Pussy: A Think Piece

Why, why in God’s green and vast and beautiful earth, would you want to murder pussy? Like, the textbook definition of what murder includes, besides doing extensive time in the penal system (unless ya’ money long like Diddy, or like, you’re white), is not for games or play-play. But, yet, here we are, as the uncivilized, and sometimes archaic and cavemen we is, telling women we gonna murder their pussies. In fact, a lot of the terminology used for coital relation between gents and the opposite sex sounds downright abusive:

“Hit that”

“Smash that”

“Fuck that”

“Bang that”

“That,” in a very distant 3rd person noun tense; “that” as in, “I have no connection to this object, this thing,” which goes along with the notion that this “thing,” which is a body part attached to a human being, has no real importance besides being something we can use for our pleasure and enjoyment, much like one plays a video game, or eats a sanmich (yeah, sanmich. Bruh Man from the fif’ flo would agree).

Language is power. Words are power. The choices we make with those words, with this language, can dictate how we approach life and the people in our lives and how they are affected by them. Growing up in a neighborhood where a woman’s vagina wasn’t really classified as hers; it was something to be controlled, mastered…dominated.

Corner and barbershop conversations normally described conquests that could have been torn from the pages of Iceberg Slim lore. And one-upmanship is the phrase that plays in these parts; the more lewd and disrespectful, the better. I wasn’t immune to it. As early as grade school, it was about getting your dick sucked and having sex with the pretty girls while ya’ momma wasn’t home (this from the boy who barely even know what his dick could do until like 9th grade, and damn near cried when his pee landed everywhere BUT the toilet bowl the first time he learned how to masturbate, and ain’t lose his virginity until 19-20 years of age), we traded tales of fucking that were unbelievable in theory, but felt real and needed, because what is more important than the frail thing that is the male ego? Answer: everything, in case you was wondering.

The shit starts early. And the music I was listening to didn’t help. Far be it for me to forget the tale of Dee Barnes, the once very popular journalist who hosted one of my favorite shows “Pump It Up” on Fox 5, way before we had the luxury of cable in our household, who was the victim of a verbal and physical beat down by the likes of a Mr. Andre Young aka Dr. Dre, multi-millionaire former member of NWA and Death Row fame, who can now be seen being played by a very talented young man in a NWA biopic.

I can recall very accurately how Dee’s account of the story got swept under the rug that is Hip-Hop misogyny, and also me at a young age not really giving two flying fucks because hey, who cares as long as they give us the art we be asking for, right? Plus it fits the narrative of “bitches ain’t shit” and the now popular “these hoes ain’t loyal” that gets sung in playgrounds way before “the wheels on the bus.”

So a “fuck a bitch” there, and a “fuck a bitch here” and a “here a bitch, there a bitch, everywhere a bitch,” ain’t seem too flagrant of a cause. I mean, R. Kelly peeing on underage girls in a video that we saw, still ain’t stop dude from wearing a mask, trapping motherfuckers in a closet, and calling himself the “Pied Piper.” It sure ‘nuff hasn’t stopped Chris Brown from almost beating the shit out of his lady in broad daylight and jet skiing with Usher next day like he just won a Grammy; ain’t stop Ray Rice from hitting his wife with a closed fist like it was 4th and 1, and proceeding to drag her lifeless body around on camera, as if he had practiced the routine in the mirror before they left the house.

There are a slew of entertainers, professionals, blue-collar 9-to-5’ing brothers who have gotten their thrills from the mistreatment and harm of the opposite sex.

Don’t be fooled. We’ve been groomed for this:

“Own that pussy”

“Beat the pussy up”

“Whose pussy is this?”

Hers. It’s hers, I would imagine, and assume. We are literal slaves to the pussy. Even the word “pussy,” like a kitten, to be stroked; like a pet to be owned. This is what, as men, as a society, we’ve been taught: that a woman’s body is to be of service to the person who is requesting the service of it. Sometimes, the service isn’t requested, but taken. Taken because, as the genius that is Nasir Jones once suggested with pride, “You owe me.” Nah, shun. She doesn’t. We gotta do, and be, better. We gotta deconstruct how we talk and view our conversation about women and their placement in the world; frankly buy acknowledging that their place and our place is equal…and a majority of the time we, as men, would do ourselves a big favor by shutting thee entire fuckety fuck up about what women decide they want to, or not want to, do with their bodies. Because it’s THEIRS.

A young lady carried a bed around her campus for an entire school year to send a message. Message received. Let’s stop being fuckboys (myself included. This ain’t soapbox dishing here. I’ve had some real backwards, backwoods ass ways of thinking and speaking when it came to the opposite sex). Live and learn…and then teach. Teach our young boys and young men about respect, and love…and that humans aren’t property. Ever.