You know what is aad? I believe girls and boys in our community are affected by domineering mothers. I think a lot these days about my cousin who is a female. Her mother did everything to make sure that the relationship with her soul mate didn’t work out. She is very controlling. The result? Well, now she is 32 years old, unmarried, childless, doesn’t have a solid work experience and doesn’t have much more than a high school diploma. Her mother made sure that she is still living under her roof. I noticed that many mothers in our community who are divorced (which is the case of my aunt) feel threatened when their kids want to live their own lives with the opposite sex. It makes me sick and I think it is soooo selfish. In many aspects of her life, my cousin doesn’t thrive.

About the whole “authority” business… true authority only comes from trust, and trust is earned. A man need not expect that he will be submitted to unless he can show that he is trustworthy, and that takes time. He also ought not waste his time with a woman without capacity to appreciate his efforts… and if Black men and women would get very serious about looking for what really matters in a mate instead of being led around by what their eyes tell them would please the middle of their legs, there are still enough of us to give the next generaton of young Black people a good chance. But it takes maturity and focus.

BLACK UNITY

When we talk about emasculation it is not about function. For example, a male can be sensitive to children and work in a what is traditionally a woman’s field. It is about the progressive and consistent, even though subtle, elimination of authority, decisiveness and sense of command that the traditional masculine father held in our history as Africans in America.

Historically this was done through slavery, and then compounded by the economic and education system. Which it still is. Now, many Black women themselves help perpetuate the cycle without even knowing it, and many Black men allow the cycle continue passively.

So many Black women are caught in a paradox. They want a ‘real man’, but simultaneously glory in the mythological ‘strong Black woman’ role, which in many cases is defined as not being able to submit or accommodate a ‘strong Black man’ and his personality traits.

Even the term submission raises the hair on many women’s necks, but yet historically, the patriarch was voluntarily submitted to, because A) He was generally a man’s man and B) He was worthy of being submitted to.

Modern emasculation makes both A & B a challenge. What woman wants to submit to a man that demonstrates more feminine traits than her? And what woman wants to submit to a man who is not worthy of being submitted to?

That is what occurs when you have women raising men, a social construct that devalues Black men, and an education system and economy that makes it very difficult for a Black man to be upwardly mobile.

So emasculation is real, and is a community killer. It creates a vicious cycle for Black women and it keeps our men weak and neutered.

This complaint has gone far beyond the work place, although it started there, with the nonsense about equal work for equal pay. Equal work for equal pay besides a few exceptions punishes the man, because depending on the danger and heaviness of the work, he HAS to carry most of the load. I am speaking from countless years of personal and anecdotal experience.

Also what most people don’t know is that the high rate of unemployment among African males has a lot to do with the specific elimination of traditional male roles and the increase in specific female oriented role. This is not equality. True equality would be both of us competing evenly for the job. But never the less more women women are in the work place and doing well for themselves, The emasculation I talk about has a little bit of the feeling of unimportance in the work force, but has more to do with how we are pushed to act in this dysfunctional society. We are expected to tone down our masculinity. We are not expected to act like MEN, just like the males in any other ethnic group is. No we are supposed to SETTLE, COMPROMISE and GIVE DIFFERENCE TO, even when it negatively affects us. Even when it is not logical to do so.

Many women I KNOW, quickly turn the tables on men who settle and compromise after they were told that that’s the way women want it. NO, women want a man to be in charge of himself and the situation that affects them, in fact I would go so far as to say women want a man being in charge of them. Tell me you don’t know of a woman who talks fondly about a man who keeps her in check.

This is why many supposed good, intelligent woman gravitate to thugs, not because they are thugs (well not so much) but because they are not pussies. Not to be too vulgar but women already have one, they don’t need a man acting like one around them. Or as the Chinese say, be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it. It is obvious that your husband and brother in law are honorable men and are not caught up in the hyper masculinity of men lacking a purpose in life. But the day both you and your sister in law take their masculine essence away from them, is when you will hear the refrain about you wanting to effeminize them.

Again loving your child is neither a masculine of feminine trait, it is the trait of a righteous parent.