random morning thoughts....been in so many spiritual circles where a guy (always unprompted and always white) will pop off with something sexually strange...like sending a group text of their privates or sending video of a naked woman with a raunchy joke attached. This has happened several times. I'm not traumatized or enraged by it, but I'm left wondering what I'm supposed to do? There is nothing that triggers or forewarns these incidents. I'll just look down at my phone and go 'oh...ok.' Then there's this pause where I try to figure out how to respond. I feel like...
-the sharing of something explicit is a male bonding. It's probably been done for thousands of years. I bet the first caveman artist showed their drawing of the herd to his appreciative tribe and then whispered to his friend 'but I drew some other stuff at the back of the cave that you should see...don't bring your wife.'
- there is something extremely basic and primitive about bonding over images...bodies, cars, houses. Giving guys the benefit of the doubt, it's like your elementary school friends sharing nudie pics with you or guys at a bar -gay or straight- checking out the crowd. I don't want to automatically shame someone seeking to make a connection.
-the sharing of something explicit is a male bonding. It's probably been done for thousands of years. I bet the first caveman artist showed their drawing of the herd to his appreciative tribe and then whispered to his friend 'but I drew some other stuff at the back of the cave that you should see...don't bring your wife.'
- there is something extremely basic and primitive about bonding over images...bodies, cars, houses. Giving guys the benefit of the doubt, it's like your elementary school friends sharing nudie pics with you or guys at a bar -gay or straight- checking out the crowd. I don't want to automatically shame someone seeking to make a connection.
- I leave my sexuality out of the equation right now. These guys don't know I'm gay. And I 'present as straight.' So they are offering this to a presumed straight, masculine black guy. But I'm not straight. And so the 'share' doesn't hit me in the way they expect. It is more like a pet cat bringing you a dead animal as a gift. You realize that they think they are honoring you...even as you the owner are disturbed by the gift. And if you reject the gift or yell at the cat, they may end up never opening up again. So you both try to accept the gift while trying not to encouraging Whiskers to do it again.
- at the same time, I wondered if this bonding is subtly trains men into being low-level creeps. We present one way but then...back at the clubhouse or the locker room or the man cave...the creep returns two-fold after being suppressed in polite company.
- also is it training men into being acceptable creeps among each other and possibly unacceptable creeps with women. I have been in incidents where women colleagues have professed discomfort with a guy. Nothing overt...just an unease. Their spidey senses tingle. And usually when the woman leaves the room -and it's just men- her intuitions are proved correct. I went to a play with a woman friend and afterward, I spotted an actor I know and admire. This actor is extremely good at playing creepy stalker guys on screen and stage...almost too good. I greeted him, we chatted, I turned to introduce my friend to the actor...she looked at him for a second, grabbed her phone, and then pretended to text while turning away from me. Later on, I asked my friend 'what was that about' and she said 'ehhh, the guy seemed weird and like a creep so I just went into my phone.' Later on, the actor was not invited back for a tv show. No accusations...but it was conveyed that the women actors on set didn't feel comfortable with him.
-a few yrs ago, I shared about the black boys on the subway who were loudly watching porn on a phone. Passengers pretended not to notice the loud moaning sounds emanating out of a boy's phone while other kids leered and bragged...'that's my bitch...that's the way I do it...yeah.' At the next station all the boys got out...except for the one. When the boy no longer had his friends, he turned off his phone, picked up a book, and started reading. It was immediate shift. Without an audience of peers, the loud pornography was suddenly inappropriate on a subway. He didn't even switch over to playing a video game...he put away the phone entirely, as if to dissociate himself from the thing. And he picked up the most virtue-signaling object in his arsenal...a hardcover book. I continued staring at him as his head was planted firmly in the book and I couldn't decide whether he was intently reading...or hiding his face behind the mask of a book.
-at the same time, I wonder how come it tends to be older white guy sharing? Maybe it's the privilege, maybe it's wanting to feel camaraderie with younger generation or a browner generation. Maybe there is a part of me that wonders if there's a racial element to these shares b/c it's always a white guy sharing with me. It's as if the blk guy would appreciate this or the white person can share this with the blk guy b/c there is a primitiveness in his heart that will find joy in just a naked white woman. In the quintessential non-fiction book "Black Like Me" a white writer disguised himself as a black man and traveled around the south in the 1970s. Yes, he saw racism and police brutality...but then he also made note of how many white guys confided in him and tried to bond with him/the blk guy about sex. The author said it always happened at night. If he was hitchhiking during the day as a blk person, no white driver would pick him up. But at night...he would get offers from multiple white male drivers. And he said the conversation always turned sexual at night. The white driver would ask him about his exploits as a black man, if he slept with white women, if he has a bigger penis, etc. The white writer realized that the greater the societal stigma, the greater fascination/fixation white Southerners had about black sexuality. They were aroused, horrified, intrigued, can't look away, need to possess, need to castrate and tame, need to project their own desires into black bodies, and then tame again, castrate again. The cycle of arousal, horror, punishment, control, castration, re-arousal repeats itself again and again. It is the dark echo chamber of American psyche.
- I don't know why I am thinking about this now. Maybe because the door bell rang at 6:57 AM on a Saturday morning and it was an Amazon delivery. Maybe because the delivery guy was black and we bonded with a simple, early morning head nod. Maybe it was reading the Michaela Coel article about sexual trauma and abuse.
- at the same time, I wondered if this bonding is subtly trains men into being low-level creeps. We present one way but then...back at the clubhouse or the locker room or the man cave...the creep returns two-fold after being suppressed in polite company.
- also is it training men into being acceptable creeps among each other and possibly unacceptable creeps with women. I have been in incidents where women colleagues have professed discomfort with a guy. Nothing overt...just an unease. Their spidey senses tingle. And usually when the woman leaves the room -and it's just men- her intuitions are proved correct. I went to a play with a woman friend and afterward, I spotted an actor I know and admire. This actor is extremely good at playing creepy stalker guys on screen and stage...almost too good. I greeted him, we chatted, I turned to introduce my friend to the actor...she looked at him for a second, grabbed her phone, and then pretended to text while turning away from me. Later on, I asked my friend 'what was that about' and she said 'ehhh, the guy seemed weird and like a creep so I just went into my phone.' Later on, the actor was not invited back for a tv show. No accusations...but it was conveyed that the women actors on set didn't feel comfortable with him.
-a few yrs ago, I shared about the black boys on the subway who were loudly watching porn on a phone. Passengers pretended not to notice the loud moaning sounds emanating out of a boy's phone while other kids leered and bragged...'that's my bitch...that's the way I do it...yeah.' At the next station all the boys got out...except for the one. When the boy no longer had his friends, he turned off his phone, picked up a book, and started reading. It was immediate shift. Without an audience of peers, the loud pornography was suddenly inappropriate on a subway. He didn't even switch over to playing a video game...he put away the phone entirely, as if to dissociate himself from the thing. And he picked up the most virtue-signaling object in his arsenal...a hardcover book. I continued staring at him as his head was planted firmly in the book and I couldn't decide whether he was intently reading...or hiding his face behind the mask of a book.
-at the same time, I wonder how come it tends to be older white guy sharing? Maybe it's the privilege, maybe it's wanting to feel camaraderie with younger generation or a browner generation. Maybe there is a part of me that wonders if there's a racial element to these shares b/c it's always a white guy sharing with me. It's as if the blk guy would appreciate this or the white person can share this with the blk guy b/c there is a primitiveness in his heart that will find joy in just a naked white woman. In the quintessential non-fiction book "Black Like Me" a white writer disguised himself as a black man and traveled around the south in the 1970s. Yes, he saw racism and police brutality...but then he also made note of how many white guys confided in him and tried to bond with him/the blk guy about sex. The author said it always happened at night. If he was hitchhiking during the day as a blk person, no white driver would pick him up. But at night...he would get offers from multiple white male drivers. And he said the conversation always turned sexual at night. The white driver would ask him about his exploits as a black man, if he slept with white women, if he has a bigger penis, etc. The white writer realized that the greater the societal stigma, the greater fascination/fixation white Southerners had about black sexuality. They were aroused, horrified, intrigued, can't look away, need to possess, need to castrate and tame, need to project their own desires into black bodies, and then tame again, castrate again. The cycle of arousal, horror, punishment, control, castration, re-arousal repeats itself again and again. It is the dark echo chamber of American psyche.
- I don't know why I am thinking about this now. Maybe because the door bell rang at 6:57 AM on a Saturday morning and it was an Amazon delivery. Maybe because the delivery guy was black and we bonded with a simple, early morning head nod. Maybe it was reading the Michaela Coel article about sexual trauma and abuse.
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