Today, I would like to talk about being "Other."
And by Other I mean the label. Meaning different, something other than the typical, something other than the majority.
This is not a subject A Goddess in Love writes about, let alone thinks about, very often. Still, in honor of the "solemn" observation of Dr. King's Day, here I am.
(And why this is to be a solemn holiday I do not understand, who ever heard of a solemn holiday?)
We all have ways in which this label, Other fits us. Being or not being an Other can change from moment to moment depending on the context. The standard we are measuring our Otherness against.
For some of us though, our Otherness is not only obvious (through the color of our skin, texture of our hair, the shape of our eyes and lips) it also comes with a very long list of painful assumptions and beliefs on the part of those who do not share in this same type of Otherness.
So, I will just say it.
Beautiful minority women, of all kinds, are subjected to some of the most ridiculous, ignorant, downgrading and dismissive showers of "admiration" in the history of Female adoration.
How do I mean this? Well in its most obvious form it goes something like this:
Scene I
(Bar interior; lot's of attractive men and women, dressed like sex on a stick, talking, laughing, drinking; dance music thumping in the background. Man approaches woman.)
Man:
Hey, how's your evening?
Woman:
Fantastic! I really love this DJ.
Man:
Cool... Can I ask you a question?
(Doesn't wait for her response.)
Where are you from?
Woman:
The East coast.
Man:
No, I mean where are your parents from ?
Woman:
(Confused.)
Um, New York and New Jersey...
Man:
No, like what are you? What's your background?
Woman:
You mean to ask, what's my ethnicity?
Man:
(Nods, relieved to have her say the word.)
Woman:
(Some annoyed, still carrying on pleasantly enough.)
Oh, well, pretty much African American. I mean, I'm American so I'm lots of stuff in varying amounts. Hard not to be, wouldn't you say?
Man:
(Stopped listening after her first sentence)
Are you sure? Both of your parents are Black? No Islander, Spanish or something?
Woman:
(Shaking her head no, for multiple reasons.)
Man:
Huh. Well, I hope your not offended, like, I mean this as a compliment - you are really pretty for a Black girl. I mean seriously, I'm not usually attracted to women, you know like Black women, but you are really beautiful.
(Woman is left with nothing to say. Man looks at her expectantly...)
WTF! Did that just happen? I am here to tell you that yes, it has and yes it does. I am also here to say it has happened too many times and with too many different men and women (of all races) to count it as the ramblings of a single, sad miscreant.
While the number of horrifically ignorant moments in the scene are too many to list, please notice that there were also multiple moments in that conversation where something else could have happened. Wide open opportunities for the man to connect and see that woman clearly. And yet he fumbled over and over because all that was on his mind was this:
And when this is the first thing you ask me about myself, in the first 30 seconds of our budding relationship I have to wonder if you aren't hoping to add another pin on your sexploit's international bucket list.
The scary thing for me has been that this preoccupation with race in romance is not always as obvious as in the above example.
There have been times I have dated a man for a long while (much longer when I was younger) before I recognized the blacksploitation elements of his most intimate of carnal fantasies.
When I start to hear him say things like, "you really intrigued me, I was curious about you, you're totally different from who I am usually in to" I can feel myself begin to recoil, cringing at the thought that their very next words might just be, "You are just so... exotic."
Exotic may be the worst back handed compliment for women in the English language. It turns the whole of her into a sort of comic book-reductionist-parody of self. (While preparing this article I put the words exotic + women into the search bar. I wouldn't post most of the pictures it came up with.)
My girlfriends and I used to call this the Princess Leia Slave Girl effect.
Remember the scene in Return of the Jedi when Princess Leia is taken prisoner by Jaba the Hut? The metal bikini, the chain around her throat?
While the imagery has long been seen as erotic (just imagine it, a woman who's only job in her entire life has been to insure the sexual satisfaction of men, that's hot right?) how do you think this makes a woman feel?
It's the Slave Girl effect because it's abusive in nature, degrading and humiliating. And as an Other, I have experienced plenty of degradation from the world at large without adding in another helping through a man I am sharing intimacies with.
Here's the kicker though.
I love being Other in every way and in every situation I find myself to be Other in. I came into this life a woman, I came into this life Black, I came into this life different on a multiplicity of levels.
I am so very grateful to be all that I am in this life and I relish all the differences in everyone that I can find since we are so much more the same than we are different.
I'm just asking that this week that we "solemnly" consider what we think those differences mean, if they need mean anything at all.
