Overheard

Overheard just the other day: We can't even use the word "ho"
-from budding academic black male

Hearing this instantly made me consider the bemoaning of white people not being able to use the word "nigger" (ugh even hurts to write let alone say--which is why I don't). Should "ho" be placed in the same category?

The thing is like most things having to do with power, names and labels carry a lot of weight. You can tell who has more power by the extent to which there are negative labels associated with a given group. Louis C.K. made this abundantly clear when he talks about white people and time travel. People in socio-cultural contexts that are near the top of all social categories, tend not to have much in the way of negative stigma historically, so words really don't hurt.

So in the same way that white people tend to be excluded from wordplay as an exercise of power and notably domination, I would consider men to have a similar status effect about them. Men are not responsible for the actions of all men. What they say or do carries little consequence to men on a whole outside of reinforcing their power oriented status. Unlike whiteness, science is still used in the service of reinforcing this status--especially when it comes to justifying the sexuality and sexual appetite of men, something women are readily demonized for as they are considered hos .

Othering of women, like most social minorities, is a common discourse that often precludes their consideration as people worthy of being treated humanely, let alone with respect, care, and even love. Yet women have a plethora or words and labels used to reinforce this othering effect. Such is the case for racial, ethnic, sexual, and a whole host of other minorities. When these minority statuses intersect so too do the labels they are faced with.

Fear keeps us in line, prevents us from actualizing and exercising the full extent of our humanity. We are already not considered fully human to begin with. This continues to be the case for black women. Ho is commonly associated with us after all. Oddly enough, our bodies are considered a common platform through which the power of men is exercised and validated. We were more a tool than human to begin with in American society. Black men  seem to reinforce this standpoint despite being minoritized racially, because their gender is exercised to an even fuller extent--those that quest to validate their humanity by means of power anyway and it seems unfortunately sex is another means through which such power is exercised. Black women are therefore not too far from being considered hos regardless of whether they do or don't abide by these arbitrary social laws that require them to stay in their place.

Blackness, having also been historically precluded as worthy of being treated humanely, let alone with respect, care, and even love, knows the pain of being powerless in so many ways, making life a struggle of reclaiming humane treatment and  validation. Unfortunately many of us have been tricked into believing this can only be achieved by patriarchal means, and thus the ways of those who colonized us.

Now a days it is a bold transgression to engage a politics of humanity, especially sexually. To demand that we also be considered a multi-dimensional being worthy of being treated humanely and with dignity that majority oriented statuses seem to have been granted at birth. Being reduced to object-hood is what I have understood to be the status-quo as far as black women are concerned. Respectability politics demand that we fear this status and do everything to prevent being considered in such ways. Oddly enough what this typically ends up implying is a deference to this very object-hood. In other words, we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. Especially in the face of such retorts as "she was just a ho anyway" or other demeaning responses that reinforce that we are little more than a resource to be plundered and cast aside rather than cherished and nourished.

So yeah, as people searching for liberation from othering, working to transgress a system of thought that excludes minorities of all varieties from being treated humanely, let alone with respect, care and even love, wanting to create a place where such treatment is the new status-quo, I would think that how we refer to ourselves and one another would be a key aspect of this struggle.

 Bemoaning the possibility that you might have to give up the power that reinforces dominating practice--which includes labels placed on women, and especially black women, forces people like me to consider that what you really want is liberation for yourself; a harnessing of the powers of the colonizer and therefore continued domination practices that refer to people like me as a resource to be plundered as your means of validation, rather than cherished and nourished--something you so badly desire and expect for yourself.  

So again I wonder, if you are really my brother...