⚠️ Trigger Warning: Please Read Before Proceeding…
This piece contains graphic descriptions and personal accounts related to sexual assault, grooming, misogyny, childhood trauma, gender-based violence, and systemic abuse, particularly as they relate to the experiences of Black women.
It also references public figures currently involved in legal cases regarding abuse and trafficking.
While this writing is a powerful act of truth-telling and reclamation, it may be emotionally activating for some readers.
Please honor your body, breath, and nervous system. If you need to pause, skip, or come back later — do so with grace. This space is for healing, not harm. You are sovereign here. You are not alone.
Back to the Super Bowl Big Head Bozo… After choking down my beer, immediately regretting the decision as I instantly felt the bloat, I was ready to leave. I signaled to Bozo that I was bored, and the wing-woman role worked better when we were kids and he was still single. I shook my head, he hung his head in mild shame, and said, “Don’t give up on us Jeh…”
Us being other men in our friend group, with whom I no longer kept in contact, who had essentially blew up their marriages in the same vain this guy was attempting to do –– consciously or otherwise.
“Don’t give up on us Jeh?!”
Why am I, a Black woman, tasked –– expected to turn a blind eye, in blind support of behavior that contributes to yet another broken home –– where these men have Black wives and daughters. Where the wife will bear the burden of the bulk of the childcare…often children the men begged the women to conceive.
A song from our college clubbing days came on, and Big head Bozo asked for one dance before I headed out. As any woman reading this knows, face to face dancing, and don’t turn around unless you want an increasingly hardening dick impressed in the crack of your ass. I kept my distance and said I was leaving when the song ended.
While walking to the door, we ran into some of his crew, and that’s when he shared that he had a threesome with one of the homeboys’ sisters-in-law. He grabbed the butts of a few more women on the way out.
At the entrance, I settled on the platonic woman hug. You know the one that includes glutes tooted out to avoid a not-so-surprising hard-on. That is when this motherfucker tried to kiss me in the mouth.
“Yuck,” I said, pushing him away and almost down a flight of stairs. That seemed, as my mother used to say, to tickle his dick. He came toward me again, asking for “just one kiss”.
The fuck?! Asshole!!!
Ok, undercover overt assaulter. I took the stairs two at time, looking back and shaking my head in disgust. I remember walking home feeling so hurt…and disappointed – mostly in myself. I really needed a friend that night. I allowed my desire for human connection override good come sense and red flag recognition. What I failed to realize in all this: I had abandoned the best friend I was ever going to have: myself.
These days, he does the “no dialogue, only braggart” photo dump texts of him, the wife and kids in some far-off exotic country. Impressive, I suppose, to someone who is on her third passport full of stamps and has had a career in global travel.
During one of those unsolicited transmissions, I googled him. Found ALL his personal information, along with his wife’s cell phone number. You claimed to have dropped upwards $10K on a Super Bowl ticket, but still using your home address for your business? Fucking amateur. And idiot.
I remember one time he called, when we used to have real catch-up conversations, he told me that before his mom died, she shared that the man he thought was his father was not. Unless she fucked the fake father’s doppleganger, the thought-to-be dad is his identical twin. Who knows, maybe she had a call to soul cleanse before her mortal coil shuffle just in case he needed an only blood relative kidney match one day.
While I haven’t shared his name, that still probably isn’t my story to tell. To that I say: Fuck that nigga! He tried to mouth grape and grope a friend…and the former girl of one of his supposed good friends.
Y’all, it took everything in me not to send an anonymous letter to his wife. I quickly snapped back into my body, remembering that he was already in a hell of his own making…and that divorce number two and his eventual self-imposed demise were not too far off in the distance. All I had to do was sit back and wait for the rumor mill raucous. That’s karma business and not mine.
I later recounted this story to a former lover, and also a good friend of Big Head Bozo.
By the end, former lover’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “That nigga gon make me kill him.”
I said, “I’ve been telling you for the longest that he wasn’t your friend.”
One Homecoming, I remember walking around a hotel party with a former homey-lover-friend and early college groomer. It was the type of hotel where the entrance to each room was accessed from outside.
As we walked by groups of people, saying hello, his older frat brother smacked my ass. Hard.
I swung around, fist balled and eyes narrowed with the fierest look of hatred I could muster. The former homie lover said nothing.
I wanted to punch the offender, both of them really. But I knew I couldn’t beat this man, who would have slapped me in retaliation for defending myself against his assault.
“Really?!” My voice shook angrily.
Had my ass gained a mouth and summoned his hand? Had it called him, desperate for abuse?
Gaslighting loading in 3…2..1
“Aww girl, chill out. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
On-lookers –– other “brothers” who I had thought were my friends…former homey-lover, said…did nothing in my defense.
Even though my irritation, and increasing hurt and embarassment was evident.
A bro-code, an allegiance if you will.
A Stockholm Syndrome of sorts.
You see, the guy who slapped my behind was the older “brother” of my companion and standerbys.
He had a hand in “making him” – them, meaning a hand in facilitating their transition as a college boy to (insert fraternity) man –– i.e. hazing the pledge – at times within an inch of their life.
The Pipeline of Harm…
Long before Black men were hazing pledges or slapping girls at Homecoming, white land owners perfected a brutal hand-me-down system of abuse.
As trauma therapist Resmaa Menakem notes, early American elites first weaponized violence against white laborers, chiefly Irish indentured servants, then promoted a few of those battered men to overseers, dangling skin-color privilege as a consolation prize.
The message was clear: you’re still trapped, but at least you’re not them. That warped hierarchy planted the seed for a cycle we still see today: hurt men proving their worth by hurting someone ranked “lower.”
Flash-forward: Black boys pledge fraternities, survive near-fatal hazing like the ones shown in Burning Sands (2017), and learn to protect the brotherhood at any cost.
Too many carry that unhealed rage into adulthood, where the only people they can safely dominate are Black women—partners, sisters, even strangers on the yard.
My own Homecoming moment was the proof: an older frat “brother” cracked my backside, the man beside me froze, and every silent onlooker bowed to a code first written on the plantation.
I knew slapping this muthafucker wouldn’t be received well, or even supported or backed up. Homey lover was a coward. Or was he?
How could my companion speak up for me when he, as a grown ass man no longer a “pledge”, did not have the ability to do the same for himself?! Or maybe he just didn’t give a fuck AND had more reverence for his our abuser.
But I Got His Ass Back.
For his silence in that moment…
For the day he shoved an envelope of antibiotics in my 19-year-old face, trying to convince me that Trichomoniasis was “nothing really”, and I had nothing to worry about –– long term.
Former Homey and I found ourselves sneaking into a women’s bathroom in an isolated part of the hotel of the after party.
Hold up in a stall, my right knee was wrapped around the back of his neck, and the magical wonders of his tongue flooded back to me.
After pulling my dress down, I noticed him reaching for his belt buckle, with an excited look in his eyes that suggested he wanted assistance. “Ok, now do me,” he asked/demanded like an excited, yet impatient puppy.
He always was a quid pro quo muthafucker.
I reached for the latch on the stall and said, “Ooo, I think I hear someone coming…”
“Oh really?!” He said, trying to mask his disappointment.
Deflated (and blue-balled), slumping behind me as I peeked out the bathroom door to ensure the coast was clear, his sulking was short-lived.
Thank you telepathy Gods! As soon as we emerged, a group of women we knew walked past. We sheepishly exchanged hellos and made our to the rest of the partygoers. One small step for womankind.
Sure, I felt a tinge of… whatever for his wife.
But then I remembered my teenage self alone, embarrassed and scared in a campus clinic, and any guilt or shame vanished.
She should have known better than to let her husband off his leash…if even for a weekend.
Why Do (Black) Men Hate (Black) Women So Much?!
I recently read Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All.
All I can say is: This should be required reading for anyone who identifies as a woman.
This, and The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. This isn’t about fear-mongering, but about awareness.
Further research on this topic yielded the GQ article: Men hating women: A look into the psychology of misogyny. At its core, the GQ article dives into why so many men, even the “good ones,” carry misogyny deep inside them—often without realizing it.
It traces that hatred back to childhood dependency on the mother, separation trauma, and the way boys are taught to “become men” by pushing away everything they associate with femininity—especially emotion, softness, and vulnerability.
Experts like Adam Jukes and Susie Orbach argue that misogyny isn’t something boys are born with — but it’s almost inevitable under our current definitions of masculinity.
The root of this harm? Boys learn that needing a woman (especially their mother) makes them feel powerless, and that fear turns into resentment. When that trauma goes unprocessed, it grows into control, anger and emotional violence toward women.
In some men, it becomes sadism—hurting women becomes a way of regaining a false sense of power.
They explain how this shows up across class, culture, and race: from everyday condescension to extreme forms like incels or violent abusers.
But the pattern holds: men, shaped by pain they were never allowed to speak about, act out that pain on women.
And not just romantically—in workplaces, friendships, families, and institutions, too.
One powerful line from the piece says: Masculinity is not in crisis. Masculinity is the crisis. Damn.
Next Up: When the abuse isn’t just personal—it’s generational, systemic, and silently stored in a (Black) woman’s body—what do we do with the weight?
In Part III, the truth breaks through silence as the body speaks, the ancestors bear witness, and reclamation becomes the final word. In case you missed it, check out Part I here.
💫 A Gentle Invitation Before You Go
What you just read might have stirred something.
Maybe it cracked something open.
Maybe it made you remember.
Or maybe it was just… a lot.
If you’re open, I want to offer you a soft landing.
A quick moment to call your energy home and bring your nervous system back to center.
Try this:
Close your eyes (if it’s safe). Drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw.
Take a deep breath in… for 3 seconds.
Inhale what is yours.
Hold for 3 seconds.
Anchor into yourself.
Exhale for 3 seconds.
Release what is not yours to carry.
Place your hand on your chest or your belly.
Say, out loud or silently:
“I am here. I am safe. I return to myself now.”
“I call my energy back to me now—lovingly, gently, and fully.”
That’s it.
Take your time. Drink water. Stretch.
You’re back.
✨ Want to go deeper?
🔮 Book a Channeled Reading
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Jehan Cicely | www.awakenedasshole.com
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