"Yo sun, I'm tryin' to holla at these hoes", at least that's what a certain acquaintance of mine (who shall remain nameless), said he planned to do. I'm not exactly sure who "these hoes" were, possibly scandalous females, possibly not so scandalous females, definitely someone's daughter, maybe someone's sister and/or mother. As a man, you kind of grow accustomed and somewhat impervious to such language, it comes with the territory. But this time, this night, something just seemed more wrong than normal. Perhaps I had an epiphany, or some type of insight, but all of a sudden instead of getting dressed and ready for the night's events, I found myself reflecting on the lack of respect women are shown in society in general, but women of color, particularly. Sexism and patriarchy are global phenomena, and anybody paying attention could go on all day about the disrespect shown to women in rap music and videos. Yet, I could not help but think how difficult it must be for women to put up with what some women have to deal with on a daily basis.

In fact, just as an illustration I would suggest trying an exercise a friend once suggested to me. Try watching a music video show that specializes in rap music, but with the "Mute" button on. If that doesn't help you appreciate the level of degradation and objectification nothing will. Actually thinking about all the times I've witnessed (and maybe at some level, even participated) the disrespect of women of color makes me wonder if I could hold up to being on the receiving end - somehow I doubt it.

In my time I've seen a lot of disrespect, in fact if I haven't seen it all, then I've seen most of it. I'm talking about women being cursed at, threatened, groped, having bottles thrown at them, and drinks poured on them, all for rejecting an advance from a total stranger. Some men, especially those in their late teens to early 30's react as if a women gives up her right to say 'NO' to their weak game when she fails to grow a penis. And I'm not just talking about the plight of strippers or exotic dancers. I'm talking about women wearing regular clothes, doing everyday things like going to the post office. No heels, no makeup, not showing much skin, but if she's even remotely attractive and isn't already with a man or an old person, you can bet she will be the target of some unsolicited "compliments" - "damn Ma, is that all you?", "can I have what's in those jeans?", "sweetheart, sweetheart …yo, ….you got the phat ass", "ay girl …you wearing them jeans". And that's if she's lucky or gives some type of positive acknowledgement, otherwise those "compliments" can quickly turn into the most venomous of insults. Every aspect of woman's physical being, broken down, compartmentalized, rated, and worst of all done openly and verbally by somebody she simply passed on the corner.

For the men reading this, imagine having your body parts and personal appearance commented on by women you don't know- "damn sugar …you got a big ass gut", "baby you balding …you probably should just cut that shit off", "he got small hands and small feet ..you know what that means". Granted none of those were "compliments" but I doubt women find all the, even seemingly positive, statements about their appearance complimentary either. A lot of the times it's that same guy or those same guys who've been standing on that same corner like the Heisman Trophy, while the woman they've been heckling has gone to work, school, etc and returned hours later. Many guys say these types of things without even thinking about them, since harassing random women is an ingrained behavior developed over years of tutelage by other men. It's so automatic that men who say these type of things to passing women often find themselves at a complete loss of words in the unlikely event the woman actually does stop. Although I think, most people like a little attention and to feel at least a little desirable sometimes, there are a whole lot of men going above and beyond the call of duty in the "compliments" department. There's a time and a place for everything and my guess is that a large part of the time, most women would just like to be left the hell alone. I wouldn't be surprised if half of the attractive women I saw listening to headphones, didn't even have the music on, they just didn't want to be bothered.

Even before a adolescent female becomes a women chances are she has gone through years of dehumanizing references, to the point where many women eventually, whether they realize it or not, see themselves as little more than the sum total of their body parts. And only part of the time is this attack on the adolescent female psyche executed by other adolescents. Much of time it executed by adult men.

Few things could serve as a better example of this phenomena than the way Robert "Age Ain't Nothing But A Number" Kelly's career, has seemingly run over charges of having sex with underage females, like the charges were speed-bumps. Technically and legally the case is not over, but the teenage girls involved seem to have more or less disappeared into the shadows. I suppose some of them, or their parents chose the payoff instead of pursuing criminal charges. But in at least one of the cases, "Ya Boy Kels", urinated on one of the girls, in addition to having intercourse with her. Please spare us both, the "Shaggy defense" ("It Wasn't Me"), everyone knows that it was Robert Kelly on that tape, unless you would rather believe that he has an evil clone who has a history of being involved with underage girls, that broke into a house that looks just like one of R.Kelly's old houses, and performed lewd sexual acts with minors, with R.Kelly's gold and platinum plaques on the walls in the background. Even if you've managed to believe that, we know for sure that this scandal hasn't even dented R.Kelly's album sales or prevented him from selling out arenas, doing interviews, and doing production work for seemingly every R & B artist in heavy rotation on the major radio stations. R.Kelly's twisted, attempt at a career in film directing notwithstanding, what I found almost as disturbing as the child sex tapes were many people's reactions to their existence.

While excuses were in abundance from men and women alike, (proof that being star struck knows no sex), I found the reactions of the men most interesting. I heard it all - "It's the parents' fault", "she wanted it too.. it ain't like he raped her", "she did it with dudes before …. look how she was moving", "she was mad thick though, ….shorty had a phatty", "..she ain't look underage to me", - but all of these lame rationalizations seemed to mask the ulterior motive of exonerating the men who uttered them, from a crime they too might have committed, minus the camcorder. Several of those who offered some of the previously mentioned excuses, are people I know personally and chances are, you know some people like them also. We make jokes and give them nicknames related to R.Kelly and Joey Buttafucco but in actuality some are sexual predators in training. They are the guys who started out hanging around the high school when they were in their early twenties. They are the ones who come up with slick sounding sayings such as, "if she's 16 and she looks 21, she can get IT like she's 30". I wonder if these same men would react so callously if "she" was their younger sister or daughter.

I know it's harder for older guys to run their mind games on women closer to their own age, but the least they could do is observe the "8-year rule". That rule being, that under normal circumstances, if a man is considering dating a women and she is not at least half his age plus 8 years (rounding her age upwards) then she is off limits (for women in their late twenties and older such rules no longer apply). For example, for a male of 28 years, his female cut off age would be 28 divided by 2 plus 8, which would be 22. For a male of 30, his cutoff would be 23, etc. It's not a perfect rule but it's at least a guide and it would keep males of questionable character, in their late twenties and older, away from adolescent girls - even if "they are mature for their age". All you mid-20s and older imaginary playas', praying on these barely 18 and younger girls, ought to be ashamed of yourselves. But I guess this is the reason much of the pornographic, spam email that I receive, advertises how the girls are barely 18 - there are a lot of creepy guys out there and apparently I'm not the only one who has noticed.

And for the record this type of male behavior extends far beyond the guys standing on the corner, riding public transportation, or hanging out of the passenger seat of someone else's ride. There are more than enough, predators in the places that should be safe havens for young people, i.e. schools, churches, mosque, etc. They may not cuss a female out or call her names but they are often even more dangerous since their propositions are veiled in the cloak of moral authority and false piety.

If a female is able to emotionally survive her early adolescent years, and make it into her late teens and early twenties, where she can begin to go to clubs a new dimension is added to being disrespected. Although some females come to social settings like clubs and parties, and disrespect themselves, how a female carries herself is not always the litmus test for how she will be treated, particularly in this arena. For guys, I know it can be frustrating to go to a party only to be thwarted by the infamous "triangle defense", a.k.a. "the feminine force field". That's where 3 or more females put on their best outfits and spend hours getting prepared, only to later on that evening position themselves in the middle of the dance floor essentially daring any man to step inside their formation. Once inside he will be inspected, and likely rejected not by the female who he was interested in but by the other "defenders". Everybody hates zone defenses, but that's no excuse to throw your drink at her or lose your cool and yell something like, "F@ck You Bitch…. You ain't all that!", when you know damn well that while she may not have been "all that", if you didn't find her attractive you wouldn't have approached her in the first place. But, I guess when you just "hollering at hoes", it's easy to react in that fashion.

Released: November 11th, 2003