“Let’s Talk Candidly”

I want to explore a few of the issues brought out in the movie “For Colored Girls” and some of the issues addressed in my next novel “The Forgotten – A Love Story”.   The first issue I would like to explore is that of rape, in particular date rape.  Anika Noni Rose’s character played a dance instructor who met a nice man and after a week or so of walking, talking and getting to know him finally went out on a date with him.  They had a fantastic date.  One in which he dazzled her with conversation, attentiveness and respect.  He made her feel comfortable by empathizing with her as she spoke of past hurts.  He made her feel she could trust him.  She invited him home.  She was dating him.  She wanted to get to know him better.  He then raped her telling her that she wanted it; why else would she invite him over.  Sound familiar?

                Some comments I heard about that entire situation was she asked for it because she was too open.  She was too free with herself and too quick to totally open up to him.  Is that a reason she deserved to be raped? The character then became fearful and sullen.  She wasn’t her normal carefree, loving hopeful self.

                I am very familiar with that concept. In my book “From the Brink of Insanity Comes the Light, it explores rape and how it effects a woman’s self esteem.  It makes women question themselves examining if she did something wrong.  The end result is she becomes a shell of her former self.  Those that know me know this book was semi-autobiographical and the subject of rape came up several times. The following is an excerpt from Jasmine, a character in my book “From the Brink of Insanity Comes the Light”:

I hate weekends.  It reminds me of how lonely I really am.  I was so excited when I got married.  I thought there would be endless weekends spent together.  I thought we would explore new territories together.  I was robbed of that experience with Samuel.  I thought that I would get the chance to have a real relationship with Percy.  I was naive.

I was letting my mind run wild with ideas of Percy and his family enjoying the weekend and having fun while I was sitting alone in a three-bed room home with no one to share it with.

                “Damn Monday morning.  I don’t want to go to work.”  I said to myself as I lay in my bed staring at my alarm clock knowing that it will go off in an hour.  “Is that my door?  Damn I didn’t get my key back from Percy when he came in here last month to re-do my closets.” I listened to him come up the stairs.  I heard him call my name.  I didn’t answer.  I was hoping he would just go away.  He walked into my bedroom. 

                “Are you alright?” He asked me. “I called you all weekend to make sure you were ok and you didn’t return any of my calls.”  I responded by putting my covers over my head.

“Hey talk to me.” He whined.

“About what?” I said.

“Your feelings, about what you’re thinking?” He replied.

“Obviously they don’t matter.  Leave my key and go.”

“Look my family is important to me.”

“Then what are you doing here?  Go, be with them and leave me alone.”

“Your attitude is starting to get on my nerves.” He said as he jumps on top of me in the bed. “Hmm this is a good position to have you in.  Let’s have a quickie.”

“Get off of me.” I yelled.  “Get the fuck off of me.  This is not funny.”

He got this funny look on his face.  It was sort of twisted and sinister.  He wouldn’t get off of me.  I tried to raise my hand to move him off of me.  He then pinned my arms above my head with one hand and unzipped his pants with the other.

“Let go of me I yelled.  I don’t want you.  I don’t want to have sex with you.  Get off of me.”

“Come on you know you want it.  You know you want me. Just a quickie to say good-bye.  We didn’t get to say good bye properly.”  At that point he forced himself inside of me. It hurt. I was dry.  He tried to kiss me.  I turned my head.  I kept saying, "Get off of me!" He wouldn’t stop.  My alarm clock went off.

“Are you going to let me turn that off so we can continue?” He asked me.

“Get off of me.” I hissed.  He continued to rape me.  He didn’t get up until he came. He went to take a shower like he did nothing wrong.  I grabbed my robe went downstairs, curled up on my couch and cried.  I called my job and told them I wasn’t coming in today.  Percy over heard me call in.

                “What, you’re not going to work today?  Why?” He asked.

“You know what you did.” I said.

“I didn’t do anything you didn’t want me to do.”

“I said no. You raped me.” He sat there and looked at me.  The realization of the situation settled in and you could tell he was wrestling with it trying to make sense of it. He knew what he did but I could tell he really didn’t comprehend the magnitude of his actions.

“I did not.”  He said somewhat dejected. He got up to leave.  I curled up into the fetal position and cried.

                The next few days were a blur for me.  I walked around in a daze trying to forget what happened.  In fact I pushed it totally out of my mind.  I told myself that I was mistaken, that I really wasn’t raped, and that I wanted it.

                Date rape is the common term for non-consensual sexual (vaginal, anal, oral) intercourse that is forced (by way of physical force or psychological coercion) on a person by someone that they know. Date rape is a criminal act that is perpetrated by a social acquaintance, a friend, or a dating or intimate partner of the victim. Date rape is a complex and difficult area of criminal law, given the nature of the relationship between the victim and the defendant.

                Statistics:

·         1 in 6 women are raped

·         1 in 33 men are raped

·         College women are 4 times more likely to be raped

·         2007 there were 248,300 victims of sexual assault

·         Every 2 minutes someone in the United States is sexually assaulted

·         60% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police

·         73% of rape victims know their assailants

·         26% of rapist are convicted

·         More than 50% of reported sexual assaults/rape was reported to have occurred within a mile of their home or at their home

(US Department of Justice National Victimization Study- US Department of Justice Bureau of Statistics)

Sobering, isn’t it.  The sad thing about this is only 26% of rapist are convicted.  Rape is a hard thing to deal with especially if you know the person.  I can personally say that I know three people who were rapped and never reported the crime.  Why is that?  Are we as women afraid that we will be accused of asking for it? Are we afraid that no one will believe us especially if it’s your boyfriend or someone we knew? How do we as women get past this and start opening our mouths to report rape?

Rape is a very important subject to explore. Rape demoralizes women and renders them powerless.  It’s a man’s way of showing dominance and power over them.  I feel the more we share openly about this subject the more power we take back.  Maybe by speaking out about rape, more women would come forward and feel more comfortable reporting their rapes causing more perpetrators to be prosecuted.

Your thoughts:

1.       How many women do you personally know that have been raped?

2.       What do you think we should do to fight rape?

3.       What would you tell your girlfriend if she just confided in you her boyfriend/acquaintance has just raped her?

Lady P

This past weekend I saw for Colored Girls a Tyler Perry production based on the book “For Colored Girls Who have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.  It got me thinking about what we as women go through.  With the up and coming launch of my new novel “The Forgotten – A Love Story”, I wanted to explore relationships amongst women. This book is not your traditional love story.  It’s about the relationships we as African American women have with each other. (Be on the lookout for an excerpt of the book)  While writing this book, even though it’s fiction, I contemplated how we treat each other and how society views us as women.

                For Colored Girls, the movie is a powerful adaptation of the book which portrays black women in various life situations such as rape, domestic abuse, aids and abortion. But if you viewed the movie closely as I did, you could see the loving and not so loving relationships these women had with each other, family members and themselves. How do we really treat each other?  Do we value ourselves? Are we our own worst enemies?

This leads me to the story of Lady P. I use this as an example of how we as African American women treat each other:

                I met Lady P about five years ago at a football party. I had met this guy one Friday hanging out at the W.  We had a decent time that night so we exchanged phone numbers.  We talked all week.  We had great conversations. We were supposed to have a date but of course something went wrong with his car so our date never happened. Side note: When a man tells you he makes over $100,000 but he couldn’t get his vehicle fixed or doesn’t have alternate transportation, RUN.   I wasn’t all that interested in going out with him after that so of course every option he suggested to reschedule our date I was busy.  He finally invited me to his big football party the following weekend.  I thought that would be fun since it wouldn’t be just us. I was fairly new to Atlanta and wanted to meet new people.

                I pull up and he had a nice house in Cobb County, nothing special.  I was one of the first few people to get there so I had a prime seat and got to watch everyone that walked through the door.  As I sat there I started noticing something odd.  As each guest started walking in the more I was scratching my head saying “hmm” to myself.  Every guest for the first 30 minutes was a woman, a gorgeous woman at that.  When they saw me they gave me the look.  Y’all know the look.  The one that says what the hell you doing here with that fake smile plastered across their face.  I was silently praying that some guys would walk in soon.  My prayers were answered.

                As the night went on, Lady P walks in solo.  You know I liked that. She reminded me of me. She didn’t need an entourage to escort her.  She sat next to me.  We started chit chatting.  She asked me if I knew any one there. I said no.  I asked her the same and she said no.  Obviously she put two and two together.  I didn’t. 

Eventually with my vivacious personality I took over the party and helped facilitate the games.  Lady P wasn’t to be out done so she decided to be co-host.  I didn’t care.  I was having fun so I rolled with it.

                Lady P and I were standing outside talking at the end of the evening and the host kept coming out there.  I think he was feeling himself and his male prowess, maybe even trying to make me jealous, I don’t know, but he was all over Lady P. She of course was pissed about something.  I could’ve cared less about him especially since I thought he was a dweeb. He was so full of it and he really didn’t even realize he had nothing much to show for himself.

Lady P and I exchanged numbers and vowed to hang out.  We got together for dinner about two weeks later.  She kept asking me about my relationship with the host.  I told her I just met the man and nothing was going on especially since he wasn’t my type.  She seemed relieved. After a few glasses of wine she finally revealed to me that she slept with the host and wanted to know if I did the same.  I assured her I didn’t but to be honest, even if I did I wouldn’t have told her. That just wasn’t any of her business. I didn’t know her that well to reveal intimate parts of myself.  Despite that conversation about the host, we ended up having a good time.  Good food and good wine usually helps solidify a friendship.

We hung out a lot after that.  I started noticing though, every time we went out every man that tried to talk to me, she tried to push up on.  I just dismissed it.  I just couldn’t believe someone who called themselves a friend would do such a thing.  Dating, trying to talk to or even looking at one of your friends man was taboo within the sister community.

I got real suspicious of Lady P when at each BBQ I had all my girlfriends would complain about how she would push up on all the men and treat them like dirt.  She was usually the bar tender and she would apparently service the men and not the women.  They felt that she was an ultra bitch.  I would say no that’s not like her. She’s really a good person.

But then she did the unthinkable.  Well it was unthinkable to me.  We were hanging out at a new hip place.  We got there early so there weren’t many people there.  The band was setting up and taking pictures for their website.  Lady P went to the restroom.  I was talking to the band manager getting to know him and all.  He was a nice looking guy so I kept flirting.  We were in the middle of bantering back and forth and he was about to take a picture of me when Lady P jumps her ass in the photo. I wasn’t too thrilled about that but what the hell.  By then the band started playing.  The cute band manager was standing up by me.  Then Lady P got up from her seat and stood on the other side of the band manager.  She then started chatting him up.  The next thing I knew she bent back, grabs her purse, pulls out her cell phone and exchanges numbers with the man. I looked. I then asked

“Did you just give that guy your phone number?”

“Yeah.” She replied as if it wasn’t big deal. “So we can know when and where the band will be playing.” She continued.

“Oh, Ok.” I said as every complaint about her from my other girlfriends was dancing in my head along with a few questionable incidences we’ve had in the past.

She kept chattering y’all know the senseless chatter we do when we know we’re busted. I just looked at her in disbelief.  I didn’t know what to say or do. She went and bought a round of drinks.  I guess she was feeling real guilty. 

The band took a recess.  We walked downstairs to see what was going on down there.  I still didn’t say too much too her especially since the band manager was there hanging around us.  But once we got down stairs I let her have it.  She acted as if she didn’t know what I was talking about. Now, don’t get me wrong, it had nothing to do with the band manager as he meant nothing to me and we just met so there was no connection. What this was about was the blatant disrespect and breaking a code we sisters never break.  We do not talk to, smile at, wink at or get the phone numbers of a man our fellow sisters are interested in.  That’s a line true sisters don’t break.

With all we go through as African American women, such as the movie For Colored Girls so expressively showed, are we reduced to this:  trying to stab another sister in the back for a man? Don’t we have greater issues to conquer like how to fight domestic violence or how to eradicate AIDS from our communities?  Do we have to fight another sister for a man also?

Your thoughts:

1.       Have you ever experienced something like this? If so what happened and how did you handle it?

2.       What do you think is the biggest conflict amongst African American women?

What do you think is the biggest conflict amongst women in general