(ThySistas.com) Life happens to us and in some cases it scars us in a way that leaves the experience etched into the brain. Those experiences have the power to shape our perspective, and the circles we’d run in or avoid. How people are seen becomes tainted regardless of how intelligent, cool, or spiritual we are. There can be an understanding that the bias is unfair, but we can’t see past them. Blanket statements are made no matter how many contradicting factors exist. What many might not understand is in that moment experience is not teaching us to do anything but build a cage that is cut off from fairness and reason. There is another component that rears its head in this space…a fighting hypocrisy. By this I mean not only will hypocrisy become a practice, but we will fight to defend what others don’t have the right to defend.
One example of this cage that many of us, as women, can relate to is how experience shapes our view of men. One can argue this applies to everything and everyone, however how it plays out is different. Furthermore, the cage built is different if we are dealing with experiences with other sistahs. Let’s unpack, some sistahs didn’t grow up seeing healthy relationships, or men that were balanced and loving. Sometimes it was because the men were toxic people, but sometimes as much as we don’t want to admit it the men leave with cause. Regardless of the way what we perceive meets our experiences once we’re adults.
Too many bad relationships, too much heartache, too many changes…all of this can change our verbiage from “our experience” to “all men”. This is important to note, because at this point experience isn’t teaching a lesson, it’s creating a cage. This cage can hinder one from meeting valuable men that, as friends or more, can add positive experiences to our life. Ironically, it can seem as though the more educated we are…the stronger the cage.
This is something we need to bring to the sistah circle, and girl chats. Its an area by which we must hold each other accountable if we are to see one another happy. This is the thing, ALL men didn’t hurt us. All black men don’t hate black women. We can’t say the majority hate us either…we don’t know the majority. Just because a man disagrees with us doesn’t mean he hates women. If a man doesn’t do as we tell him to do with his life…doesn’t mean he’s toxic. If a man has boundaries it doesn’t mean he hates women. You might be thinking these things are a given, but when experience hasn’t been kind it’s not. We want the mind and strength of a black woman to be values and respected…we must respect the exact same thing in our counterpart.
Sistahs, men get hurt just like we do. They have mommy and daddy issues just like we do. Many of them have been, molested, raped, abused, and traumatized…just as we have. They have seen bad examples of women in relationships, as you have men. They have had their hearts ripped up…just as we have. They have experiences too, but we need them to understand that we WILL NOT pay for another woman’s mistakes. No matter how intelligent they are, we will not allow them to use current events not stats to try and prove All Women are any particular thing that is unfavorable. That is a hill we are verbally willing to stand on. We must give the same respect.
Understand that you can’t use intelligence and knowledge of current events, facts, your experiences, and the women in your circle to judge all men. When this happens the cage bars us from allowing ourselves to be loved by a man that values us in a manner that we deserve. You ask how…easy remember All MEN hate women. Which is it? Please understand this kind of cage can restrain us in every area of our life that it allies. Some of us are in spiritual cages, cultural cages, and even academic cages. This happens any time negative experiences become the reason that we disavow a whole when the whole is not what caused us harm. Trust me I know this is not easy…but think about it.
Staff Writer; Christian Starr
May connect with this sister over at Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/christian.pierre.9809 and also Twitter; http://twitter.com/MrzZeta.