#ToxicMasculinity

"Dress the way you want to be addressed." This is presently the male response and reaction to women's requests to be regarded as human, vs a series of holes that exist just for men to penetrate.
It would appear that, in our case as black women, black men fully recognize their right to exist and not be deemed thugs or dangerous based on their clothing choices. However, when we make requests of them to show the same courtesy, they are unable to hear us and proceed to suggest "logical" reasons why their refusal to listen is valid. Among these "logical reasons" are "don't dangle meat in front of dogs and be mad when they bite" or "don't wear a Ho's attire" or "you must have wanted the attention" and other such "pearls of wisdom." These men believe, unfoundedly, that they are noble in telling us to "cover up." Louis Farrakhan was recently heralded as a "real man" for offering "protection from the NOI" to Beyonce, after Florida police refused to do detail work for her concerts. However, he had also just recently given an edict to Jay-Z to "tell his wife to cover up!" Interesting intersection there.

Science has proven that males are incapable of actually hearing the female voice and taking her seriously.

Men apparently would rather "listen" to the "energy" our outfits emit than the energy of our voices saying no, I'm not interested.

What I find to be most intriguing; our foremothers and forefathers were well dressed, yet made to suffer gross indignities in this nation. Martin Luther King was wearing a suit and tie when he was murdered/lynched. Malcolm X was wearing a suit and tie when he was murdered/lynched. Countless black women and men in suits and looong dresses were turned into strange fruit all around this nation.

Therefore, I posit, that in addition to a genetic inability to hear and process the far more complex feminine voice, male culture itself is desirous of stagnation. The Diminished Masculine's perpetual and cross racial inability to review history and adapt/reform, means we are doomed to remain trapped in a never ending story of collusion with oppression and citation of attire and other presentations as "the reason" it has happened.

(Sidebar: I'm not surprised by Farrakhan! The man still rocks Brooks Brothers suits and Stacey Addams shoes! He still got that conc, he will never change lol)


It is an unfortunate reality that far too many of these toxic and diminished masculine are out there. We need to learn how to recognize them, what are the signs and symptoms of the Diminished Masculine. Only then can we begin to alleviate this sickness, that seeks to keep the Divine Feminine wounded, in our interpersonal lives. Unfortunately, I do not believe that men en masse can or will be changing this of their own volition any time soon.

I had no clue what my color was, until I began wearing makeup. I remember a few years back at a Goddess Retreat, one of the Priestesses was talking about bitstrips and how funny it is watching black women choose their character. She said based on the bitstrips, she could tell we all were very confused about our color.

"Triple, yo ass is too dark in that bitstrip. That is NOT your actual color or even close!"

I was like hush, I know I'm darker brown! I dismissed her point about me, but embraced her overall message.

Then this year I up and decided to buy foundation for the first time. I immediately, instinctively, reached for the darkest hue of makeup. And then I looked at it, in my hand against my actual complexion.... And the sister was right. In my mind, I am a lot darker skinned than I actually am.

This stems from a deep envy of my daddy and baby sisters dark hue. I remember sitting in the sun as a little girl, I always thought the darkest black folks were the most attractive. (Cuz my daddy was an ultra black skinned Maroon!)

My mamas mother was a creole woman, extra fair skinned and nearly looked white. She would pick at we who were dark skinned, in her old age, and all we brown skinned grand babies were treated like scum compared to the daughters who gave her bright and yellow grandbabies. She regarded me kinda funky, but she really was nasty with the darker cousins and my baby sister. I internalized that at a young age and began privileging dark skin, as opposed to despising it which so many end up doing.

Long before any white person ever performed racism against me; I had endured internalized racism and white supremacism from my family. All of this ended up impacting how I see myself.

Buying that little jar of Caramel foundation engaged me in a bit of Metanoia. I experienced dissonance, like the Brown v Board experiment with the dolls.... When the child ascribes all the negative qualities to the black doll, then when asked which doll looks like you? They wincingly point to the black doll. Except in my case, I ascribed all manner of positive things to darkness and thus dark skin. So to fall outside of that category was nearly painful. Like some how my black wasn't as real. I am brown skinned, not light. But I can imagine this dissonance is what light skinned sisters experience when they try and silence conversations on colorist notions.

This isn't to say that color is the only marker of blackness or Africanness. However I wanted to examine some of this and share my observations with you.

Who taught you how to view yourself? Do you know what color you are?

Who names makeup? Who the hell decided that black women's makeup should be named after foods?

That's another thing, my makeup color is caramel. I remember calling myself caramel as a teen and having a fair skinned girl tell me I couldn't be caramel Cuz I was dark and she was caramel. The messages we internalize, unknowing and unintentional, they are lasting. Unpacking them helps us heal.

In my teen years, I worked primarily with black girls. I worked with the children of battered women. I did youth gang violence prevention. I'm talkin out in the streets, making shyt safer.

I routinely faced opposition from those children's mothers. They were all broken, bitter, unhealed and overworked mothers. Wounded mothers create wounded daughters who are over parentified. We grow up care-taking our mothers. When it should be the other way around. We support mother, help her and all that!!! And she is supposed to be supporting us, helping us! Her damn help is supposed to come from the penis that pinned her with the babies she chose to bring into the world.

That isn't what happens with wounded mothers though.

Growing up with a wounded mother myself, it didn't take me long to see what was happening. It didn't take me long to see that the mothers were pushing back out of jealousy and envy. Their daughters were going on trips, to the theatre and to museums; while she stayed home. So, like a jealous and bitter woman tends to do; she starts being extra hard on her daughter. To find a way to punish her so the daughter can't go either. My mother routinely did this to me. And when I stopped doing anything but going to school and going to church, my mother then began to try and ration church activities.

For example: my father would come home loaded out of his mind. He would take to the fridge and begin eating food at random. Leaving a mess in his wake, he would stumble to the livin room and pass out. And I would be beaten awake in the middle of the night by my mother, who would be screaming about how I left her kitchen a mess and didn't clean up before bed time. "And that's why Ya ass ain't singing in the choir this Sunday either. Until you can learn to obey my rules!"

I do not know how I maintained any love for this woman. I guess it's the reason I always had a heart for battered women and girls. Because the women were battered by the men, and the girls were battered by their weak mothers, who took out the abuse they tolerated from men on their daughters. I had lived it, I think that finding myself in shelters helping other girls and women kept me sane. It kept me from breaking and it also kept me sweet. I knew what I was surviving was bad, but I also knew it could be worse. I didn't complain, I just found a way to make a difference.

That was me as a child. A teenager.

As an Immortal, I know that when one teaches, two learn. And in helping those girls, I was actually helping myself.

I see now, the way to enact change in the lives of black daughters is to heal their battered mothers. As a child, I tried in vain to force help onto my mother. It was selfish, I needed her to be better because I was afraid I would snap one day and whop dat trick! Because I needed her, I was a child and my father was an addict. The only alternative were aunties with rapist husbands or foster system filled with rapist males and idiot females who hate children and love money. Or who get children for the men in their lives to fuck, so he won't leave her or so he won't fuck her children.

I learned early on that women are the gateway and gatekeepers. And that if I wanted to see black girls have a better life, I would have to leave them be and help their mamas.

This is why I kick your sorry emotional ass. Fuck your feelings, I am thinking of the daughters. You grown women? YALL will be ok! You need someone to shock you, to remind you of what it was like to be a girl. You grow up and become dickmatized and forget the horrors of being black and female in this world.

My GodMother said to me, through tears one day, that I was an Angel for the Children. I tried to interject but she shut me up. She made me hear her. She said I am the Guardian Angel of the Children and that I possessed an ancient Mother Spirit. She said I was the "evil mother" who was willing to kill for the children.

I whispered, Kali-Ma. And she came out of her trance. My GodMother is a church going woman. She relates everything. To Jesus. She said to me "if Mary was a Black woman she was you!"

Oh Mary don't you weep. Oh Martha don't you moan...

My work now focuses on helping women heal the connection to their Daughter Self. You all grew up with horrible mothers, or with good mothers, but all of them wounded. This is what it means to be female in a thriving male centered culture that has erased the primacy and supremacy of the Feminine. The erasure of the Divinity of the Feminine is the Wounding of the Mother. And then mothers participate in the ritualistic wounding, by initiating their children into the belief system that cements it. Abrahamic faith based male diety centered religions all were created to wound the Mother and Usurp her crown.

It is plucking out your own eye, and lamenting the blindness.

Wounded Mothers. Mother Wounds. They must be healed. You must challenge how you were raised. And challenge what is driving you to make your parenting choices.

For if you continue to mother in fear, you may as well drown your children and bury them. Make it quick and get it over with. Think about all the unpacking of bs you had to do.

Do you really want to recreate that with your children?

Let's go get your wings back mama. So you and your daughter can fly together.


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