What follows is an extensive comment on ‘So Feminism Is The Goddess’s Revenge?’, copied from the backend and instead posted here, that serves as the basis for Of Hos And Men, and the ‘sister article’ The Vagina That Launched 1,000 Ships. The paragraphs addressed specifically in this article appear in bold.
‘Old-World European Ghetto Bitch’
On suck-ass Fridays, which already start lower and stay lower than other days in my week, it seems harmless to spend a little more time combing through your website in search of something that grabs me – after all, the risk of a low mood from reading something dark on your website has already been preemptively removed due to a weekly rhythm which automatically assures that this day will not be a high point.
Today, it was the goddess article. I am naturally drawn to such themes, being female, and like a kid who has received a book which includes his / her name in the title and throughout the story, I compare myself mentally to the women you analyze.
I have decided therefore, that I must be a ghetto bitch, which must be due to my old-world European father's training to share, care, consider others, show appreciation, work hard to help others and take care of my family. I've been deciding, for many years, that in general, American culture is lacking in its ability to instill such values the way they were instilled in me. I'm sure that day care, media, and a ton of other things you could discuss cogently (that's you, Sir, specifically) contribute to that.
I don't know how many times I have thanked a man (or woman) for holding the door for me, and I don't discriminate in my thanks, and I often say Sir or Ma'am. I do the same for others whenever I can, which is usually always, except when they have beaten me to the door. I don't just thank for doors held – but for any kindness, seat offered, etc.
I can't help observing that I also can't count the times that I have been completely ignored by a black woman whom I held the door for or have been ignored walking only a few steps behind her, door closing in my face (of course not always, and I would say more often with younger women). I guess I have less status than a man and am less useful. This has happened with younger white women also.
I've also been bypassed aggressively by someone who is shoving past me, or even literally bumping into me or grabbing a seat that I'm heading towards and close to (and this has tended to happen to me more so with black women and men).
So my point is that we're all dealing in stereotypes or percentages of people in a clan who will act according to whatever stereotypes we apply to them, and that my experience as a white woman who is not assumed to be a potential rapist is different from yours. I think I get blown off more, to be honest, as well as approached more by the kinds of opportunists your white woman was trying to avoid when she refused your help.
Part of what I'm observing, I would also attribute to entitlement, and evidently entitlement crosses all lines: race, gender, age, and culture. And this I would definitely blame on the media with all of its BS portrayals of culture, family, values, etc. In short, who we should be and what we should have – nothing any thinking person should swallow whole...
So there you go. Where, I don't really know, but I know your world is not exactly the same world I walk in. It can't be. What I do see, is that we're both frustrated. And I don't know if that's anything new either. It's hard to live in society when you don't like what you see. I think that has existed throughout the ages.
Thoughtfully expanding the perspective to include another viewpoint,
Habibi
PS: I'll add a comment that my tendency to look directly at people who have shown kindness and thank them must also show a kind of confidence: that I have chosen to connect this way to others and that my appreciation won't be misinterpreted. As a woman, it shows that I'm not running so scared that I can't interact as a human being.
On the few occasions that someone has tried to use my openness to gain a favor, I look away immediately and ignore them to show that the openness is gone, and if necessary, show a fear-free annoyance, which means piss off, I won't be easily intimidated. So far, it's worked well for me.
Of Hos And Men
Dear Habibi, when someone claims to be a European belly dancer living in Philadelphia I cannot help but pay attention. On a less primordial level I see two themes here:
1. Social resentment in the form of suburban white women resenting the most matter-of-fact overtures of masculine courtesy, and of black women resenting you white women
2. Your lack of understanding concerning the nature of underclass black women placing such high value on a grungy old white guy holding a door for them.
Of Hos And Men deals exclusively with theme 2. Permit me to arrange the following scenario based on our very dispirit experiences:
1. Upon entering the dollar mart a young black lady in Baltimore city has the door held for her by James. She is thankful, smiles, has her children wave to the man, and continues on her way.
2. At the very same instance in a dollar mart in Philadelphia, the half sister of this lady—fathered by the same drug dealer—is entering that store with her children, and Habibi, holds the door open for her, and is promptly ignored—perhaps even shouldered aside—and alienated by this abrasive ghetto bitch.
What, my dear belly dancer, are the causes of this behavior? You, as a white woman, see the issues of courtesy, deference, civility, reciprocal social behavior, and manners, all associated with what amounts to a tiny comfort value, the burning of a handful of calories or seconds more or less for either party. This is obviously a symbolic act without utility, unless the door is being held for a person who is crippled or bearing a heavy load. The white woman sees that she is resented [and there is much reason for a poor woman of color to resent a white woman, which are beyond the scope of this article.] To find the answer we must look to the reason for the identical black woman in Baltimore treating James like he is a knight in shining armor, when he is manifestly and decorously not.
There is just as much reason to resent a white man as there is to resent a white woman. Indeed, the Whiteman ruled all of the colored world except for Japan and Haiti for the formative 100 years of current colored world opinion [1848-1947]. The Whiteman may have raped, pillaged and ruled the world on behalf of his woman, but it was his heavy colonial hand, not hers. So there is just as much reason for a woman of color to resent the slave master’s perceived descendent in the person of James in Baltimore as there is to resent the slave mistress’s perceived descendent in the person of Habibi.
The answer is very simple, practical, and quite beyond the ken of suburban whites and any whites of upper or middle class—European or American—society. It is related to the central value of white culture, which is abundant material ease and comfort, and plays heavily in the interaction I have with motorists. As a pedestrian I recognize myself as a shirker of responsibility. When I walked up Loch Raven Blvd. yesterday I was in no danger of running into a mother and her children and killing them, where all of the motorists faced this grave responsibility as church let out and had to be more careful than I, wheeling their one ton machine this way and that as I scampered along like the first hominid to fall out of a tree.
A related discussion may be found here It's Unlocked!.
The Whiteman’s Magic Carpet
Every white man and white woman of the hundreds who have driven me here or there, has unlocked the passenger side door before or as they took their driver’s side seat, and then looked at me puzzled as to why I refuse to open the door and sit until they have the keys in the ignition. They seem to believe that I am abiding by some ancient stirrup holding courtesy that my lowly ancestors showed to their lord knight as he mounted his destrier. They all become impatient. The men are usually curious. The women get angry, that I am declining—as per their suggestion—to take a comfortable seat at the first possible opportunity. When all that matters is the warmth of our house in winter, the coolness in summer, the softness of our blankets, the taste of our meal, and the comfort of our conveyance, what sense does my action make?
It makes no sense to the feminized materialistic mind of Western Man or Western Woman.
It makes sense in my primal feral mind, in Harm City, where stupid comfort-obsessed white people are attacked, mugged, robbed, and carjacked every day as they go about their convenience-minded life in a fantastical daze, having been weaned in the softest society that Man has ever devolved for himself.
The plain simple fact is that people are most often attacked in their vehicles while exiting and entering them. However, the white person obsessed with getting high quality slacks at $10 off retail and thereby decreeing the dismemberment of some child slave in Indochina being overworked and underpaid in a sweatshop; whose ruler sends flying death devices out of heaven raining doom upon whoever they fear, cannot sit behind the wheel of the most world changing machine ever invented as the captain of their own land ship, without feeling a certain sense of power.
That sense of power is a lie. When you sit in your vehicle putting the key in the ignition before that door is locked you are as helpless as an old lady sitting in a lounge chair during a gang fight. Though you feel empowered by your vehicle you are helpless.
the white woman can afford this fiction as she is a member of a vast overfed heard of prey animals, preyed upon by a tiny minority of predators. The only wildebeest that bleats is the one that has been singled out by the lions, not the millions munching away as he is eaten balls first.
However, the young black woman on the streets is embedded in that minority predator population. White women not only live away from criminal populations, but outnumber the criminals 1,000 to 1. Black urban women live among the criminals, and are looking at perhaps a 1 in 10 chance of being attacked where the white woman's is more like 1 in 1,000. She cannot afford the white woman's deluded sense that the moral authority of the her race and gender will protect her. She knows that she is at the mercy of men, where the white woman's sissy men permit her to fantasize otherwise.
White Lies and Ghetto Truths
Men in this society are mostly sissies, with a minority of savages. The black woman at the door saw me as a savage, but one with honor. My opening the door was code for, “If you need anything consider yourself under my protection.”
That is what courtesy means in a dangerous environment, where in your cozy world it means, “Oh my honey, have a cushy seat and a tasty biscuit—is the tea cold enough?”
You see, in her world, you have no practical value. You holding the door open has just saved her 2 calories and your tax dollars provide her with enough food stamp money to eat 10,000 calories a day. If Tyrone and his thug buddies decided to take her wallet—she does not carry a purse like you white women as she thinks tactically like a man out of necessity—what will you do Habibi? Do a belly dance and invite your rape along with her robbery?
One need only watch a boxing match or any fight alongside lower class women as the combatants walk into the ring to realize that poor women are as good at picking the winners at a glance as fight coaches are with scouting reports in front of them! To affluent white women a dangerous man is a big loud guy, a cartoon. To a ghetto girl a dangerous man is the one who walks alone and quietly with confidence in a neighborhood were police fear to go without backup. There is a tie in with police harassment too. I and all of my black fighters have been harassed extensively by cops for simply walking without fear while alone in a criminal area, thereby implicating ourselves as potential violent actors. When Oliver did not make his workout yesterday, my first thought was, “I hope he didn’t get picked up by the cops again for being Oliver!"
Megan’s Way
I have lunch or drinks on a weekly basis with Megan, who, though white is a ghetto girl, who works and lives in a black area, and handles large quantities of cash for black customers. When Megan walks into the bar where I meet her she hugs one to three men, kissing them on the cheek, before taking her seat. Those would be the three badasses. She has an established friendship with these men so that they will come to her aid when need be, in return for making them feel good about themselves. And who does she sit with? She sits with me; the guy she has seen beat the piss out of young men and chase criminals down the street.
At the pawn shop and check cashing and money transfer place where she works she runs a courtesy racket. Men like to be smiled at, respected, and called by a pet name like sweetie, or honey by a pretty girl. To most men she is simply courteous. To handicapped or elderly men she behaves like a caretaker, a mom or daughter. To those few dangerous men, such as Jamaican drug dealers, African slave traffickers [mostly from Ghana and Nigeria], white numbers runners, bikers, independent business owners, etc., who behave politely, she learns their name, smiles, waves, pats the back of their hand, and shows all of the little courtesies that their wife or girlfriend no longer bother with. These men will come when called to remove some drunk, or some reprobate, or some emasculated gay white male who is talking to her disrespectfully, from her counter. Within a year at the money store she had established herself as the girl who is adored by all of the most dangerous dudes in the neighborhood.
Having established a true functional moral authority, she has stopped violent crimes just by walking up to a dirt bag and saying, “Leave her alone.” The emasculated dirt bag quickly does a mental inventory of the various area hard cases that would be stomping his ass to blood pudding in the alley if he so much as threatens her, and backs off. The first time I met Megan for drinks at the bar closest to her place of business she nodded to this white dude and said that he had touched her and said something “perverted” in her ear.
She also asked me not to hurt him. I waited for his next beer to be served, walked up to him, stared in his eyes, and without taking my eyes away from his, reached over and grabbed his beer. I stood and stared at him in between gulps for ten minutes as he squirmed and sweated on his stool. I then went back to Megan and put my arm around her and nodded to him, ‘yes.’
He has not bothered her since, and literally jumps out of my way when I walk down the street. He has also huddled close by me a few times outside when he has seen the local knockout game boys come prowling.
Habibi, this is an entire real predatory world that the dominant society on earth has been able to shield its softer parts—being you white women—from. This shield is slowly breaking down with the drug epidemic, and I recommend that white women begin behaving more like Megan, and many a black girl who I have often seen do the same thing, by getting an accurate reading of the masculine landscape. Once the few effective males in your work environment or even at the rail station or bus stop, have been identified, simply adopting a family role such as sister, mother, daughter, is usually all that is required to begin building a network of men who will actually do what was traditionally their role, before it was farmed out to the police state, which is protection; the prime component of which is deterrence.
Conclusion
While the media bombards white women with news of serial killers running wild and tout the federal police as the only solution, ghetto girls know that the police can never be there when something bad goes down, and that their only chance of survival is the cultivation of relationships with honorable men. In white society though honor is a joke, and white men are touted as universal opportunistic rapists. Ghetto girls with brains have retained the skill set of the primitive woman who realized the power that her acknowledgement of a man’s honorable status has over him. In our materialistic Western Culture reciprocal relationships between men and women who are not related by blood can only be conceived of on a material basis, as a sex for violence tradeoff.
This is a shame, the shame of our dying society. Consider the image of the uncle in modern America. What is he portrayed as in the media? He is either a loser living off of his brother or sister, or a child rapist. In an earlier society he was the role model, the protector, brother to the entire extended family. Now, he is not only increasingly rare in our increasingly sterile white culture, but has been denuded of any masculine qualities in the collective mind’s eye. For more on uncles and masculinity read Point Of The Family Spear.
The practical utility of courtesy does not exist. Courtesy is symbolic. The resentment of white women by women of color will be addressed next week in The Vagina That Launched 1,000 Ships: The Moral Authority of White Women from Bathsheba to Faye Wray
As far as my "perceived descendence" goes, my father alleviated me of that guilt, at least as far as what has happened in this country's history, when I was somewhere between 2nd and 4th grades.
A girl at school had told me that her ancestors had been slaves, while mine sat back and drank lemonade, keeping the slaves.
He told me that my ancestors had nothing to do with any of that. Besides the fact that I was a first generation American on one side and only a few generations in on the other, any of my ancestors, being Eastern European, would have been coal miners here or some other unlucky manual laborers.
He also patently rejected the "melting pot," pushed in this country and pushed ethnic pride in my background instead. I'm not Heinz 57. I can list what I am, thanks to my father.
One thing that has ticked me off, as an adult, is having to check off the category of white or caucasian, as if that explains anything about my cultural heritage and lumps me in with the DAR ladies or those with WASP heritage.
I have my own problems fitting into this originally Brit-based culture, and I'm not interested in being the guilty white oppressor, period. I have no more spare change to give out because of the color of my skin, and also because I haven't had it easy myself, in ways the average American can't imagine. Not a pity party, frankly, just an f-off, to people who know nothing about me.
So, while I hear you, and understand that I will always appear to be a white oppressor, I call bullshit on the type of racism that will lump me into that category because of my skin color.
For the rest, we live in a reality that has to be dealt with as such, not fantasy land or some other sit com world. I grew up as a city kid, dressed in thrift store clothing, without even a family car, riding subways at night, very wary of my surroundings, not always safe either. Not comparing that to ghetto life. Just saying I won't accept that kind of cultural stereotyping being thrust onto me.
I totally get that you weren't doing that in your answer. My information is to edify the readership of another perspective.
Thanks again,
Habibi
We have had a number of discussions on this site on the more man-friendly women of recent European extraction over the indigenous American lady. As a man with many friends and relatives who have served overseas in the military, and returned either with a non-American bride or a strong case of 'Yellow Fever', I recently suggested that I was going to toss out my Filipino Wives catalog in favor of a Russian Wives database.
Of course, it must piss you off to no end to be mistaken for some spoiled American woman.
Thanks for generating this article with your question.
You're welcome, and thanks for your kind response.
I have gotten rejected regularly for my differences, because I run on a different set of rules.
The group that I mentally butt heads with the most are young, spoiled American women. The ones who know and judge everything with no experience or knowledge to back themselves up. And many, who are my age, have never outgrown that.
As for those Russian women, given where they are living, there are plenty who would give any impression you wished, that is, until they got citizenship... One of the bitchiest, most selfish women I have bumped into was a Russian Emigree. She could compete any day with your stereotyped spoiled American woman and probably win.
Each on her own merit, and give her time to prove it.
Habibi