NO. You Do Not Have The Right To Grab My Ass

I am fucking tired of walking through the streets of Oakland and being judged as racist for avoiding groups of black men*. I'm avoiding men of all races throughout the day. Every fucking time I have to walk anywhere, there's always got to be a creepy guy who gives me one of those looks that just forces me to either skip a bus stop or walk on the curb of the street next to the cars whizzing by. I have even taken out of the way detours walking to some of my destinations because I am afraid of being cornered by a man.

So I come out of work today and then I see a group of three black men, at least six feet tall, loitering in a *four foot wide* space between a building and the bus stop bench. If I walk through, I would be forced to squeeze my way through three men. So when I decide instead to make a really obvious detour in front of the bus stop, walking like a damn ballerina on the cub of the street, I hear:

"HEY. Why you walkin' all the way over there?" It was accusatory. It was me being light skinned and supposedly *afraid* of black people. It was obvious by the way he said it, and I get it a lot. I was thinking, fuck, are you kidding me?

Man, fuck you. Fuck you so much because of that. What, being black is the only possible element in my decision? Man screw you. You act like you don't know what you are doing. Three fucking penises in a four foot wide space. I don't care about the color of your penises, I care that you *have* them!

This is something I've gone through, not something I just imagined in my supposedly racist mind. I was talking on my damn cell phone outside...during lunch, mind you. Pure daylight, but distracted. And then all of a sudden...boom. Full on ass grabbing. His hand slowly sliding back off. eeehhhhh. I was frozen. The guy, yes he was black, but he was a man. A man who was more than six feet tall and took advantage of me. "Ohh I just had to grab that." NO YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO GRAB MY ASS. No, you do not have the right to come closer to me right now. Get the fuck away, I am calling the police. God.

It took me two months to get over that shit (and I know that it was nothing compared to what too many other women go through). Nevertheless, I went through two months of complete self disgust. It took me half a year to ever wear those jeans again. Now I panic if I forget my pepper spray at home...my pepper spray was the only consolation I could find after that.

I work at a place where I hear the most intense stories of criminal acts of violence against immigrant women. Rape. Sexual assault. Child abuse. Abusive men who use rape to *prove* that the woman hasn't been with another man. Or who take advantage of undocumented teenage children because the mother is busy working two jobs. No matter how long the staff have been working there, we all have the same disgusted reactions when we get new clients. "How can anyone abuse a child like that?" "How could anyone even think of doing something like that to a woman?" Etc.

So this is my final two cents:

All men need to be conscious of their sex 24/7. Just as much as white men need to realize that they are both racialized and sexualized beings...black men need to realize they are not just racialized. They are also sexualized. Hey, I'm not saying some don't, but from what I keep experiencing, many don't even realize it. Guys, have you ever heard of that little dating tip about never taking a girl on a first date in an isolate/desolate/closed space? The translation of that tip is: "Realize that you have the penis and that a girl doesn't want to fear being raped. She doesn't know you, so how does she know if you're gonna keep it in your damn pants or not?"

It's not fair. We women are under constant awareness of our sex and our environment. I had to learn to no longer talk on my cell phone or be distracted in any other way when walking in the city. I also learned to take detours. I have even walked right past my own home when there is any man behind me. In fact just yesterday I did this and it was some white guy in a suit and a briefcase. I trust no strange men.

IT'S NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE BLACK!!!

*[EDIT: I removed "because they are black," since it came out of my incoherent ranting at the time of writing the piece. On a side note, if my rant was not clear, this should sum it up--I am not avoiding black men more than white or any other race when I feel that I suspect an unsafe situation]

'Dos Equis' Buses Sprouting In Mexico

When I think of Mexico, just as when I think about most foreign countries, I tend to immediately think of women. Of course I think of their children as well, but my thoughts start with the women.

Maquiladoras. Feminicides. It goes on...ayayay.

It's impossible to lay it all out in text, let alone in words. But here's a small something that can serve as one lens into the complicated world of the brown woman:

Andrew Gumbel, from The Independent, reports that Mexico has finally established a female bus line.

Mexico City residents take a staggering 22 million bus rides every day, creating an atmosphere ripe for chaos of all sorts.

Officials say about one-seventh of the city's rapes and incidents of sexual harassment take place on buses, but the number of actual complaints is stunningly low – just seven last year.

Every woman has her own defence mechanisms – everything from wearing dowdy outer clothing to carrying a safety pin to deter wandering hands.

Mexico City is not the first place to introduce women-only buses. Similar services already exist in Brazil, Japan and India. The concept is not entirely new in Mexico City either – on the city's underground system, the first three cars are usually reserved for women.

The response in the first few days, though, has been enthusiastic. A couple of times, men have got on a bus, only to be mocked by the passengers and shamed into climbing back off.

"Now he knows how women feel," Yolanda Altamirano, a 64-year-old office cleaner, said after one hapless caballero retreated from her bus.

Well, these buses aren't complete life savers, because women do have to exist outside of the buses for most of the rest of the day...but at least they get a small break. For now.

You can never know enough about Mexico. This is the one thing that I would say to anyone who asks me anything about the country. I have never been there. But the Mexico experience fills more spaces than merely the geographic.

[Edit]
To complete this post now that I have more time (I was running late to class when I put this up), you can't just look at these events without understanding the layers and layers of cultural, political, religious, and spiritual spaces of Mexico.

Too many working women of color are systematically targeted, violated, and killed--known as the feminicides that take place in areas like Ciudad Juarez. Too many women of color in Mexico are the family bread-winners, many working in factories along the border--living off of some of the best wages in all the country, yet what they make is barely enough to live in suffering. Many of these women hold onto their love for family, religion, and rich culture. They hold the country together, as daughters, mothers, grandmothers, wives, friends...and collectively make up that essential flame that gives Mexico life.

This is why I am elated to hear about such buses. I have no way of imagining a bus ride with these women--but with the little knowledge I can piece together, I feel (and I hope) that for a small part of their day, they can step into a space where fear and anxiety can be put away for a little while.

TMZ pulls the "ho" card

Last time I checked, Don Imus-gate resulted in “ho” being a punishable word when used in the media to refer to Black women.

But just two months after Imus, the word seems to be gaining ground again, on novelty shirts, and most recently, in a popular fashion review on TMZ, a celebrity gossip website.

After the Black Entertainment Television Awards show last week, Tmz.com posted a blurb, in typical style-review fashion, attacking the guests’ evening wear. But what is normally innocent hardballing of celebrity fashion, became another forum used to insult Black women by devaluing their sexuality. TMZ got it wrong when they called powerhouse Beyoncé a “roboho,” for wearing a metallic suit on stage, and rapper Eve, a “streetwalker chic.”

Because when it comes to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, a couple of TMZ’s most covered stars, TMZ portrays their fashion flops as more legitimate fashion mistakes—like copying people’s styles or wearing the wrong colors.

Still, we rebuke hip-hop artists and people like Don Imus for calling women of color ho’s. And we should. But we can’t be so quick to think the problem stopped with Imus.

“Ho” continues to be associated primarily with Black women, making it not only sexist slander, but a very racist one. Writer Jasmyne Cannick would agree.