I think the third Friday of the month is one of my favorites! I get to read just about anything I want and then write about it!! Anyway, the book we are reviewing and talking about in this post is The Consent Guidebook: A Practical Approach to Consensual, Respectful, and Enthusiastic Interactions by Erin Tillman, The Dating Advice Girl! First of all, let me tell you that this book is wonderful! I will tell you why in a few moments, but I wanted to make sure I said that up front, in case we (...I) get lost in the sauce and go off on the tangents that seem to make me happy.

It is #minoritymentalhealthmonth!…Politics of respectability is a phrase that was coined by Evelyn Higgenbotham in 1993. The idea here, is that one monitors and presents oneself in an acceptable, pure, chaste, respectable, albeit Eurocentric, way.

Definition

For those who are not necessarily “in the know” the phrase Mind Your Business, is a verb, in which the person who has been told is expected to respect someone else’s private matters by refraining from being meddlesome, dropping their 2 cents (thought, opinions, or suggestions). This includes but is not limited to minding your own based on someone's appearance, attitude, situation(s), or other occurrences as defined by the giver of the statement either verbally, through text, or through body language (which includes but is not limited to putting up one hand in your direction, rolling their eyes, or turning away).

I remember my time like it was yesterday. I was a sophomore in college, attending my school’s all nighter. I was super excited and went to meet my boyfriend for a night of dancing and fun. As I was cuddled up with my boyfriend, during a slow song, someone smacked me on the behind and kept walking. I immediately left my boyfriend’s arms to confront the person who did it, when he stopped walking and met up with his friends, I realized the anger I felt was laughed at by 6 big men, over 6’2, waiting for me “to say something”. I don’t know what would have happened to me if my boyfriend didn’t drag me to the car.

The same feelings of humiliation, anger, and even rage that came over me that night were the same when I heard about Shana Fisher. It was the same rush of emotions when I realized that the world must hate women and the realization that our culture is complicit.

We need to work on setting our expectations around sex and relationships and then making sure others are aware of these boundaries.

For this 3rd Friday’s Turn the Page, I have decided to challenge myself and read the book Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo by Zora Neale Hurston. I am calling this journey challenging because as some of you know, this book was meant to be published a long time ago, but was not because no one wanted to read about the slave experience of a man who would implicate the people in Africa. It was thought to be a book which could tarnish the integrity of the movement. Which, even now, I would understand. To tell this story aloud, is to have some who were directly involved, or their ancestors, or white people who feel resentful of the history of slavery--mostly as it relates to talking about white privilege and such, to feel vindicated in what occurred because African people were complicit.

Today we talk about the duality in people and learning to accept that in honor of ourselves. Lately, I have published a few posts that speak about the duality of people and how we sanitize people to be who we expect them to be. It’s a part of cognitive dissonance, when ideas, beliefs, and behaviors contradict each other. If you want to read more about how I see saint and scoundrel, you can read about it in some of the other posts including this one about Kelis & Nas. But, for this post, we are talking about how that black and white thinking can feel like it helps with moving on. BUT really how it can get in the way of moving forward in our journey when a relationship ends.

Click to keep reading!

Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle In Time was...weird for me. I know that, for the culture, we keep our silence if we hate something, because we still want it to do well. However, this prose is not to render judgement on whether the movie was good or bad, but rather to touch on one of the very many things that were thought provoking and some kinda wonderful. Honestly, if I were to render judgement I would likely say that when it first finished, I was not immediately pleased. But I was prepared to place blame anywhere else, including giving it to the original author of the book, though I know and have been told that this movie deviates from the book. However, the more I allow myself to actively reflect on this movie, and the more I speak about it with friends, the more my opinion of the movie evolves. There is certainly something to be said about processing a movie with Black women who, like me, enjoy drawing meaning from what we see. Please note, that there will definitely be some spoilers ahead.