the good
well, some light is being shed on domestic violence in the black community.  We are actually acknowledging it exists and speaking about it with our friends.  We are seeing that it can happen to anyone and we are seeing a lot of people talking out how this has affected them personally – men and women.  And hopefully, we will see a beautiful young woman strong enough to walk away and a young man secure enough to get some real help and learn to deal with his issues.

the bad
Most likely we won’t.  And it will be heartbreaking to see them together again, and more heartbreaking when he does this again.  I understand that it is not easy to walk away from an abusive relationship.  I know even when women leave it is emotionally draining to press charges.

the ugly
The way young people are reacting to this situation.  Reading the comments on Black gossip sites and on Rihanna and Chris’s myspace pages is horrifying.  Some young people think this is ok.  Some people think being provoked is a reason to beat a woman (this comes straight from Chris’s sister AND cousin).

So what do you guys think?

peace,
e.

h/t: postbougie, ill doctrine, huffington post

p.s. dope vid courtesy of ill doctrine

And I’m totally not being sarcastic.

Previous research has suggested that the first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months and after 10 years it has gone completely, the newspaper said.

“The findings go against the traditional view of romance — that it drops off sharply in the first decade — but we are sure it’s real,” said Arthur Aron, a psychologist at Stony Brook, told the Sunday Times.

Lately, love has felt so unattainable.  You see lovers move on.  Or lovers who can’t move on and seem destined to be alone forever.  I’m glad there is research to confirm my idealized vision of love.

That is all, night folks.

e.

While the article focus’s on a study conducted on high school students, I can say, in my experience, that hooking up is here to stay for young adults as well.  To gain more insight on hooking up vs. dating, Blow consulted La Salle University professor, Kathleen Bogle.  Bogle broke it down and said hooking up takes the pressure off as it promotes groups of friends going out and it takes the stigma off the one person who can’t get a date.  Fine, that sounds good in principle.  But the consL

The cons center on the issues of gender inequity. Girls get tired of hooking up because they want it to lead to a relationship (the guys don’t), and, as they get older, they start to realize that it’s not a good way to find a spouse.

Enter double edged sword stage left.  And this is what I see happening to my peers.  Women hook up to get a boyfriend, while men hook up to avoid having a girlfriend.  You see, everyone enjoys consistent sex but the ways men and women view the future of such relationships are very different.  Women view consistent sex as a first step in a committed relationship.  Men view consistent sex as the end result – that’s all they wanted, the sex without the commitment (read: drama and work).

In talking about this with some friends a while back, some women decided that they were not going to have sex unless they were in a committed relationship.  That is, they would withold sex from the man they wanted more from, but would still hookup with guys they knew had no relationship potential. This way, they would avoid the “I don’t date girls who are easy” tactic.  However, this plan backfired as the guys who were relationship material resented the fact that they had to wait for sex with a woman when she was having sex with other guys easily.

They, like myself, could not find a way to win.

That’s not good. So why is there an increase in hooking up? According to Professor Bogle, it’s: the collapse of advanced planning, lopsided gender ratios on campus, delaying marriage, relaxing values and sheer momentum.

Aw man – we have to work against the collapse of advanced planning (I personally do not think she’s talking about women’s advanced planning), lopsided gender ratios on college campuses (that’s not going to be easy (or quick) to solve), delaying marriage (I could write a million posts about this) and sheer momentum (I get it, why would these men give up all this non-committal sex and freedom if they don’t have to?)

So it looks like hooking up is here to stay, and I for one am not happy about it.

e.

She told me that she hasn’t been receiving a lot of support from our same age peers.  People are surprised she wants to get pregnant.  She’s married, almost done with grad school and wants to have 5 kids.  She’d better get cracking now.  People want her to wait until she gets older.  Why?  Because they think she should start her career and then have kids.  To us, this isn’t the smartest move.  Why would you wait until you have an established career and then risk it by taking off tons of time for maturnity leave.  It’s makes sense to us to have the kids before there’s a career to worry about.  For me, the ideal time would be while I’m writing my dissertation.  Ok that was a sidebar.

So after we talked about kids, we talked about dating.  It was a relief to meet someone who thinks the same way I do about dating.  My definition of single is simple – you are not dating someone, you’re not in a commited relationship, you are single.  For the past few years, I’ve been noticing that most of my peers don’t think that they way.  They can be monogomous with one person for months but consider themselves single.  They “date” many people and are still single.  They will give someone everything but a title.  To me, all these people are not single, but they consider themselves single.  It confuses me.  And having dated someone who’s idea of single was totally opposite of mine, I know that’s not the scene for e.

I never considered myself conservative, until I started dating.  Whomp. My name is Eva and I am a conservative dater. And I am ok with that.

peace,
e.

In an earlier conversation he compared the future to the Matrix 2, where everyone looked liked us – you know, light skinned, not Black or White.  Everyone had been mixed and that was the future and “Black women are holding up evolution by being the only ones trying to stick to their race.”

I’m sorry, but does this sound crazy to anyone else but me?

Here’s what we all know:  The number of never-married Black women has doubled in the past 50 years (it’s around 45%).  The number of married Black women has decreased substantially in the past 50 years.  Quite frankly, this graph freaks me out. 

My boss said that this was a crass way of discussing the lower prospects of an educated black women getting married. Fine and fair enough. That drama has been widely written about and every Black women knows that the more education she gets the less likely she is to get married. That’s depressing – chose between education and men. whomp whomp.

What’s really disturbing me is that lately I have heard some black men (not a lot but enough) exploiting this situatuion. They are exploiting the fact that there are so few educated, financially secure Black men with no children by cheating on their girlfriends and not worrying because “she won’t find anything better.” And what’s more depressing is that some women are subscribing to this notion.

For me, if it comes to having a Black man who won’t respect me and being single, I’m going to have to choose single. Or I’m going to have to choose to date outside my race. But whatever my decision, I sure as hell won’t be begging as I do it.

peace,
e.

source: The Joint Center