"I lost my left eye behind partner violence, so I forgive the woman who blinded me, and I ask the forgiveness of the women I physically, verbally and emotionally abused!"
--Marvin X
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Angela Davis, Marvin X, Sonia Sanchez
"In the presence of Angela and Sonia, I bow down to goddesses as co-revolutionary and represent myself as warrior man, not weak ass man with no love and respect for the goddess who stands with god!"--Marvin X
Confession of an Ex-Wife Beater
I beat her because she loved me
I beat her
Gouged my fingers into her eyes
Stomped her on the floorvi
Because she loved my dirty drawers
I beat her
Put my hands on her throat and squeezed
Until her eyes looked like marbles
I beat her
Because she loved me
Because she gave me a child
That looked just like me
I beat her
Because I stood trembling
Watching the child ooze from her womb
I beat her
Because she wouldn’t give me some pussy
I tore her panties off and took the pussy
I beat her
Then said to her, “Baby, I love you so much.
You’re so precious to me, let me kiss you.”
And she let me
Then I beat her for letting me
Because I was drunk
Too much rum
I beat her
Too much weed
I beat her
Too much coke
I beat her
My you are so precious to me
I beat her
My I love you so much baby
I beat her
Because she was faithful
Because she was patient
I beat her
While my child stood terrified
I beat her
Kicked her
Sat on her
Punched her in the mouth
In my madness
Because she said the wrong word
Because she said nothing
Because she said the right word
Because she said too many words
Because she had a thought
Independent of mine
I beat her
Knocked her too the floor
Because she called the police
I beat her
How could she call the white man on me
As Black as I was
I beat her
Because she called her mama
I beat her
Because she called the operator
I beat her
Because she picked up the telephone
I beat her
Because she left me and I found her hiding in the closet
I beat her because I took her to Mexico and she wasn’t happy
I beat her because I took her to New York
And she didn’t smile
I beat her
Because I was sick
And she told me so.
I beat her.
--Marvin X, from In the Name of Love, Laney College Theatre, 1981
I Shot Him
I shot him
Because he loved me
He loved me so much he came home smelling
Like his other bitch’s pussy
I shot him
I didn’t kill him
But I shot him
Because I got the phone bill
And saw he’d called his other bitch
On my birthday
I shot him
Cause I got papers on him
Yeah, I got papers on the motherfucker
To use his filthy language
I shot him
And I ain’t sharing him with nobody
I don’t care what the Muslims say
Bout a nigguh can have four wives
I don’t care what the Holy Qur’an say
I don’t care bout the African tradition of polygamy
I don’t care how many mo women it is for every man
I shot him
I don’t care if women are turning lesbian and bisexual
Cause they don’t want no man
I want my man. I love my man
But I shot him!
--Marvin X, from In the Name of Love, Laney College Theatre, 1981
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Partner Violence and Spirituality
By Marvin X
"I beat her because she loved me."— mx
Any semblance of partner or domestic violence is antithetical to spirituality. No person who beats another can claim spiritual consciousness, rather they should claim animal consciousness. And no matter what any scripture says, I say domestic violence or partner violence must be outlawed totally and absolutely, no matter where it exists anywhere on the planet earth, simply because it does no good whatsoever, and ultimately drains the sand out the hour glass of love and respect between human beings.
It has a traumatic effect on the mate and children, thus it must be avoided at all cost. To beat another human being is the height of savagery and men, in particular, must rise above savagery and step up to their divinity.
I speak as one who was such a savage and it was all to no avail. In the end, the sand was indeed drained out of the hour glass of love and respect. I subjected my family to great pain, literally, and suffering, and many times it was due to my altered state of mind, i.e., drugs and alcohol. Too much domestic and partner violence is initiated when one or both partners are in an altered state of mind, so we must be advised to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
You know the ritual: even before the first drink someone is angry, then the drink, then another and another until the wrong word is said and its on. But the alcohol was the devil who forced up old issues that were supposedly resolved, old pain, wounds, treachery, sexual improprieties, money, anything, even jealousy between mates, or some other evil thought or suggestion due to the altered state of mind. Yes, loose lip sink ships, and we can be very loose with the devil juice or some other drug that diminishes any possibility of anger management.
Before we know, what started out as a beautiful evening turns into a nightmare: blood is flowing, bones broken, police in the house, somebody goes to jail, another goes to the hospital or morgue, children are taken to child protective services. The mental damage is irreparable.
I wrote a play (In the Name of Love) about my madness which my ex-wife and daughter came to see. After the play my daughter asked me why did I need to tell all that stuff about how I beat her mother. I told her it was for the healing of myself and the community.
Years later I gave a reading and my ex-wife was there. A poet requested I read the poem about domestic violence (Confession of An Ex-wife Beater, see Dr. Julia Hare's How to Find A BWM, chapter, The Violent Male) that was in the play. At first I resisted because the poem had been in the play that my wife and daughter had seen, and since my ex had come to the reading to support me, I certainly didn't want to upset her. But the poet insisted I read the poem, so I did. And it did indeed upset my ex--when we got to her house, she claimed she'd never heard the poem before. I couldn't convince her that she had, and furthermore, she said I had never apologized for beating her, so I apologized, and of course it ruined our evening since her suppressed memory was jolted. But some healing occurred so I thank the poet for forcing me to read the poem, Lamont Steptoe.
We can't imagine what we do to each others psyche with partner violence, let alone what it does to us physically. And things go from bad to worse, so if we don't' get started we won't need to stop.
I suggest therapy at the first sign of physical violence because it is possible to save relationships with therapy before police or relatives intervene.
Dr. Nathan Hare suggests couples need not break up due to violence, but I say it is unacceptable and must not occur for one moment because things go from bad to worse, and certainly, people professing spiritual consciousness must be above physical abuse, although emotional and verbal abuse is just as bad.
We are a people in need of much healing before we can come together, far too many times we come together and don't know a damn thing about each other, then all hell breaks loose, we discover we're in the house with a monster, a devil, a beast. Then we have babies by the monster, the beast. And it's possible we're both monsters, neither one can claim a clean bill of health.
But let us renounce violence at the outset, then proceed to process the emotional issues, since we know we come together far from a state of divinity and have much healing work to do before we can claim spirituality.
Marvin X on Partner Violence,
A Pauline Conversion
On the matter of partner violence, Marvin X long ago experienced a Pauline conversion, similar to how Saul suffered a conversion on the road to Damascus and transformed into Paul, the champion of Christianity. Marvin's conversion was not religious but perhaps spiritual for he has come to recognize women as spiritual beings in human form, thus they are not to be treated lightly or rather roughly.
He has well documented his domestic violence in his plays and poetry, especially the poem Confession of an ex-wife beater and the play In the Name of Love, Laney College Theatre, 1980.
There is no woman who can say he laid a hand on them in recent years. He rarely argues with women but prefers to stay in the no stress zone. His solution for domestic peace these days is to exercise the language of love, in which he stresses silence due to the psycholinguistic crisis inherent in our use of the English or American language, wherein words are most often misunderstood and lead to violence because we have lost the art of diplomatic conversation in male/female relations, especially when mind altered drugs are involved, especially alcohol, those distilled spirits who soon are no longer still.
Of course women have no choice but to use their mouths in confrontation with men, since they often lack the physical power to subdue men. They resort to verbal violence or emotional violence, a kind of revenge to ultimately win the battle of the sexes.
But the truth is that domestic or partner violence is pandemic, a global nightmare in every religion and every nation on the planet earth. It has become the scourge of humanity, and yet it shall persist until the patriarchal mythological order perpetuated by men is destroyed, yes, all the myths that make females chattel property must be cast into the dustbin of history.
Women who buy into the myth must be detoxed and recover. It is not about feminism or misogyny, but about recognizing the spirituality of all human beings, whether male or female.
As per females, Phavia says it best in her poem Yo, Yo, Yo, "If you think I am just a physical thing, wait til you see the spiritual power I bring." So there is no need to think in gender specific terms but simply think of each other as spiritual beings in human form, thus we are not to be abused, harmed, disrespected, neglected in any way, shape or form, physically, verbally or emotionally.
I have come to hate partner violence with the Passion of Paul. I wish it could be wiped from the face of the earth tonight, though it won't happen until people come into the new spiritual consciousness sweeping the world. For sure, partner violence is part of the Slave System, based on religious mythology, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Yoruba, Rasta. This mythological system lies in the deep structure of said religions, but it must be uprooted or the religions will be uprooted when the people achieve true spiritual consciousness. Of course it is also rooted in the capitalist slave system (Ed Howard term) that debases human beings outright with wage slavery that perpetuates stress leading directly to partner and/or domestic violence. Persons are stressed at not receiving a living wage, then often practice misplaced aggression onto their partner rather than confronting their greedy capitalist boss who has been pimping them to death. In their cowardice, men beat their women into a pulp yet let the greedy boss escape their wrath, while the women have been nothing but dutiful slaves to their husbands, washing their dirty drawers, caring for their children, while often working full time themselves to compliment their wage slave mates.
Only a workers revolution can really solve this problem that entails a redistribution of the wealth stolen by the capitalist blood suckers of the poor. When the economic order is a slave system, the entire society is reduced to such, for all institutions contribute to the whole demonic social economic order.
The education system must be thrown into the dustbin of history as well, along with the other archaic institutions that perpetuate such madness. Children are dropping out of school and shall continue to do so simply because they are smarter than their teachers and parents. They know school is bullshit, a perpetuation of the slave system and they reject it outright. Yes, they are that smart, smart enough not to be hoodwinked and bamboozled by an educational system that is totally irrelevant to the lives they live in the hood. After all, their teachers are trained to only instruct a curriculum that perpetuates the world of make believe.
We feel sorry for the new Mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, who tonight called for 2000 mentors to help Oakland youth, yet help them do what, adjust to the slave system of white supremacy education that robbed their parents of their humanity and spirituality? It is the educational system that has taught our youth they should be treated as chattel slaves or the personal property of each other. Otherwise, why would the boys think they own the girls, or girls own other girls or boys own other boys?
As per women, the tragedy is how they become addicted to partner violence but exercise the typical classical denial of the addicted personality. They make excuses for their mate, even imagine him to be a good guy, even when he has taken them to the edge of death.
It is a sick state of mind and the women in this condition need to be taken to a shelter where they can detox and recover from their addiction to madness, for one human who beats another into submission is mad, insane, a danger to himself and others. And the person who accepts such inhumane treatment is sick as well, quite similar to the relationship, if not exactly the same, of the oppressor to the oppressed. Dr. Nathan Hare says that there can be no master except when one agrees to be a slave.
Yes, we come to love oppression, even make excuses for the oppressor: he didn't mean it, he really loves loves me, I deserved it cause I hit him first or I talked about his mama or his little penis!
The truth is that we have monsters in our midst, men who are drunk on this patriarchal mythology and must be taken to a detox center, and meanwhile the women who are addicted must themselves be taken to a safe place.
Only when they both recover should there be any consideration to the possibility of reconciliation. Only when they discover they are both spiritual beings in human form and must be treated thusly, should they be allowed to come together.
Meanwhile, the community must intervene to help the helpless, especially those women in denial and who wish to continue in their inordinancy blindly wandering on, as the Qur'an says. They are a danger to themselves and others, especially their children who are traumatized as well and then grow up to emulate violent social interaction, especially in male/female relations.
And please don't tell me you love the one you with and he/she loves you, for this is a bold face lie, because you don't even know the one you with and he/she doesn't know you. If you knew you were dealing with a spiritual being in human form, we know you would not abuse them or be abused by them. So you are living a lie. You don't know jack shit about your mate, more than likely you met them in a din of iniquity and had nothing but lust on your mind.
And even if you met them at church or the majed is still no reason to think you know them. The Nation of Islam used to refer to matches as thirty day wonder marriages, for they lasted all of thirty days, long enough to allow the persons to get their sex jones off, then they divorced, thus could not be charged with fornication.
But the tragedy is the amount of marriages that last for years under the cloud of ignorance as I say in my poem You Don't Know Me. There are persons who have been together for thirty years yet are total strangers. They don't have a clue who they are in bed with, but fake the funk, as they say in the hood.
And let us not talk about the golden handcuff syndrome, yes, those bourgeoisie persons who live well heeled to the extent they endure the most wretched partner abuse, yet because of the material comforts continue to endure it, these are often the professional class that includes doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, lobbyists, et al. In their gated communities they live lives more wretched than the persons pushing shopping carts and enjoying rot gut wine.
Again, I am horrified of this partner violence. How naive I was to think because I stopped the world stopped. What kind of bubble was I in? I have a friend in prison who stabbed his woman 16 times and threw her onto the freeway. Just the other day I heard a couple talking downtown Oakland. The man told the woman he was going to sniff some powder cocaine and return to kill her. What savagery is this and how long can this go on?
And the virus has infected our children. Girls 16-25 years old are suffering a high rate of partner abuse. We must jump out of the box of ignorance and wretchedness, no matter the cause, whether mythological, economic, religious, political or whatever.
We must, can and will come into the understanding we are spiritual beings in human form, i.e., divine beings in the image of God and Goddess. Thus we must step up from savagery to civility, from animal to divine, and we must do this now, overnight or suffer a severe chastisement. You see events are moving in the universe at a rapid pace. One need only look at events in the Middle East and Africa. The universe is on the move and if you don't move with it, you shall be removed, fast, quit and in a hurry. I warn you, you must get into the flow of the flow of the universe that is moving toward absolute righteousness, up from slavery and ignorance. Does not your Bible tell you the people were destroyed for lack of knowledge?
For all my violent behavior against the women who loved me, it caught up with me in the drug culture when I was attacked on numerous occasions, stabbed, guns pulled on me, bum rushed, robbed, etc.
As with Job, I knew it was God allowing the devil to teach me a lesson. We know God told Job you can do any and everything to him but kill him, and so I survived it all to tell you the above words. Hopefully, a hint to the wise is sufficient.
If anything, beat your boss, as a woman who called into a radio station said to me, "Beat your boss, asshole!"
As-Salaam-Alaikum,
Marvin X
2/26/11
Domestic Violence Fact Sheet
Domestic violence, also called intimate partner violence (IVP), partner abuse, and spousal abuse, is a serious, preventable public health problem that affects millions of Americans. The terms domestic violence or intimate partner violence describe physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. This type of violence can occur among heterosexual or same-sex couples and does not require sexual intimacy.
Domestic violence can vary in frequency and severity. It often starts with emotional abuse. This behavior can progress to physical or sexual assault, and several types of domestic violence may occur together.
Types of Domestic Violence
There are four main types of intimate partner violence (Saltzman et al. 2002):
- Physical violence is the intentional use of physical force with the potential for causing death, disability, injury, or harm. Physical violence includes, but is not limited to, scratching; pushing; shoving; throwing; grabbing; biting; choking; shaking; slapping; punching; burning; use of a weapon; and use of restraints or one's body, size, or strength against another person.
- Sexual violence is divided into three categories: 1) use of physical force to compel a person to engage in a sexual act against his or her will, whether or not the act is completed; 2) attempted or completed sex act involving a person who is unable to understand the nature or condition of the act, to decline participation, or to communicate unwillingness to engage in the sexual act, e.g., because of illness, disability, or the influence of alcohol or other drugs, or because of intimidation or pressure; and 3) abusive sexual contact.
- Threats of physical or sexual violence use words, gestures, or weapons to communicate the intent to cause death, disability, injury, or physical harm.
- Psychological/emotional violence involves trauma to the victim caused by acts, threats of acts, or coercive tactics. Psychological/emotional abuse can include, but is not limited to, humiliating the victim, controlling what the victim can and cannot do, withholding information from the victim, deliberately doing something to make the victim feel diminished or embarrassed, isolating the victim from friends and family, and denying the victim access to money or other basic resources. It is considered psychological/emotional violence when there has been prior physical or sexual violence or prior threat of physical or sexual violence. In addition, stalking is often included among the types of IPV. Stalking generally refers to "harassing or threatening behavior that an individual engages in repeatedly, such as following a person, appearing at a person's home or place of business, making harassing phone calls, leaving written messages or objects, or vandalizing a person's property" (Tjaden & Thoennes 1998).
Domestic Violence Is A Serious Public Health Problem
- Each year, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner related physical assaults and rapes. Men are the victims of about 2.9 million intimate partner related physical assaults. (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000).
- Intimate partner abuse resulted in 2,340 deaths in 2007. Of these deaths, 70% were females and 30% were males. (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2011).
- The medical care, mental health services, and lost productivity (e.g., time away from work) cost of domestic violence was an estimated $5.8 billion in 1995. Updated to 2003 dollars, that’s more than $8.3 billion. (CDC 2003; Max et al. 2004).
- Physical violence by an intimate partner has also been associated with a number of adverse health outcomes (Breiding, Black, and Ryan, 2008). Several health conditions associated with intimate partner violence may be a direct result of the physical violence (for example, bruises, knife wounds, broken bones, back or pelvic pain, headaches). Studies have also demonstrated the impact of intimate partner violence on the endocrine and immune systems through chronic stress or other mechanisms (Crofford, 2007; Leserman and Drossman, 2007) Examples include:
- Fibromyalgia
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Gynecological disorders
- Pregnancy difficulties like low birth weight babies and perinatal deaths
- Sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS
- Central nervous system disorders
- Gastrointestinal disorders
- Heart or circulatory conditions
- Children may become injured during violent incidents between their parents. A large overlap exists between intimate partner violence and child maltreatment (Appel and Holden 1998).
- Physical violence is typically accompanied by emotional or psychological abuse (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000). IPV-whether sexual, physical, or psychological-can lead to various psychological consequences for victims (Bergen 1996; Coker et al. 2002; Heise and Garcia-Moreno 2002; Roberts, Klein, and Fisher 2003):
- Depression
- Antisocial behavior
- Suicidal behavior in females
- Anxiety
- Low self-esteem
- Inability to trust others, especially in intimate relationships
- Fear of intimacy
- Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder
- Emotional detachment
- Sleep disturbances
- Flashbacks
- Replaying assault in the mind
- Women with a history of intimate partner abuse are more likely to display behaviors that present further health risks (e.g., substance abuse, alcoholism, suicide attempts) than women without a history of intimate partner abuse.
- Partner abuse is associated with a variety of negative health behaviors (Heise and Garcia-Moreno 2002; Plichta 2004; Roberts, Auinger, and Klein 2005; Silverman et al. 2001). Studies show that the more severe the violence, the stronger its relationship to negative health behaviors by victims.
- Engaging in high-risk sexual behavior
- Unprotected sex
- Decreased condom use
- Early sexual initiation
- Choosing unhealthy sexual partners
- Multiple sex partners
- Trading sex for food, money, or other items
- Using harmful substances
- Smoking cigarettes
- Drinking alcohol
- Drinking alcohol and driving
- Illicit drug use
- Unhealthy diet-related behaviors
- Fasting
- Vomiting
- Abusing diet pills
- Overeating
- Overuse of health services
Risk Factors for Domestic Violence
Risk factors are associated with a greater likelihood of intimate partner violence victimization or perpetration. They are contributing factors and may or may not be direct causes. Not everyone who is identified as "at risk" becomes involved in violence.
Some risk factors for domestic violence victimization and perpetration are the same. In addition, some risk factors for victimization and perpetration are associated with one another; for example, childhood physical or sexual victimization is a risk factor for future perpetration and victimization.
A combination of individual, relational, community, and societal factors contribute to the risk of becoming a victim or perpetrator of IPV. Understanding these multilevel factors can help identify various opportunities for prevention.
Individual Risk Factors
- Low self-esteem
- Low income
- Low academic achievement
- Young age
- Aggressive or delinquent behavior as a youth
- Heavy alcohol and drug use
- Depression
- Anger and hostility
- Antisocial personality traits
- Borderline personality traits
- Prior history of being physically abusive
- Having few friends and being isolated from other people
- Unemployment
- Emotional dependence and insecurity
- Belief in strict gender roles (e.g., male dominance and aggression in relationships)
- Desire for power and control in relationships
- Perpetrating psychological aggression
- Being a victim of physical or psychological abuse (consistently one of the strongest predictors of perpetration)
- History of experiencing poor parenting as a child
- History of experiencing physical discipline as a child
Relationship Factors
- Marital conflict-fights, tension, and other struggles
- Marital instability-divorces or separations
- Dominance and control of the relationship by one partner over the other
- Economic stress
- Unhealthy family relationships and interactions
Community Factors
- Poverty and associated factors (e.g., overcrowding)
- Low social capital-lack of institutions, relationships, and norms that shape a community's social interactions
- Weak community sanctions against violence (e.g., unwillingness of neighbors to intervene in situations where they witness violence)
Societal Factors
- Traditional gender norms (e.g., women should stay at home, not enter workforce, and be submissive; men support the family and make the decisions)
- Oppressive mythological values rooted in patriarchal religions that define women as the chattel property of men, thus the partner can be subjected to physical, mental and emotional abuse that is sanctioned by the religions, whether Christianity, Islam, Judaism, traditional African, Vudun, Rasta, Yoruba, et al.
Fathers Sing Blues Too
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Fathers get the blues too
like mothers
over children
worry bout them
think about them
try to be example for them
sometimes children don't get it
repeat lessons mama and daddy did
childhood ghosts appear
and they are not sure why
yet father knows like mama
parental instinct
vibe
photo Pendarvis Harshawfather can tell when children not happy
long before they decide to talk and cry
we knew from the beginning it wasn't going to work
but said nothing
keep out of children's bizness
they grown
let them sink or swim
but unhappiness is unacceptable
father can't stand unhappy child
when all the while we knew
we knew our baby had the blues
they didn't know each other
they never do in America
they don't ask dad or mom
just hook up wit some nigguh
in the name of love
that wasn't love
maybe lust in the night
a momentary thing
tension reliever
but not love
not steel that sharpens steel
some unequal thing that should've never happened
wasn't meant to be
and never will be
only for a moment
a child
then departure
for another
same person
different name.
father knows
like mother
call it instinct
a vibe
father sings the blues
worries hair out
wish he never had these kids
sometimes
cause they always have problems
even grown
especially then
big problems then
not little kid problems
we listen
advise
hope they will do the right thing finally
to be happy.
---Marvin X
2/17/11
Partner Violence
and
Parable of the Dick Slave
You desire domination over your mate, your pussy. You own it, it is your chattel or personal property. And the woman, in her companion view, claims to own your dick. The pussy and dick drama is on. She is also addicted to white supremacy ideas of ownership and domination, thus she will kill over her dick, just as he will over her pussy. Yet we are supposedly free human beings, not property of each other, love slaves, if you will.
The NFL quarterback McNair (RIP) was shot four times in his sleep because he was giving up dick across town. Even though he had a wife, one of his girlfriends obviously thought she had "papers" on his dick. And we know the Thanksgiving Day present Tiger received for trying to make his booty call. Clearly his wife thinks she has eternal rights to his dick. Oh, this is called marriage?The whole matter cost Tiger a few hundred million and he has yet to regain his composure to play golf at his optimum.
I was asked why I did not advocate marriage in Mythology of Dick and Pussy (www.mythologyofdickandpussy.blogspot.com). Nor will I advocate marriage here. When the blind lead the blind they both fall into the ditch together. Marriage should await revolution, otherwise it is doomed to failure as we see in the present 50% divorce rate.
Marriage in this society is another gamble in futility, though we praise those couples strong enough the remain together in the midst of this hell hole called capitalist swine America. The present marital structure is a product of the full blown addiction to white supremacy materialism or conspicuous consumption, wherein the man and woman are cogs in the wheel of global wage slavery.
They are merely consumers for the capitalist blood suckers of the poor. The wife conspires and collaborates with the capitalist pimps to enslave the husband and addict him as well to consumerism until he and she retire dirt poor with all the concomitant diseases of the hostile environment they've endured throughout life.
As an additional form of social control, she conspires with the preacher to demand church attendance of her man, making him bow down at the alter of another pimp in the name of the Lord. The poor man's dick is caught in the vice of wage slavery pimps, the preacher, police and the deaf, dumb and blind wife or mate. Again, Dr. Nathan Hare:
"Of all the many disorders and distortions that plague the black male, each and every day, perhaps the ones that take the heaviest tool on his ravished brain are those that--if not contained by armed resistance--revolve around the painful difficulty of gaining control over his individual and collective destiny, around what is known in mental health circles as "the locus of control," the dilemma of resistance to the enemy from without and the enemy from within (including the self, if we consider that there can be no master without those who, for whatever reason, are willing to be a slave....)"
The dick and pussy drama is thus a product of the capitalist society, though it originates in primitive culture, especially in the mythology and ritual of religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but traditional African religions as well, although some African religions have a more balanced approach to gender relations, more sexual equality and inheritance rights. There is polygamy (plural wives) and polyandry (plural husbands).
In these societies, pussy and dick relations are thus more equitable and we would therefore imagine social relations more peaceful and successful, although Africa is currently suffering widespread partner abuse and rape is pandemic. In short, the dick is running wild in Africa! Still, there are those Afrocentric "Kemetic" scholars who suggest we return to the philosophy of Ma'at or Egyptian religion of ten thousand years ago as a way out of our morass and before we slip over the precipice.
Getting the masses of North American Africans to return to Ma'at or African philosophy is at best a romantic notion, with as much chance as the Egyptian mythology of Isis finding and reconstructing the dick of her husband Osiris. And then again, it may indeed take the black woman to reclaim her man's dick or phallus, retrieving it and her pussy from the ravages of the addiction to white supremacy.
For now, the norm is patriarchal domination, consistent with the capitalist society of ownership of property, domination and oppression of men, women and children--yes, the children are addicted to greedy capitalist materialism as well, the learned behavior from their parents. Imagine the gullible fools we are: a young sister was downtown Oakland coming out of Footlocker with three pair of tennis shoes that cost $370.00, made in China for 50 cents per pair.
We must face the sad reality that we are not in Africa, but captives of the West, of the white man's values, sadly addicted to his dick and pussy drama until we decide to detox and recover from such aberrant social behavior that is antithetical to our psychosocial health.
--Marvin X
from Mythology of Dick and Pussy, toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, Black Bird Press,
Berkeley CA,2010.
Parable of the Woman in the Box
There was a woman who lived inside a box. Her whole life had been spent inside the little box, squeezed in from all sides. She never went outside the box. People brought her food to eat but she ate it inside the four walls of the box. She was cramped to the point of being crippled because she could never stand up inside the box. Not only her body but her brain and spirit were crippled from living inside the box.
Her thinking was confined to what she could imagine inside the box, and that was very little, no big grand thoughts, only micro imaginings. Even her God was a little god, one that fit into the box. She could not envision her God outside and that her God ruled the whole world, not just her little world inside the box.
Now and then she would beat on the walls of her box in a vain attempt to break them down and escape. But whenever she did, someone would come by and whisper to her to be quiet, she was making noise and disturbing other people.
She would comply with their request, trying to be nice, since she really was a nice person, she just didn't know how to escape the box. And she had to be nice to the person who brought her food because they might not return if she got angry and loud, started screaming, hollering and foaming at the mouth. Inside the box, she lived the life of a stunted woman, her mental growth stunted as well.
She could not imagine the finer things of life, or how she might expand her spiritual development. She did not know how she might be able to fend for herself, make her own money for food and other things she needed, even if she stayed inside the box, but she really wanted to get out. Somehow she gathered the energy to have a thought that went beyond the box, energy that would stop her from being a stunted woman, unable to stand tall and rise from her condition inside the box.
She began to figure a way out, a way to free herself, mind, body and soul. She had to do some hard thinking but she was determined to liberate herself. She saw nails in the walls and began to tinker with them, push them a little with her fingernails, then wiggled around and backed into one wall, then the
other. After a time, she could see a little break between the walls. She came up with a name for the nails that kept her down. One nail she called ignorance. She knocked and knocked until it loosened. Then she beat and pressured another nail in the box she called passivity. When she put counter pressure on that nail the box started shaking.
She tinkered with another nail she called lack of desire and will. Then she started talking to the walls, telling them to open up she was coming out. She
even told her little God to give her a hand. Her little God gave her a hand. Some people came by and seeing the walls shaking, tried to pound on the nails, but the woman commanded the nails to stop in their tracks and they did as she commanded. She continued her resistance until the walls of the box gave in and was able to gradually stand and eventually began to do a little dance.
--3/10/10
From The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Marvin X, BBP,2010
You Don't Know Me
By Marvin X
You don't know me
you had a chance to know me
before we made love
you had a chance to know my mind
understand my fears
learn about issues
help me heal some things
but you wanted to make love
so you don't know me
we made love
but you don't know me
don't have a clue
think I'm a good dick
or some good tight pussy
but you don't know me
and never will now
because you wanted to make love
you wanted to get a nut
we didn't even talk much
a little bit leading up to sex
I went along
I was horny too
but you don't know me
and I don't know you
now we never will
we blew it forever
because we made love
too fast too quick too soon
now you think you own me
I can't breathe
can't talk on the phone to friends
because we made love
because I gave you some dick
you gave me some pussy
now I'm no longer human
I'm your love slave
you're my slave
we're in love
but you don't know me
we gonna get married
but you don't know me
we're gonna have children
but you don't know me
you're gonna beat my ass
but you don't know me
you're going to jail
but you don't know me
we're getting a divorce
but you don't know me
now we're friends
"Just Friends" Charlie Parker tune
But you don't know me
and never will.
--Marvin X
