Tag Archives: Maturity

“Grace,” #MeToo, and Our Binary World

20 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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Water buffaloes in mud, January 2017. (http://reddit.com).

Part of me knows that some of you will assume that I shouldn’t be discussing this on my blog at all. I’m a man, a Black man, a middle-aged Black man, so what do I know, really? I haven’t been on a date with anyone other than my wife since 1995. And my own history with hypermasculinity and sexism combined with my exposure to patriarchy and misogyny should disqualify me from making any comments on Babe.net’s “Grace” piece, right?

But I do have a few things to say. That is, after a week of reading tweets, articles, Facebook posts, as well as conversations with my wife and a couple of friends. Most of the divide has been between those adamant that “Grace” was a #MeToo victim of some form of sexual violation and those who believed that her evening with Aziz Ansari was little more than a bad date. This is yet another time in which the American penchant for seeing the world as white or black, or in computer code, as 0s or 1s, can literally blind most from the truth. Both sides are sort of right and sort of wrong. And like an electron (which can be in two places seemingly at once), this isn’t a binary issue. It’s a both-and situation.

Either-or thinking, December 2014. (http://survivingchurch.org).

Ansari was a doggish pig. Period. His intent with “Grace” was purely sexual. He saw her as a piece of meat (or, really, a “piece of ass”). That would explain both Ansari’s words and actions as Katie Way wrote them last week. Does that make his sexist? Of course!

Ansari also tried to persuade “Grace” into full-blown intercourse a couple of times after she had expressed her uncomfortability with moving beyond kissing, oral sex, and other fondling. Coercive behave is also doggish, venturing toward the misogynistic. All of this is true, and is certainly part of how entitlement and patriarchy can work together in sexual relationships.

Context, however, is always important in any situation. Especially one that isn’t as cut and dry as what Way described regarding “Grace” and her Ansari date. So many have harped on the idea that questioning “Grace’s” decision-making in any form is the equivalent of what misogynists do to rape victims. Not true. Not when the power dynamic is limited and diffuse at best. Not when Ansari never used physical coercion or the threat thereof to get the sex he obviously wanted.

And certainly not when “Grace’s” actions didn’t line up with her word. Some have argued about the inability of men to read the subliminal subtext of women when they are saying “No” or “I’m leaning toward no.” And for many men, this may well be the case. For so many women, being too direct may well lead to a verbal or physical confrontation with a misogynistic man. But that negates the context of Way’s piece. “Grace’s” physical responses and cues throughout the sexual encounter either belied her words, or her words were simply unclear.

Truth is, after their first try, Ansari should’ve not only just stopped, which he did. He should’ve also immediately called “Grace” a cab and sent her home. But in even writing this, isn’t this as much a form of ceding power to patriarchy as it would be a sign of sexual maturity, at least on Ansari’s part? 

Truth is, “Grace” should’ve also have been clearer with herself about what she wanted from her date. And should’ve just ended the date, rudely, discreetly, with clearer words and clearer actions, either at the restaurant or after the first sign of being uncomfortable. Because feminism is about taking charge of one’s own womanhood, and not just merely resisting patriarchy and misogyny with mealy-mouthed language.

Truth is, “Grace” had very different expectations of Ansari and that one-and-only date. The kind of expectations that are a bit immature, especially for a women who thinks that “[y]ou guys are all the same. You guys are all the fucking same.” That the main divide among women who’ve commented on “Grace” is age (with the over-under around 35 years old) is telling. Some will say that women (especially younger women) shouldn’t put up with legal yet boorish behavior, either. So don’t!

Truth is, “Grace’s” story via Way’s article is a hit piece, a sort of revenge for Ansari bursting her internalized image of him as one of the few “good guys.” “Grace” got to violate Ansari’s private life because she was enraged that Ansari saw her as little more than a piece of sexual meat. And while Ansari showed himself on this date with “Grace” to be a sexist pig, this isn’t a #MeToo moment.

Unless, of course, we distance ourselves from context, privilege, and intersectionality. Most assume that “Grace” was a 22-year-old White woman. Probably. But even if not, Way’s article about “Grace” is drowning in Whiteness. Especially when considering “Grace’s” relatively lofty expectations that Ansari would be different from other men. Especially when taking the approach that she wanted Ansari to calm her down after the awkwardness of their first sexual try. What made “Grace” think that he was so different? What made her actions as confusing as they were?

A lock of blonde hair (an allusion to Pope’s Rape of the Lock), June 18, 2013. (http://allure.com).

The Sturm und Drang over this hit piece reminds me of when I read Alexander Pope’s mock epic poem The Rape of the Lock in tenth grade. I might not remember much from Mrs. Buckley’s otherwise boring-ass English class in 1984-85, but I do remember the story of how a war started because a baron cut a lock of Belinda’s hair and kept it. It’s also typical of how race riots and lynchings of Black men often occurred, over perceived slights and embarrassing winks.

Speaking of intersectionality, where have all the “Grace” defenders been this week on serious #MeToo issues? Where have they been on Jade Martin for the past week, as a video of her assault at the hands of a Pizza Milano manager in Pittsburgh went viral, an instance of both racism and misogyny? Where have they been on the sentencing phase for Larry Nassar, a man who sexually assault over 100 young women and girls over decades? Where are they on the Rohingya, as the Myanmar security forces have admitted killing and raping women and children while driving them out of the country?

No, for so many privileged, younger, and White American women, a bad sexual encounter with a man whose sexual sexism was obvious is more important that the felony assault of a Black women for wanting to use the bathroom. The last week has shown yet again the racial, ethnic, class, and even age divide that has plagued #MeToo ever since it became more about White women and less about marginalized women and people.

Ambient Hero

18 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Tom Welling as Clark Kent/The Blur (almost Superman) from Smallville series, November 18, 2013. (http://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/).

Tom Welling as Clark Kent/The Blur (almost Superman) from Smallville series, April 2011. (http://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/).

In the years between the chronological end of Boy @ The Window (February ’90) and when I began dating my wife (December ’95) of now thirteen and a half years, my relationship life was hit and miss, at times in a silo, and for two of those years, almost completely nonexistent. Grad school took up much of my time and energy, and there were times I barely had the money to catch a bus to campus at Pitt or Carnegie Mellon, much less go out for a dinner and a movie.

It was at the end of ’94, after becoming ABD (All But Dissertation for those not pursuing PhDs) that I felt I finally had the time to take my dating life more seriously. I realized that I’d been separating my sex life from my wanting-a-more-serious-relationship-life. Casual sex was fine, but I still found it more daunting to be in a relationship when I wanted more. So did the women in my life back then.

These realizations came to a head in my relationship with a woman I’ll call AMB for the purposes of this post. I’d known AMB off and on since ’90, as a result of a mutual friend whom I’d worked with during my Western Psych job years. By ’95, she was in grad school herself at the University of Maryland, working on her master’s degree in history. It was a different area in the field, luckily, so no frequent debates about how many historians can dance on the head of a pin.

During that summer and into the fall, we began seeing each other off and on. I found it wonderful at first. After years of grad school, of not even being remotely attracted to anyone who was a historian, I could have a conversation with someone about my doctoral thesis research and about my family at the same time. And all without having to explain it as if I were teaching a class or their eyes glazing over!

But there were issues right from the start. At the time, AMB lived with her mother in Maryland, and with me not owning a car, it was a four-and-a-half-hour trip by bus, longer by train, and costly on a grad school budget if I planned on renting a car. My dissertation research, though, brought me to the DC area frequently. So I visited her in August, October and November, while she came to visit me in July and October as well.

Oscillating balls hitting each other, November 18, 2013. (http://www.burbuja.info).

Oscillating balls hitting each other, November 18, 2013. (http://www.burbuja.info).

There was also the matter of her little one. At the time, I couldn’t have imagined working on an M.A. or PhD with a young son or daughter to raise. And although I admired how AMB was juggling, she was also struggling with this as well. Between her ex and the psychological abuse that came with him, her daughter, her mother and grad school, it was no wonder that our phone conversations could turn from boyfriend-girlfriend to psychologist-client on a dime.

The biggest issue, though, was defining the nature of our more-than-friendship as it began to evolve after July ’95. Depending on the week and what set of friends were around, AMB either introduced me as her “boyfriend” or as her “friend.” The first time this occurred, we were around a group of her U Maryland friends during my October visit, the weekend before the Million Man March. But one-on-one or over the phone, she didn’t slip up. I found it a bit strange, even as someone who didn’t date between December ’92 and October ’94.

Then, on AMB’s last visit with me in Pittsburgh, at the end of October ’95, she did it again, at Hillman Library, among a group of our mutual acquaintances and friends. What really clinched it for me, though, was when she added that I was her “hero.” That was a record scratcher for me. Really? How many lives had I saved? Could I shoot laser beams out of my eyes or phase through walls? After having put two younger women on a pedestal in my previous life (Crush #1 and Crush #2, Wendy and Phyllis — see blog), I couldn’t — no, I wouldn’t — allow someone to do the same to me. Especially someone with much more serious issues in her life than dating and high school.

So when AMB invited her up to her hotel room, I came up, but I definitely wasn’t in any mood for anything other than an explanation. She didn’t really give me one then. And three weeks later, after ditching our date to see the Kiss of the Spider Woman musical (it was playing in Baltimore at the time, headlined by Vanessa Williams) by going to see it with her friends two days earlier (all without telling me in advance), I’d had enough.

Vanessa Williams in Kiss of the Spider Woman poster, circa 1994. (http://geminibroadway.com).

Vanessa Williams in Kiss of the Spider Woman poster, circa 1994. (http://geminibroadway.com).

On this date eighteen years ago, we had a two-hour phone conversation, where I broke up with AMB. I told her that I’d tired of our “oscillating relationship, where I was just a ‘friend’ one minute, and a ‘boyfriend’ the next.” I told her that she needed to figure out herself and her relations with her ex, her daughter and her mother if she really wanted a more meaningful relationship in the future.

I’d broken off relationships before, but not like this. Mostly, I’d just ignore phone calls and email, or say something so sarcastic that the woman would get the message. This was hard. I was destroying AMB’s image of me as a hero, not just agreeing not to kiss or hug her anymore. Or maybe, just maybe, I was doing what a real hero does, which in this case meant not taking advantage of another human being at their most vulnerable.

On Maturity and Writing In Text Message Form

11 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Dulcesita, "i would die for you," November 11, 2013. (http://www.myxer.com).

Dulcesita, “i would die for you,” November 11, 2013. (http://www.myxer.com).

In Boy @ The Window, I have a chapter on my first year at Pitt and the baggage I carried from my last months in Mount Vernon, New York, Phyllis (a.k.a., Crush #2) included. I haven’t discussed Phyllis much in the six and a half years I’ve been running this blog on all things related to my memoir. Mostly because once I got over my crush-turned-internalized-obsession, I realized that she wasn’t really all that as a person. Still, given the number of posts I’ve done on my Mom, my late idiot ex-stepfather Maurice and Wendy (a.k.a., Crush #1), Phyllis does deserve some mention, along with my stumbled-filled transition to manhood that went with the years between December ’85 and August ’88.

A key point for me in this transition was in October and early November ’87. I finally worked up the courage to write Phyllis a note about an incident earlier that summer, one in which she all but emasculated me at the White Plains Galleria. As I wrote in Boy @ The Window:

Crushing walnuts in plastic bag, November 11, 2013. (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/).

Crushing walnuts in plastic bag, November 11, 2013. (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/).

I got the address, bought her a card for her eighteenth birthday, and sat down and wrote her. About how I liked her and wanted to know if she “ever liked me.” I needed to know if she and her sister really were talking about me at the bus stop that day, “one way or the other.” I wanted to know what she thought I needed in order to impress someone like her in the future. Then I added “Happy 18th Birthday!” I sent the card off on the second week in October, just a few days before her birthday.

On the second of November, I got her response. It was in purple ink, with heart shapes and circles for dots over “i”s. Reading her letter was like reading the liner notes off of a Prince album. Like the song “I Would Die 4 U,” Phyllis had decided to limit her English skills to the ’80s equivalent of sign language on paper, a real “revolution” on both their parts. I remember she started, “Thank U 4 your card 2day,” an insult to my intelligence. She would’ve been better off with, “Yo nigga, ’s up wit’ ya sweatin’ me?” She wrote indirectly that she did like me at one point in time, but added “but we’re in college now . . . around lots of nu people” She admitted that I was her and Claudia’s topic of conversation that day, but “I needed 2 get over that.” She hinted that I shouldn’t write her again, and that was it. No apologies, no attempt to understand how I felt…

After Phyllis’ wonderful response, I all but stopped going to class. I missed most of my classes the month of November, only showing up for exams or if my mood had let up long enough to allow me to function like normal. The weekend before Thanksgiving, I allowed my dorm mates to cheer me up by getting a couple of cases of Busch Beer. These were the Pounder type, sixteen-ounce cans. After getting Mike to get us the cases, we went back to Aaron’s room and started drinking. I downed four cans in fifteen minutes, and was drunk within a half hour. I started throwing around the word “bitch.” Anytime anyone mentioned Phyllis’ name – or any woman’s name for that matter — one of us said the B-word and we’d guzzle down some beer.

In today’s world of text messaging, I would’ve found Phyllis’ response so ridiculous that I probably would’ve shared it with close friends and laughed about it for weeks afterward. But as someone with the emotional and psychological maturity of a twelve-year-old in the fall of ’87, Phyllis’ response really, really, really hurt. Her letter shattered the pedestal on which I had placed her, and reaffirmed every negative thing I’d felt about myself for the previous half decade.

Depression image, Carroll College, Counseling Services, November 11, 2013. (http://www.carroll.edu).

Depression image, Carroll College, Counseling Services, November 11, 2013. (http://www.carroll.edu).

It also left me so depressed that I finished that semester with a 2.63 GPA. That, and spending the holidays at 616, made me determined to use the anger I felt toward myself and Phyllis as fuel for the next semester. And even though that worked so well that I made Dean’s List, I still hadn’t really gotten over Phyllis’ rejection by the time the school year was over in April ’88.

It took one last look at that letter — that unbelievably trifling and simple letter — to realize that even under the best of circumstances, Phyllis and I would’ve been a match made only in a mad scientist’s laboratory. I’d never be interested in a human being who talked down to me, as if I was unworthy of anything other than some simple shorthand language. Or in any woman whose expectations of men were about as objectifying as Mike Tyson’s views of women. I realized that I had finally gotten to know the real Phyllis, and in the process, had begun to know the real me, and what I needed to change about myself in order to build a better, 2.0 version of me. With that, like so much from my freshman dorm at Lothrop Hall, Phyllis’ letter became part of my garbage pile.

Quitting Before a Fight

13 Monday Feb 2012

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks Fight, Convention Hall, Atlantic City, NJ, June 27, 1988. (http://antekprizering.com).

As a writer, I can often see my past as if it happened within the past week. As a forty-two year-old, though, it sometimes seems like my failures and pitfalls are a long-lost memory, one of a very bad dream. To think that it’s been a full thirty years since my preteen struggles with identity, purpose, and the realization that I was in an intense academic competition that I was predestined to lose. It seems like I was playing a role, acting my way through my tweener and teenage years.

But this time thirty years ago, I seriously thought about quitting the Humanities Program. It was the beginning of the third marking period in seventh grade at A.B. Davis Middle School, early February ’82. My grades were unimpressive. I struggled in every subject except social studies, where three years of reading World Book Encyclopedia and forty books of all kinds on World War II made me a nerdy standout among my mostly nerdy peers. My social studies teacher Paul Court was so much fun and so inept that he played games with us to keep our class interesting. Anyone who could find factual errors in his teachings on American history would earn twenty-five cents. I’d already earned more than three dollars by the end of the second marking period.

I barely averaged a C+ in math. My Italian teacher Ms. Fleming told me that my “Italian sounded British.” And I was averaging a C+ in art. In Art! All because Doris Mann, who was about as good an art teacher as I was at making friends, said, “I don’t give A’s for effort. I give out grades based on your ability to create good art.” I couldn’t believe that she gave me C+’s while the art world fifteen miles away cheered folks who smeared blood, paint, and feces on canvasses!

I thought that I was the only one who felt like a failure. I was certain that I was more of a failure than my Holmes School classmates or other, non-Pennington-Grimes students in Humanities, at least. If other students appeared to have problems, especially my classmates who were alumni of the Pennington-Grimes program (Mount Vernon public schools’ K-6 Humanities Program), I believed that they were faking it.

The Crucible (play), date and location unknown. (http://reyvl.com).

I had good reason to. It was around this time that one of my White female classmates from Pennington-Grimes had become anxiety-ridden prior to a test in our English class. She began to sweat, her hands and face turned colors, like one of Arthur Miller’s female characters in The Crucible, his famous Salem-Witch-Trial play.

Within a few seconds, three of her friends joined this tortured soul in this expression of fear. The one girl kept saying, over and over, “I know I’m going to fail!” The other three huddled around her and joined in séance, as if they expected God to witness this physical expression of pressurized fear and take pity on them. That this involved the Pennington-Grimes group of Humanities girls was not lost on me. They loved their grades, almost as much as they loved Jordache Jeans, The Gap or Benetton.

We received our exam grades from Mrs. Sesay a few days later. My grade: a 78. The Fear Bunch’s lowest grade: a 92. Understanding how quickly fear can destroy your confidence: priceless. Their fears had left me thinking more about failure — theirs and mine — than it did about the task at hand.

Then it was my turn to act demon-possessed. I went to the back of the classroom at the end of that day and chanted, “I’m silly, I’m stupid. I’m silly, I’m stupid. I’m silly, I’m stupid.” over and over again while pounding the back of my head into the side wall. But I learned a valuable lesson that day. That doing well required me to ignore the worries and grades of other, to concentrate on me and my own emotions on test days.

So, I spent the first two weeks in February thinking about sliding into the general population of A.B. Davis Middle School. I couldn’t do much else other than think. With the growing problems of lack of food, late rent payments and three siblings at 616, my mother’s tiny Mount Vernon Hospital paycheck, and my idiot and long-term unemployed Hebrew-Israelite of a stepfather, I had no one to talk to about school (see “Humanities: First Contact, Full Circle” from September ’11).

What I didn’t realize was that I hadn’t yet begun to fight. My efforts up to that point in Humanities — from making friends to studying — were all half-hearted at best. I was the emotional equivalent of an eight-year-old in a preteen’s body, one right at the early stages of puberty at that. With life at 616 starting to fall apart and the isolation I felt at school, I was growing up, whether I wanted to or not. All it would take was an immature spark of inspiration to prove it….