Come Over and Let's Hook Up

So, last night I did a workshop "Come Over and Let's Hook Up" It is somewhat like a skit put on by University Housing, Wellness Center, and other health and professional organizations. Last night was the first night; I suppose you can say it went well. However, listening to some of the comments that were made... I was just a bit embarrassed and a bit upset if I may add.

Nonetheless, the skit was about consensual and non-consensual sex. As this is a topic that is always brought to surface, I am certain we have all discussed this before as it relates to rape, domestic violence, and even death. I personally thought the skit went well, I mean as the moderator I sort of had some expectations on how things may progress.

To get to my reason for blogging this; one of the students, in fact several of the students (Black males) made what I thought was a misogynistic and objectifying statement, "G, I am about to call the 'head doctor'" (for those who don't know what a "head doctor" is, it is a female who goes around giving oral sex; also known in Chicago terms as "bustdown." I gasped at that comment, almost having to exit the room. I said to myself, why would any male who has been brought up by their mother or grandmother fix their mouth to say such derogatory statement? It is disrespect to himself and to other women...I would even go as far to say his entire family of women may have been. As I perpended on that virulent statement, I realized that I should have expected that; their is always going to be one or two guys who would be so valiantly to make such comment.

As a male, who was raised in a single family home (my mother) and a brother of two sisters, I was outraged and disgusted by the statements. As Mark Anthony Neal stated, "The fact is that men are oblivious to the travails of women in American society and often embrace the rudimentary forms of sexism naturally until they are challenged by the women who are close to them." this is to say that, women positive women should step and teach some of these young guys a lesson; we need to point out the preconception of their [males] view of women. As feminist scholar bell hooks so eloquently stated, "Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence." Thus, until Black men disengage the patriarchal norms of society, matters will only worsen in the Black community.


LaCharles Ward
Student, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
Studying Psychology and Speech Communication