you have work to do. As embarrassing as it may be for you to have your children see that you actually sleep in the same bed with someone who thinks like that....the Truth will set all of you free and allow you to properly combat "daddy" ideas until he can get help. 

1. Housework....Dang skippy! Let young boys SEE and FEEL how challenging house work can be. Let him walk 30 days in your moccasins. This has multiple benifits. Not only will he appreciate you and your work more but he will know what to look for when the time comes. . 

So this is far from being a “you go girl” blog. This is more of a “what are we doing here people” type of blog. It’s a “ men are REALLY trippin” type of blog…it’s a “I once was blind but now I see” type of blog. 

Men initiated an unjust system that has now been ingested and assimilated by the masses both male and female and now the most sacred of relationships are now facing unprecedented upheavals as the reality of the situation continues to reveal itself to the world. 

What is your role in this? Confess and be free!

I think I need a drink……but then again…that’s how this all started isn’t it?

At least that’s what I think in 2219 or less.

Man Up!

WOMAN REVEALED pt 1

As i write this blog- i do so in a state of crisis-. Really, I’m serious. No, really, i’m very serious about being in a state of crisis as i write this. I had two incidents within the course of 24 hours that have completely and totally rocked my world. Really.

How many of you have ever had the experience of having a particular idea or concept that you may have read , heard or watched on tv suddenly and without warning drop down on your dome like a ton of bricks?

I mean it’s been there all along but like that mole that you finally discover one fine morning on the back of your ear-you finally actually see it. It finally reveals itself to you. I never really thought that Aha moments actually existed. They do and I’ve had one, two to be exact.

I’m not sure what to explain first- what it is that i realized OR how I came to realize it. So rather than choose between the two let me explain the paradigm that I had been operating under that is now laying before shattered into a million pieces never to be reconstructed again.

I have come to realize that for the last 39 years of my life i have been the beneficiary of a world system imbalance. I have been the unwitting recipient of male privilege. It’s rampant, it’s pervasive and it’s as entrenched in the minds of the human popluation. This idea is seen as normal as the idea that the sky is up or that God has a penis. It’s a world phenomenon truism.

How could this have happened to me? I’ve read, understood and enjoyed bell hooks and other authors of her ilk who deliver passionate eloquent expression to the ideas of male privilege and how it must be shattered for us to have real relationships. But until now I realize that I never really SAW how this actually manifests in my life on a day-to-day basis.

Perhaps my senses have been made more acute due to the fact that I now have two daughters and have been married to a woman for over 12 years. Perhaps. Or maybe I just didn’t WANT to see it. Maybe the privilege apple was just too deliciously tempting for me not to bite and enjoy so I decided to close my eyes and let my societal programmed instincts do the rest.

Haaa!!! How ironic! As a black man I was socialized in the USA to be cognizant of the reality that whites had perpetrated a great injustice against people of my “race”. However, I never have been “schooled” by any of my “conscious” mentors on the con game that’s been run on “mankind” for as far back as the garden of Eden. Now, I realize that the issue of race is merely a subscript to a much larger more pervasive and more sinister plot- sexism.

Why do I say it’s more sinister? Because, everybody- whether they are black, white, red, yellow or brown may or may not have had the opportunity to experience racism but every human being has a woman somewhere in their family and if she's lived on this planet she has tasted the bitter pill of male institutions.

An example of this lies in the Black Panther Party . Here was a group who had assembled to fight the racial and class injustices in American society, however it never was able to extricate itself from nor did they ever even articulate the oppression of women {the promiscuity within the party is well documented}. Thus, this group, while being able to preach racial and class justice was able to simultaneously run the Panther P***Y program that prostituted the female members of the party without any compunction {for a more in-depth analysis of this phenomenon read Elaine Brown’s Taste of Power which is her account of her time with the Black Panther Party}.

Now, my fellow males who think that I’ve gone off the ‘you-go-girl’ deep end consider this: Racism has been a humanitarian challenge for the past what- 600 years? That’s just a flash in the pan of history. How long has the established order or male dominance and male privilege been in existence? Anyone?

Who are we told misled Adam? Don’t get it twisted-you know the answer. This theme runs thru all of major traditions. Whether Eve existed or not is really irrelevant to this discussion- the quintessential question is -who is she to man in this story? What are the authors getting at? Who is she being edified as in these creation stories and what impact do these stories have on our relationships today? I mean, with help mates like Eve who needs enemies? And since we’re on the subject- weren’t all these stories written by men? Why is that? What is the justification for the majority of the world’s population following laws, secular or religious, that have been dictated by men? I mean, have men as a species shown a positive propensity towards administering the planet? I mean, shouldn’t this assault our democratic sensibilities?

You see how far this thing has me twisted up? I mean, my feminine/sensitive side panties are all in a bunch- and it’s going to take more than a quart of haagen-dazs and my O magazine to undue them!

Top 5 benifits of male privilege:

5. Father, Son, Holy Ghost....what's the real value of women if they can't even make it into the trinity?

4. How else can you get 86% of the images on the world wide web to be pornographic?

3. Who else could we blame the damnation of humanity on....a snake?

2. Otherwise we would actually have to actually compete with women on an intellectual basis...and lets be honest....how many of us believe that we can out argue a woman?

1. You get the big piece of chicken!

I will reveal what led to this cataclysmic shift in Part Two

MAN UP! The Empire Strikes Back

What I have found interestingly curious over the course of my last two blogs are the responses from men who essentially say “well that’s great that you have found the ONE, but hey- give us guys a break who have yet to find our queens”. Permit me a moment to address this valid rebuttal on part of my single brethren. 

First, as it pertains to single men’s perspectives about my scrutiny, I would have to state for the record that I too have had my share of ‘less-than-ideal’ relationships. My wife was not my first girlfriend or lover. 

My ex’s can easily give you stories of betrayal, insolent dialogue and a blatant disregard for the relationship- to be frank- drama was simply the norm for me. I’m a pretty passionate person so when the relationship is good-it’s very good but when it sours…hey, get ready because it’s about to rain lemons. 

But single man you would have missed my point if you believe anything other than this: YOU ATTRACT TO YOU WHAT YOU ARE EMITTING OUT. PERIOD. So, if it seems that you have been hit by a string full of miserable women who made your life living hell….guess what? That’s right, I’m sure they have the same to say about you -Mr.Miserable. 

Not only that, this perspective miraculously reveals that the onus of the burden of your singleness rest on your inner world which is pulling these relationships and women to you. Why are you doing that single man?

Single men have a hard time looking in the mirror, which is the divine role that women serve in our lives. Single men instinctively search for the source of their problems outside of themselves, often times blaming their lack of commitment on their being a shortage of suitable partners. 

I have a hard time keeping a straight face when single men tell me that I’m "lucky" to have found “one of the few good women left”. Haaa! I may be blessed….but I’m not lucky. I attracted to me that which I was actively seeking and it took WORK. That’s like telling a world-class body builder that he’s “lucky” to have muscles OR the Wright brothers were lucky to have a plane. It belittles the serious work involved. 

Just so that single man doesn’t think that I am unfairly castigating him, I will put myself on the operating table and allow the analytical surgical tool of PMM {Polyamourous Monogamous Male} to open up my own innards to be examined. After all one should be able to taste the medicine he prescribes right? 

When I reflect on my own patterns of dating let me explain to you what I found out about myself. I first started seriously when I was about 15 or 16. There were of course certain types of women that even at that age that I was attracted to, however, the most common characteristic amongst them all was that- none of them, and I do mean none of them- had close and loving relationships with their fathers. None. 

I was attracted to women who didn’t have close relationships with their fathers. The reasons are actually quite simple- girls/women who had absence or misaligned relationships with their fathers were more likely to have sex with me quicker. There I said it- let the chips fall were they may. I mean really, should this be surprising? What else is more important to an American teenage boy then scoring and scoring quickly, except a song and a movie that glamorize it to the extreme? 


Although the pursuit of sex may be an oversimplification of my drives what I want to get across is that I got away with murder with girls who didn’t have congruent relationships with their fathers. It doesn’t take a serial dater long to discover the traits of easy pray. I list some of them for you here:

Top 5 reasons I dated a girl/woman with weak or absent father relations:

5. She’s more likely to have sex earlier in the courting phase {this is key because if she waited she would soon find out exactly how shallow my drives to date her really were and nothing makes a coward run faster than the threat of exposure}

4. She’s unfamiliar with what true manhood looks like thus she is willing to tolerate a lot more foolishness and single men are inherently foolish. 

3. She’s more insecure- having felt the real or perceived rejection of her father these women have daddy issues that leave them vulnerable to exploitation. 

2. She has a deep desperation to fill the male void and thus she may leap before she looks. The phenomenon of seeking out the weakest of the pack is akin to what lions do when stalking their pray. 

1. She hasn’t had anyone to school her on all of the games that young boys run on young girls AND doesn’t have a baritone voice holding a high caliber weapon to deter unseemly behavior on the part of young foolish boys. 

Women instinctively measure men up according to their relationship with their fathers. If their father was absent, physically or emotionally, that left me with very little, if not zero, to measure up to. Whew….that was great for me because my aims and intentions didn’t measure up to much….perfect fit- or so I thought. 

When I was finally ready to be serious it wasn’t because by some grand wave of the magnanimous wand that I realized that I was hurting others- I could only wish that I was that circumspect at the time. No, the reason why I was driven to make a profound change in the way that I saw women and my relationship to women was based on me continually feeling unfulfilled in the choices I was making. It was my own pain that really drove me to change- not the pain that I had been inflicting on others. Like I said…single men are selfish but not unredeemable.

But back to the major point: the relationships that you have in your life are mere reflections of what you really believe, think and act towards yourself. Nothing more-nothing less. . The most effective way to attract that person into your life that you say you really want is to become that person. 

Some of you are asking for a mate who is kind and understanding but you yourself have a temper of rattlesnake in heat. Some of you are bemoaning not having someone who loves you for the way you are- yet you spend 15 minutes every morning in the mirror and the better part of you day making mental comments about how fat, short, pale, dark, stupid or saggy you are. As one of the great men of our times once stated “be the change you wish to see in the world”. 

Finally, Single man- there is a plethora of fantastic women out there. The world is full of them- trust me they are out there. The question is are you going to re-align yourself and do the WORK necessary to make YOU ready and receptive for a meaningful relationship? Or are you saying there’s a lack of good women to cover up for your lack of commitment to changing what hasn't and will never work for you? Just keep it real. 

Man Up!- At least that’s what I think in 1239 words or less. 
Next Blog: Women and their fatal mistakes in finding MAN