Arlene Fenton, special to No Wedding No Womb!
LEAVE THE BURNING HOUSE
If you woke up in the middle of the night, choking to the smell of smoke, and opened your eyes only to see that your curtains, walls, ceiling and dressing table were engulfed in fiery, white hot flame — as your lungs burned as you gasped for air — what would you do?
What if your partner who was lying in bed with you looked you straight in your face and said: “What flames? What smoke? The problem is not that bad. Go back to sleep.” … all the while you clearly smell your hair getting singed by the overwhelming heat of the tongues of flames that were disintegrating your headboard… What would you do?
If your mama called you on the phone and was saying, “It’s all your fault. You should have turned that space heater off like I told you to. You made your bed, now lie in it!” while you watched the flames creeping up your bed linens, what would you do?
If the television (now smoking, flickering on and off, and throwing sparks of electricity) had the latest “expert” on, teaching that someone in your position should take that half-drunk glass of water on the bedside table and try to put the housefire out with it… what would you do?
If every self-help book on your shelf told you to feel free to play with the fire, enjoy the fire – but just protect yourself by wearing flame-retardant nightgowns in the process… what would you do?
IF THE ENTIRE WORLD stood outside your window and told you to sit tight and be strong while your pajamas ignited with white and blue-hot flames, while you watched in horror as your skin began to melt like chocolate ice cream on a blistering hot Florida day… what would you do?
You would do what any sane, self-preserving person would do:
YOU WOULD LEAVE THE DAMN BURNING HOUSE.
And yet – maybe you wouldn’t.
Black women all across this country are in a situation that is every bit as dire and urgent as trying to live in a burning house, but we allow ourselves to be consumed and destroyed by it on a regular basis.
We aren’t crazy. We are naïve. We aren’t stupid. We are incredulous: we simply cannot process the incredible, unfathomable, mind-blowing reality that THE ENTIRE WORLD IS LYING TO US about what we are seeing and experiencing. It’s too mentally overwhelming to face the awesome, hideous, truth: we are headed for annihilation and the world is enjoying the show.
Mothers and daughters, sisters and aunts – black women of every hue and shade, are being relegated to ‘untouchable’ status – slated to become complete social pariahs, presented as the ugly, unloveable, jealous, bitter step sisters to the gleaming white Cinderellas of other races – and as a result, black women are the most un-partnered, the most abandoned, the most violently oppressed demographic on earth.
Yet if you howl in pain from the consuming fire, even other black women will tell you to shut up. No, you aren’t seeing things. You are being lied to by the entire world.
Black women – you must understand that in order to live, you must stop asking for permission to survive, because consent will not be given. You must take your survival by force.
The first step in survival is to halt sexual access to your body from men who do not care about you. Understand this universal truth: a man who does not commit to you does not care about you, period – he only cares about what he can get from you. It’s hard to comprehend, because this smiling, easygoing person couldn’t possibly be so heartless, right? But the ugly reality is that while you fantasize about the possibilities of your future together, he is not thinking the same way at all… your humanity and life experience are of no consequence to him. In his eyes, you are a temporary scratch for an itch that he can not relieve himself. Being nice to you is his insurance that he receives it.
Hear me clearly: men can and do have regular sex with women they have no intention of providing for, caring for, or participating in any kind of relationship with – heck, they are willing to have sex with women that they don’t even like. These men use your need for companionship as an emotional battle axe against you, in order to gain access to your body. The children that result are simply collateral damage.
Out of wedlock child-rearing is the burning house that I was referring to earlier. The poverty, the emotional pain, the exhaustion, the devastated self worth, the abandonment issues, the lack of protection from violence, the lack of supervision, the lack of parental teaching that results from the 72% out of wedlock childbirth is what is lighting on fire and cremating every valuable asset that black women have. Even our incredible triumphs have a cloying stench — like the smell of the smoke of a burning house.
In the black community, there are many, many, many men who will set you on fire, blame you for letting them set it, and walk away while you go down in flames. Then they will complain if government forces them to spit on you to relieve the pain.
Giving men like this sexual access to your body will not change the fact that they will never, ever care about you. That, my dear, is a great, unspoken, universal truth.
If you live around, make friends with, and are surrounded by fire-starting pyromaniacs, you will eventually get burned. This is why you must get up and LEAVE.
Look around you – if 50% of the women around you are unpartnered and struggling to raise kids alone, GET OUT. Leave that neighborhood, church, or social group. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
If your man won’t call you “girlfriend,” if you have not met his mother, if he only calls you after 11:00PM, GET OUT. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
If your man ‘hates dating,’ doesn’t want to clarify what your relationship is, but wants all the sexual rights and privileges of a husband, GET OUT. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
If you have been engaged for 5 years, but there is no wedding date, no ring, no attempt to acquire a home, no savings plan set up to take care of a family, GET OUT. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
If you are a young teenager and the male suddenly befriending you is more than 3 years older than you, GET OUT. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
If you know that your man is having sex with other women or men, or if you aren’t even comfortable asking him if he is, GET OUT. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
If a man considers you ‘high maintenance’ because you want to be treated as well as he would treat a white, latina, or asian woman, GET OUT. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
If a man treats you nice but wants bareback sex as repayment for being with a ‘good man’, GET OUT. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
If the people you hang out with glorify “no strings attached” sex, “friends with benefits” lifestyles, GET OUT. YOU ARE IN A BURNING HOUSE.
STOP ASKING FOR PERMISSION TO SURVIVE. GET OUT.
You are not alone. You are not crazy. You are in a burning house and the lack of oxygen has previously clouded your judgment. Your only hope for survival is to ignore what everyone else is saying, and GET OUT.
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ELPHIE: Some days. I hate this job.
PHLIP
SUPREME: What do I do?? You mean AFTER I do the Running Man, a few back flips and scream “THANK YOU, WHITE GEEBUS”??
Some eye-popping news about HIV in the gay and bisexual community (which, let’s face it, affects all of us since folks are swimming in the lady and the man pond and not telling their partners)… but, I digress:
