SERENA WILLIAMS LOSING IS NO MORE THE POINT THAN WHETHER OJ SIMPSON DID IT OR NOT

....WHEN IT COMES TO THE RACIST OR SEXIST MOTIVES OF THE WHITE FOLKS IN AUTHORITY

Serena lost a match everybody wanted her to win yesterday. But that's not really the point. The point is that there was an attempt to cheat this black woman --again. 

A lot of people want to talk about how she was going to lose anyway.  Then they want to imply that she wasn't cheated out of anything. Then they want to talk about her behavior.  But you know what?  

Serena's playing badly, appearing destined to lose 

and 

the attempt to cheat her 

**are no more mutually exclusive than the ideas that**

OJ Simpson did it 

and 

white cops also tried to frame him

The thing that matters is not who won or lost but that two black women were cheated during the U.S Open -- and that a black woman's behavior in the face of what looked like an attempt to cheat and disrupt her is getting equal time in the news instead of the blatant unfairness of a referee.
I read an entire article at SLATE that discussed Serena's behavior when she's stood up for herself over the years, against racism more often than not -- and instead of identifying each "behavioral" incident as potentially racism, there's a general statement that Serena faced racism while playing tennis near the end, not attached to any specific incident. I'm thinking the racism the writer remembered to recognize at the end of article is only the n-word being lobbed from the stands -- which Serena has had to face in the past too. 

But let's get back to THE CHURCH OF WHAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW:

Chair umpire Carlos Ramos managed to rob not one but two players in the women’s U.S. Open final.

Nobody has ever seen anything like it: An umpire so wrecked a big occasion that both players, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams alike, wound up distraught with tears streaming down their faces during the trophy presentation and an incensed crowd screamed boos at the court. 

https://www.thestar.com/sports/tennis/opinion/2018/09/09/sexist-power-play-ruins-powerful-us-open-final.html

BACKGROUND:
First, Ramos enforced a tennis rule that is almost never enforced period, must less enforced during a U.S. Open. He accused Serena and her coach of trading hand signals.  The coach later admitted he tried to but also stated -- backed up by Chris Evert-- that all coaches do it. (ESPN played a tape that seems to show Serena didn't see the gesture.) 

Then,  angry at herself for not playing well during the second match, Serena smashed her racket. That was worthy of a penalty.

Thirdly, Serena still angry over the referee basically calling her a cheat --same as repetitively drug testing her more than they do other white athletes accuses her of being a cheat-- Serena called the referee a "thief" for penalizing her for cheating. Ramos took the unprecedented step penalizing her for talking back and being sassy(?) by taking an entire game from her too.

All three of these calls --two of them "questionable" calls-- happened during the second match. So the third match never took place due to it haven being given to Naomi Osaka as part of Serena's punishment.

Ramos took what began as a minor infraction and turned it into one of the nastiest and most emotional controversies in the history of tennis,
Williams abused her racket, but Ramos did something far uglier: 

He abused his authority.

Champions get heated — it’s their nature to burn. All good umpires in every sport understand that the heart of their job is to help temper the moment, to turn the dial down, not up...Male players have sworn and cursed at the top of their lungs, hurled and blasted their equipment into shards, and never been penalized as Williams was in the second set of the U.S. Open final.

https://www.thestar.com/sports/tennis/opinion/2018/09/09/sexist-power-play-ruins-powerful-us-open-final.html

Compare: Another male player has admitted he's said much worse without it costing him a match:

Compare: Last week a chair umpire got down from his chair to comfort a pale male player instead of penalizing him. 

The career of Nick Kyrgios -- who has been criticized for his attitude and on-court behavior in the past — is under renewed scrutiny after the Australian tennis star received a "pep talk" from the umpire during his match against Pierre-Hugues Herbert at the US Open on Thursday. 

After Kyrgios let two serves pass him by while he was a set and 3-0 down to the Frenchman and reportedly threatened to quit the match, umpire Mohamed Lahyani climbed down from his chair and said he wanted to "help" the 23-year-old Aussie.
"I want to help you," Lahyani could be heard telling Kyrgios from TV microphones, "I know this is not you."

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/31/tennis/nick-kyrgios-pierre-hugues-herbert-us-open-mohamed-lahyani-roger-federer/index.html 

Compare: Ramos' own behavior with a brown-skinned, latino player.

Ramos has put up with worse from a man. At the French Open in 2017, Ramos leveled Rafael Nadal with a ticky-tacky penalty over a time delay, and Nadal told him he would see to it that Ramos never refereed one of his matches again.

https://deadspin.com/serena-williams-hit-with-17-000-fine-for-her-part-of-u-1828920901

Ramos is to blame for this debacle. And his motives need to be questioned. 

White folks are entirely certain Ramos motives were purely sexist. But I'm not so sure. Serena is always black and female at the same time. And the "back talk" fits into the same anti-black female stereotype that got Sandra Bland put in jail.

Then again, it could be that Ramos motive was simply that he wanted to take somebody that's always winning down. Some people are like that. I remember the Dallas Cowboys being on a winning streak. I don't even watch sports and I remember that a bunch of folks just wanted them to lose -- they didn't care WHO won.

Again ultimately, the biggest thing Ramos stole was not a win from Serena. 

Most people are telling me she was going to lose no matter what the way she started out. But that's still not the point. Carlos Ramos stole was a victorious moment from Naomi Osaka. He may also have stolen her assurance that she 100% deserves the trophy she won. 

And maybe he stole an honest loss from Serena too. She's old by tennis standards. It will hurt many of us deeply if she doesn't go on from here -- and lose in an clean honest way when her body won't cooperate anymore.

Some people have cried foul because Serena dared to get angry when damn near anybody would have gotten angry in the same situation -- especially after the repeated attacks via drug testing and about her freaking BLACK PANTHER outfit being called "disrespectful" of all things

DEAR WHITE GIRLS OF TENNIS PLEASE SHOW ALL THE ASS YOU CAN

https://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2018/08/dear-white-girls-of-tennis-please-show.html

And it wouldn't surprise me if Carlos Ramos or his supporters insert her lack of being "respectful" into this conversation as well. Black folks not just submissively taking bullsh** is often called "disrespect" by the white supremacist who doesn't want to admit he or she is a white supremacist.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins

White expectations of peaceful acquiescence in the face of their repeated insults and assaults need to die today. What happened during the Civil Rights Movement, the peaceful responses in the face of violence, lying, and cheating wasn't owed to white folks then. 

And it's certainly not going to happen again.

Even so, I wonder if Serena had known for sure that Osaka was going to win, if she would have spoken to people later. Maybe. Then again, she's too competitive to ever believe it's over until it's over. That's what makes her a champion.  

And nothing Serena woulda, coulda, shoulda done changes the fact that Carlos Ramos made two bad calls and penalized Serena in a way he has not penalized others in the same situation. 

Serena has had to fight for fairness from the white folks of tennis her entire career.

One example of many: In 2004, a line judge "mistakenly" ruled against Serena over and over again --when line mistakes are generally more random. The white gatekeepers of tennis decided to get line cameras to use in the future, but the possibly racist motives of the judge were never really discussed.  

Serena's behavior was though --thoroughly by the white press.

In the end, I'm thinking Osaka, as a brown-skinned woman herself, will be better off for Serena's having spoken up against someone who may have penalized her for being black when he saw her coach making gestures then penalized her for being female (and black)while being willing to talk back to pale male authority.

A lot of white people think this is just about gender and sexism. And it might be. But the white folks of tennis have been coming for Serena all along. And there aren't too many black people in this country who haven't experienced a rule that's never enforced  for white people suddenly being enforced when a black person does it. 

There's a lot of focus on the chair ump's last penalty. But I say we should be looking at the first penalty because that set off everything that came after.  

If the kind of gesture Serena's coach made is standard and never penalized when the coaches of white players do it, then it's the referee that should have been fined. And he should lose his job permanently as well if it's found that it his decision was race based.

I have no idea if his motive was race based. I'm saying nobody else knows whether it was or wasn't, we to know, and that this is worthy of investigation.

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM 

WILL WOMEN BE THE UNDOING OF DONALD TRUMP?

Feeling Rebloggy

TRUMP DEFENDS ALLEGED WIFE BEATER 
           

      FROM THE BUSINESS INSIDER

President Donald Trump said he was "surprised" by [two] allegations of physical and emotional abuse against Rob Porter... from two ex-wives.

 Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. "He worked very hard... "We certainly wish him well. It's obviously a tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House, and we hope he has a wonderful career."

Colbie Holderness, who was married to Porter from 2003 to 2008, has provided photos to news outlets of a black eye she says he gave her, while Jennifer Willoughby, Porter's wife from 2009 to 2013, provided a copy of a 2010 protective order she filed against him...

[Trump said, ]"He says he's innocent, and I think you have to remember that," Trump said. "He said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent."

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-defends-rob-porter-abuse-allegations-ex-wives-hope-hicks-2018-2

FROM THE ECONOMIST

If Mr Trump has a calculation, it is that sticking it to a lot of self-righteous Democratic women will cost him little support among women who vote Republican, while delighting their husbands.

That is logical.

His defeat of Mrs Clinton showed the great extent to which partisan loyalty trumps genders. Hardly any Republican women, who tend to be older than Democrats and more conservative in their views on gender relations, among other things, voted for her.

Yet mid-terms are not won by wooing the other side’s supporters, but by whichever party turns out its own voters. On that basis Mr Trump appears to have handed the Democrats an enormous advantage.

By inspiring so many new candidates to come forward—as “an outraged sorority”, in Mrs Houlahan’s phrase—he has helped the party remedy one of its biggest weaknesses, the shallowness of its bench.

In the process, the confusion of left-wing groups that have been leading the opposition to Mr Trump, including Emily’s List and Indivisible, a grass-roots group which introduced many of the newbie candidates to activism, has started to coalesce. Moreover, as the surge in women candidates also suggests, Mr Trump’s chauvinism may have stirred up Democratic voters across the board.

Nice to #MeToo

There are reasons to wonder whether they will remain energised. 

Whereas Democratic voters turned out in droves for Virginia’s recent legislature elections, and elected many women candidates there, they showed less enthusiasm for New Jersey’s elections, held the same day. That was because its governor’s race (won by Phil Murphy, a bland Democrat) was uncompetitive. This suggests the gender war is not sufficient to motivate many Democratic voters. 

Yet in the mid-terms, a more straightforward verdict on Mr Trump, that will be a lesser problem. And no one should bet against the president causing more chauvinist scandals to refresh Democrats’ sense of outrage. If there is an issue on which Mr Trump’s unreconstructed personality could backfire, it is this.

Read More

https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21737050-many-cultural-clashes-president-has-engineered-work-his-advantage-not

The article above clearly points out that The Orange Menace hasn't been nearly as successful at spinning gender issues to his advantage as he has been at spinning race and racism to his advantage.

White supremacy is easier to use, I suppose. So many in the population have been trained since birth to believe that nothing but the n-word and cross burnings are truly racism. That's why it's taken so long for white progressives to see that Trump is obviously a racist.

The KKK endorsing his candidacy in 2016 wasn't enough.  The KKK's David Duke cheering Trump's remarks about Charlottesville wasn't enough for the mostly white press to straight up call Trump a racist. It took him calling damn near all black-majority countries "shitholes" for the predominantly white press to even use the word "racism" and directly attach it to Trump's words.

Even so, I won't say the white press has been more aggressive with women's issues. Or maybe it has been because it's just impossible to spin rape, sexual blackmail that's practically rape, and men exposing themselves to female subordinates for sexual kicks at the workplace.

Maybe Trump can't spin that kind of crap either,  especially when another woman with another type of abuse issue comes along and says 'Hey, your aide gave me this black eye and did it to another ex-wife too. '

It looks like Tarana Burke's #MeToo movement has spun up and become powerful, leading to the creation of some no spin zones in politics.

Here's to hoping women are Trump's undoing in the 2018 and 2020 elections

DID LARRY NASSAR HIDE HIS SEXUAL ABUSE BEHIND CHILD ABUSE ALREADY IN PLACE?

Part 3

I've been trying to figure out how the girls in gymnastics and other sports were sexually assaulted for more than two decades without anybody's parents reporting Larry Nassar to the police rather than the people in business to produce bronze, silver, and gold medals for the United States.

In various discussions I've had over the past few weeks, a number of women tried to tell me that girls don't tell, that this is the reason this abuse went on for so long. Dozens of studies do show children don't tell on their sexual predators. 

Continued from 

THE PARENTS OF LARRY NASSAR SURVIVORS ARE NOT CO-VICTIMS
http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-parents-of-larry-nassar-survivors.html

During one discussion on social media, sure enough, upwards of 90 percent of us -- including me-- never told anybody until years had passed.  And a bunch of us never told our parents.

The thing that amazed and dismayed me during that discussion was that:

 - some grown women actually thought these studies meant that virtually nobody but the sexually assaulted* little girls knew --over the course of more than 20 years. (Little girls acting abilities are generally not Oscar worthy) 

- that my persistent question: Why didn't the girls tell their parents? could somehow imply the girls are at fault rather than their parents they were too afraid to talk to.

In fact, this is just one symptom of what amazes me about how this story has been warped into a young women triumphant story in the news when this is a failure to recognize child abuse of the sexual variety for decades.

These children, some of them 8 years old, had nobody to protect them from routine sexual assault UNTIL one of the little girls grew up and did protected herself as a young woman Rachael Denhollander was the one that stopped screwing around with entities in business for profit (USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, and Karyoli Ranch) and went to the police. 

I don't know if other PARENTS went to the police over the course of 20 years, possibly ignored because our press is to busy trying to turn this garbage into a feel good story that I have no idea if anybody is asking parents of the gymnasts anything but softball questions.

The parents may not be villains. But they are not co-victims either, even if the girls that were abused want them to be.  

The other problem I'm having with the way this story is being sold is this: We are not addressing the societal problem at the root of the Larry Nassar Scandal. 

One of the reasons Larry Nassar got away with sexually assaulting little girls for more than 20 years is due to it being normal in our society to ignore the pain, fear, and anguish of women, much less little girls. 

And it is here where the sexual child abuse of little girls and #MeToo overlap. But they are not the same. However, the #BelieveWomen crap putting mud in the water here too because it IS true that these female children were not believed BUT IT IS not true in the case of women such as those in Hollywood.  

Plenty of men believed women were being sexually "harassed," they just didn't care or call it "sexual harassment" much less "sexual assault."  

Some men knew they could get away with abusing women because they have more social power while other men thought "boys will be boys" about their buddies. 

Ben Affleck grabbed a woman's breast while on camera. His brother had crew members and such exposing themselves on a public set before he supposedly got in bed with a female co-worker. Director Brett Ratner commented that he could hear woman's vulva flapping while she walked while on a public set. And he was questioned on a rape charge long before that. #BelieveWomen has nothing to do with this behavior.    

But these little girl gymnasts weren't believed when they spoke up. And if their fear and upset was as obvious as it sounded during the victim statements they gave during Nassar's trial, then their pain and fear was ignored by the adults around them in a dozen different ways

Women and girls being ignored and/or not being taken seriously is not new. I've had a number of conversations in real time and I'm on social media where doctors told women their pain was nothing. I

I experienced this first hand when I was eleven. 

Less than a year after I began my menstrual cycle I began having horrific cramps along with gastrointestinal problems and vomiting that would last for the first two days of my cycle every month. EVERY month. 

Doctor after doctor and eventually my father said, "you have to be able to endure a little discomfort." 

I lucked-up and got a female doctor in my late teens that told me about breaking the progesterone cycle with ibuprofen....which required a cycle as regular as a clock. That let me out. So timing my medication which was about as effective as using  he rhythm method to avoid getting pregnant.  

Later, as an adult in my thirties after things got worse, I went to a female doctor who actually did tests, took blood work  and did an ultrasound -- just like she was taking my pain seriously. It was she that told me I was likely having cramps as bad as giving birth every month because of the huge number of fibroid tumors I had inside my uterus, in the walls of uterus and on a stalk attached to my uterus. 

I was admitted to the hospital for an embolization rather than a hysterectomy some time later.

In my own home...

My parents would protect me from all manner of nonsense from adult white racists that I would encounter in classrooms and guidance counselor offices. But inside the house, it was different. My parents, my mother in particular, had an infinite capacity for ignoring any emotional pain or general upset that was caused by the rare physical abuse, the regular verbal abuse and gaslighting, and even threats of being hit by an adult with a baseball bat. 

All of this is why I thought maybe I was projecting my own neglect and occasional abuse on these girls. So I listened to others and bent over backwards to understand what the parents might have been doing that enabled them to allow this sexual form of child abuse to continue

....over a period of 20 years

I even decided that the worst thing some of the parents did was abdicate responsibility for their children to USA Gymnastics and Karyoli Ranch, where they trained. 

But then I heard Larry Nassar sexually abused these children while some mothers were in the room.

He positioned his body so they couldn't see him put his hand down the girls shorts.  But these adult women couldn't see their child's face during and immediately after the assault?

In discussions over the past few weeks a number of young women who have been sexually assaulted as children in the past as well wanted me to believe that they were such superb little actresses that their parent(s) couldn't have known.  And I can tell the gymnasts want to believe the same thing of their own parents.

Who wouldn't?

Nobody wants to believe their parents either aren't paying enough attention or that they're not invincible when they ARE paying attention.

Despite all of the justifications I've heard in regards to the parents, regardless of what the girls decided to tell or not tell, each parent in the room during the sexual assault had to have seen discomfort and pain on the faces of their girl child. 

And I'm not really guessing here. 

Mattie Larson, one of the gymnast-victims, said she kept calling her parents begging them to let her go home. It is safe assumption she never said why based on other interviews I've seen. But it's worth noting that crying and begging weren't enough for her to be allowed to leave.

In an interview on Good Morning America, Larson actually said she pretended to fall down in the shower at home, loud enough do that her parents could hear it....all so she didn't have go back. It was an elaborate ruse, complete with splashing water and injuring herself.  (see the link at the end)

Do you know what I finally realized about the mothers that were standing in the room while her daughter was sexually abused and the mother who initially defended Nassar against the allegations?

These parents were used to seeing their daughters in pain, sometimes fairly bad pain.

That is, I think the anguish and pain on their daughters faces wasn't any different when Dr. Nassar was sexually abusing them on Wednesday from when Dr Innocent was torturing them by stretching out overused muscles and joints on Thursday.

Seeing their daughters suffer was normal. 

As stated before, I think adults are conditioned to ignore the emotions of girls, to label their tears and upset as "over reactions." But USA Gymnastics created an atmosphere where ignoring the the humanity of little girls was raised to new horrific heights. 

And the parents of these girls signed up for all this hoping for glory at the Olympics one day.
 

In another interview where the girls are explaining why they didn't tell and save themselves --instead of parents explaining why they didn't see their child was being abused-- Mattie Larson said her and the other girls would get in trouble for saying they didn't sleep well. They would get in trouble for not smiling. They would get in trouble for saying they didn't feel well. 

Another girl revealed that parents weren't allowed in some of the practice gyms at all. 

These girls were being working hours upon hours per day so that they can compete on the behalf of our country, stretching and building muscles upon muscles so that they can perform feats that look almost super human....feats that will leave some with shoulder pain etc for life. 

When it comes to elite artistic gymnastics, most female competitors begin the sport at before the age of five and train around 40 hours a week, pushing their strength and flexibility to the limits, at times defying anatomy and biology to stick their routines. 

Naturally, that level of physical and psychological stress can have an effect on a growing body, with most elite female competitors retiring from the sport in their early twenties.

"Stress fractures are common amongst former gymnastics," says Natasha Melacrinis, a physiotherapist from the Sydney Sports Medicine Centre and former elite sports aerobics competitor. 

Many female gymnasts have low bone density issues. Decades of extreme physical exercises can lead to a later onset of puberty and therefore a lower level of oestrogen being released in the body. As a result, "bones play catch up" to fast-growing muscles.  

.

https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/science/humans/article/2016/08/09/what-happens-gymnasts-body-it-ages


This is why these girls are going to doctors like Nassar constantly instead of only going when they are sick like the rest of us do. 

And these girls are being worked like they are at a full-time job, because it is a job. Endorsements worth millions of dollars at stake.  Those girls are working 40 hours a day on their bodies. And when they called home crying wanting to go home --without much of an explanation-- did their parents say "no pain no gain" Did their parents say, "You said you wanted to do this...we've wasted too much money for you to just...." blah blah blah. 

When the girls didn't want to do their "job" -- those abused by Nassar and those not abused by Nassar-- were adults really telling them "Shut up and do your job" and "Don't talk back to the boss" and "Never tell the boss crap he doesn't want to hear." This kind of work advice is the same all over except we're talking about children.

This is why I consider Larry Nassar to have hidden his sexual assaults, his sexual abuse of children inside regular/everyday non-sexual child abuse.

Child Labor laws were designed to stop child abuse. Why don't these laws apply to the gymnastics?

Listen to the victim impact statements for yourself. Then try to imagine a little girl calls home crying to come home. Why did Mattie Larson have to bang her own head against something, injure herself in order to NOT go back to a place she was that terrified of?

Does it really matter that she didn't name Nassar and say exactly what he did when she was THIS afraid? 

In the final analysis I'm not sure the parents not knowing about the sexual assault is the biggest factor in why those girls remain exposed to Larry Nasser.

Ordinary girls, not gymnasts working 40 hours a week, are taught the emotional pain that sometimes causes them to cry is so much nothing. But boys are taught by patriarchy soaked parents that crying makes them a sissy, a girl. So now I'm trying to imagine what might be happening to little boy athletes at their professional gig. 

It could conceivably take an even longer time for a scandal involving boys to surface. 

When a child is being hurt by an adult and we are asking why the child didn't report what was happening to a virtual stranger or a temporary adult fixture in their life instead of their parent, we need to ask what's wrong with American parenting. 

Right now authorities are looking into which adults at USA Gymnastics and the University Of Michigan. But every adult anywhere near this, including the parents, should be investigated. Anybody who didn't call the police needs to be questioned.

I know that sociologists have shown us that human beings have a funny relationship with authority. And studies like the Milgram Experiment have revealed that many people or most people will obey an authority figure even if they are told to do something heinous to another. And history of Europe shows us this, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.  

But the parents still need to explain what they knew when and why they didn't report what was happening to the police instead of the authorities at USA Gymnastics and Michigan Univeristy and Karyoli Ranch, the training facility.

If the press was reporting this as a child abuse incident involving sex, I think we'd be discussing this in public already.  

We cannot afford to let the families "have their privacy" in regards to this part of the story. If we do not figure out what went wrong we won't figure out how to prevent Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar from being followed by others. Predators will always be with us. We can't have ONE predator prey on hundreds, possibly thousands of children again and again.    

We have to stop this from happening to again or at least limit the scope of the predator. And in order to do that we need more knowledge.

To be even more specific, we should all know before this story fades away whether the parents believed that digital penetration was part of the treatment when the judge said at sentencing that the "parents were groomed too" 

MATTIE LARSON INTERVIEW 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/gymnast-mattie-larson-purposely-injured-avoid-toxic-atmosphere/story?id=52600778 

This level of parental incompetence needs punishment. And the threat of punishment might be enough to get some parents to call the police to investigate a questionable handling of their child instead of the people who are most likely to say what those parents wanted to hear, "Nothing bad is happening to your daughter."

In order for us to get a real investigation going, in public, we're going to stop the feel good story from women over-coming and change it to child abuse that went unchecked for decades that helped hide a sexual predator.

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM 

FRENCH ACTRESS POO-POOS #ME TOO AND CONFIRMS WE'RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK

I'm glad some French film makers have said they hate #MeToo. 

Glad, I tell ya. 

Because I have hated damn near every french film I have ever seen due to its depiction of women.
The reason I'm glad the irrelevant french actress Catherine Deneuve and a percentage of the french film industry hates #MeToo is because it confirms, for me personally, that the french and how they see women is seriously sexist and messed up. Frankly, I think the internalized sexism that women suffer from in France must be off the chain. 

For a long time, I thought it was just me. But Catherine Deneuve and the 100 french film makers and scholars that backed her up have just proven IT'S NOT ME. IT'S THEM


PLOTS OF FRENCH FILMS
(that I saw back to back to back to back)

1) One movie was about this white kid named Jules, maybe 19 or 20 years old, who is in love with music in general and particularly in love with this black opera star who refuses to have herself recorded in any form. He goes to all her concerts, like she's The Grateful Dead or something, and records a bootleg at a concert. Criminals are trying to kill him to get the recording and sell it for millions of dollars. 

The hero winds up being a white pedophile (implied) with an Asian girlfriend who looks like she's no more than 14 years old to his forty, but supposedly sexy.

2) Another film was about how fancy free and sexy and half naked this white woman was to this very, very, VERY average looking white guy.  

She didn't do one damn thing that made a lick of sense for 1.5 hours then gouged her own eyes out just before the end of the film. Her incredible freedom and joie de vivre was mental illness, I guess. 

My eyes were open, but I was comatose 15 minutes in. I think that's what happened.

3) The third film starts off with another EXTREMELY average looking white guy seeing this waif supposedly-beautiful white girl--that he's knows but doesn't really know- at a party or a wedding reception. 

He goes home in the rain bummed out he couldn't think of a way to get to know her better. White girl then shows up at his door soaking wet. He goes to get her a towel, he comes back and she's naked waiting for the towel, while behaving like an innocent 10 year old 

BARF. 

They start to date. We find out Wackadoo is living in the basement of an empty mansion that her mother owns, who's always dancing with some young guy. There's a strange smell in the basement. Turns out it's some guy the girl killed a while ago. When the police arrest her, she's pouty and confused that everybody all hyper about her killing someone for no apparent reason. Sexy mental illness again.

4) The other  french films I've seen that were NOT teenage-boy wet dreams filmed by 50 year pot bellied french reject, had 35 to 40 year old women in them instead of teenagers. And the women were bitter and smoking all the time, having that sex they didn't appear to enjoy...which somehow was supposed to make them sophisticated and wise

I like foreign films. 

I hate french foreign films. 

And I hate that Blockbuster is gone because that was really the only way I had of perusing foreign films and indie films and deciding a DVD cover looked interesting enough to give a shot. (Pssst!  Trust me, a DVD cover has to look VERY interesting in order for me to be willing to read subtitles. )

But I found myself wanting to hit myself over the head with a bat every SINGLE time I broke down and got a french film that looked interesting. 

Now that I look at this list, I can be more specific. 

I HATE 
FRENCH WOMEN 
IN FRENCH FILMS

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/movies/catherine-deneuve-and-others-denounce-the-metoo-movement.html

Catherine Deneuve and french others hating the United States #MeToo and #TimesUp movements mean we are on the right track. 

The one point Deneuve might have is that the men accused are disappearing too quickly. 

But the reason the men are disappearing so quickly is because their employers CONGRESS, NBC, PBS, etc are trying to damage control before the whole sordid mess becomes too detailed and the employers get splashed with more than just mud.

I feel like we got one-tenth of the story on a bunch of men who just disappeared all of a sudden. I was disappointed in Charlie Rose, but I know there was more there. But I don't know that we had a right to know more. If the women involved didn't want to expose themselves, then they didn't.    

Rape victims don't have to say what happened blow by blow to the public, and neither do sexual harassment victims....for the same reason. It's humiliating. The offender, the employer, and the victim get to know the details.

And I felt the same way about Congressman John Conyers -- that there was more there that we didn't get to hear. I feel like Conyers' legacy was about to be destroyed--not just damaged--if he didn't shut the investigation down quickly. 

That's probably why Matt Lauer went fairly quickly and quietly too.  The large amount that we heard about Lauer in a short time seems to indicate there was tons that could have been exposed about him AND ABOUT how NBC covered it up.  When a man is bold enough to give a female coworker a sex toy, everybody knows he's a dirt bag --and for some of the men, he's a bold dirt bag they admire.

For some men, leaving quickly meant legacy damaged but not destroyed.

And that would especially appealing to some men if they think #MeToo will pass and things will go back to status quo-- which I was worried about until #TimesUp.  But now women's groups, as part of #TimesUp, are putting together resources and money to sue employers. And they are on their way to proposing legislation.

As for Deneuve's male witch hunt complaint, I for one would love to see each and every man get dragged over the coals and get all the detail about what they did for months on end -- for so long as women's identities were protected. I'd love to see them dragged instead of allowing these rich men to disappear after a few minutes of embarrassment. These men tortured their victims at work, for years in a lot of cases. 

They deserve a hell of a lot more than losing their jobs. And a public dragging would be just the ticket for me. 

Because these men are disappearing so quickly, the other thing that's happening is that the public isn't getting enough information to discern the difference between level 1 and level 10 sexual harassment. And level 10 harassment might be very close to rape or the threat of rape. 

And all levels, might be offenses worth firing someone over

For example: If Ben Affleck squeezes a woman's breasts and she knocks one of his teeth out in response, in order to call that a draw both of them have to have committed a crime.  He sexually assaulted her. She straight assaulted him. If the cops come, they can both press charges or both let it go.  

As it stands now, the breast squeeze is STILL "boys will be boys" and an apology for a lot of men, Deneuve and her 100 followers. That's why a lot of the first articles, written by men, on sexual harassment were about "men misbehaving" 

#MeToo and #TimesUP need to move toward criminalizing the boys-will-be-boys crap, at all levels, until even an ill-informed irrelevant french actress can understand it. 



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/movies/catherine-deneuve-and-others-denounce-the-metoo-movement.html

I Believe Taylor Swift But....

This is reportedly the photo where DJ David Mueller is supposed to be shown grabbing Taylor Swift's ass.

Background: This male DJ grabbed Taylor Swift's ass. She reported it. DJ was fired. DJ sued Swift for millions. Swift counter-sued him for one dollar, as a protest among other things.

According to the video below, Taylor Swift says she doesn't know if the photo was taken before or after the moment he put his hand on her bare ass. According to a news report I saw on ABC, he left his hand her ass for a long time and persisted on leaving it there after she lurched away from him.

The other thing she reportedly said is that the gap between her body and his reflects her having lurched away from him -- which seems to indicate the photo was snapped during or after the assault.

This all brings me to my next point: Why is it Taylor's mother is the only one who saw her face change? Yeah, your Mom knows you. She's the one who is going to know if something is wrong and you're hiding it.

But my real question is why did Swift hide it?

When something not-nearly-that-bad happened to me I hid it too. But why?

Why are we hiding it? Why are we the ones humiliated? Yeah its embarrassing in the moment, but why does the embarrassment last beyond the moment, especially for someone as powerful as Taylor Swift. Me?  I had to think if the white men were going to be believe me. Then I had to decide if the white men in charge at the place I worked were going to go to bat for me. And I also was at an age where I didn't want anybody to think I was a child who couldn't take care of herself.

I didn't complain that loudly. I backed the cretin off by myself with death-ray stares.

But why is it STILL "professional" to hide it when somebody is violating you while it's happening. It's freaking 2017. When this happened to Swift 3 years ago, it was 2014. She was somewhere near 24 years old. 

Speaking up at 24 years old when you have damn near all the power due to your star status isn't precisely nothing, but close to it. Going to court definitely isn't nothing. Going to court and making this public spectacle of herself sent the right message to young girls that adore her. And I wouldn't be surprised if Taylor Swifft's story didn't put a little wind in the sails of the six women suing the Plaza Hotel for routine sexual harassment.  

But I'd have been a hell of a lot more impressed with Swift if she'd knocked his teeth out and then got him fired.

It's 2017. I think a better message to send to girls is "speak up right away and loudly." Creating a six inch gap while you just stand there and take it "like a professional" isn't a right-enough message to send to girls about sexism and sexual assault.

And this is about sexism too because more men were likely involved in this than just the man accused. 

Only slightly less powerful than Beyonce, by standing there and taking it without making a fuss, Taylor Swift  has inadvertently said that the men that run the radio stations, music video productions, and concert stages might be offended if a woman doesn't just take it quietly in a ladylike manner until she can tell another man that a cad embarrassed her by putting his hand on her bare ass.

That DJ should have lost teeth and his job. 

At the very least, everybody in the room should have known something happened in the moment. And he should have lost his job too. Her mama shouldn't have been the only one that knew something happened because she knows her own child's face.

Video: You can watch the men mansplain to one another what may or may not have happened if you want to. But I found it a little repulsive in more than one spot.

NOTHING THAT DAMAGES HALF THE RACE IS PRO-BLACK

Again, I don't know John Ridley's story. Further, I am not questioning anybody's ability to love outside their race. What I am questioning is the initial attraction.

continued from 

With Black Male Friends Like John Ridley, Who Needs Enemies? 

http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2017/04/with-black-male-friends-like-john.html

* * * * *

Before there is love, there is what you see on the outside of a person.

Black men with money, in sports and in Hollywood, are legendary for their collective decision to look for pale women. Even white people joke about how many black men are with light or white women.

When white people get in on the same racial jokes that black folks tell one another in private, you know there's an actual problem. Michael Jackson was three shades lighter than a paper bag before the average white person noticed he was getting lighter-skinned. If white people have noticed black men's dedication to getting themselves a Becky once they have some money in their pockets, there's a bona-fide problem

It's not necessarily black men's fault the internalized racism is digging at them in a deeper way. Unfortunately, society sends a clear message to young girls and women: A woman's worth is still based on beauty. And the beauty that's bombarding black people day in and day out is the white aesthetic, with the "white women are beautiful" message.

Of course, a black man named  G A Morgan (not Madam C J Walker) invented something to straighten the hair like a white woman. Of course black women --and black men too for a time-- ran to go get a relaxer for their hair so as to make themselves more "acceptable" to white society.  

Malcom X with a conk

Because a woman's worth is still connected to her "beauty" in this white supremacist patriarchal capitalistic society a lot of black women still feel like they must straighten their hair so as to look "professional" in the white eyes that judge them for hiring and promotion.  

When I decided to change jobs, the first thing I did was get a straight weave. I made sure I had some wigs with straight hair too.  

White women's straight hair is still held up as "normal" and professional -- even by black feminists like Shonda Rhimes. On the television show SCANDAL Olivia Pope's hair is only curly when she is running away from her life, on an island vacation, or a kidnap victim. When Pope is powerful, kicking ass and taking no names her hair is bone white-girl straight.

 Even with all this pressure on the black community toward the white aesthetic, using rates of intermarriage as a measuring stick, upwards of 85% black people find one another attractive. And that's been pretty consistent over the decades UNLESS you're talking about black men with millions of dollars.

However, any college-aged black girl can tell you that this 85% intermarriage rate does not speak to how very often a college-aged black boy is looking for someone light-skinned to date and marry. 

School Daze takes place on a black campus. But the colorism issues among black men
at much whiter Ivy League schools weren't much different

There have been studies done, according to an old professor of mine, that say that the trade between black men and white/light women is status for security (money). If that's true, then the famous black men that we in the black community tend to identify as "very pro-black" appear to be affected by wanting the white/light woman possession as status bump too.  

This pattern happening among highly visible, pro-black, black men is a problem for the black community because humans tend to mimic one another. Humans copy what other humans are doing a lot, across the board

Straightening hair is one example of this and fashion is another indication. Women even follow make-up trends. And men, in my opinion, like to mimic other men that are successful in almost every way.

This is because women aren't the only ones being held hostage in this white supremacist patriarchal capitalistic society. A man's worth is determined by how much money he has, how successful he is. And one of the status markers of a man's success is his beautiful wife. And in the white supremacist patriarchal capitalistic society beauty = whiteness.

And it appears that even the highly successful pro-black male will get a light woman even if they refuse to go out acquire a tropy-wife in the form of a white woman.

Again, this isn't a problem because of each highly-visibly black man's personal choice. This is a problem because of the pattern. And this is a pattern among highly visible black men; coincidences don't come in multiple six packs.  



And the pattern is a problem because human beings tend to copy one another.

Human beings in the form of 

black boys and black men 

mimicking 

successful, highly visible black men 

who have clearly communicated 

that getting yourself 

a light woman/white woman 

is a part of your success 

makes the pattern of highly visible

black men chasing white/light women

a black community problem

Some people will under-estimate how much they are being affected by the bombardment by white beauty aesthetic. A lot more people will under-estimate how much they themselves and their loved ones are influenced by other people and by what the black male one percent hold up as status symbols.
 
Many people will say they believe that an adult mimicking another adult is mindless or stupid or bad. These same people will say they won't allow their children to just copy what so-and-so is doing. But we humans will often communicate that mimicking another person is good using words we don't recognize as endorsing mimicking successful others.

For example:

Black men, including hoteps,

will tell you every single day

that a black boy cannot be

successfully raised by a single black mother 

because a black boy needs a black man

to look up to (a.k.a "mimic")

Personally, I don't believe this in the way it's usually presented.

I DO believe a child, boy or girl, needs a father. And I think a lot of girls without good fathers wind up getting damaged because they're seeking partners through trial and error with no standard of behavior to use as a basis of comparison. 

But I also believe a single black mother can raise a decent human being, male or female, when a good hypermasculinity-free male role model is present -- because I've seen it.

Let me say it again, I think boys and girls are hurt when no male role models are present and providing a more multi-dimensional socialization. Both women and men are needed for a child's mental and emotional health.

But most men don't believe what I believe. Most men believe boys need a man in the house to mimic ("look up to"). Hell, a lot of women (feminist and non-feminist) don't believe what I believe either.

Some feminist women think unacknowledged hyper-masculinity and disregard for black women (e-race-sure) is so prevalent in U.S. black males that all of them should be kept away from children. But I think men are trainable in the ways of feminism --especially since a lot of men don't recognize what feminism is and how it has benefited them in the first place.  

Many-a -non-feminist woman will keep a disaster-of-a-man in the home thinking he's good for her son...because a bad man is better than no man at all(?) If a man is a bad husband because he doesn't show up in the relationship or whatever, that's one thing; he can still be a good father in many ways. But it's an entirely different thing when women say about a man who cheats "He's a bad husband but a good father" That woman is lying to themselves and their sons and damaging future women everywhere.

A habitual lying-betrayer is not a good human being or a good role model, no matter how many pay checks he brings home or how nice the cars and house is. And a person not performing well at being a "good human being" cannot be "a good father" because he's teaching his son to be "a lying betrayer" too  -- especially if Mommy puts a reluctant seal of approval on abdominal behavior.   

 Furthermore, counting repeated BETRAYALS as "nothing" damages the entire black community for generations.   

• Not only are there high profile men being put into the pseudo-harmless boys-will-be-boys category when they betray (cheat), these men are allowed to keep their "hero" status. Boys are affected because they mimic these men and become predatory. Girls are left the choice to grow up to be women that put up with betrayal as "normal" or take a rather predatory/consumption type attitude toward sex themselves. 

• In my opinion, young girls are becoming harder-hearted at earlier and earlier ages, "playing the field" in the same loose, your-word-means-nothing sort of way as boys who hold highly visible black men betrayers as heroes. Some girls are being led to think that to become like boys is "progress" of some sort. This is a cheap imitation of feminism we need to live without. Becoming the social equals of men is not the same as becoming like men, same as becoming the social equals of whites is not the same as becoming like whites.  

In the black community, we have to be careful who are boys "look up to" and mimic. Having a boy (or a girl) look up to a man that holds betrayal as nothing, as boys will be boys is a horrible legacy to let your son (or daughter) take hold of.

And if successful black man after successful black man on television has white wife or a light wife, then that's something to worry about too because colorism is another legacy attitude you don't want passed down and through the black community. 

Individual Interracial marriages below 15% or so don't harm the black community. But seeing 70% to 80% of highly visible rich black men marry white and light re-injects the black community with the anti-black poison of white supremacy in the form of colorism. 

Don't think that the male love of mimicry --and the associated competition attached in the form of whose wife is prettier-- is limited to rich black men. 

I lost this link I had to white wives of white baseball players. But you'll have to take my word that it was amazing to see all these white baseball players with their cookie-cutter blond white women in photo after photo after photo.... There were like 25 of photos of white baseball player wives that looked damn near exactly the same.

The white blond trophy wives looked so much alike...I swear, if you set the white husbands at the 50 yard line of a football field and told them to run toward their wives, 80% of them would start off by running toward the wrong woman.

For a lot of rich men in public eye, it appears that their women are seen by them as Rolex's with legs -- just another object that proves he's a winner.

This is why some black men want that same white blond trophy wife that the white guys have. (Bernie Mack and Samuel L Jackson made fun of this in a movie once.)

Yet, some black men are self-conscious enough about their black self-image that they won't go for straight for a Becky trophy wife. Instead of a white chick, they will go for light chick in the form a bi-racial looking black woman, or an asian woman, or a latina.

Some will say I'm making something out of nothing, that all these images of dark skinned men with light and white women are evidence of colorblind love.

Again, I say:

1) Love comes second.
2) Attraction to looks comes first.
3) Coincidences don't come in multiple six-packs.
4) There is a pattern among high profile black men. They look for light and white women to bed, love, and sometimes marry. 

THE DENIALS

1) Black men who want to justify their attraction to the the light woman only will say things like "We are all black!" in the same indignant tone that white people will say, "There's only one race, the human race!"

2) Others will say they are allowed to have preferences for white/light women. (Few are brave enough to go this route)

3) The black man who only dates white, latina, or asian -- won't even date light black women-- he will feel compelled to make something wrong with black women so that his own blackness is not questioned. This black man who wants anything except a black woman like his mama? He will say that black women are angry or selfish or judgmental.

All of these ugly excuses from a certain kind of (usually dark-skinned) black man are an attempt to throw other people off the scent of their internalized racism. 

4) And then there are other black men, like Gilbert Arenas, who don't even know they are supposed to hide their hatred for black features on black women.





http://www.tmz.com/2017/04/14/gilbert-arenas-dark-black-women/


More important than all of the high visible black men that deny black women are the pro-black men (by reputation)
that don't appear to be aware of their own preferences
for the white aesthetic and whiteness in general BECAUSE
they wind up making questionable decisions...decisions that lean into whiteness/lightness while having nothing to do with whom they choose to bed.


This is what is most interesting to me 

because black men in Hollywood

who are held up as black heroes, 

due to certain successes, 

wind up being encouraged 

to create images of black people,
images that are presented to us as 

"pro-black" without interrogation, 

based solely on the creators 

pro-black reputation

...when those images could be 

damaging to black women, 

whether the women be light or dark.

In other words, John Ridley doesn't get a pass because he wrote the award winning 12 YEARS A SLAVE. If he created something damaging to black women, then he did. He deserves to be questioned every bit as hard as we do white people who create questionable black images.

So don't ever forget this:  

Nothing that is damaging to half the race is "pro-black."


NOTHING.

It ought to be clear by now that I'm not questioning Ridley's fitness to create positive black images because of his choice of a pale wife. I'm questioning his fitness to create positive black images because it appears the same thing that made him choose to be attracted to his wife may have made him choose to e-race black women from GUERRILLA as if they are nothing, as if black women are NOT a more critical part of black history than non-black people including those that look like his non-black wife.

If he wanted to show how non-blacks were part of or dovetailed into the Black Power Movement in the UK, then he should have cast Asians and Latinx as side characters-- not as the main character in what was supposed to be "the black love story." 

If Ridley doesn't think so then the next time he does a fictional representation of black history, he should replace the black man with an Asian man and let the black woman character remain as central to the story he's telling. He's made it clear that black women's history needs to be told a lot more often anyway.

read more tomorrow:
PRO-BLACK MEN AND THE E-RACE-SURE OF BLACK WOMEN

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