Transcription
So, tell me in your words why you're here.
Well, we've had uh three miscarriages. All in the past 14 months and with um different variations of horror.
And what do you hope to get out of it?
I just want to help her, really. I'd do anything. I said that, haven't I? All along.
But what do you hope to get out of it for yourself?
Uh I just like her to feel that she's able to move forward from it all. And then we can start trying again.
But what about for you?
I just told you what for me. I told you what I want for me. I told you that three times. It's not me that lost the baby. It's you that had to. It's you that had to have the I don't know. I don't keep like positive. Head up, eyes open, move forward. You can't carry on. I'm just like keeping keeping on with my life. I assume that's actually deal with with the like the physicality. But it did happen to you. That wasn't my body, you. Was it? It wasn't my body that had to go through all that.
>> Your babies. Look, this is what I'm saying. They were your babies. You're not listening to me.
>> They were your babies.
>> Can you Can you just let me speak? Is that okay? I'm not getting annoyed, don't worry. I'm not getting annoyed at you. Okay. I'm not getting annoyed. I only had to deal with like the disappointment, if you want to call it that, and like at crisis in the moment, which is fine. That's fine with that. And there is a level of like readjustment, I guess.
>> They were your babies. But what I'm trying to say is I didn't have to
>> They were your babies. Can you stop saying that?
>> They were your babies, though. Why are you being so annoying? Jesus. They were your babies. We made three babies together. And they all died. It's okay to wallow. It's okay if you don't know what to do. It's okay to be broken. Your babies died.
What's good, people? Welcome back to the Onyx report. Black masculine news for the day. Hope everybody is well. Like, share, subscribe, join, donate, hit the hype button. Support the show so we can continue to bring you this independent black male thought. Fair use. Hopefully, uh this video won't get shut down, you know, for the copyright issues. But I thought that scene was important.
Now, wanted to talk a little bit today about therapy, uh black male emotional expression, and so on and so forth. Few things that just came to mind that I wanted to share in a very short period of time. Let me first say that uh I've had some experience with this. Longtime listeners know I've not uh held these things a secret. Um when I was an undergrad, there was uh a pregnancy that uh I was unaware of and I was only told about it after the woman had a had an abortion. So, before I even got to, you know, comprehend that I had gotten someone pregnant for the first time, you know, um I was grappling with the fact that that was already decided upon and dealt with before I even was aware. So, that had a jarring effect that I didn't expect, you know? And um after which, once I was married, my wife and I lost three pregnancies at varying stages from uh 3 months to 6 months. We lost three. I actually two. 2 months to 6 months. 6 and 1/2, in fact. So, I've had some experience with this.
And one of the things that that I thought of when I saw this scene, first and foremost, was the kind of rock and a hard place that black men are in, right? Because um you know, these women are are really coming across, especially the therapist, as very consoling, you know, um for me a little bit condescending in the sense that you know, they're they're giving him permission to emote. And in fact, they're encouraging it. And the subtext is, you know, that men don't know how to. Men Men need guidance from women to learn how to do so. But what a lot of women, you know, in this kind of scenario, or women who, you know, are watching this video and you know, kind of like what they saw or what not, like that men need to be taught and like the message that men need to get. But what they forget is that his reaction didn't come out of nowhere. See, I remember from the '80s onward, there was such blowback when men tried to include themselves in these scenarios and they were they were harshly snapped back to with you don't understand. Cuz this happens in a woman's body. You can't understand. This is not a space for you. I heard this growing up. I remember it. So when these situations happened to me, I had a very similar response, you know, in terms of what I articulated publicly as this man did here. You know, I stepped out of the way. I mean, it doesn't include me. I I'm not allowed to speak on this because this is this is an issue that that you know, it this is women's issue and not in the sense that I it was dismissive and it was beneath me because it was a woman's issue. But in the sense that I'd heard so many feminists you know, downplay men including themselves and their pain in these kind of scenarios, men learned that we were supposed to be quiet when it came to abortion, when it came to problems with a pregnancy. I mean, look, my wife had preeclampsia. We lost a child. You know, there were other issues over time, you know, so these were usually talked about as solely the purview of women and there was no space for men in these conversations. So it's it's interesting and I can see the kind of you know, lack of preparation and sometimes downright distrust when finally women turn around and say, well, you're included in this. How do you feel? But then to turn around even if subtly so and to suggest that men can't emote is a bit problematic. It's a bit of gaslighting going on because it's like, wait a minute, if you look at this historically, you put this in, you know, even a a media historical narrative over the last 30, 40 years, men weren't just dismissive and robots. Men actually tried to include themselves in the '70s and '80s and have discussions about where they fit in this and they were told briskly, this does not concern you.
>> [music]
>> You don't have a place in this and men responded accordingly. So it's a kind of, you know, you you you almost can get some whiplash with the shift in focus here. Right? So, I if I wanted to first kind of put that there, you know, uh it it in terms of his reaction.
But, some of the the reason for today's show though came because um I played this gentleman in my last show. You know, just want to play a clip of it.
>> Oh, mom, bro. She like my OWN MOM, BRO, teaming up with my MY SON MOM, BRO, to keep me away from my son, dog. Keeping me away from my son, bringing Yeah.
And a lot of people had something to say uh about this man being so emotionally distraught. You know, uh a lot of men in the comment section, you know, talked about how they understood they've been there, they've gone through the scenario he went through. And if you don't remember he had a scenario where his baby mother wouldn't let him see his child no matter what he did. And then he found out his mother was colluding with the baby mother [music] to see the child, but both of them were keeping him out of it. So, he was crying over the lack of contact with his own child, but you know, you had two kind of reactions. You had the reaction to his situation and then you had the reaction to his emotional expression. And there were all kinds of reactions, you know, um I heard uh from different messages. Some people DM'd me, some wrote in the comments, but there were all kinds of reactions. And people are for the most part very uncomfortable when black men are are highly emotional for a variety of reasons. But, this is what kind of spawned the show today. It made me want to think about the whether or not black men have a space to express themselves and how they're treated. Right?
So, you you kind of can do the one of the things I noticed is we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. In one vein, if you don't express yourself, you're you're considered a robot, you lack emotional intelligence, emotional maturity, you need women to show you how to emote properly. And then on the other side, if you do emote, even if you do so under the guise of what women tell you you're supposed to do, uh you'll have women that are turned off. You'll have women that will shut down entirely. I've read I've read a numerous stories in the last five or six years where women talk about their husbands crying for the first time and being completely turned off. And even though they may not have broken up or gotten a divorce for several years later, the woman will say, "That was the moment it started. I just didn't tell him." You know, I didn't want to be cruel. The man's father just died. His brother just died. Or his you know, whatever. Our child just died. And so I didn't want to be cruel, but that was the moment I lost my attraction because he cried. It was undignified. It was feminine. You know what I mean? But if you remain stoic, toxic masculinity. So you actually have to tap dance and cry correctly to the extent that makes her comfortable. These are the kinds of things that men are experiencing. And nobody talks about it because you don't want to hold women accountable. See, that's the goal. See, it's it's it's it's okay if you emote to some extent, so long as it doesn't present women in a problematic mode. And that's that's kind of the problem unto itself. Trying to see uh There was something else I was going to show, but it all depends on if I can find it in time. But anyway, while I look for that, to kind of corroborate corroborate Man, I'm so tired right now. It's ridiculous, I guess. But to to kind of back what was already presented earlier, I want to remind you about this clip here. So when we're talking about, you know, men in the context of pregnancy. The The show is not going to be about that, but I just wanted to layer this. You know, the first clip I played this is kind of why you know, men have a problem with whether or not they're allowed to share, especially in regard to pregnancy and the whole issue I said about, you know, that that being considered a woman's space.
Um remember Sherri Shepherd's discussion about her husband. I remember my ex-husband when we talked and and kind of like came to terms with being divorced and he said uh it was infidelity and he said, "Sherri, I was in so much I was in a place where I could hear what he said." He said, "I was in so much pain cuz we were pregnant and had lost Jeffrey's sister. I had It was twins and we had lost his sister and thought we were going to lose Jeffrey and he said, 'Nobody everybody rallied around you and wanted to know how you were doing and what's going on.'"
>> And that's important, you're pregnant. I'm pregnant and they but a man goes through, you know, now you're realizing men, you may not be carrying that baby, but you're no less close Oh, yeah. to that being that you helped create. And he said, "Everybody rallied around you and was there and they want to pray with you and it was all about you you and he said, 'Nobody nobody rallied around me Yeah. and I had nobody to to talk to about the pain.'" Okay. All right.
And that's kind of that kind of goes with cooperates with what I was saying earlier. It's It's It the notion that this is a woman's space and there's so many spaces when it comes to emoting that men are are harshly judged if they, you know, participate in the conversation, but you never quite know when the conversation will shift. Now it's expected that men participate, but participate on women's terms. And if you don't figure out how to do it right you know, there's still something wrong. You're you're you're going to be critiqued, you're going to be dismissed and and so that it's you You men some men hopping on one foot to another trying to figure out what they're allowed to share. And in other scenarios, you have men that are just completely disconnected from the whole conversation. And choosing to share on their own terms, which is actually something I support. Right? But nonetheless, but there are other issues when it comes to men expressing themselves. And you can find that that men experience all kinds of pain even though they may not actually have a space to express it. Right?
This is a scene that stood out to me. Um and it really kind of hit me. Really kind of hit me. Uh let me see here. There we go. Check this [music] out.
My mama would leave me a lot, bro. She would leave me. My brother had his father. He can go to his father's uh to his grandmother's house. Uh there my mama for some reason she was on killed me over there. And I was left alone a lot of times. They People don't realize my mama left me outside one day, dog, when I was like three or four, bro. My mama pulled off on me, bro, with a with a dude in a in a truck. And I'm running behind the truck crying. And it's like 9:00 at night, 9:30 at night. And I'm like, "Mama, mama." She looked back. The guy tried to stop, but I guess she told her to keep going. And I stood I was outside, bro. Like I actually slept on the stairs. The neighbor came out. On and on saying that no [ __ ] The neighbor came out and she let me in her house. She let me in her house, Miss Connie. That's deep, man. Yeah, Miss Connie let me in, bro. She gave me something to eat. She gave me a bath. She talked to my mama. She said, "Your mama wrong." She said, "But you going to be all right one day." She got you scrubbed. No, I still love my mama, though. My mama would leave me alive, bro. Yeah.
So, that's one of the things that we know in the black community quite well, right? Regardless of what mama does has done, you know, this kind of unending dedication to her. And this is real. There's a lot of black men who've experienced traumatic uh mistreatment. And when it comes to fathers, we're allowed to hate them. When it comes to mothers, you'll get chastised by strangers if they hear you talking about it if you have a problem with mama. So, in the black community, it's I mean, I think there's a general a general kind of, you know, love for mom across the world, but in the black community, there's a doubling down on it to the point where if you have something negative to say, it's a problem. And you have people perfect strangers butt in your conversation and cuss you out if it comes down to critiquing mama. So, it's not a surprise to hear men who've had all kinds of traumatic experiences with their mothers, you know, still say, "I I love my mama." You know, I understand where it comes from. I get it. I don't always like it, but I understand. I understand how it came about. You know, I get it. Uh as a matter of fact, this is one of those scenarios that reminds me of that. I don't know I've No, I've never heard of this gentleman speak. Um but it uh, you know, so you guys can let me know if this is something you're more familiar with, but it reads, "Speed sends his mom half a million monthly even though she doesn't like him." "His mother raised five children completely alone, no government assistance, no child support, no family help, just pure survival mode every single day, stretching every dollar and making impossible choices between basic necessities. She worked multiple jobs while her kids grew up in circumstances most people couldn't imagine. Struggle was real and it shaped every single day of their lives." "Now, Speed pulls in $9 million monthly from streaming, sponsorships, and business ventures, but here's what separates him from most people who make it big. Every single month without fail, he sends his mother $500,000. Not because he she asked for it, not because they have a perfect relationship. He does it because he remembers where he came from. During a recent stream, Speed made a comment that hit differently than his usual energy. He said he sends her half a million monthly even though she doesn't really like him. That wasn't him bragging about his wealth or trying to impress anyone. That was a son who lived through those hungry nights and unpaid bills, who watched his mother sacrifice everything, and who refuses to let her struggle another day regardless of their complicated relationship. Real respect isn't conditional on approval. Sometimes the most genuine love shows up uh, as action without expectation of anything in return. Right? I'm not familiar with this young man. This was something I just ran across, but it's interesting to note, you know, the dedication some some of these men have for their mothers, right? Despite the mistreatment. And of course, that leads to trauma. Often unresolved trauma, often ignored, often bypassed and downplayed, but nonetheless, present. Right? Nonetheless.
But in regard to therapy, you know, and that's what we we we're kind of getting to. Um there's an interesting statement made in a video about black men in therapy. And it just kind of goes back to what I said earlier about the whole rock and a hard place when it comes to when men are allowed to emote and when they're not and how. Let's see what this young lady has to say.
I agree therapy was not built for black men. But let me tell you why because I don't think a lot of people talk about this. Not to be confused with can black men benefit from therapy? Absolutely they can. It just was not built for them. Most therapists are trained in a framework that was developed and tested on a very specific population. And then when we apply those same frameworks to black men, we wonder why they don't work. Most therapists don't realize before a black man ever sits on their couch and utters a word, black men have spent their entire life managing how the world sees them. Society tells us that they're dangerous, so he's made himself look smaller in public spaces. Society has said black men are a threat, so he has learned to monitor people's body language and their facial expressions. Society has said that he's lazy, so he's learned to work twice as hard as his counterparts and never ask for help because then he's just confirming what they've already thought about him. So he walks into a therapy office and you have a therapist who may or may not have done their cultural competency work and so they see a man who is guarded, who is resistant, who is avoidant and now they pathologize it. No one has ever stopped to ask what happens when he actually lets people see him, when he's vulnerable. Has he ever felt safe? Has the world ever told him that his feelings matter? Cultural competency isn't just knowing that black people exist. It's knowing that he's carrying the exhaustion of having to walk into a room and prove his humanity to everybody that's around him. He's carrying generations of being told that his pain is not worthy of attention. Now you want him to be vulnerable with a stranger for 50 minutes and they're going to charge you $200 at the end of the session. I absolutely believe that therapy has a cultural competency crisis. I think that we're the problem and men are having to black men are having to pay the price in their relationships, in their marriages, in their lives, with their mental health. But this is also why representation matters so much and why it's important to have a therapist that looks like you. Even though I do believe that women do a better job of counseling black men than men do um for a different reason when it comes to vulnerability. But I just think that it's so important to have somebody who understands your world and where you come from because it's not a luxury, it's a necessity. Everybody deserves healing and for them to be understood for everything that they've been carrying. But I see all my black men out there and I will do everything in my power in order to help any way that I can.
All right. Now, elements of that I agreed with in terms of what black men, you know, experience in regard to therapy. Uh at the same time, I think there's a as it relates to therapy, uh uh specifically from black therapist, there's a misandry issue that has not properly been dealt with yet. Now, we already know that the majority of the field of psychology has been feminized. Not only in terms of you know, some of the concepts and the major ideology, uh some of the major intellectual movements in psychology, but in terms of bodies in the room. It's an old overwhelmingly female field. Right? That's first. So when you talk about black psychology, it has become overwhelmingly female. And if you talk about black therapy, that too has been dominated by women. So it's not surprising to hear these kind of statements laced with misandry. You know, I think women uh as she said did perform therapy much better than men in regard to vulnerability. Um I take issue with that. Because I think it goes back to what I've been saying for the longest. Because men don't emote like women doesn't mean that they don't have their own own ways of expression. And it doesn't need to be authorized by women in order for it to be valid. Right? But we assume that women are better at managing emotion, emotional expression, emotional maturity, so on and so forth. When in actuality, I don't I disagree with that. I've seen too much. I don't believe that women are just naturally better at managing emotions. Simply because they have them. I mean, we all have them, but no, I don't buy that. And I think there's this kind of prevailing idea, especially in a field that's been successfully feminized, that because it's been feminized, um you know, women just are better at it. And therefore, men have to sit and be quiet and learn from women how to be like women in order to emote properly. I take issue with that whole kind of subtext. Right? So, I think, you know, when she talks about, you know, people need to do cultural competence competency training uh in regard to helping black folk, I actually think there are a lot of black women in therapy that need to do cultural competency competency training in black male studies. Before they start actually, you know, engaging in therapy for black males. Because I think a lot of the misandry is so deep-seated in the culture, let alone in the practice, you know, the ideologies invoked in therapy. I think it's so deep-seated that we tend to ignore it. And it's accepted as, you know, a general generally accepted wisdom that this is this is true. You know, men are are emotionally irresponsible, they're emotionally immature, they're incapable, they're little robots, they've never learned how to manage emotions. I think these popular kinds of assumptions about men are highly problematic. Highly problematic. Because I think it actually changes um the services rendered in therapy. I think if it's rooted in a dehumanizing objectified stance, it's going to affect what the treatment actually looks like. And I think black men's reservations about engaging in therapy have been, you know, kind of misconstrued and treated as just a fear of of dealing with emotion. Now, while I think that may be the case for some people, I don't think that's the case for black men as a whole. And I think black men's gripes about therapy, which I've heard since the 1980s, kind of get swept under the rug and dismissed. Because, of course, anything that's uncomfortable for women to hear that's critical of women tends to be ignored by women. So, if you have a field that's predominantly female, you know, and you have a a a particular arm of that field in regard to therapy that's predominantly female, I think a lot of the time the critiques men have are going to be dismissed.
But I think, you know, and I've talked to so many men, close friends who have gone to marriage therapy, couples therapy, so on and so forth. And and one of my brothers [music] reached out to me about 5 years ago and he was telling me he was saying that the therapy was going well that he and his wife was having. I said, "Well, how do you know it's going well? What what do you mean by that?" He said, "Oh, well, she's happy." I said, "Okay, why is she happy?" "Well, I'm doing the things that she wants me to do." I said, "What does that have to do with therapy?" He said, "Well, you know, the therapy the therapist and her, you know, the therapist will take what she says and translate it and let me know why it's important that I do it. And therefore, when I do it, she feels better." I said, "Okay." I said, "Have you uh had a chance to communicate what you need in the marriage?" He said, "Oh, I didn't need anything." I didn't I was fine, you know, this is just about her. I said, "Bullshit." You call me on a regular basis to tell me that she won't touch you. Or that she'll pick fights out of nowhere over nothing. Or at least issues that have nothing to do with you and blame you for them. Like I had a list of things that he and I had talked about for years. I said, "Do those things come up in therapy?" He said, "Well, I tried to bring them up early on, but I was told that we really need to focus on her happiness." I've had similar stories from several other friends and associates over the years. Over about a good decade, I would say. I heard these stories more often than not. I still get them, but not as frequently. But, they're the same stories. And it happens so subtly that everybody in the room except for him fully argued that he needs to just shut up and do whatever makes her happy. And this is considered a good marriage. This is considered happiness. It's not his happiness, it's her happiness. And her happiness is the couple's happiness.
This is why I think bodies in the room need to be different. There need to be more men present, and not just men who absorb the feminist narratives about whatever field they're in and then tow the line and only use the terms they're given and pretty much function in the way, you know, women feminists do. No, I'm talking about men who root themselves in the understanding that men are [ __ ] human beings and don't need permission from women to be human and to be men. And that declaring yourself a man need not be some type of stereotypical macho gesture. It is a declaration of reality. You live a different experience as a black man than as a black woman or a white woman or so on and so forth, and there's nothing wrong with that observation. As much as they as they've tried to water that down to suggest that everything is everything and everybody's everybody and there are no differences between gender and, you know, race is a social construct and so is gender, so none of this really matters [ __ ] [ __ ] I knew it mattered when I was in elementary school and I was the only kid in the principal's office offices often as I was and as much as those white boys were [ __ ] with me in school, I knew there was a difference. I knew there was a difference when I was the only one getting in trouble at home getting spankings and my sister didn't. I knew there was a difference. You know what I mean? I knew there was a difference when police started throwing me over the car for walking to school, over the hood of the car. And it was a regular thing that happened at least once a week for a period of my life. I knew there was a difference. Don't tell me that black men don't live a different reality. Right? That's That's it it really comes out as a form of gaslighting unto itself.
So, yeah, I do think that black women in therapy need to have a cultural competency rooted in black male studies before they start treating black men because I think the dehumanization of black men is so deeply rooted in black American culture as well as the the field of psychology that without it being dealt with overtly, I think it's highly problematic. I really do. And so, you know, what we've seen today is are examples of black men emoting whether they had permission to or not. And in some instances, they were corrected on how they were supposed to emote properly despite that women themselves have actually, you know, forced black men to into a position of removing themselves from the conversation. And then later, they get admonished for doing so. Right? These are the kind of scenarios that we're seeing happen. And there are a lot more. Obviously, in a short show, you can only cover so much, but I'm merely pointing out that there are many black men that have experienced all kinds of things from traumatic to mildly devastating and had no way where to put it. And And the only way they could process it is in in in collaboration with their brothers. Sometimes, this was handled um constructively, sometimes with some dysfunction as with any other group. But the question of getting therapy is a little more complicated for black men because it all comes down to whether or not you can find a therapist that believes you're fundamentally human. And that you don't need to either be quiet, disappear, or somehow become a woman in order for you to be considered healed. Cuz I hear that a lot now, too. You know, even in the dating world, women demanding that you be healed, but their definition of healed is that you have to speak like, act like, and use the terminology of women. And they don't consider you healed if you haven't, or at least some. And I find it problematic. Right? This leaves very little room for black men to be themselves. But this is one of the reasons I've also seen black men finding alternatives that allow them to circumvent these assumptions about what they're supposed to be like. And I support them. I support them.
So, anyway, give me your thoughts. Let me know what you have to contribute on this. Let me know what you've experienced, and I look forward to reading your comments. All right, y'all. Peace.