(ThyBlackMan.com) eclecticalexandria:
i’m tired of reading, seeing, and hearing lectures and panels of men sharing their opinion of why women are single and how women should portray themselves in society. true womanhood cannot and never will be defined by a man.
This may be old news to some folks but I’mma run through it anyway.
I rolled my eyes at Steve Harvey’s Think Like A Man, Act Like Lady nonsense the moment I saw it. After reading What Tami Said’s post on the topic, I let the gears start turning even though it ticks me off.
Many young [Black] boys learn that the way you talk to girls is by having some kind of script or approach, known as “game” or “rap”. Sometimes it’s putting on airs, like an attitude or a mentality, sometimes its a set of actions, sometimes it’s an actual rehearsed set of lines, and sometimes it’s a combination of these things. The better you act it out, the more believable it is, the more convincing it is to the female the faster she’ll fall for it. They 
deliberately treat dating and sex like setting a trap or literally playing a game. Contrary to the idea that women are the only ones that play games to get what they want, boys and men are socialized to “run game” or learn a “rap” from the examples taught to them or set by other men. I could get into how the relation between this and mainstream rap and R&B buuut I won’t.
Some lil’ boys never learn to stop playing games.
So it only stands to reason that the only thing they can teach these females that they are giving advice to, solicited or unsolicited, is how to play games. In my opinion, the only kind of advice you can really give anybody in any relationship is tentative guidance on communication, empathy, and honesty. Because if we’re all playing games, and it’s all just a game, then what’s really real?
Beyond the game, there is nothing else. They get what they want, they move on.
The message that many men are sending women is There’s a man out there for you, you just gotta adjust your lure to catch him. They will use any excuse they can to maintain male privilege–from the Bible, to blaming a woman’s personality, to ridiculing and shaming her body, to shielding male bigotry with arguments of preference, to purposefully pitting women against each other and playing “mind games” with girls/women who are really interested in a relationship with them. And back again ten times over on that circuit.
As boys get older and many of them are placed as leaders in Black communities, they are indoctrinated into and learn to enforce hegemonic heterosexist practices. Which means they try to control and influence women’s behavior by manipulation and drawing attention away from male privilege.
All dating advice from a man can typically tell a woman is what they need to do to change/adjust themselves into somebody he or other men will find attractive and willing to deal with. Some women want to change themselves for men, they want that happily ever after. Many of us just want to be ourselves (anxieties and all), know that should be enough, and we want to experience a non-formulaic ending that includes us being happy for the most part.
A man can teach a woman to play football, a male dominated sport. But they control the field because they control the game by being the ones who dictate the rules of the game.
Personally, the only types of games I generally like are the ones I can play with a controller. or a pencil, like sudoku.
Staff Writer; Shannon Rucker
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