Women
She Divided By He
Women are surviving Roe, R.Kelly, and the rest of us
I presented my feminine side with flowers
she cut the stems and placed them down my throat
and these tu lips might soon eclipse your brightest hopes.
- Saul Williams, She
TRIGGER WARNING: This story contains descriptions of sexual violence that some may find upsetting.
It’s Personal
I am a swirl of memories and emotions.
I am remembering more than ten women I know, personally, that have been victims of some form of sexual assault. They shared their stories with me over the years.
I have seen their raw emotions, previously buried like the tips of carrots in deep dirt, brought to the surface, exposed, and oxidized right in front of my eyes.
One friend woke up after a first date not remembering much beyond her plea for him to stop and his hand over her mouth. She did not drink much alcohol that night. Whatever he put in her drink left her hungover, overwhelmed, and left questioning everything.
Another said ‘no’ in a sexual encounter, but he did not stop. She got pregnant. She kept the child. The child is a beautiful and amazing testament to this woman’s strength and perseverance. I recently sat at the child’s graduation unable to restrain tears, knowing she was borne from sexual violence inasmuch from her mother’s love.
Nevertheless, she persisted.
There are other stories. Horrific, mind-bending stories that I do not have authority or permission to share as I did the two above, but please know they happen.
The survivors are amongst us. You know them. They affect you, even if they have not shared their testimony with you.
Some of them don’t remember. Some of them don’t want to remember. Same for the perpetrators, but that’s another story.
Most men cannot fathom the idea of someone literally taking their body, being forced to conceive a child and (now more than ever) being forced to birth the child.
Roe vs. Wade
I am processing the big news regarding the overturn of Roe vs Wade and the cascading stories that have flowed since the announcement.
This news is forcing me to explore my feelings and consider my own role as a leader and ally around issues of gender and reproductive rights. Men often see themselves as separate from women on issues that presumably and uniquely affect them.
But, men are not separate from women on issues when they hold the power to annihilate her personhood with the stroke of a phallic pen.
Men have an outsized influence on policies that affect women. And, our privilege as men can and often does create blind spots when we are making big decisions.
Roe vs Wade has been the law of the land for the entirety of my life. I could never foresee that law being struck down any more than I could imagine Brown vs Board of Education being reversed. I thought it was a done deal, especially as the country has become more fiercely feminine in recent decades.
I thought we were beyond this.
Seeing Roe struck down was one of the biggest surprises of my adult life. Right up there with Magic Johnson’s announcement of his HIV-positive status, the presidential election of Donald Trump, Putin’s disruption of our democratic process, and learning of R. Kelly’s psychotic torture and torment of the girls and women caught in his vortex.
C’mon, fellas. Get your shit together.
R. Kelly
R. Kelly is a classic Shakespearean character, an outsized talent with a tragic flaw. His flaw is that he is an apex child predator.
Growing up in Milwaukee during the time R. Kelly was rising in Chicago made me feel connected to him in a unique way. I saw him perform several times and previously considered myself a huge fan. Kelly’s origin story was like a modern myth: a young man uses his voice to overcome poverty and trauma. His performance career was birthed from the belly of a Chicago subway to international fame.
I watched R. Kelly being sentenced to 30 years in federal prison with disappointment, anger, and fascination. In some ways, I feel duped and suckered into his demented reality: lyrics, his ethos, his narrative. I can’t help but feel I enabled his behavior.
The Lifetime mini-series, Surviving R. Kelly, demonstrates the incredible power of a well-told story. That story compelled the legal system to action.
And, our legal systems are set up to protect wealthy and well-connected people. After all, R. Kelly’s conviction was an exception, not the rule for a man of his social status.
On a more encouraging note, in 2022 the Southern Baptist Convention revealed the status of its own sexual abuse investigations. This follows the most expansive discovery of sexual exploitation, pedophilia, and abuse in modern history with the Catholic Church. Even Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was held accountable for her actions.
Maybe an awakening is underway.
It is not unusual to sift through ashes and find an unburnt picture.
- Nikki Giovanni, The Women and The Men (1975)
A Message To Men: Higher Ideals
Modern leaders bear the responsibility of wrestling with issues never or barely considered by their predecessors. In some cases, their predecessors fought against issues society has changed its collective mind about.
For instance, I sit in a city hall that was once occupied by Bull Connor, someone that sought to destroy people like me on the basis of race.
Birmingham’s City Hall, with the support of the State of Alabama, was the chief organizer, policymaker, and voice of racial terror against Black people in a city considered to be a standard-bearer of political oppression in the entire South.
If these walls could talk, their echoes would be epithets.
Still, we should be careful of judging the generations that preceded us. Our generation has its own challenges with living up to our higher ideals.
Some leaders in our companies and communities are still trying to understand why sharing preferred pronouns is important to others. We have a long way to go.
Others are just now awakening to what it really means to support girls and women. More often than not it means truly letting her choose. Choose her relationships. Choose her expression — an intellectual frown, a new hairstyle, cleavage — it is for her, not for you.
It means respecting her authority more than trying to protect her identity. Many men might be surprised to know how well she can protect herself. Heck, she may have had to protect herself from you from time to time. If she wants your protection, then she will let you know.
Let her choose.
Personally, I am challenged to deepen my understanding of gender fluidity and the many considerations around chosen identities. I accept this as a part of my journey to better understand how people — me and them — can change in ways never imagined.
I do not understand all of it, but I am committed to learning. And, equally important, I am committed to loving humanity. I cannot be progressive and be Archie Bunker at the same time. I choose love. How can I ethically lead others — all others — if I don’t love them?
And, how can I love all people if I don’t see them?
For all the work that has been done for the past 60 years, current leaders cannot forget that we are still undoing some backward policies, processes, and ways of thinking about who we are as a city.
Accepting that and doing the work to change it is a big part of our roles as leaders, especially as men.
We owe it to our communities.
We owe it to the women. All women.
We owe it to ourselves.
Honestly,
Ed. (i/am/with/her)
I could use someone to talk to but most of my conversations with men seems to revolve around music
i am no musician but my life seems to be orchestrated by the likes of women
the pain has been instrumental
- Saul Williams, She
Post-Script: About Saul Williams
Saul Williams is an interdisciplinary artist whose career was rooted in the resurgent spoken word movement in the 1990s. He was a major influence and inspiration on my own journey as a spoken word artist. After finishing Morehouse College he pursued theater as a graduate student at New York University at a time when Fort Greene was still percolating with world-class performance talent on every street corner. (Check out Brooklyn Boheme, an incredible documentary about Fort Greene and the cauldron of legendary actors, writers, and musicians, that all emerged within mere blocks from one another all at the same time.)
In recent years, Williams revealed his status as a Queer person. He has always been a vocal ally for gender fluidity for many years through his art. Specifically, and more subtly, in his second book of poetry, She, represented by the cover image of this post.
In the video below you will find one of Williams’ most prolific spoken word pieces that helped him win the National Slam Competition and led to his award-winning and breakout role in Slam which raised the modern spoken word art form to new heights.
I am an essayist, marketer and strategist based in Birmingham, Alabama where I serve as Senior Advisor & Chief Strategist to Mayor Randall L. Woodfin.
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