A WAOD Reader sent me this article out of the Detroit Free Press,Take a breath, then read about teens’ normal sex life .
I read this morning and cried. The I read your story in Essence and I feel like dying.WAOD Reader
She is talking about a forum that was recently held in Detroit where teenage Black girls starting at 13 years old spoke about their sex lives ( cringe). None of this should be anything new for readers of this blog. I have already stated on numerous occasions that certain segments of our community think that girls as young as 13 ought to “know better.”:
Many girls who were 13 to 16 years old were having sex and have had anywhere from 10 to 15 sexual partners — most they don’t know by name.
Some girls in that same age group are “dating” men as old as 30 because the men can give them things — love, money, presents — that their parents cannot.
They talked about girls who are being raped and feeling powerless to do anything afterward, blocked by a sexual irrevolution that has made feelings irrelevant and intercourse the new dating. They feel that these encounters are their fault, and they are ashamed to tell anyone. They are not seeing doctors. And some are getting pregnant. Detroit Free Press
Um, this reporter clearly is not a reader of this blog. I didn’t need to take a breath because I already read Getting Played by Jody Miller. Every reader of this blog needs to read that book. Its dry, but it will blow your mind and a blood vessel or two. Did we really need this forum in Detroit to tell us that young Black girls are vulnerable and exploited or are being fed a set of values that sets them up to be noting more than prostitutes and props?
Do you think that it is a coincidence that this message is being sent out uniformly? Did we not have thousands of Black women defending R. Kelly a few weeks ago?
The teenagers today look and dress like grown ups, and there parents see this and don’t care. I don’t think people should do time, when they do not know the person is a minor. Another thing the girl denied that it was her, even if it was her you can only go by what she says. The problem is R Kelly is making to much money doing him and people are jealous. Kelly keep doing you. -Mona Harris on ESSENCE.com
Did you not read about the women who lamented the fate of the men and boys who raped an 11 year old girl?
“Five years? Ten years? That’s ridiculous,” said LaToya Bell, 22, sitting on a porch with four others who nodded in agreement. “They (are) getting time for nothing. That girl, she knew what she was doing.“ LaToya Bell, 22 speaking about the gang rape of an 11-year old by up to 20 men and boys.
This isn’t an accident, this is systemic. These girls aren’t just “stumbling” into these situations, but a powerful system of OPPRESSION is steering them there and some people think they are actually making a “choice” BAH!!! Oh yeah, and some of the most important enforcers of the system of gender oppression… that would be other Black women and girls.
12 comments ↓
It’s like I said in the last post. When magazines started scaring black women with stories of a shortage of black men, all they did was talk about the problem but not offer any solution.
What has happened is many black women are scared of being alone forever and feel that having a man is the most important thing in the world; don’t get too much education, the articles say, be submissive, they say, do whatever the man wants even if it means giving your boyfriend your own child.
People need to stop being so scared of not having a man. I’ve had men and not had men and the truth is I’d rather be alone than wish I were.
So what’s the solution here? This subject matter has been written and rehashed and written again whether it’s Jody Miller ala Getting Played, or Dionne Patricia Stephens, with Freaks, Gold Diggers, Divas and Dykes: The Socio- historical development of African American adolescent females’ sexual scripts or Daphne Valerius with the documentary Souls of Black Girls. We know the problem. We see what the outcomes are. So what if anything is happening to combat this issue? And please no more freakin townhall meetings.
I don’t see what can be effective in the long-term unless we can get in the houses and raise these children ourselves, ’cause there’s a lot of bad parenting going on. We already have laws in place, but we can’t enforce them unless victims can go to adults with the truth without being attacked more than the predators. Somehow the idea of the “fast girl” has become more evil and blameworthy than her abuser. That’s cultural – you don’t change something like this with three months of late-night public service announcements on tv.
Too many of us are afraid to speak up against someone willing to assert themselves (afraid of “speaking truth to power”). We are going to have to recondition ourselves to speak out and endure conflict and win. I was at a park over the weekend and noticed how many grown men were looking at 12 and 13 year old girls as if these young girls were women.
There’s a lot of fear of men in our communities. We’re afraid to confront them, so they get their way. I don’t know what other explanation there could be for why we aren’t putting a stop to this.
Look the fact that girls living in tough economic situations are trading sex for favors ot being preyed on by the males in their environment is not in thel east surprising.
The fact the “good” kids, raised in “good” neighborhoods are getting pregnant and giving head like it is a handshake is not surprising.
We live in a world that has been pushing back heavily on the gains women and minorities made in the sixtiesa and seventies for the last 30 years.
There is not so subtle message that women are little more then sperm receptacles and baby incubators. Out popular culture is full of these messages.
The bottom line is…the s*it has hit the fan and unless…and I’m not real sure what can be done about it. What has to be done would take a full on Herculean effort combined with massive time, money and infrastructure.
Well we have to keep talking about it and putting more focus on this situation – which has gone on for YEARS. I remember being one of those 12 year olds and it was open season. Except I used to get angry at men and yell at them to leave me alone. Then I just wanted to be in a bubble and disappear.
Things will change once we adjust the mindsets of those who think it’s ok. It will have to start with us women. And some will need to be left behind if they can’t get the program. We can’t have a ton of people dragging down the lot of us.
This type of mentality with our young girls is destined to happen when we have our parents and other adults supporting this type of behavior (click on screen):
http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/player4.swf?autoplay=0&Addr=http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos&v=playFLV.php?loc=http://api.ning.com/files/uR729jcouJk7×4mGV6Ui0GruJa7t9m73buuaQYDdn4iDqh0bVQEGbMw0Cp*U3m2D73no*hnz-264cGHBPwqNAxQn6Scgfdkr/tmp55541.flv&play=1&vCode=PC94WSO1C7t1088y&enctrch=&vl=wshhy8801t7C1OSW49CP&ens=2&vid=10479
Edited:
This type of mentality with our young girls is destined to happen when we have our parents and other adults supporting this type of behavior (scroll down to view video):
http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhy8801t7C1OSW49CP
T
“That girl knew what she was doing”
That line gets me everytime.
It’s not just Detroit. Hi Gina and ladies.
I composed this on Tuesday because of what I’ve been hearing “educated” DC’ers of Black and white extraction saying on the streets. Some of these people probably spend their day jobs writing “policy” at NGO’s.
DC is going to have girls’ blood on its hands. I walked up to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I needed the night air, the faith, the prayer, the surrender. Maryam ultimately means a woman who is surrendered to Allah (swt), and I needed to go cry before our Mother and before Allah (swt).
And cry I did, snotty nose and all…
I hope Allah (swt) forgives me, but I stood on those steps in the dark and objected to the Most High (swt) and Her servants the Virgin Maryam and Isa (Jesus) al-Masih that DC is clearly putting policies in place that will result in the rape of girls across this city.
It is impossible that adult women and men can tell openly women that they need to “fall,” “suck on” a man, “submit” to a man, cause a man to “split those jeans,” let the men or women “eat,” be “pleasured,” discuss the men’s “erections,” who is or isn’t “fertile,” and “orgasms” without expecting to set off every pedophile in the city. I’m not discussing 2am conversations either. I mean the daily nonsense spewed on DC streets, from porches, apparently from those military choppers, and on their radio stations.
This activity is not promoting marriage. It is promoting women and girls as hypersexual targets. In a city where the men point to their crotches in broad daylight, where the women and girls emphasize their breasts and demand that people look down their shirts, an astonishing number of young girls discuss the numbers of men with whom they have had sex, and males from early teens up approach women aggressively – shamefully the capital of the U.S.-such malicious language does not make people “strong.” It tells rapists and pedophiles that girls and women – especially young girls- are open and approved targets.
Maryam Sharron Muhammad Shabazz
I recently joined this blog and I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who is concerned about our black and brown girls. I just added Getting Played to my Amazon wish list.
Looking forward to reading more on this blog, and glad that someone besides myself is finally taking up the cause.
The uniqueness of the Female Teen Summit: Sex, Lies and Older Guys, held on August 16, 2008, was that it was entirely youth driven and that the youth felt quite comfortable with sharing their concerns. This is a good sign! So many of our youth choose to remain silent on this issue due to peer pressure or the thought that a parent simply will not believe their stories.
We are glad that Dr. Cosby supported them in their efforts. I am honored to have mentored so many of the teen organizers, who moved from “victims to victors”
–FrankMcGhee
Neighborhood Service Organization/Youth Initiatives Project