Anticipating reactions to the latest big news from reality television in a piece for Clutch magazine, The Root's contributing editor Demetria L. Lucas questions why women can be so quick to give men the benefit of the doubt, but not other women.
Yesterday was D-Day. Yes, I'm referring to the divorce filing [heard] 'round the Internet, that of reality TV husband Kordell Stewart against his wife Porsha. I joked on Twitter that I wondered what creative excuse would be concocted to blame Porsha for her husband's abrupt departure because despite the viewing audience of Real Housewives of Atlanta largely agreeing that Kordell was overbearing, he was the one who filed for divorce. And though the couple haven't said much — yet — about what went left in the marriage, some people, including women, always blame the woman when there's a break up, but really, when anything goes down between a man and a woman, women get blamed.
… You see, sometimes, we women can be our own worst enemies. (Note the "we." I include myself.) Whether it's wondering what a female celeb did to deserve her boyfriend beating her like that, or how a 16 year old girl should take responsibility for her rape because she was drunk or what a woman could have done for a man to allegedly kick her — and her son — out of his house. We don't always flat out accuse, but sometimes in our musings as we dissect the news, we tend to give men the benefit of the doubt, a privilege that is not typically extend to women. In that, we reveal that we either enjoy our high horses or we just don't think so highly of womankind, and in turn, ourselves.
I would never suggest that women are supposed to monolithic, you know, like how Black people are (joke). But we spend a lot of time fighting unnecessary battles amongst ourselves, whether it's singles versus marrieds, working moms versus stay-at-home mothers, single moms versus everyone else, light versus dark, natural versus straight, young versus "old", hood versus "bourgie", degree versus diploma, corporate versus creative and so on. Even the so-called enlightened among us might be too good these days to hurl the B-word, but we're not all so above creative replacements to denigrate — "basic", "regular" — and so many of us don't think twice about labeling a woman a "whore" or some derivative of it. Every time we do that to each other, we implicitly give our male counterparts license to do the same. How do we logically tell men, "you can't call me that!" when we do it to each other effortlessly?
Read Demetria L. Lucas' entire piece at Clutch magazine.
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