Transcription
What's good people? Welcome back to the Onyx Report. Black masculinist news for the day. Like, share, subscribe, join, donate, hit the hype, support the show so we can continue to bring you this independent blackmail thought. And I do hope everybody's well.
So, today I want us to talk a little bit about the end of an era, the end of an idea that was popularized, I want to say, in the 1960s and '70s. Definitely by the '80s and '90s, it had been completely internalized into pop culture, black pop culture to be, uh, to be specific. And that is the worship of the black goddess. All right, the worship of black women. And it was something that I grew up with, thought to be the case, but we're starting to find, uh, is coming under question as black men are starting to redefine themselves.
Now, I wanted to first start with a public service announcement, but this also is still, uh, it's still, you know, connected to the main subject of the show, right? So, just so in case you don't know, um, a different, uh, I guess a different, uh, I don't know what you call it. I don't know if it's a sequel or I think it is a sequel. I do, I do think they're going to have some of the original cast, but A Different World will be appearing on Netflix September 24th, and it will include, if I remember correctly, some of the, the, the old cast, but of course, it speaks to a new generation. Um, I think some of the old cast will serve as parents or maybe even employees at the university. We'll see. Um, but yeah, a new generation of this. And and one thing I will say is I went back and watched some of the old episodes. Now, mind you, A Different World was one of the shows that inspired me to go to college, as you know, for many black folk because, um, it helped to give us an image. It helped to give us a perspective. Prior to that, going to college was challenging because we had no idea what it looked like, what it could look like. And I'm not saying that Hillman was reflective of all the universities we went to, but it gave us a sense of what college was like. And it kind of demystified the idea for many of us, you know, and a lot of people don't like to do so today that, you know, if anything, if you say his name, you're, you're, you're kind of dismissed or canceled or whatever. But the reality is, a lot of people have Bill Cosby to thank, right? Between The Cosby Show and A Different World, a whole generation of us, Gen X, uh, you know, uh, his kids at the time, uh, decided to go to college. He helped to demystify that. He helped to make it cool. I talked about this some years ago. Even when my son was like five, six or seven years old, I showed him some episodes of popular sitcoms on, you know, uh, mainstream TV. I showed him some on BET. And then I showed him one episode of The Cosby Show. He had nothing to say about any of the other shows he watched, but after one episode of The Cosby Show, he asked me, "Can I go to college?" Now, that's that says, uh, quite a bit about this, the side of Bill Cosby that people don't want to talk about these days.
But the other aspect to A Different World that I had forgotten about until I began to rewatch it was just how feminist it was and how much of it sought to really, in many ways, uh, downplay black men, disrespect them subtly. And truthfully speaking, The Cosby Show had its own angle on that that I didn't see when I was a younger man. And as much as I adored, uh, Claire Huxtable, you know, the feminism with Claire was, uh, was extremely pronounced, but all I knew was the feminism of the black community. I grew up in a single-parent household. Most of the schools I went to had predominantly female teachers. Even college, you know, was predominantly female. So, you grow up in an environment of feminism, you really don't think critically about it, 'cause it's all you know. It isn't until you start to interrogate it that you start to raise questions.
Well, and this one, and shout out to my boy Cameron, uh, he brought in some information I thought was relevant. So, this is the show creator, all right, the, uh, she's an American author, screenwriter, producer, and director. Her name is Felicia D. Henderson. And apparently, this is the person behind, uh, the upcoming Netflix show, right? A Different World. She's behind *B.A.P.S.*. Uh, I guess she's written for *Grey's Anatomy*, *Queen Sugar*. Uh, you know, that should tell you quite a bit right there, right? So, you can anticipate that we'll not only get a lot of the feminism we got in the original show, but we will likely also get a doubling down of black feminism here alongside a healthy dose of LGBTism and the kind of narrative that continually puts straight black men down. Now, I never watched the *B.A.P.S.*, um, revival or recreation. So, you guys can comment on that in the, uh, comment section, but from what I understand, it's pretty much in line with what we can expect for, for A Different World. And I anticipate that we're going to see a lot more straight black men starting to move away from these productions, right? These productions that have become extremely popular not only in mainstream culture but in the black community and have had little pushback in regard to straight black men. I think we're going to see, uh, a kind of shift in that regard, and I think it's overdue. I really do.
But moving on to the primary segment of the show. All right. What we're going to talk about is this kind of shift, and we're going to look at it from the vantage point of an article that I was sent. Uh, shout out to Andrew for sending this. Uh, this is from, uh, newrepublic.com. "Can Marriage Survive the Manosphere?" Right. I'm not going to go through this with a fine-tooth comb. Uh, but I am going to share some insights and we'll look at elements of the, the article. But fundamentally, what it does is it attempts to attack the very notion of marriage and most particularly the nuclear family. And all of that is window dressing for an attack on straight men. And the attempt is to get men to accept a new paradigm that, uh, allows women and feminists in particular to redefine family along their own interests. While at the same time, they go about re, you know, trying to recast and reimagine the history of sexual dynamics across race, across geography, and across time. And as it is no longer in vogue for straight men to comment on this, many, including those in the academy, have gone silent unless they are in complete agreement with this kind of tidal wave of sentiment that, uh, is also referred to as feminization, right? That suggests that you need to silently agree with these perspectives, or not silently, you just need to agree. And if you disagree, you need to stay silent to keep your job. You know, this is kind of where we, where we're at. But I want to be, um, well, I'll deal with that in a second.
So let's delve through this a little bit. Now, first and foremost, when I get these kind of articles, some of the first things I do is try and look at what the politics of it are. And, you know, now, straight off the top, you can see, "Can Marriage Survive the Manosphere?" Now, that doesn't sound like much in and of itself, but then you read the subtitle: "The appeal of marriage is waning in an age of supercharged misogyny." So, they're already telling the audience what the manosphere is. And and notice, in many of these think pieces and articles, they don't actually quote people. And when they do, which is rare, they only quote the same, you know, three or so. You know, it's, uh, you know, it's always Andrew Tate. You might get Sneako in there. I forget the name of the two guys who have a show together. Um, anyway, I, and and, you know, those are the guys that everybody kind of points to. And of course, they, they find the most extreme quotes that they can find. But there are literally thousands of content creators in many of those spaces. And there's a whole separate component of the manosphere referred to as the black manosphere that has yet again thousands of thinkers, content creators, podcasters, you name it, that are contributing their own life experiences and their own perspectives. And many are in disagreement with each other about a wide variety of things. There is no monolithic perspective in either the white manosphere or the black manosphere. There are ideas that many subscribe to, but even in doing so, there are questions, there are disagreements, and they don't always have to be extreme. Sometimes they're slight. But the point of the matter is, there's no complete conformity of thought. Right? Unlike what you see with feminism. As a professor in the university, what I noticed is that, you know, feminism is considered a unilateral, damn near religious orientation that you have to accept without qualification, or else you end up worrying about job security. But the manosphere is not constructed around job security. As a matter of fact, many in the manosphere have had to maintain anonymity just to communicate their thoughts without, you know, having to lose their entire, uh, you know, career, without having to worry about being canceled to such a degree that their kids have to not be able to eat behind it. So, you'll still find a lot of anonymity, you know, people who don't, you know, reveal their their name or sometimes even their face. And this has been going on for years, uh, for, you know, concern about blowback, right? But there is no conformity of thought. There are ideas that people agree with in the manosphere. But what, what, what I would say is agreed upon is that black men should have the freedom to determine their own fate, whatever that shape that may take. And that's, you know, specific to the black manosphere, of course. You know, I don't really comment much on the white manosphere, but mostly what I do is suggest that, uh, one, it's worthy of study, right? To, to look at this. This is unprecedented in world history. A space where you have this many men across culture, geography, race, class. You know, if all you need is a smartphone, you got people who are living in abject poverty, and you got the ultra-wealthy all able to come into a space and dialogue, debate, whatever. That's unprecedented. And I've never seen this, this many men do so. And that includes the black manosphere, for that matter. I've been, I've had men reach out to me from as far away as South Africa to China to Australia to all over the United States and to Alaska, for that matter, right? And that was before I got on YouTube. That was just dealing with my blog. When I got on YouTube, it blew up, and I had many more all over the world reaching out to me. So, you're talking about a global table where men are able to come together and dialogue and share experiences. Something we weren't able to do prior to the advent of social media. And it's actually starting to take effect now. Unfortunately, mainstream, the mainstream's only response to this is to smear it, to either ignore it, or or label it as, uh, supercharged misogyny, right? But they haven't watched or listened to what's going on, and they're definitely not listening to the transformations that are taking place that are starting to shape men's behavior in dating and mating. Right? So, they're still stuck in the model of trying to cancel it, but it has moved so far out of this. It has generated legs of its own, and they're late to the party.
So, the first thing I want to say about this article is that when you look at the title, you know, in the subtitle, you know, it's an attack on the, on the manosphere. And you would think there would be a deep dive into the manosphere to make sense of what they're arguing and why, right? Well, let me tell you, they, outside of the title, they only mention the word "manosphere" twice in the entire piece. Only twice. And, uh, let me see. The first time it's mentioned is here in a random sentence. It just says, "But this era did not, contrary to manosphere caveman theories of gender relations, establish a time-honored template of women staying at home nursing babies." You know, it's, it's a side jab with no direct author or content creator that's named, right? Second time they mention the manosphere is here, right, where they said, "These feminine qualities from which men take enormous pains to distinguish themselves may explain what Kun describes as the antisocial features of today's so-called manosphere." So, again, the only time, the only two times that it's mentioned is to jab at men, but not even pay them the basic respect of acknowledging what they're saying. Now, I'm going to, you know, I'll take you through some bits and elements of it because, truthfully, I found it to be a waste of time, but anyway.
So, you know, there's a, the kind of analysis of historian Stephanie Coontz's piece, "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap" in 1992. And basically, what they're arguing here is that the whole notion of marriage, the whole notion of gender roles in a traditional context are, uh, inaccurate and they always have been, and they need to be revised along feminist lines, of course. And the idea is that these things were never really in place. All right.
Now, this paragraph I found pretty interesting here. "In her new book, *For Better and for Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage*, she once again turns to the past to make sense of our current marriage crisis. Namely, that for many, the appeal of marriage is rapidly dimming. While the divorce rate has stabilized since its peak in 1980, married couples now make up less than half of American households, down from 66% half a century ago. Fewer young people even aspire to marriage than in the past. A 2023 poll showed that two-thirds of 12th graders said they wanted to get married, down from 80% in '93. A drop driven almost entirely by young women changing their minds. Another recent survey showed that Gen Z men ranked marriage as their seventh most important marker of personal success, while Gen Z women put it, uh, a dismal 11th out of a possible 13."
Now, you can see the impact of feminism here, and more than feminism, the type of feminism that supports and and encourages a hatred of men. And we've already talked about the, the data around the hating of men. It's been a constant. It has never gone away. It is something that is, you know, delivered within the philosophy of feminism. And of course, if you say it that way, you're dismissed because, you know, you're supposed to suggest that feminism has, has been championed, um, in the world. But, you know, again, we come back to this, who dislikes the opposite sex more? So, you've seen the data around, uh, you know, this, this angry context. And what this is, is a shift. They're trying to shift the narrative that men are not the ones walking away, but women are, right? And they're not even going to suggest that men, that men's walking away is contributing to this. They're just going to suggest that men are the problem, and women are no longer tolerating it. This is why this whole Gen Z segment here, uh, the comparison between how men and women and Gen Z view marriage, they're showing you how much women hate it even more, right? To suggest that this is women's doing. And then the last sentence reads, "In the past few years, publishers have unleashed a spate of divorce memoirs, nearly all of them by women, nearly all of them jubilant about life after marriage."
So, this is a hit piece. That's not only a hit piece. It's, uh, you know, a, a commercial for the impact of feminism and of course, the idea that women are the ones leaving.
But I do want to show you this. So, this comes from blackdemographics.com. I've been showing this for some years now. Uh, it is a chart that says, "Black Men More Likely to Be Married Than White Men Until 1960." Event. And so, what you can see on the chart is right at 1960, this is the first time where black men, right, the, the percentage of never-married, uh, black men age 35 and older by race between 1890 and 2010. It's the first time that group of black men exceeds the group of unmarried white men, and it goes up from there into the stratosphere, right, by 2010. Right? And the point I'm making at by showing you this chart is that it's black men who first break from convention in regard to marriage in the '60s. In fact, it's not white women, right? White women have enjoyed and continued to enjoy the benefits of marriage as it suits them. And their current-day frustrations are actually in response to men's withdrawal, in my humble opinion, and not just their dissatisfaction with marriage that's supposed to come out of nowhere. But I do want to be clear, black men are the canaries in the coal mine. Um, but, you know, this is not like a super psychic thing where men figured out 60 years before things were going to go left. The reason this is taking place with black men in 1960 can roughly be attributed to what was going on at the time. One of the biggest things to influence the black, black male community in 1960 was the Vietnam War, right? And the Cold War, for that matter. So, you had an escalating Cold War, you had the Vietnam War, all happening in 1960, right? And more black men served in Vietnam than all the previous U.S. conflicts. Over 300,000 black men served. This is the highest proportion of black soldiers in any American war up to that point, right? And you also had a couple of other factors going on. You had a high draft rate, right? Higher draft rates than normal, right? Making, even though black men made up about 11 to 12% of the U.S. population, black men accounted for about 16.3% of all draftees. So, this is critical. It wasn't just that the war happened. It was that black men, well, men were drafted, and there was a kind of a hyperfocus on black men, and this is referred to as combat overrepresentation, right? A disproportionate number of black troops were assigned to high-risk ground combat roles and infantry units. In 1965, black Americans filled 31% of ground, uh, combat battalions. So, whether you're talking about football, or whether you're talking about the Vietnam War, you're looking at a practice of putting black men in the most vulnerable and dangerous positions. One, for the sake of winning a war, the other, for the sake of public entertainment. But either way, black men, and I'm referring with football to, you know, reports that black men, you know, tend to play positions that are more dangerous in terms of injury, right? But the point I'm getting at here is that this is a time period where men begin to withdraw from marriage. And there are a variety of reasons behind that, but I also want to point to some of the largest ones. The response to the war, the response to the Cold War, all of these are factors. And so, with with that overrepresentation in combat, higher draft rates, what you end up with is higher casualty rates. A preponderance of women who are looking for men, a reduced number of men available, and of course, we don't even have to talk about, um, you know, uh, uh, the impact of war, right? PTSD, what people are coming back with, what they've been traumatized with, and that doesn't even speak to the physical, you know, uh, trappings that come with the Vietnam War. So, you're talking about Agent Orange, injuries from battle, you know, cancer, you know, all these different factors dramatically impacted the black community. While at the same time, and I show a film on the '70s film era where, uh, you have black actresses from the 1960s, or excuse me, '70s, talking about, um, you know, their experience in the black community. One in particular was, uh, most famous, um, where, what is it? Yeah, Pam Grier. Pam Grier. I talked about, uh, or I showed a, I show a film in my class where she talks about where the motivation for some of the characters she played during the blaxploitation era where they came from. And basically, what she says is she based it off her aunts and her mother and so on and so forth. And these were women that were adapting to an environment where there were very few men because those men were drafted and had gone to war. Many of them not ever coming back. Some of them coming back broken. Some of them coming back, you know, going through different things. And if we go back to World War II, we're talking about men who didn't get the resources they were promised when they, you know, went into war. So, you're already talking about a community that had had suffered economically. We could take that all the way back to Reconstruction, but at least World War II promised that there would be resources for soldiers that served, and only one out of six black men got those then. So, by the time you get to Vietnam, you know, you're already talking about a generation that's been economically underdeveloped, you know, and are struggling with employment, you know, um, but on top of that, the Vietnam War, uh, further damages those dynamics.
So, I want to put that into context when we're talking about this article, 'cause they're mainly talking about white folks, right? So, when they talk about, you know, the nuclear family, when they talk about gender roles, they're not looking at the specifics of black history, they're talking about white folks in mainstream culture. And this is really an ongoing, you know, family fight between white women and white men for status, for control, for, you know, who's in a position of authority. And this advocate, you know, this hyperfocus on Coontz's work is all about that. Can we dismantle this idea about patriarchy, about, you know, traditional gender roles, and and show that women are freer and happier outside of marriage? That's what this whole piece is really fundamentally about, right? Uh, I really didn't want to spend a whole lot of time here. It is a longer piece. Uh, they even deal with industrialization and so on and so forth. You are free to, you know, enjoy it at your leisure. I can only, you know, uh, ingest so much, you know, this kind of poison. But I'll say a few things. You know, the article attempts to challenge the notion of the nuclear family and gender roles, but it is fundamentally, fundamentally a hit piece that tangentially attacks the manosphere while undermining questions about masculinity, traditional masculinity in Western society, advocating for a feminist rewrite of gender dynamics and families. You know, as I said, it only mentions the manosphere a couple of times. It doesn't even do what others have done and malign the manosphere by only focusing on one or two voices. It doesn't focus on any voices at all. And I think this is one of the most popular ways that's starting to take shape when the mainstream deals with the manosphere. It is to completely dismiss and not quote anybody, not actually pay attention, and get the public to ignore it, either, either because this stands in place of actually listening to what these men are saying. The problem is, this may work on women, especially middle-aged women, wine moms, as it were. It's not necessarily working on men, particularly young men who are actually raising questions about their own masculinity. Now, for better or for worse, there are many in the manosphere that these young men are starting to identify with, you know, and it's starting to have an impact that they are not able to control with these kind of wine mom-targeted think pieces. Right.
The last thing I'll say is that, you know, this piece ignores the black family structure and the, the history of the black family in the last few years, right? And speaking of which, if you want to look at what the black community is dealing more with, take a look at this: >> Mothers in the white community and the black community. There are only 20-plus million black women in America. Okay? There's over 100 million white women in America. How is it that single black mothers in America is about 4.6, 6 million? Single white mothers in America is about 6.2 million. There's 100 million of them and there's 20 million of us. Dang. When you look at the numbers, right? When you look at the stats, you could ask ChatGPT, you could go look at statistics. All these women that most times are just trying to get love and end up with a baby. It's not okay. And it's not okay that there aren't mothers out here teaching women how to be responsible with their bodies. Look, I'm not saying you got to wait till marriage. I will never say that. I'm not saying you, you, you need to just be abstinent your whole entire life. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is be responsible, and pregnancy is up to the woman. And we have to stop pretending like your value won't go down when you do have multiple children by multiple men. >> End of story. >> End of story. And this is why I'm saying people try to say I don't like women. No, I love women. But more than I love women, I have faith in our young girls that they can do better than we do. Single mothers in the white community and the black community. There are >> Yeah. There you go. I noticed that the, uh, New Republic piece is not talking about this, right? See, they don't want to deal with the aftermath of feminism and its impact not only on the white community, but especially on the black community, right? They don't want to talk about that, that not only the extreme numbers of single motherhood in comparison to other groups, but hell, the high numbers of say, abortion, for that matter, over 20 million in the black community, which exceeds every other group. This is also an aspect of what feminism has wrought. And how happy do these women seem? Are they celebrating? Well, strangely enough, some are. Even though they're in an extremely precarious economic state, you know, all kinds of things are failing. We're finding that black women were the most evicted during COVID and beyond, but then started to lose employment in record numbers. And that isn't to say that black men haven't. The difference is, black men have always lost, had lower, uh, employment rates than any other group, including black women. We're just now seeing black women join them in the last couple years, or especially in the last year, in ways that we never seen before. Right now, black men's unemployment rates have always been kind of ignored and downplayed for unemployment or employment rates, for that matter. But we started to see black women join the conversation in the last year. So, how happy do they seem? How happy do you think they are based on this? We're not getting much conversation about that. So, again, the crux of today is about this theme here: Men are being blamed for the failure of marriage. And to some extent, this is true, especially in the black community. As I showed, we, we stepped out in 1960, but not because there was a hatred of men, but because of the, you know, structural issues hitting black men that included the wars, right, among other things. But often, in the context of of the exodus of of men, and black men in particular, it's honestly not dealt with in mainstream media. Black men in particular are avoiding the exploitative elements of marriage that American culture refuses to come to grips with. And why the black male political agenda addresses, and that's why the black male political agenda addresses issues with marriage and the exploitative elements of it. Right? We deal with it because nobody wants to talk about it. And when, and again, I didn't write it. The black male political agenda is literally a list of, uh, uh, of ideas, proposals for policies that black men themselves wrote in relation to what they've been experiencing every day. And the first point they wanted to focus on was, uh, marriage, or, you know, I should say, family court reform, the, the blowback from marriage, you know, when you get divorced, you have to filter that. You have to go through that experience in the family court, and that has usually tilted in women's, to women's advantage. So, men talked about how the family court needed to be reformed, and the policies that they've levied against black men over the years needed to be reformed. That was the number one point. All right. So, if you haven't seen it, you can go to newblackmasculinities.wordpress.com, and it is the pinned article at the top, "The Black Male Political Agenda," and you can look through that. The 19-point Black Male Political Agenda, as it stands right now, right? But alongside that, in terms of the theme of this show, I wanted to add in that when you figure in the single mother epidemic in the black community, where you have women who expect to be catered to and pedestalized despite men's preferences, this only exacerbates the problem. Now, this woman is critical of, of, of, you know, uh, single motherhood and the extent to which it's been, it's been kind of unquestionably practiced in the black community. I'm talking about on dating apps and on dating shows, this kind of position that you see many black women in where they are demanding that high-quality, high-profile men accept their status and pay for their kids unquestioningly. And this is becoming more and more of an entitled expectation of men, right? But for many of these men, the additional issue is that we've been taught in the black community to damn near worship women. Which is why these conversations are happening. Women are frustrated that their expectations are not being met the way they were at different periods in time because black men have always been taught to worship black women. Especially if you were, uh, anywhere older than Gen X, right? We were taught that our peace could only be found through, uh, through her, right? Especially since COVID, many black men had been re-examining this belief system and started questioning it because we were all forced to be at home, and men were starting to find that their heads or penises did not explode when they couldn't have, uh, contact with women the way they had prior. They found out that not spending their money actually worked for them, especially in a precarious economy. They found out that there was a peace that came from not being, you know, not argued with all the time, not, uh, pressured to provide resources that they shouldn't have had to provide, not expected to give money for no real reason, but the fact that she wanted it. They started to find that there was a kind of peace. Now, this was a, you know, this was a forced-upon kind of peace. This wasn't something that they came about, you know, that came with themselves. It was mostly something that was in response to the policies we all experienced under COVID, but it nonetheless gave many men a reality check that you can actually not be in a relationship and be happy right now. This drastically changed dating, you know, but instead of dealing with it honestly, the mainstream seeks to demonize, uh, black men and has refused to actually give an accurate picture. This is kind of what we're looking at.
Now, there's one last thing I want to say on this topic, and that is to men themselves. Um, one of the things we, as we were taught, as I was saying earlier, growing up, learning how to worship women, one of the things we were taught is that women were the source of our peace. And I want to shout out this brother here, um, Jason Wilson. I really enjoy his work. Um, you know, I have a different spiritual orientation, but he's still kicking truth, and I think much of it is important. His, his takes on masculinity are are sometimes very interesting. I haven't heard everything. Um, so I'm not going to say I agree with everything, but not because there's anything I can think of that I disagree with, but just to leave myself room in case there's been something said that, you know, I don't, you know, share that position on. But of what I've heard, I've agreed with a lot of it, with a lot of it. In this particular piece he drops today, I'm going to, I want to play some portions of it because I think it's important. The, the subject of it is "Peace With Her Versus Peace From Her." Right. And I want to say the title of it, uh, might have been changed very recently because, uh, yeah, because initially it was called "She Will Never Be Your Peace." But let's check this out.
>> Women know we are not their peace, but for some reason, my brothers, we think they can be ours. Shalom. I truly hope all is well with you and your families. If I was speaking right now to a group of men and I asked what is the one thing they all wanted, they all would yell, "Peace." But sadly, many of those men would never attain peace until they stopped believing it comes from a woman. The belief that a woman can be a man's peace has emotionally and mentally crippled countless men. Not because those men were naive, but because many of those men were never taught what peace actually is or where it truly comes from. The issue is not that women cannot bring comfort, support, wisdom, companionship, love, encouragement, or partnership. But many men mistakenly expect emotional and mental salvation from the relationship. And as a result, peace itself is elusive. And then there are some men who seek peace through activities like sports or hunting. They even seek peace through intimacy, money, drugs, success. Yet nothing in this world seems to be able to sustain their peace for long. Which is why many men eventually place that expectation onto women, hoping she can permanently calm the chaos within them. I believe this belief began when we were babies. Because the first experience of comfort most men ever receive comes from their mother. From a psychological perspective, the nervous system of a baby boy learns early that when he is distressed, hungry, afraid, or overwhelmed, the person who usually restores calm is his mother. So subconsciously, boys learn that when they feel stressed, a woman will bring them peace. But tragically, many men carry that template into adulthood. And adult relationships were never meant to function like maternal regulation. I also believe culture has reinforced this myth as well. Look at literature and movies. The hero who finally finds peace is the one who finally finds a woman. Even mantras like "Behind every great man is a great woman" or the classic dismissal of a man's value, um, "She is his better half." These ideas suddenly train a man to think that a woman will resolve the internal tension inside of him. But peace, my brothers, is an internal condition, not something another human being can permanently provide. In my book, *Battle Cry*, I share that most people think that peace is an absence of trouble, a utopian type of place. But you must cast away that limited understanding of peace if you're actually going to experience it. >>
All right. Now, I'm going to play another portion of it in a minute. I don't want to play the whole video because I think, uh, the brother deserves that you go to his channel and watch the whole thing. And, you know, it, it's the brother's work is tight, you know, but I think it's important that we really examine what we've been socially taught. Now, men in this space, I think, have already begun to seriously re-examine their, their programming. Even if they're still grappling with it, they're at least questioning it. Whereas, I think there are many men who've never even begun to question this orientation. But it is an orientation in the black community that many of us have been made familiar with. And we still, and we do need to actively grapple with it, this idea that she is the source of peace. And he raises some excellent critiques here about what happens when you make a woman your peace, and that's not what she's supposed to be there for. And he puts the onus on men, which I have no problem with, um, because we are the ones that need to reexamine this. And I do believe we are. But nobody actually, uh, is really prepared for what happens when men begin to reexamine this dynamic, right? What happens in societies, even what happens in communities when men begin to question the fabric, the woven fabric of what they, what roles they were supposed to play, what worldviews they were supposed to carry. You know, when when that begins to happen, it shifts everything. Now, women really kind of did it first with feminism and decided that they wanted to redefine themselves and their role in the community, and they thought that they could do that and that would be it. Men would acquiesce, and things would move on along the lines that women wanted. But it didn't. And in many ways, it, it inspired men to raise questions of their own. Well, if she's not going to play her social role, then should I? Now, women would tell you that they wanted you to, because to this day, when you listen to women on dating apps and in dating conversations, they want to free themselves of any obligation. You know, they want to get married, they want to not get married, they want to have kids, they want to not have kids, they want to adopt kids, they want to abort kids, they want to work full-time, part-time, not at all, have you work, take care of them. Sometimes they want to go back to work, sometimes they may not. They wanted to create every option available for themselves. But what do they expect of men? They expect you to work, to provide, to protect, but do so on her terms, at her whim. The only shift that women have from the expectations that men provide a traditional reality is that she wants the traditional reality at her behest. Right? She wants you to protect and provide the way she wants you to protect and provide. But there is no option for you to do neither. See, that's the difference. She gets to do neither. You, you know, she doesn't have to do anything associated with what traditionally what women were supposed to provide in relationships, but she wants you to stick to those traditional models. This is what I call selective traditionalism. But even that needs to be done on her terms. You protect her on her terms. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, protection, you know, really for most men, women think of protection as you physically stepping in to prevent them from physical harm. That's not the way men think of protection. I mean, we do when we're in the situation, but much of it is avoiding that in the first place, right? I'm going to move my family to a place where they're not going to have to worry about stepping outside and getting shot. I'm not going to take them to places where physical violence is a regular occurrence. You know, in other words, protection is often preventative. But the problem is when prevent, when you're preventing her from doing what she wants to do, when that happens, right? When your need to protect and her expectation that you protect conflicts with what she feels like doing in a given moment, you're supposed to accept it, adapt, even at the threat of both of your lives, because it's something she wants to do in a given moment. So, you got to shut up and provide it. So, this is what I mean. Traditionalism is accepted to the point that it's filtered through her wishes and her worldview. You know, but there is no point where you don't work and you don't protect. That doesn't exist. And to the extent that it may with some couples, it only lasts often until she's not satisfied or she's experienced a scare, right? Something of that nature, or she doesn't feel protected, or she doesn't feel provided for, and she will quickly trade up or leave you altogether. Especially if she runs into money, whether that money is government-filtered, whether it's coming through government or hell, the lottery, or another man. You'll notice how quickly she'll leave men, right? 'Cause all of this needs to be on her terms. But let's, uh, let me see. Let's go forward a little bit. And I like, you know, his definition of peace is really interesting. So, I want you to check that out for for yourself. Um, like I said, I don't want to take up too much, but I do want to share some things with you. He, he breaks down. Um, all right. So, let's check this part out. Oh, that was another thing. He did get into some stats that I thought were important, and I didn't want to skip that. All right. Yeah, here we go. Share something with you, my brothers, that's very alarming. The American Institute for Boys and Men reports that men died by suicide significantly more than women after a relationship breakup. In research, fellow Michael J. Wilson and his colleagues reviewed 75 studies from 30 countries and found that divorced men had nearly three times greater odds of death by suicide than married men, while separated men had almost five times greater risk. Please sit with that for a moment, my brothers, because many people hear this and immediately think, well, he must have loved her too much. He was too all into her. No, my brothers. I believe something much deeper is happening. This is not. >>
Now, I want to come back to that, but I actually want to go a little bit further here. Further back. Uh, where did it go? Damn it. All right, I'll let him continue.
>> Simply about a man losing a woman. Researchers believe one of the reasons separation and divorce can devastate many men is not because of the money they may lose, but because of societal expectations that are placed upon us. Many men have been conditioned to provide, but never process; to endure, but never express; to stay strong while quietly falling apart. So when intense emotional pain arrives, many men do not know where to put it. Feelings of isolation, loss of identity, financial strain, and the fear of losing meaningful connection with their children. All of these can begin colliding at once. And when pain has nowhere healthy to go, it starts searching for exits. Some men withdraw. Some men become reckless. Some men become violent. Some men abuse substances. Some become angry. Some become obsessed. Some desperately try to reconnect at all cost. Not because these men were weak, but because pain becomes dangerous when a man has never been taught how to process it. Again, many men are not collapsing because they lost a woman. Many men are collapsing because they built their entire emotional world around the relationship. Another reason I believe men are vulnerable to this deception is because many of us lack comprehensive camaraderie. We are so used to dealing with life alone that we do not have brothers we can process life with. Men who sharpen each other without condemning each other. Studies from the Pew Center has repeatedly shown that men report significantly fewer close relationships than women. So now when a man enters a relationship or marriage, something dangerous can happen. The woman slowly becomes his confidant, his camaraderie, his emotional processor, his stress relief, his source of affirmation, his source of encouragement, his source of love. And my brothers, this is very dangerous because when this woman hurts him or leaves him or doesn't believe in him, he is not simply grieving a relationship. He is grieving his sense of belonging, his identity, his future, the family he imagined, and the life he pictured. And many men, including myself, at some point, have annoyingly anchored parts of our identity inside the relationship itself, especially men who have never had stable homes growing up. Here's another part I don't want you to miss. The nervous system can experience something similar to withdrawal. Neuroscience has shown that romantic rejection activates some of the same brain regions associated with physical pain. So, the destabilization men feel is not imagined, my brothers. The brain is literally processing the loss like injury. This is why becoming a comprehensive man matters because a comprehensive man eventually realizes something very critical. A woman can bring joy to his life, birth his children, walk beside him and help him fulfill Yah's purpose for their lives. But she cannot become the foundation of his emotional, spiritual, and mental stability. Most importantly, she cannot be his peace. Only Yah gives us that. Now, let >>
All right. So, I, I, you know, like I said, check out the brother's channel, watch the video, support what he's doing over there. I'm sure many of you are familiar with him. We saw him doing those martial arts videos with young boys. Uh, so I think he runs his own school or dojo at least, um, you know, in terms of that. So, shout out to him. I appreciate his work. Um, but I think what's critical about this piece in regard to this conversation is how much we've been taught that women need to play a certain role. See, he, he kind of approaches it differently. He talks about the extent to which men do it. But I want to be clear, this was off, this was often something taught to us, and it's been popularized in in Western culture, and he did talk about that, right? You know, he did show, uh, clips and examples from superheroes and so on and so forth. We were taught as young boys that our peace was found in a woman. We were taught that she was the source of it. She was the anchor of, you know, our emotional anchor. There have been a million love songs that reinforce that same thing, if especially if you came up in the '60s through the '90s. But again, in this moment, as men are re-questioning their relationship to marriage, to bonding, dating, mating, they're examining their own contributions to gender roles and asking critical questions about what they actually get out of it. It is also important that we unmoor our connection to our dependence upon women playing certain kinds of roles in our imagination. And strangely enough, as much as people want to say that this is something men do that women have to suffer from, women do this as well in relationships. Women will leave you if you do not allow her a certain amount of emotional access and allow her to play this anchor role, which gives her a great deal of power and access to your vulnerability. So, in other words, what I'm getting at here is this is not something, contrary to popular belief, that men are just doing to women. It's something that women, in many respects, expect in relationships and will punish you for not allowing to do, not giving them access to do. And these things raise critical questions. But men have been re-examining these things for more than half a century, and they're not giving credit for it. But they already are. And I just want to say, we need to continue to do so. Question your motivations when getting into relationships and dealing with women. Question the social expectations of it. Challenge convention that expects you to suffer in silence and provide servitude with no reciprocity. All of those things are well within your right to do. It is necessary for you to do for your own well-being. And I wanted to kind of end on that message because I think it's critically important that we continue to push those boundaries and raise questions because otherwise, what we see is just the expectation that we suffer in silence, and I think that era is dead.
So, let me know what you think. Give me your ideas, your thoughts, your experiences in the comment section. And I will highlight y'all later. Peace.