On the Usage of Love
I did some thinking awhile ago about how I use the word “love” and how it colloquially gets used and, in my opinion, abused. When I was in high school, I found a classmate’s binder that she left, took it home so it wouldn’t get lost, and returned it to her the next morning. In her happiness upon having received her binder, she gave me a big hug and exclaimed, “Oh my God, thank you, I love you!” I stammered out a “you’re welcome,” but was presented with possibly the first time (or at least one of the first times in my memory) where I was presented with the colloquial usage of “love.” In some ways, I was truly flummoxed. Now, I knew she in fact DIDN’T love me – so why say it? I shrugged it off, chalking it up to me being socially inept at that young age and just not having dealt with the colloquial use of “love.” But now, nearly a decade later, I can revisit that instance and wonder about the use of the word and wonder about its implications.
I suppose the original problem with my young interpretation was that, growing up, I only told my family I loved them. As some of us are familiar with, the Greeks had a multi-tiered conception of “love,” and I really only knew familial love. I didn’t have a conception of loving someone outside of my family – just liking them. I made that decision early on that the word “love” wasn’t something to be tossed around all willy-nilly. I observed how important it was in my family to let family members know that we loved one another, though I’m not entirely sure I knew what that meant (probably still don’t, to be honest). But I did know that love was something special you felt for someone.
Certainly, some people might say, “Well I love everybody, don’t you?” No, I don’t love everybody. I harbor no ill will towards everybody (though I must admit of my misanthropic tendencies at times), but I never felt comfortable saying that I love everybody. This gets back to my most popular piece on this blog, “On The Subject of Love,” in which I address the concept itself. Frankly, I’ll tell those who I care about deeply that I love ‘em. But I won’t do that for those who I don’t care about that deeply. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you – it means I don’t love you.
Having written that, it’s apparent to me that I hold a very distinct viewpoint regarding the employment of the term, “love.” I didn’t like how freely it got used when, to me, it’s such a powerful term. So perhaps (and this comes from my personal identity seminar), there’s a hard and strict use of “love,” and a colloquial use of it also. Let’s explore this.
The strict use of the word stems from our familial love, love of our offspring, and love for our spouse. How we qualify the definition may differ, but ultimately when we say we love our parents, there’s probably a mixture of gratitude and appreciation for giving us life, a loyalty to them, a trust that they will not lead you astray, and a type of reverence towards them that makes us protective of them as we get older. When we say we love our spouse, there’s a loyalty to them, an attraction to them, and a forged bond and link between them. Where’s “friend love” at? Well, I think it’s in the conception of the love of a friend that the stretch between strict love and colloquial love might have begun.
We develop the “love” emotion for other people. Everybody who’s not a sociopath, I believe is born with the ability to love. This doesn’t mean they will love – it means they can. Either way, this emotion is developed through plenty of other factors, but is based primarily in its reciprocity. Without doing too much more on the concept of love itself, the love of a friend is wholly different from the love of a family member or a spouse or a child. Well, wholly might be a bit heavy, but I assure you the love you feel is different. With family, often there’s a…need of sorts. You reciprocate the love shown you as a child, for example. With a child, you have a love for your offspring. With a spouse, you have a deep rooted love that touches in the metaphysical realm. But with a friend…it’s not quite reciprocal, it’s not quite metaphysical (I don’t mean this in the philosophical sense, but the common use), and it’s not necessary with the job like it is for raising a child. In this cloud of ambiguity, in comes the vagueness of the second sense of love.
Love of a friend brings about the second, vague sense in which the word is used. And from there, we see it applied in an exhaustive manner with people. I’m not so much concerned with when people use love with objects – generally it’s just a way of expressing how much they like it, but on a different level. That probably sums up the “love for a friend” use, however – there’s an extreme, platonic like of this individual such that it goes beyond the normal realm of just liking someone. But again, look at how that use or etymology of this use differs from “family,” “spouse,” or “child” love. It’s this version of love that opened the doors to the ridiculous amount of times “love” gets used. “I love this celebrity,” for example. If you love Halle Berry or Denzel Washington, you only know what you see in the movies or read the tabloids – you don’t actually know them. They aren’t your child, and they probably won’t be your spouse. They aren’t even your friend. So in what manner do you “love” them? You just really, really like them and are expressing that your like for them is on another level.
But back to my original story – the girl tells me she loves me, but she and I weren’t cool like that. We were acquaintances at best at that time, so I was taken aback that she’d say “I love you!” I figured a “thanks” was plenty. I suppose I still haven’t unraveled the mystery here, as her use isn’t like a celebrity, or a friend, or a spouse, or a child, or a family member. So there’s a new use that I haven’t pinpointed. I blame all of this on how we tell friends we love them. Aporia has been reached, and I’m going to go ahead and stop now.
Whore vs. Player
I’ve got a bunch of work in the queue for the future – a piece on how dating is like the Hobbesian State of Nature (definitely not the Rousseu S.O.N. and Locke…maybe), on how it’s tough to be a man nowadays (it’s a hard life y’all), and some interviews I’ve had with people who have successful relationships on what makes their relationship work out so well and a boatload of other stuff – the new year will be one to remember here at the newly titled “Mr. Philosopher: The Thoughts of the Ignorant Intellectual.” Shameless plug by the way – follow me on Twitter!
Oh, and subscribe to the blog since I plan to do more posts that are shorter as opposed to my normal sized ones as best I can. Lots to talk about from an ignorantly intellectual perspective! (And don’t worry, I’ll explain why I call myself that in the near future…or should I say why it’s been ascribed to me.)
But let’s get to the title – the whore vs. the player. I’m not getting into the whole “women can be players and men can be whores” stuff – I already agree that both men and women are capable of both. But where does the line get drawn at between the two? I think this is a murky area for most people – we want to use a more laudatory term for both sexes as opposed to “player” for men and “whore” for women. But the words have weight only in their perceived power – they lack distinct definitions unless whore = prostitute. But I don’t think we’re using whore like that (I still do refer to prostitutes as whores, but not to their faces. That’s just rude. But you are what you are – just Ask John Witherspoon.) Anyhow, I’m going to throw in a couple of charges here -
1) There’s a difference between being a player and a whore but I’m going to try to make it a lot more tangible than it’s normally been;
2) Though more desirable than being called a whore, being a player really isn’t much better (from an ethical standpoint).
And I’ll try not to take too long to do it.
So on charge 1, we’ve got the difference between a player and a whore. At first read, somebody inevitably says, “Duh. Men are players if they get a lot of ass, and women are whores if they have a lot of sex.” Well, it’s not all that obvious to me. For one, the title “player” and “whore” have been gender stratified for awhile now. Whore gets the derogatory (female) connotation; player gets the laudatory (male) one. Let’s remove the gender aspect from it, however, since the new move is to level the playing field and have both men and women be players and whores, where exactly do we draw the line between the two? Whore still has a negative connotation, though it may still be through its long-standing connection to “women of ill repute,” but for argument’s sake (goody! Thought experiment time!) let’s remove the gender aspects to the words, since that’s what we want to do anyhow, and just focus on what a whore is and what a player is.
Before now, folks would call the player somebody who just gets around all the time with whomever, whenever, but clearly had the power in the situation. They came after it, you know? The whore, on the other hand, was the loose person who just was willing to hop in the sack with anybody. The key difference? One’s gunning, the other is just willing to deal with anything that comes their way. The player has standards but they are flexible, the other lacks standards essentially. The whore gets used and abused and considers it part of the life.
Sure, these differences might be simple, but I’ve tried to make them at least a little bit more concrete. If there’s something I missed in the subtlety, let me know, but I’m going to move on now to Charge #2 – why being a player still isn’t all that much better in the end.
The player is the one with the perceived power to the rest of the world. The player travels searching for more conquests to notch on his/her belt or headboard. The player controls the situation but is only after one thing – the sex. As I noted in an earlier post, men have been reduced to being sexually charged beings who only endeavor to have sex, which is probably tied to why men have been called players in a negative way (the positive way has obviously come from men in order to laud their exploits of women). Either way, the player wants to have as many partners as the player can handle.
Clearly I’ve taken a few literary liberties with the concept of the player, but the case I’m making here is that people would rather being the player vs. the whore, all gender biases aside and even historical connotations aside, is because of the perception of the power the player has. That power is at the expense of the using of those that the player conquers. And as I’m sure many of you are aware, I’m a good Kantian – you can’t go using people as means towards an end. So even though it might be socially “better” to be considered a player due to the perceived power of the player (which reminds me, I’ll have to do something on the power of the p-u-s-s-y, as it was once termed to me), it’s still not ethically better, in my estimation.
Someone might go, “well that’s fine, I’ll proudly be a whore! The social stigma may stay, but I still get what I’m after!” Well yeah, you do, but you end up being the one being used – still poses an ethical problem. Whether or not you wish to acknowledge being used, it’s still an ethical issue of being treated as means and not an end. So no, opting to be a whore comparative to a player doesn’t alleviate the issue at all.
And at just around 1000 words, I’ve tried to problematize the “player vs. whore” debate from a different angle. What are your thoughts? Did I miss the mark? Is being a whore or a player alright? Is there another viewpoint to give this?
For The Love of Money Pt. 2
“A 700 credit score is sexy! Let me say that again, a SEVEN HUNDRED credit score is SEX-EE!” The woman was excited, and her audience cheered. Hearing that bold announcement by a 30-40 year old black woman during Freshman Orientation back in 2005 was alarming and an opening taste of reality for me. 5 years later, I still struggle to deal with how love and money play out. Back in For the Love of Money Part 1, myself and a few other people dug into the issues surrounding socio-economic status and potential relationships that can be negated due to those material relations (one key line my opponent said was, “Nobody on Wall Street marries the fry girl.”). In the few months since then, I still struggle with the supposed fine line created through the constructs of socio-economic status. In particular, how important money has become for relationships and how it can make you a potential partner. As a friend and I collaborated to conclude, and this may well be a sad shame, but for a woman to be a potential partner “she needs a mouth and a vagina.” For a man to be a potential partner “he needs some money.” Though it reduces women to mere sexual or physical beings and it reduces men to nothing more than ATMs, it might be that this crude thesis holds some merit, or is at least worth digging into.
Both partners having been reduced to their most basic parts, let’s try to look at why this may be the case. Men have been sexually aggressive beings for as long as male and female has existed (supposedly. This very well could be a case of me playing into the stereotypes, but either way the stereotypes have, in some way or another, driven how the current social landscape is setup), so what do men look for? Point blank, someone to poke. This reduction of male desire isn’t safe, but is out there and so for right now, we’ll just leave it at that – men are looking for someone to have sex with.
Women have been after security as one of the top priorities in a partner. Originally, I imagine the cavewoman was referring to security from the sabretooth tigers and ridiculous other natural aspects. Currently, protection and security extends out to the financial realm. As Eddie Murphy put it, “You gotta have some money to get some pussy in the 80’s.” Nearly 30 years later, his point still stands. Financial security in a man has become a principal trait for many women, as it represents plenty of things about the man, potentially (he’s hard working, toils endlessly at what he believes in, or the most obvious – he’s got money he can spend on the woman). Either way, the financial security is something that women are vocal in their desires – they don’t want to pay a man’s rent or his bills, he needs to be able to do those things. He needs to have some money.
While I can appreciate that there are many people out there who don’t have money as a principal issue for them or sex as a principal issue, this is being done for a larger point – the de-evolution of the relationship due to the importance of money.
So men want sex and women want someone to have some money. The extreme interpretation of this is that men are going to use their asset (money) to get what they want (sex) and women will use their asset (sex) to get what they want (money), which could be called prostitution. For the record, if Andrea Dworkin’s work can be (though potentially misinterpreted) considered calling all heterosexual sex rape, then I feel comfortable saying that the current dating structure is very close to prostitution.
The interpretation of my comments can be many in number and angry, but hear me out. Women, when you go on a date, is it considered bad form if the man doesn’t pay? Men, have we not been taught that the bill is on us? Granted, in a longterm or serious relationship, the basic dating payments tend to be swept away, but in order to impress, the men opt to pay. If he can pay the bill, it’s an example of him doing decent enough (and being “chivalrous” enough to pay) that he gets a notch up. Granted, he needs to not be an idiot or some rude fellow on the date, but just off of the top the dating concept is, for better or worse, “he pays, she lays.”
A new thing I’ve run across is, “Whoever asks pays,” thereby (supposedly) leveling the playing field. But when you ask people who should ask, the man will say it’s his responsibility and the woman will put the onus on the man due to a bunch of different reasons. All in all, “whoever asks pays” alleviates some of the problem but it doesn’t get at the root – the maleffect of money on the current dating age.
I don’t have a solution to the problem I’ve posed here. Frankly, due to the link attaching money to relationships and the narrowing down of both sexes to simply “sex” and “money,” this problem has no end in sight. But I can say there are a few things in the world that get a bit of an explanation through this theory.
- Men persistently try to “buy” women with gaudy gifts, expensive jewelry, even drinks at the bar. Everybody knows if he buys you a drink at the bar, she owes him….(a conversation?)
- Women might really think the best way to say “I’m sorry” to a man is by having sex with him, which effectively reduces the male’s emotions to purely sexual. On the flipside, men might really think the best way to say “I’m sorry” is through the acquisition and presentation of something expensive, reducing the female’s emotions to purely material.
This love and money issue is beginning to trouble me, as if the only shot I apparently have is to get my credit score up, (and one of my cousins told me that a good credit score is a must have for a husband) then I’ll have to give up this philosopher’s life, go find some corporation that needs a professional writer and tap dance to get my money up. Next up, Black people and For The Love of Money – if the problems I’ve presented here are real, how are they (if at all) exacerbated by the current state (or even recent state) of Black people?
Quick Thoughts on MLK Jr.
I’m no King scholar (though many Morehouse College alums are unofficially) and truthfully, I don’t want to be. I have many mixed feelings about this day. I love that there’s a national holiday for the face of the Civil Rights Movement. I love that in the past 4 years I’ve been in 2 cities that he’s made his biggest impressions (Memphis and Atlanta). But in other ways, like with many holidays, it becomes one day to do something. Haven’t been volunteering? Go do it on MLK day – it’ll soothe your soul until next year. Haven’t been marching? Go do it on MLK day and feel like you’ve done something. Haven’t said anything inspiring? Today’s your day; pull out all the MLK quotes you can find and spout them like it’s gospel. Tomorrow, everything goes back to normal. I don’t like that aspect of it. I suppose it’s just going to come with the territory, but everybody wants to be civil on MLK day. I don’t see the use if we’re going to be rude and snippy like normal on Tuesday.
Mixed feelings definitely define MLK day for me. For example, there’s the blurbified life story the American public knows and deifies him for, but if something questionable about King came out everybody vilifies the person, as if King is a figure who cannot be touched. McGruder got away with it on The Boondocks, but @OMGFacts on Twitter could not. McGruder had King call a group of black folks “niggers” and @OMGFacts put up a tweet saying that on King’s last night, he slept with two women (something I’m fairly certain is false and that the author knew was false). The backlash was so outlandish that the @OMGFacts account doesn’t exist anymore. All this vitriol about a joke could’ve been put towards something that means something, in my opinion. One woman tweeted something along the lines that “King will not be slandered on his day!” Lady, he’s not Jesus. It’s not a sin to poke fun at a man who was a known womanizer as well as the frontman for the biggest movement in the United States since perhaps the American Revolution. If anything, it brought King out of the clouds of “can’t do no wrong” to the more realistic and I believe more appropriate “great man who was a human being.”
While I’m on the subject of King’s supposed indiscretions, I told a friend of mine today that, “I hope he didn’t cheat on Coretta. If he did though, and Coretta let it slide or dealt with it internally, then we all should shut the fuck up and leave it alone. She had to live with the man for her life, we just read about him.” And I feel like this generally with cheating in relationships – if the significant other is willing to work through it with the cheater, all outside parties need to mind their own business.
Back to the matter at hand, it’s a wonderful thing that King Day promotes many principles that we should try to uphold – a sense of egalitarianism, a Kantian duty to the Other (King did know his Kant and Hegel, which is where he pulled the concept of the Other (Hegel) and his duty to the Other (Kant)), and for some, a love of one’s country and a hope that things will get better provided we put the work in. But tomorrow, there won’t be King quotes. No more talk of his impact, at least until he gets the obligatory mention in everybody’s favorite 28 day month. And the part that saddens me most is that many people who went out and did stuff won’t do a damn thing until some other holiday or something tugs at their heart strings and they feel a sense of pride for doing…what? Just what did you do?! I know in some ways you mean well, and in others you want to appease your inner humanity, but in my eyes, those fairweather folks spit in the face of the legacy that King leaves behind. If you’re going to be humane one day because it’s a damn holiday, why not do it daily because the guy who the holiday was made for stood for the COMMITMENT to the progress – not a showcase of faux progress!
King shouldn’t be rolling over in his grave. He should look down on us and shake his head and nod his head simultaneously. He was one hell of a guy, to die for wanting all people to be equal. Not many people today would do it. In a time where people die for stuff like a burger (no lie, someone was shot over a Rally’s hamburger in St. Louis in late 2008 or early 2009), he died for a real cause. And he didn’t martyr himself – he got killed in the line of duty. Fact is, the personal mountaintops we all want to climb to, he reached. When he said, “I might not get there with you,” he was right. He’d already gotten there way before us. He was being prophetic, just in an entirely different way then how we normally take him.
Still, if King came back to life somehow, I always wondered just how far off McGruder’s interpretation really is….(it’s closer than we think).
Haiti Disaster and A Few Philosophical Implications
In case you didn’t know, Haiti (more specifically the capital, Port Au-Prince) was nailed by an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude. The epicenter of the quake is roughly 10 miles from Port-Au-Prince, and the capital has been leveled. There hasn’t been an earthquake of this level in Haiti in over 200 years, the last major earthquake in the area was an 8.0 in the Dominican Republic in 1946 that shook Haiti also, but this has been a bad stretch for Haiti. 2008 they were just bombarded with hurricanes which included something like 4 in 3 weeks, and now this for the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. All the facts aside, for those of you inclined to help, here are some websites that are taking action:
http://www.yele.com (Wyclef’s relief site)
South Side Scholar and Uptown Notes also have more information as to what you can do to help.
A few implications of this situation…
“Cruel and Incomprehensible” – Vicious characterization of nature. Pres. Obama called the earthquake “cruel and incomprehensible.” How can an earthquake be…cruel? It’s just plate tectonics. Unfortunate, definitely, but not cruel. As far as incomprehensible goes, scientists have known that something like this could happen due to the poor strength of the buildings relative to a fault line. But hell, if you haven’t had something like this happen in over 200 years so it’s tough to have the foresight in some ways, and tougher to afford since Haiti is the poorest country on this side of the globe. We can’t anthropomorphize nature in order to place blame on something. The only thing that’s cruel about this is that folks died because of something they had absolutely no control over.
“…They Have Nowhere To Go” – This is an interesting question. Yesterday, Anderson Cooper was reporting that there were people who were walking around looking for somewhere to go and that many didn’t know where to go. Philosophically, that’s one hell of a problem on multiple levels. Questions leveled – what do you do when you don’t have a home? What constitutes a home? Where are you going when you have nowhere to go? What is the lived experience of a large group of people who have literally nowhere to go? When Anderson Cooper said that small statement, I really, really felt for them. To have no place to go, and therefore no place to really be at. An old man once told me, “Everybody’s gotta be somewhere.” But even in their somewhere, they generally have a place they want to go. What happens when the somewhere you wanted to go doesn’t exist anymore? All bad.
Pat Robertson – As most of you know by now, this elderly evangelist white guy, Pat Robertson, claimed that the earthquake was due to a pact with the devil during the Haitian revolution in order to beat the French and claim their freedom. Clearly this is the biggest implication, when people from an overwhelmingly privileged position use their, of all things, religion as a way to lambaste the Haitians and blame them for something that was not of their control (read: plate tectonics aren’t something we can go in and adjust). Moreover, by blaming the Haitians it puts this privileged man in an even higher position – savior. Now he can tell people to pray for the Haitians to gain Christianity or something, or to renig on their deal with the devil in order to save themselves or something. Either way, now he has increased his privilege AND his notoriety with this ridiculous comments. And what’s worse is that there are people out there who believed it. Then again, I had a cousin who told me that Katrina might have been a wake-up call for all the insanity that goes on in New Orleans, with the voodoo and the glaring excess. Ironically (or maybe not so much) enough, she too was a devout Christian…
Either way, this is something horrible that’s happened – people need help. Don’t charge up others to help, do your part (whatever that is). And don’t try to be the people who view themselves as amazing helpers who are coming to save the country – the country right now needs people to help save and heal people and shelter people. And while I’m in a small rant, kudos to Pres. Obama for the swift response. Perhaps seeing what happened with Katrina and the response time made the Oval Office a lot more sensitive to giving aid quickly and judiciously after a major natural disaster. One more thing – investigate who you give money or clothes to. People got ripped off during Katrina – don’t think it wouldn’t happen now. Stay safe folks, and if you pray, send one up for Haiti.
Santa And The Holiday Spirit
I still believe in Santa Claus. Not in the way that I did when I wa a kid, where there was some guy sneaking into my place when I was asleep and possibly leaving me a gift if I’d been a good boy all year, but more in the spirit of what takes place. Santa is my personal representation of the holiday spirit.
I'd be mad too, taking all these gifts to kids who probably don't deserve 'em.
Do we deserve gifts for Christmas? No, it’s not our birthday. Even for Christians, you’re celebrating Jesus’ birth; why do you get a present? Nazareth should be covered in presents. But, and I imagine this is due to the mixing in of the pagan rituals and all other history I didn’t feel like Wikipediaing, we give folks we care about presents. We take time to try to find them something they’ll like, appreciate, need (even though they don’t want to admit it), or perhaps want. We take this time for some unknown reason as we get older. Now, up until a certain age, you have a certain vision of Christmas – it’s your free day. You get whatever you want as long as it’s within logical standards. I know growing up, I tried not to ask for too much – I played with action figures for a long time, letting my imagination run wild, so I hope my presents weren’t too expensive. Then came the video games, but even as a kid I knew that those things were expensive and that if I didn’t get it, nobody dropped the ball – Santa just couldn’t get it done this year. And that’s ok.
But some jolly, morbidly obese man with magical reindeer manages to traverse the world in one night, delivering presents everywhere is more for a child’s imagination than an adult’s. But as a teenager and an adult, the shift in how one views Santa happens. My shift was to take the whole “secret gift giving” and embody that spirit. As I type this, I’ve got my family’s gifts in front of me (and I’ll be doing my wrapping shortly), and I love that I’m going to get to play Santa – the guy knows what you want/need/could use, and gives it to you with a catch – you don’t know what’s inside of that box. And maybe I enjoyed the surprise so much as a kid that I wanted to maintain that as an adult. But I love being able to give the surprise like I did last year for my Mom by giving her photos of our family unit that she didn’t have (she’s a photo nut and doesn’t have many of us, particularly me after age 15 or so) and see her face light up because she never saw it coming. The art of the (good) surprise is part of the holiday spirit, to me.
You know what else is? The willing gift-giving. At some point, it becomes just a thing you do, but until I reach that point, I really enjoy trying to find something that my folks will enjoy and be able to use or like having. There’s no pressure, there’s no heat, it’s just something I want to do because this is the cultural gift-giving day, and Santa epitomizes that gift-giving mentality. He has no profit, no business, no real reason to travel the globe, passing out presents. I’d surmise he’s some sort of an old man with a serious problem of some sort (elves are slaves as far as I can tell), but he gains nothing from the gift-giving. It’s a philanthropic endeavor, and that philanthropy is part of the holiday spirit, to me.
Look, I could give a lecture as to the problems with Christmas, with the created Santa Claus character, and everything in between. I recognize all of that – BUT I also recognize that I do enjoy getting into the holiday spirit, surprising my family with gifts and happily doing it. Those aspects of Santa always stuck out to me. And you know what? They helped to mold my interpretation of the “holiday spirit.” If you don’t like it, you can deal with it because it sounds like a personal problem. Either way, if you’re around family, spend time with them and cherish it. If you’re not – call up somebody and fellowship with them. But enjoy your holidays, folks.
Can We Stop Vilifying Men As Cheating Spouses?
I was just in a Subway and the radio was on. Some woman was hosting a talkshow, and she’s just laying into men. “We’ve all been cheated on, it’s a fact! Just because you’re married doesn’t mean he’s not cheating on you! We see it time and time again! I’d like us not to be so naive, that men are cheaters!”
I get it, it’s a reaction from the Tiger Woods debacle. But this is excessive. She then proceeded to ask for “any women who have been cheated on to call in and tell me about that!”
She was getting on about how people should use contraception all the time because it’s a foregone conclusion that men will cheat, so women should protect themselves from the STDs that the men will bring back. I mean she has a point, but that’s certainly an overstatement – A) not all men cheat. B) Not JUST men cheat. I’m not sure which one is more important, but I really f’n hate when that stereotype is not just enforced, but reified as if it’s what all do naturally and it’s to be expected.
Admittedly, there is a lot of cheating in this world. Celebrity couples, regular couples, high school couples, it might happen to you. But dear God, why is it always assumed that men are the ones cheating? I suppose this hits close to home because I’ve proudly never cheated, nor had much of a reason to, nor had someone cheat on me. So I quickly get offended when the circular logic is thrown out, because not only is it circular, I personally prove it false.
Here’s a story: I was visiting two friends in New York a couple of summers ago. My first time in the Big Apple; I’d told my boys to try to set up some females for me to meet, and they succeeded. One of them, however, clearly had a bad breakup recently, looking at the three of us with disdain. She kept on having a harsh tone when talking to us, and at some point she started talking to one of the other women there saying, “All men are dogs. They’re all dogs. All men lie and all men cheat.” So I (of course) said, “Bad breakup recently? Do you wanna talk about it?” She reneged on the talking, just repeating the whole “all men are dogs” business and then challenged the three of us, saying, “Have you all cheated on your girlfriends?” I never have, and even if I had I didn’t know her so I would have owned up to it, and said no. The other two guys both said no, and these guys I trust very quickly – I’ve known them for years and they too had no reason to lie if they did. She responded with, “You’re all lying. All men cheat and lie and I know you all have cheated.” My friend was quick to point out her circular logic, “Well if you say all men cheat, then we said we didn’t cheat, then you say we lied, hell, that doesn’t add up!” She was floored, and stuck to her dogmatic belief that ALL MEN CHEAT.
But the problem was shown, the error was pointed out, and I was saddened. I’m not a cheater, I don’t condone cheating, and I nearly fought my friend when I found out he cheated on his girlfriend (another story for another time), but I’m not dumb – I know folks cheat. But notice what I said – people cheat; not specifically men or women, for that matter. I really hate when circular logic persists and even when it’s presented as circular it’s still considered the truth.
I understand experience tells us a lot of things, but there are many more experiences than the one you have, or even more importantly, the ones your friends tell you about. The biggest problem with this “false truth” is the prevalence of the story. “I think my man is cheating on me!” Wait, he’s actually just been hanging out with his boys. “I found these texts on his phone, girl what should I do with his cheating ass?!” Wait, somebody’s been texting him and he hasn’t been responding. I had a cousin tell me she didn’t believe her husband was actually going to coach little league ball when he said he was and tailed him and hid in the bushes to make sure (upon hearing a family member tell that tale, I concluded that women are crazy). But where are the stories of folks like my parents – no cheating, just getting through it all. I know plenty of people who haven’t cheated, I know women who have cheated, I know men who haven’t cheated – what REALLY precipitates this false inundation of information that vilifies men as the sole cheaters possible?
Somebody give me the answer, because I’m mad about this and already finished my Subway sandwich.
Pregnant Music
I stayed up all night Wednesday night, not sleeping until maybe 10 or 11pm Thursday. During the wee hours of Thursday morning, I heard “Baby By Me” by 50 Cent come on my shuffle, which prompted me to rant on Twitter. Difficult to do with 140 characters but I pulled it off. Rather than give you all some essay or something, just be treated to my own brand of ignorant intelligence, Twitter-style. Enjoy. (Anything in bold is possibly philosophically pertinent.)
And I went on YouTube to find the original version, not the one with all the Ne-Yo, because the hook is a lot less suave, but here’s the remix so you get an idea of what’s going on (if the song title doesn’t tell you):
Twitter Rant!!!
You know, I think I can take advantage of the mornin and give a little sermon on how wild music has gotten after postin bout Three 6 Mob.
A song I cant get out of my head is Baby By Me by 50. Real good beat, catchy hook, its just a nice lil hit. But really though, baby by me?
Not sure why niggas are so intent on makin babies without any regard for the mother or the child, its a commoditization of the family unit.
Sure, you may blame my Marxist leanings but for real – who makes a song bout LITERALLY MAKIN BABIES for no reason other than givin the…
woman millions in child support? Whole damn song bout beatin it out the frame raw. Nothin bout “I love you” or “You the 1″ just raw doggin.
Now R. Kelly got a song bout gettin girls preggo (LINK HERE) like thats the move. Niggas musta forgot – preggos get big bellies. Not cute for real.
I mean my baby momma/wife/whatever gon be cute to me when she preggo, but not nobody elses for real. Veins pulsatin, heavy breathin…
But back to the music, these niggas just settin a horrible example. Some young dumb fool gon think “i can get em pregnant too!” no nigga.
Gettin girls pregnant aint the move. Accidents happen but 50/Kels aint talkin bout accidents. They talkin bout raw doggin on purpose.
Wonder why we had a World AIDS day? Songs like this. I swear the next hit gon be a DJ Khaled hit w/ Wayne, Drake, Soulja Boy and Snoop…
and itll be called “No Mo Child Suppo” w/ Kanye, T-Pain and Nate Dogg on the hook.
You heard it here – DJ Khaled, Wayne, Drake, Snoop, Soulja Boy, Kanye, T-Pain, Nate Dogg – “No Mo Child Suppo” in late 2010. Wait for it.
Dumb niggas gon stop payin child support, sayin they doin civil disobedience. Nigga please; pay the $75 and shut the fuck up.
Sorry about the extra vulgarity (that’s actually an empty apology for the record), but thoughts would be appreciated? Is music getting out of hand between “Baby By Me” and R. Kelly’s “I Wanna Get You Pregnant?”
Clearly I’m having trouble with the whole making people pregnant stuff, as that goes beyond the whole “One Night Stand” business, and now into creating a new human being for no reason, especially the R. Kelly song. Just a damn shame.
On Humbling
As it’s been asked by a friend of mine, I should explain why someone might think I’m in an unsavory, or grinchy mood. And here’s one of the reasons – the supposition of the necessity of a humbling experience in order to gain something further down the line, also known as redemptive humility. I….HATE….REDEMPTIVE…HUMILITY. I HATE REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING. I HATE THE CONCEPT OF THE BREAKDOWN TO BUILD UP PATH FOR PEOPLE. And now a brief interlude to explain why.
Morehouse College. Great school. I loved my time there. Fun. Fraternities are on the campus, Ques, Sigmas, Kappas came back my senior year, Iotas, and Alphas. My freshman year I was staunchly anti-black frats and sororities. I felt their existence was moot and was nothing more than enhanced social groupings of mostly well to-do black people that rivaled gangs. As my cousin once told me, it’s similar to a gang initiation. There’s the jumping in, the humiliation, the idea that this is your family, that it’s for life, and that ultimately you get colors, symbols, signs and handshakes – all a secret code so that people know which gang you’re in. It made sense to me at 17. 5 years later, there’s still merit to her theory.
Clearly somebody has promoted Black Greeks to a higher calling.
Anyway, I said to people then I wouldn’t pledge nothin. Not a thing. Because I took issue with the process and the methodology of the process. “Break you down to build you up.” Forced humility to make you “look deep down inside of yourself and find….” whatever the hell they expect you to find in order to endure whatever hell they’re giving you. A redemption amidst the suffering. There’s a reason for it all. Or at least, there must be, right? Surely there’s no plausible reason for why someone would use a cane or a paddle on my ass unless there was some greater good to be acquired and this was the sole means of acquiring it? Surely there’s no plausible reason for why I would be humiliated in front of my peers unless there was some brighter future to be gained and this was the only way possible for us to get it? Surely, surely, surely…there are other ways to get there. But there’s a delusion out there that this is the only way, so we swallow the big pill and find a reason for our swallowing. We fabricate a reason so that we may deal with the suffering.
This isn’t meant to crap on black frats and sororities; at this point in my life I’m still not up for joining for a lot of the same reasons I had when I was younger but I’m not so militaristic about my stance, nor as dogmatic. But this is a concrete example of what “humbling” has come to mean – an acceptance of bending over and taking it up the tail pipe because of the ideal that there is a brighter future ahead. We just have to take that pain now. You know, the ol’ “Frontload the work now so on the back end you can relax” theory. It’s got its place, but to endure pain or suffering in the hope of a new future doesn’t resonate so well with me.
Back in my younger days, I mentioned this to a cousin of mine who is a Delta. She didn’t tell me I was wrong, she in fact agreed with me on my commentary on black social life with respect to Greekdom, and then said that it’s why I should join – so I can make it better in the future. And I said no, I have no impetus to go through a process just to change the process; I’d rather the reform be universal, if it’s going to happen. And that’s where we left it – our agreeing that something must be done, but that it makes no sense for me to do it internally if it means having to deal with the “breaking down to build up” concept.
Now don’t get me wrong – there’s truth in that concept. Sometimes the walls of a certain situation need to come crumbling down for a future good.
Social Humpty Dumpty was the gatekeeper of this wall...until capitalism pushed him through it, crumbling the wall.
The Berlin Wall is a physical example of this. Race relations in the United States are a more theoretical example. In both instances, for progress to be made, there had to be a complete overhaul, restructuring, or destruction of what had been in place for so long. But both of these examples could well be considered extraneous. So let’s get right to the individual and his/her (you know, I gotta be honest, it’s much easier to just use his and not have to worry about gender neutrality because I’m speaking so damn generally) experiences with redemptive suffering and “forced humility.”
What’s “forced humility?” When there’s some sort of process in place that endeavors to constrain you, limit you, temper you, makes you submit to it in order to get ahead or through it. It’s “humbling” you. But you don’t know that’s the goal – you expect some sort of nurturing for your growth. No nurture – just humility, being masked as nurturing. So you have no say in this process you’ve stepped into, but you will bend to it. You will bow to it. And you will submit to it, all in the attempt to get ahead, and maybe blaze a path so that the next generation won’t have to be forcibly humbled. But how do we get through this forced humbling? By adopting a redemptive suffering-esque mentality. We tell ourselves that THERE MUST BE A REASON, THERE MUST BE A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL…even if the light is just the ending of the suffering/”humbling process.” Then we must ascribe a use for that light, a reason for that light’s existence – we must make it so that the light has meaning, otherwise we had no reason to go through the process we went through. The human mind is amazing in its ability to trick itself.
So we’re now caught in a loop. We have gotten out of the process and created a meaning for the light at the end of the tunnel. We gave it a meaning in order for us to keep our sanity. We rationalized the process so that there is a rationale, because humans crave rationale and logical reasoning. We hate doing something for no reason, because that just doesn’t make sense. So we’ll have to make it make sense. “If it won’t make sense by itself, then by God it’ll make sense when I’m through with it.” And we force ourselves to live with that decision, because if we found the hypocrisy, we wouldn’t know why we did go through the process and that leads to the realization that the process is reified and that ultimately, there is no reason for it.
There’s something markedly Christian about redemptive suffering. You buy salvation now, but you don’t get it until later. You get tested and tried now, and you find out later if you pass. You get brow-beaten now, and you gain the ultimate gain later. I could come up with a billion similar examples, but it’s clear – the whole “tabbed for something higher” is a very, well Abrahamic-based religious concept. That’s why, for many people, the whole “destined for something greater,” “trials now for success later,” “take the ass-kicking now” mentality fits – it runs right in line with their religious affiliations or pretenses.
Perhaps those who believe in redemptive suffering find enough redemption to warrant their suffering.
I'm sure there's a redemptiveness to this tattoo. Or this could have been "forced humility."
But I don’t see why you chance it in the first place. I suppose there’s the faith concept – believe in what you aren’t sure about, because in the end your belief is all you have. From that standpoint, you engage in redemptive suffering because of what you believe to be true – that there is a redemption that far outweighs the suffering. For the neophyte, it’s being a part of that esteemed organization with great brothers and sisters and history and you can call yourself part of it. For the Christian, it’s the everlasting salvation of the kingdom of Heaven.
I don’t see how the suffering can be redeemed though. They seem to be two distinct issues that have a remote causal connection between them, but not a direct one or a necessary one. That’s the big issue I have – the acceptance of its necessity. That, at some point, you must bend over and take it from the system. From the players in the system. From the players who consciously understand the system and still play within its confines. This acceptance goes right in line with redemptive suffering, and pardon me if I don’t just scream hooray for knowing that I’m going to have my will bent for no good damn reason. The common examples have been American chattel slavery and the Holocaust. Both were events with enough suffering for the world over. Where’s the redemption at? And if there’s a redemption, were these horrific events the SOLE means of getting to that end? I would argue no, there are other means to that end, we’re just too lazy to find them.
So it stands – being broken down to be built up, supposedly like the Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin (not the beer swilling retired wrestler, Steve Austin) is the only way apparently for people to gain certain ends in character development and self-knowledge. Well next time you’re forced to take it up the tailpipe, on the ass, or suffer some indignity or humiliation, ask yourself if whatever you’re going to get could have been received some other, less insufferable way.
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