Hey, Dudes.
Seven years later to the date.
That was the last time I wrote a blog entry for this website. Needless to say, as lot has happened since then.
But know what hasn’t changed? Not giving a shit about women! Then being a Black woman adds an extra layer of feeling like our lives matter less.
I deal with it on a daily basis. Too many times I’ve been ignored, because I was already invisible to them. That’s the power of being Black and female!
The Diddy news is super shocking to folks who haven’t been paying attention since Kim Porter’s suspicious death in 2018, Cassie’s eye-opening lawsuit last November (and that news was released around Porter’s death anniversary), or even since Tupac and Biggie’s deaths.
He’s creeped me out since Suge Knight called him out at the 1995 Source Awards. It’s crazy how Suge is looking less lethal these days. I didn’t like Diddy because of my suspicions on how he was with his female romantic partners, but the level of evil still shocking, no matter how suspicious.
Diddy and the likes of him are scarily powerful because they don’t get checked by their peers. They only hang around peeps who tell ‘em what they wanna hear. No one was there to say, “Hey, mane, you wildin’.”
Some folks didn’t believe Cassie when she filed her lawsuit, only until the hotel footage of her getting assaulted by Diddy was released. “Show us your marks, or you’re a liar who asked for it!”type shit.
Even now with Diddy’s no-bail, keep-yo-ass-in-jail arrest, most of the attention has been aimed at his baby oil count. I’ve already seen too many skits about it.
Anyway — those are serious examples, and then there are the seemingly light-hearted ones.
Recently, some wack ass podcast dudes (surprise, surprise!) came under fire for a two-month old clip recirculating from an interview with an even wacker ass podcast comedian dude (I don’t need to name any of these fools). No one was surprised the comedian said some racist shit about Black women, because he’s done so in the past. However, the podcast dudes incredibly disappointed many who considered them “the good ones” in the midst of Podcast Bros Fuckery.
Of course, the apology tour is happening most likely because their PR team reminded them that their core audience is Black women. I learned about them through a Black woman. I see mostly Black women commenting under their clips. I never gave it a serious listen because, well…I hate that I expect this to happen at this point.
It’s upsetting because we don’t even have to be in the room to have someone dog us. And seeing how they chucked that up to a “fight or flight” response rather than having the gall to call someone out when they are disrespecting us was even more frustrating. Especially when it was very clear they were laughing heartily at those wack ass jokes.
It’s ironic I am writing about this exactly seven years later after praising Donald Glover on his Emmy win for Atlanta, because he doesn’t like our Black asses, either. At least, it feels that way through his art. That was a tough realization after seeing way too many negative stereotype tropes he used for some of his Black female characters. (I promise you we are not walking up to random Black dudes with white girlfriends, aggressively asking why you don’t like “us sistas.”)
One thing that’s been universally addressed all year that I am happy about: confronting men’s toxic behavior towards women, to the point of questioning if they even like women. There are waaaaaay too many viral videos on social media showing grooms blatantly disrespecting their brides at weddings or husbands making tacky jokes about their wives on game shows.
It starts out small — a simple joke. Which is why something as “small” as defending us when we’re not in the room is a major step in stopping the bros from being a brute. A simple, “Nah, dude, that’s fucked up and I don’t agree with that,” really can help stop a lot of bad situations get worse.
We’re tired — aren’t y’all?