“I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It”

In the fall of 2008, Kate Perry’s I Kissed a Girl often played on the radio in Jou Jou café where I wrote most of this book. Across 168^th street from Presbyterian Hospital in my Washington Heights neighborhood, where I have called home the majority of my NYC career, Jou Jou is a kind of crossroads of civilization where everyone from heads of state to the homeless come in for physical and mental nourishment. Being born at Presbyterian and conceived 40 blocks uptown (before being raised in New Jersey) might also explain why I feel a cosmic creative energy here. So just as I was created nearby, the variety of my conversations and observations at Jou Jou helped shape the content of this book. In this case, hearing Perry sing her popular hook, “I kissed a girl and I liked it” back in 2008 made me think about how the system divides sensual wealth – the entitlement to express, feel and create - in society.

The way Perry’s song flirted with homosexuality struck a chord with me because while my dancing rhythm is often impressive ”for a white guy”, my dancing flamboyance is often so good, people often question how “straight” I could possibly be. I suppose I like many “gay” dance moves because they are dramatic and expressive, and it’s a place most other heterosexual male dancers are afraid to go. By going there I feel like I have an expressive weapon they do not have, a dramatic one that catches audiences off guard in a society dominated by overly compensating machismo. And then I can put my own male heterosexual subtlety into these movements that again catches people off guard, keeping their attention and curiosity. Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, being creative and expressive this way often led me to frighteningly question my deeper intimate desires and heterosexuality. So as an adult, listening to Perry’s song provocatively raised the question of how much more tolerant society has become of different sexual and gender roles.

Perry’s autotuned lyrics superficially seem culturally rebellious, but between the lines they remain compliant with established male dominated roles in society. For example, the hook, “I kissed a girl and I liked it”, is not nearly as revealing as the following lyric, “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it”. Though Perry has said the song is “about the magical beauty of a woman”, hearing it brings to mind those late night commercials for “Girls Gone Wild” videos that seemed to single handedly make soft-core girl-on-girl porn mainstream.

Perry must have known in reality that her boyfriend won’t mind her kissing another girl one bit. If she had any real fear that he would, she wouldn’t have even mentioned him. The boyfriend represents most heterosexual men today who believe that whatever else their girlfriends do with other girls, at the end of the day or night the only entrusted act that matters is using their penis. Perhaps this is because most in society are more likely to learn about Sigmund Freud’s famous “penis envy” theory than Karen Horney’s “womb envy” theory. As men, we learn that women love us because they wish they had our penises to play with to make them feel complete and fulfilled. This leads them, to our delight as men, to stick it in places like their vaginas, and then BOOM! They have baby girls and boys, and the cycle starts all over again.

Admitting a “gender bending” act most likely excites Perry’s boyfriend, because he then would have a foot in the door to initiate the macho idea of a threesome with another girl. Then by having a threesome, the boyfriend will feel even more masculine, confident in his virility being with more than one woman at a time. In fact, the knowledge of her infidelity will probably inspire the boyfriend to “give it” to both of them just a little bit harder to remind his girlfriend that he has the penis and how much she wants it. Everybody wins!

In all seriousness, if the roles were reversed and a straight male pop singer as masculine as Perry is feminine, like Usher or Timberlake, sang, “I kissed a guy and I liked it. I hope my girlfriend don’t mind it”, I doubt the song would be as popular because for some reason male homosexual overtones are just much more taboo than female. For example, The Village People, the popular gay musical group from the disco era, did not even have as explicitly homosexual lyrics as Perry’s in their hit songs. They were only suggestive in the context of their costumes and vocal delivery. The most homophobic men can sing their songs because lyrically at face value they are platonically about having fun at the YMCA, joining the navy, and a macho man that works out to get confidence. They have no lyrics explicitly about getting drunk, or being curious and physically affectionate with other guys.

Therefore explicit homosexual expression about beauty and affection today seems only popularly accepted when it comes from a heterosexual bi curious female, Rihanna’s 2010 hit single Te Amo another case in point. Regardless of whom they are directed towards, affection and beauty are strictly associated with being feminine, separate from what defines the marketable predatory alpha masculinity that dominates society. Maybe that’s why hip hop artist Lil’ Wayne is known for often saying “No homo” in his lyrics. As American men we are not expected to fully embrace or kiss each other and remain “straight” like Greeks or other cultures. You throw a wrench in that foundation and the very fabric of our American culture starts becoming undone.

“Feminine Essence”

Around the same time that I heard Perry’s song, an ex-girlfriend asked me to attend part of a seminar she was taking on female empowerment taught by the sexuality/relationship expert, Liyana Silver (www.redefiningmonogamy.com). The women at this point of the weeklong seminar were encouraged to invite either male friends (my label at the time) or boyfriends to practice exercises in better communication and rapport with the opposite sex. When I and the other men showed up midday, Silver told the women to leave for a couple of hours while she worked with us.

For two hours, Silver very gently and supportively informed us guys about what women generally want from us, and gave us a perspective of the fears and insecurities women have in the everyday male dominated world. Then she also asked some of our thoughts on what we just heard. After the seminar, two things dawned on me pretty hard. First, that many of the issues between men and women seemed to have similar patterns that exist in the black and white issues I had been reflecting on. And secondly, “the magical beauty of a woman” is so much more than “soft skin and cherry chapstick”.

According to Silver, “the traits of Feminine energy tend to include expression, possibility and creativity; activity and reactivity; the bliss of the Feminine is movement and everything-ness.  The traits of the Masculine tend to be witnessing, penetrating and willful.  The bliss of the Masculine is stillness and nothingness; the stability in the storm.” If reactivity and expression defines femininity, then femininity logically drives creation. Creation, and hence creativity, only happens when people, both men and women, react to their world and express themselves. Indeed, these feminine traits are most obvious in the female form, where life is created.

If the feminine form is the literal and symbolic source of creation, women should logically be playing a more equal if not dominant role to men in society. Without this spirit of creation and creativity, there would be no invention, innovation, art and most importantly life. “This is a man’s world, but it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.” (James Brown) Yet despite the feminine power of creativity, America historically oppressed women while becoming the world’s superpower. After America’s independence in 1776, it was not until 1920 that women got their right to vote. And it wasn’t until the civil rights movements of the 1960’s that the “women’s liberation” movement became “second-wave feminism”, one result in combination with the advent of the birth control pill was to claim sexually independent and casual roles that in the past men were solely entitled to. Additionally, a huge victory occurred when the Supreme Court in the case of Roe vs. Wade, ruled to give women reproductive rights setting the federal precedent for their right to choose to get an abortion legally. With more and more women achieving institutional (business, politics, education) positions of power primarily held by men in the past, the continuing struggle for financial and social equality between genders and sexualities are very similar the struggles between races and ethnicities.

However, the biggest difference between these struggles is what is genetically hardwired versus what is dictated by culture (and our system). In other words, the very facts that men are generally physically stronger than women and are the ones that have to be aroused for sexual intercourse to occur are hardwired in our human DNA. These characteristics necessary for the preservation of all species in the Animal kingdom naturally carry with it some dominating roles, but they do not guarantee oppressive laws towards women existing insociety. Many repressed Puritan women during the early colonization of America were known to run away and join Native American tribes because of the elevated social roles women enjoyed in their society (Zinn).

Compared to the roles between men and women, the racial roles (oppressor versus oppressed, dominant versus submissive, and performer versus spectator) in different facets of society are arguably more linked to culture and geography than genes (nurture over nature). As discussed earlier in Chapter 4, there are more differences between people within each race than across races. Races are not species or else we would not be able to “interracially” make babies with each other as men and women. The next chapter explores whether beyond being the result of modern human population diffusions over space and time, race has any real scientific basis to predict material, sensual, and ideological entitlement. For the purpose of this chapter, it is just important to realize how the system uses gender/sexuality roles in similar ways it uses racial roles to divide the entitlements to these experiences (types of wealth).

Despite women’s advancements and victories in status and empowerment, like other groups, the system from birth keeps women plugged into a male dominated society by bombarding them with audio/visual symbols of entitlement that exist in media and in their gender role models. Their role models include their mothers, their parent’s female friends, and women in the street, so many of whom strive for the unattainably tall, skinny, or voluptuous but cellulite free airbrushed models and actors that dominate the media (television, movies, magazines and the Internet). By buying into the coping and survival mechanisms these models/actors sell, from an early age most girls become curious and obsessed with clothes, makeup, grooming, and trying different diets to look “healthy”. Comparatively, most boys’ only obsessions are toys and sneakers that express their status and athleticism. I often hear most women simply justify their obsessions with the statement “I’m a girl. What do you expect?”

The system’s media directs feminine creativity towards fashion, food, and sexuality all of which facilitate making more babies that become people who consume more products businesses sell. For every independent minded Hillary Clinton archetype we hear about in the media, there are ten dysfunctional Britney Spears’/Lindsey Lohan’s archetypes glorified because the media discusses them, deified victims of the commercial products and lifestyles they promote and consume in excess. The media uses token “Clinton” novelties to make the “system” seem equal opportunity.

Pursuing independent financial success while maintaining a sexual identity as a woman seems quite challenging, especially in comparison to how it is socially acceptable for men to remain sexually masculine while being slackers living in their mom’s basement playing video games. It makes one wonder why there is so much pressure on women to be as corporately successful as a lawyer/doctor, as socially fulfilling as a spouse/mother, and as beautiful as a supermodel/actress. I mean I know that women are supposed to be good at multitasking but damn. And yet a lot of women seemingly accomplish becoming at least one or two of these ideals. Since society seems to popularly define ideal feminine beauty as youthful, achieving the other financial and social ideals during the small window of time a woman can enjoy this beauty is next to impossible, not to mention maintaining that fleeting youthful beauty once these other ideals are met.

The media even seems to have ways to keep women from throwing in the towel completely during their pursuit of the feminine ideal. For example, a very striking stopgap is how the media depicts suicide of women in movies. Right before I wrote this paragraph at Jou Jou café, I overheard a paramedic named Liat, a regular, in a private conversation over coffee with some fellow EMT’s (from Presbyterian across the street). She was saying that when she often treats girls trying to commit suicide, they slit their wrists laterally, length wise below their palms. Liat believed these girls were really just looking for attention because they know slitting your wrists that way won’t kill you. The correct way to effectively slit your wrists is to cut your wrists perpendicularly down from the line across the bottom of your palm.

Contemplating what I heard while writing this chapter at the table next to them (not to mention looking for a conversation as a lonely musician writing a book in a café), I interjected that these girls probably learned the wrong way from watching movies that stereotypically show depressed girls cutting their wrists laterally (incorrectly) but then bleeding to death in a bathtub. Though Liat remained skeptical, her EMT friends agreed with this hypothesis. It made me think afterwards that the system won’t even let you dramatically kill yourself correctly (at least on the first try) to escape its consumer driven doctrine. The “system” knows you’re looking for ways to escape its grasp even in the most extreme ways!

In the face of all their challenges, and maybe sometimes even because of them, we are all drawn to women. There is nothing more nurturing, soft, and life giving than a woman. We always take something with us from where we have been. Regardless of gender or sexuality, we all initially come into this world from a woman. Each one of us was united with our individual mothers in her womb during conception and for approximately 9 months afterward. So as we enter this world from our mother, we take with us her feminine ability, and our first undeniable birthright, to be creative. Different cultures, religions, and philosophies interpret this birthright differently. But after all the debates, arguments, and fights are over, the ultimate truth is that we all crave this feminine essence. The tension between so many of us seems to come from how much we individually feel entitled to express ourselves through this feminine essence of creation and creativity.

When we do not use the feminine essence to be creative, we use the masculine essence, the characteristics of which as said earlier include stability, witnessing, willfulness, and calmness, not being as outwardly expressive. During her seminar, Silver described the essence of masculinity as being the “penetrating” force. This essence naturally finds its human form as the solidly erect penis. I imagine if we could see the masculine essence in all its glory, it would not just be any solidly erect penis. It would have enough Viagra to send blood to keep it hard for eternity, an ideal, funny enough it often seems, most men believe they have to live up to in today’s society.

Both women and men, as many eastern philosophies discuss, have both types of essences within them – the Ying and Yang in Japanese philosophy. The masculine essence is staying focused to get work done. The feminine essence is stopping to smell the flowers. People use the masculine essence to restrain from the emotional distractions that keep us from getting things done. People use the feminine essence to experience life, to enjoy and mourn it, reaping the results of the tasks done by the masculine essence. Vice versa the prospect of these feelings and results drives the masculine essence to keep focusing.

The system’s pattern of hyper polarization continues between men and women, where the opposite essence to one’s gender and sexuality is suppressed in order to find acceptance. Like the systematic tension created between groups with deficient and disproportionate amounts of wealth and experience (white and black for example), the tension between the genders and sexualities stems from the systematic suppression of the essence opposite of the individual’s reproductive organ. Perhaps many of us feel incomplete and/or without purpose in society because of this suppression. Perhaps to feel complete we must on some level be able to feel and be in touch with both masculine and feminine essences within us regardless of what reproductive organ we possess, or sexuality we are. This is not to encourage or discourage bi or poly-sexuality, only to say that these essences go much further than the superficial aspect of genitalia and intercourse. While women desire to contain penetration, it isn’t necessarily a penis that provides it. While men desire that containment, it isn’t necessarily a vagina that provides it. And alternately at times women want to penetrate and men want to contain.

Additionally, while opposites attract, when we are attracted to the opposite energies that compliment our own, I don’t think we can truly relate to our partner(s), regardless of their gender or sexuality, until we recognize at least a part of our own essence in them. Depending on how we are individually wired, we are either conscious or subconscious of this phenomenon, one example being when women want a certain amount of emotion from their men and men want a certain amount of aggression from their women.

“Race and Gender vs. Dancing and Sex”

Writing this book is probably the closest thing I’ve felt, or maybe will ever feel as a man, to giving birth, an urgent process that has fully consumed me. At first I thought I could push this book out of me in a couple of months but as each month passed I realized the labor would take much, much longer and that I could not stop until it was out of me. In the second month of my labor, a few weeks after Silver’s seminar in the early winter of 2008, two conversations within the same week further linked together issues of gender and race in my mind.

The first conversation was with great NYC bassist Lonnie Plaxico. After finishing a rehearsal at Smash studios for a singer’s New Year’s gig we were both playing on, we both started to walk towards the subway at Penn Station. On the way, our small talk about music suddenly turned into a more serious one about music in inner city public schools. Excited about what I was writing, I shared my Uncle Tim theory, that there would be more funding for the arts and multicultural education when white people address their conscious and subconscious guilt about having oppressed minorities throughout the history of our country. Plaxico expressed cynicism and doubt that this would ever happen based on white people’s history going back to when Europeans first started colonizing in Africa. He told me I should read a book I had not heard of at the time, The Isis Papers by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing.

As we walked towards the uptown A train entrance, Plaxico told me the Isis Papers argue that long before Christ white European colonists destroyed all signs of the female goddess Isis in Africa as part of an overall strategy to destroy black heritage and rewrite their history to make blacks easier to enslave, and to keep women in both European and African cultures in subordinate roles. He argued that the destruction of Isis artifacts opened the door for the creation and rewritten male dominated racist Abrahamic religions Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Plaxico argued that the ways black women are not honored and respected today as in the days of Isis thousands of years ago has contributed to many of the overall problems in the black community today. While Plaxico’s synopsis of the Isis Papers, differed from how I would summarize it after reading it for myself a few months later, his arguments definitely made me think about the name and concept of Mother Africa.

The second conversation happened a few nights later during one of my “writing breaks”, when I struck up a conversation with a pretty blonde girl who happened to be sitting next to me in Jou Jou. During our small talk, I learned she was an actress named Kristin Wright studying to become a nurse, who was reading a book for her own enjoyment called Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Wright said the book was about female archetypes in ancient mythology and multi-cultural fairy tales, many originally of which are more empowering than those told in American mainstream.

Stimulated by what she was reading, Wright described one of the tales in the book, Bluebeard, where the youngest sister of a family escapes the clutches of the rich and powerful Bluebeard whom she married under false pretenses. The sister saves herself when she discovers Bluebeard’s penchant for murdering young brides and calls for her brother’s help to storm the castle. If the sister did not lose her innocence, by curiously exploring the mysterious rich man’s castle, and take the initiative to save herself, by tapping into her symbolic masculine essence of her brothers, she would have suffered the same fate as the rest of Bluebeard’s previous brides. The moral of the story according to Estes, (according to Wright), was that not until a woman embraces this lost innocence (nothingness) and willful initiative (masculine essences), can she live her life as a functional woman. Listening to Wright describe this book made my eyes widen with excitement from how much her coincidental choice of conversation had to do with what I was writing right next to her.

Both of these conversations made me think further about how both race and gender issues are connected. On one hand, many argue how women of color are hyper-sexualized than white women more because they are “exotic” minorities. Meanwhile, I have been witness to different contexts where “snowflakes” (white women) have been as “otherized” among black men as much as “chocolate bunnies” (black women) among white men. But what Plaxico and Wright really made me contemplate was how my stereotype, the white male, is a polarized opposite to the archetypes they identify with. The system that encourages hyper-feminizing women by suppressing their masculine essences, the same one that promotes the misogynistic depiction of women in so much of popular black hip hop culture, is also the same system that hyper masculinizes men, especially white heterosexual men, by encouraging the suppression of specific feminine essences of creativity and expression that inherently exist within them. We’re not talking about the poking fun, gay mannerisms many straight guys momentarily adopt with their friends for a laugh. We’re talking about serious dance movement, expression, and rituals most often associated with women, gay men, and people of color, which requires a feminine essence often ridiculed and frowned upon in mainstream white male dominated culture.

The stereotypical white imbalance of the three entitlements - a lot of material in exchange for very little sensual and a wealth of ideological to justify that relationship – explains the cause for stereotypical white male (Uncle Tim) behavior. Please bear with me as I make the following generalizations based on my observations of myself, other white men, women and people of color throughout my career: People of color are generally better social dancers than white people, unless they were raised in white lifestyles. By social dancers, I mean being able to dance to today’s music that play at most parties and clubs – pop, house, rock, hip-hop, and soul, all of which has rhythmic roots in black and Latin culture. By “better” I mean that they take music more seriously, are not as inclined to make physically exaggerated out of rhythm jokes with their body and faces every time they dance, and are more coordinated and consistently rhythmic with their bodies according to the pulse of the music. Additionally since white women are women, who are more likely to try new things, react to them, and express their feelings than men, they generally will make better dancers than white men as black women generally will make better dancers than black men.

However since social dance and music have been such a large part of the black community for generations going back to Africa, most black men generally will be better dancers than white men, but not necessarily better than white women. Since both women and black people share this higher sensual skill level and a history of oppression for white men’s material benefit, many heterosexual white men feel threatened when white women want to dance or engage in other expressive acts with black men.

Dancing, especially to the rhythm of popular music, is not just about dancing. Dancing, like sex, is a physical expression of the feelings, the sensual wealth, that exist within us. Dancing is like sex because it is physical, it is done with others, and it is performed for enjoyment. There are many materialistic theories that white male supremacy is about the fear of genetic annihilation, that white men have oppressed people of color and women so that they can pass on their genes by being the dominant mates with white women keeping their race “pure”. These theorists never consider that white male supremacy just might be a compensation for some white men’s insecurities about their deficient amount of sensual wealth compared to other groups (women, gays, and people of color) of which dance, emotional expression, art, and sex for sexual enjoyment’s sake are culturally more valuable and integral parts.

Humans are one of the few animals (like dolphins) that at times have sex purely for fun and enjoyment. After all, how many times do we have sex not because we are trying to make babies but because it feels good especially with the person(s) we want to have it with? Therefore I theorize many white men feel threatened by black men’s dancing skill not because they fear genetic annihilation, but they fear that their women will associate the ritual of sensually enriching dancing with the ritual of sensually enriching sex, a ritual they will be left out because they do not dance as well. And while there are a few stories I’ve heard from women that good dancing/artistic expression does not always translate into good sex, there are many more stories I’ve heard that it does.

And that makes sense because sex and dance are similarly performed through space and time. If you can feel your body in rhythm with music, you more likely can feel your body in the rhythm you make with your lover. If you can enjoy and absorb the space between each beat of music, in other words taking your time feeling when they happen as they happen, you can more likely enjoy and absorb the spaces between the sounds and movements of your lover. If you can seriously and comically express who you are with your body (space) in rhythm (time), you can more likely share the full range of your soul with your lover. To feel and express this deeply requires tapping into the feminine essence of our humanity.

Contrastingly, dull sex is very much like dull dancing. I’ve heard about and at times in my life have participated in dull robotic sex. How many women go through the motions of spreading their legs while their guys just robotically or awkwardly bang away on them without any finesse, consideration, nor take their time to fully and enjoy the experience and privilege of their bodies? These guys seem to be happy with the macho idea of having sex banging away without fully getting involved with the process or the person they are with, leaving the women feel empty and unfulfilled. More likely than not, these men probably can’t even do a two-step with soulful feeling, without turning it into an overly aggressive stiff mosh pit motion or spastically jerking their hips making a silly face. Sound familiar?

Yes, instead of sincere movement, most white guys today, especially the outgoing ones full of wannabe Jack Black/Andy Samberg personality, do the typical pelvic forward and backward motions to dance sexy, comically of course. They won’t even go side to side except as a gyrating joke (see Conan Obrien’s side to side hip dance ended with a mimed cut of a scissor) or an Elvis imitation. That makes sense. Whiteness is all about getting the job done. That’s the definition of today’s man, whose feminine essence has been purged out by ridicule and material obsession. This one dimensional back and forth linear motion is just enough to make the guy cum, complete the macho task of sex, to potentially make babies and then go back to work. There is no other dimension of side to side wide strokes which women love (After all, women prefer width over length and these movements help that kind of stimulation). There is no circular penetrating, no hugging, no finesse movement that makes sex more than just a task, but a divine gift to be fully experienced, enjoyed and shared with your partner.

So in a male dominated world where rhythm, hypersexuality, rebellious art and popular music are so associated with blackness and people of color, it is no wonder that white people try to often imitate them safely from afar. And because of this conflict of wanting to be as soulful while feeling trapped in the whiteness that entitles a safe amount of material privilege, it is no wonder that white people make jokes and caricature references during these imitations to release this tension.

“Racial Entitlements in Sex and Music”

One of the most challenging aspect of confronting these racial tensions as they pertain to music and sex is that there is little candid recognition or helpful dialogue about how sex has both separate sensual and material motivations and consequences. When put into the context of white male supremacy, sex is always about genetic preservation, but when put in the context of music, especially soulful music, sex is about making love.

Fitting that sex, which has such high stakes feelings also has the high stakes of creating life. Sex, which we pursue so often for sensual enjoyment, most often has huge material consequences. In other words, “baby making” music is the same as music for “making love”. Though the process is the same, “baby making” is the material consequence that happens later while “making love” includes the sensual (the feelings we experience) and ideological (belief in our partner’s intentions) consequences that happen in the moment.

However, since the ritual of sex has all of these consequences, people can easily get confused. And especially within a system that takes advantage of this confusion, depending on the divisions to which an individual belongs (class, race, culture, religion, etc.), it is very difficult to develop the discipline and understanding to successfully maneuver between sex’s motivations and consequences that greatly affect life opportunities and options.

For example, America has the highest rate of teen pregnancy of all developed nations. The racial/ethnic groups that have the highest rate of pregnancy are Hispanics and Blacks (Guttmacher Foundation 2006). Besides this ethnic/racial statistic, is it a coincidence that most of these teenage pregnancies happen in lower income areas with failing schools many of which do not offer after school programs to keep kids busy, interested, and involved in activities outside of sex, and “hanging out”? Is it a coincidence that art and music are the first things to be cut in a school’s budget, especially in these lower income areas? When both sports/arts activities and strong parenting are missing the only things left to do for any type of youth is to find the close companionship (ideological) and expressive feeling (sensual) immediately available in sex, drugs, and violence. And some times when alternative are around in this environment defined by deprivation, these alternative activities are often stigmatized as being goody two shoes, uncool, or even “white”.

Violence, as a “creative” alternative, is more masculine than feminine because unless it is focused as an “art”, as in martial arts, inherently it supports the opposite of creation – destruction. Men generally evolutionarily tend to be more violent logically to defend the creative women. Additionally, any male frustration resulting from failed attempts at being creative and expressive (look at Hitler and his painting) especially in a polarized society like ours is easily and expectedly channeled into violence. Similarly, how many wars and terrorist attacks would have been averted if the perpetrators had a great lay or got on some meds or were just “self” medicated? Nevertheless the activities of sex and drugs potentially have extreme material consequences as well, especially when you’re young, that can set back, end, or alter the life of the individual, their family, and their community. Sex can lead to “making babies” and/or STD’s before the parents have stopped being babies themselves, and excessive drug use can cause detrimental health and relationship problems.

Ironically, it seems a backlash to the greed that drives so much of material obsession and white privilege (often at the expense of family functionality and soulful sensual experiences) leads many in white culture to romanticize the hyper-sexuality glorified in black American music. And since so many white males cannot (or believe they cannot) dance to black sensual rhythmic music, there is even more pressure to make up for their lack of sensuality, with being more (or at least appearing to be more) sexually virile, violently imposing, and financially rich, because making jokes about their sensual inadequacies gets old and just isn’t sexy after a while. Interestingly it seems that while poorer racial/ethnic groups are hyper sexual because they lack sensual alternatives like art and music, privileged white people are hyper sexual because they don’t believe they can take advantage of these alternatives they have more available.

Ben Sidran, white pianist and author of a book called Black Talk (1971), calls out the “ultramasculinity” inherent in black music. Notice that while his examples are slightly dated referring to jazz, there are definite parallels to the ways people related to popular black music of today (R&B, house, pop, hip hop, and funk). First, “if Western [white] man has ‘lost’ his masculinity to the machines and corporate structures he has to serve, the black musician, whose work is his play and whose orientation is the polar opposite of technological, increases his importance as social archetype.” (p. 158) Secondly:
This drive of a masculine front was part of a new sense of community within the black ghettos, based on the notion of ultramasculinity. One indication as to the nature of this community spirit was the use of the hip nominative “baby”, introduced by black musicians. Calling a friend “baby” implied, “Man look at me. I’ve got masculinity to spare…I can say ‘baby’ to another cat and he can say ‘baby’ to me, and we can say it with strength in our voices. If you could say it, this meant that you were really sure of your masculinity.” Only blacks could use the term effectively, could “give it the meaning that we all knew it had without ever mentioning it – the meaning of black masculinity.” (p.121 Sidran)

“Baby” in 1971 seems to have many parallels to the n-word today, the difference being while baby implies a security in sexuality (sensual wealth) while the n-word implies a security in status. In other words it’s an opposite game. While saying “baby” implies degrading a man because you are using a feminine term, it does the opposite because it is implied the person is able to sustain masculinity under such “degradation”. Similarly, saying the n-word might imply that you’re degrading a person as less than human, but it seems to do the opposite because you are implying their integrity and pride can hold under such degradation.

The other difference is that while “baby” definitely has become part of the popular vernacular across races and divisions since 1971, the n-word remains more controversial, not as mainstream, though many non-black men seem to be using it as an urban term of endearment, a trend the rapper mogul Jay Z said was acceptable when he appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show on 9/24/09. However, neither Jay Z nor any other black public figure in American culture can really speak for all black people or how they feel, a point well illustrated in South Park episode 1101 “With Apologies to Mr. Jackson”. Only time will tell if the “n-word” will ever get the widespread nonchalant acceptance “baby” gets today, not to mention the fact that “baby” does not have nearly as exclusive a connotation to the black experience as the n-word.

Overall, I believe on some level most of White America considers anything Black as ultra masculine because of the enormous amounts of resilient focus, emotional detachment, and at times aggression (all parts of the masculine essence) Black people have used to survive generations of white supremacy. There is a paradox that exists in white culture: they both fear and love black rage and coolness. They fear it if it manifests in physical retribution and rioting towards them and yet they love it because they wish they had it for their own power, to have an even more ultramasculine essence to coldly oppress people with, a reason why so many white males gravitate to anti-white lyrics in hiphop, etc. Eventually, after the novelty and awareness of power identity wears off, the jealous white Uncle Tims try to channel the masculine coolness and rage primarily into entertainment and servitude instead of institutional equality, unless of course such equality will make richer white people more rich.

This perception partly explains the interracial trends of more couples of black men with white women than white men with black women. Stereotypically, white women are attracted to the ultra masculine, culturally rebellious (forbidden), hyper sexually virile black man. Black men are stereotypically attracted to the idea of gaining the material status of a white guy by “having” his white woman who is considered ultra feminine, emotional, over protected and softer as a result of white privilege. White men are attracted to the idea of being considered as sexually masculine as a black man by having sex with the stereotypically sexually ultra-feminine-in-body yet strongly masculine-in-attitude black woman. Black women are stereotypically said to be attracted to “marrying up” to white men’s status and money, often regarded as compensation for masculine sexuality, an issue black men stereotypically do not have.

Additionally, black women often justify their relationships with white men saying that “black men don’t know how to treat a woman”(Ebony Mag, Norment 11/99) which signifies they get more sensitivity, a feminine trait, from white men. The stereotypical slight masculinizing of black women and the slight feminizing of white men seems to explain this less common pairing, compared to the ultra masculine black man and the ultra feminine white woman. After all, this makes sense since our society socially thrives on all polarization, whether its sexual gender roles or race, because it thrives on it economically from the unresolved unspoken tensions that result in profitable coping mechanisms - voyeurism, pills, drugs, wars, etc. Within our system, the most popular interracial/ethnic pairings between yellow, brown, red, Latino, white and black peoples, the most popular combinations can be predicted by how oppositely the pairs fall on the following Uncle Tim’s Subliminal Scale of Entitled Traits in America:

Table 7-1	Uncle Tim’s Polarizing Scale by Race first and Gender Essence second
Popular		Unpopular
Tonality		rhythm
following the rules of establishment		Rebelling against establishment
Academic strength		Physical strength
material privilege		Sensual privilege (soul)
WHITENESS	ß----------------------------------------à	BLACKNESS
Femininity		Masculinity
Nurturing		Violence
Sexually submissive		Sexually dominant
Reserved BUT		Wildly Passionate BUT
Sensitive		Emotionally Cool

If you think this scale is counterintuitive, you’re right because each set of polarized labels is somewhat compartmentalized depending on what we consider first within our (white male dominant Uncle Tim) system. In the above diagram, the ruling variables considered are first race - white and black people (and everyone in between) - and secondly gender essence. One big contradiction is how sexual virility, aggressively violent behavior, and emotional “coldness” are masculine traits that white men historically employed during American and European imperialism when they raped, murdered, enslaved and oppressed the people they conquered. Perhaps it is white guilt, projection, or an insidious strategy to maintain supremacy in a changing world for a select few that has put these traits on stereotypically the blackness side. However, materialism rules whiteness and all of its pervasive scales we on some level use in society. As a result, despite “reserved” being masculine in essence, it is put on the white “feminine” side because of the focus needed to attain white material privilege. Despite sensual privilege and being wildly passionate, Blackness is considered more masculine because of the taboo stereotype of being sexually virile and physically dominant (material aspects). The origin and evolution of this scale will be explored in the next chapter. Also, consider what happens to the polarized scale if the main variable considered first is shifted Popularity:

Table 6-2	Uncle Tim’s Polarizing Scale by Popularity
Rebelling against establishment	(youthful angst is a commodity)	following the rules of establishment
rhythm	(white rhythmic pop much more popular than white opera or jazz which has more complex tonality)	tonality
Whiteness	(white pop stars always make more money and white heroes always kick more ass)	Blackness
Physical strength	(Athletes more celebrated than scientists)	Academic strength
material privilege	(everything’s more popular with money)	Sensual privilege (soul)
POPULAR	ß----------------------------------------à	UNPOPULAR
Masculinity		Femininity
Violence	(everybody loves to “kick ass”)	Nurturing
Sexually dominant	(everybody loves studs and sluts)	Sexually submissive
Reserved AND		Wildly Passionate AND
Emotionally Cool	(keeping it “gangsta”)	Sensitive

Notice in our society how different races of people (and other divisions) adjust accordingly to achieve degrees of acceptable/popular identity. Now consider how the scale’s polarized groups can be reinterpreted yet again when gender essence is only the main variable:

Table 6-3	Uncle Tim’s Polarizing Scale by Gender Essence
Rebelling against establishment	(The feminine storm riling things up) vs. (the masculine witnessing calm)	following the rules of establishment
rhythm		tonality
Blackness	(all colors combined: everythingness) vs. (no colors: nothingness)	Whiteness
Popular	Feminine “everythingness” gives you people and popularity	Unpopular
Sensual privilege (soul)	Feeling, expression, creation versus stillness of super stable structure	material privilege
FEMININITY	ß----------------------------------------à	MASCULINITY
Mental Dominance	(women are smarter than men because they have to be)	Physical Dominance
Nurturing		Violence
Sexually submissive		Sexually dominant
Wildly Passionate AND		Reserved AND
Sensitive		Emotionally Cool

It must be stressed that these (Tables 6-1, 6-2, 6-3) are the scales that seem to dominate our society but do not apply in the rare cases of free thinking, true love, and other ideologies that reinforce other systems people may subscribe to, many of which would have to be very isolated from the westernized white ones (good luck with that one but on occasion does happen).

In addition to the entitlement of using “counterintuitive” terms of endearment (i.e. baby and the n-word), interestingly black men and many men of color are also expected (and entitled) to dance rhythmically well, an act “counterintuitive” to straight white masculinity. The implication seems to be that black men are so masculine they can afford to tap into the feminine essence to rhythmically dance while white men are not as inherently masculine and cannot afford to dance without compromising their male heterosexuality. No instead, white men are most popularly rhythmic and passionate when beating a drum (especially percussion in a hippie drum circle), or performing less rhythmically variant rock (often with violent and aggressive energy) and gentrified intellectualized jazz.

In many ways, even when the white masculine archetype is physically musical and expressive, he seems to continue to look like a sort of bow legged John Wayne cowboy character, relatively stiff in movement, but full of penetrating masculine vision to the sun setting on the horizon. In other words, if the white man cannot be as creatively dominant in the sensuality or soulfulness in dance, art, or sports, you better believe he wants to be dominant in the most creative sensual act of all  - sex – by using intellect to make a masculine material world dominant.

Just as physical and emotional participation in dance, music, and art contradicts the glorification of this familiar stiff cowboy (waspy) white masculine image, naturally male masturbation also becomes feminized because of the sensual enjoyment of a male body, even though it’s one’s own. Coincidentally, it’s also considered a sinful act in most ideological religions we hear about in society (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), mostly because it is sinful to pleasure the flesh (sensual wealth), and it spills and wastes seed that can create life (material wealth). Also in my experience the majority black men view masturbation as being homosexual or contributing to becoming one. Ultimately, black males seem to be expected to divert masturbation energy into being exceptionally sexually virile with women and sensually dominant in art, rhythm, physicality, and music, while white males are expected to divert this masturbation energy to compete for sex with women by being financially and intellectually dominant.

The repressed heterosexual American male (black, white and everything in between) striving for the ultra masculine ideal naturally gets sucked into the sensual privacy offered by material computers (Iphones, televisions, other screen viewing devices). A click of a mouse gives access to and endless variety of images that men (both straight and gay) would not be able to make up in their own mind, a mind out of practice because very little time is taken outside of watching screens to be imaginative. Especially in the world of whiteness, most time is taken up getting soulless tasks done to make money and attain status through material consumption, and procreate a legacy (making babies versus making love). Little time is left over to explore one’s creativity, not to mention fantasize about the lovers in real life, whether they are ones they already interact with or the ones they would try to if their desire wasn’t quenched by the crack like orgasmic fantasies these screens provide.

Even as a sensual alternative to intercourse, the system uses the desire to masturbate as a tool to increase materialism. The system’s internet porn brainwashes heterosexual men with it’s a hyper-refined “feminine ideal”, which can potentially hurt real relationships with the real less than perfect women men end up having relationships and children with. Not coincidentally, it makes females consume products and services to become the brainwashed female ideals their men desperately search for. And to prove their own sensual wealth in this unbalanced world, men buy pills to be as sensually wealthy as their male porn star idols.

This is not a criticism towards masturbation or even pornography but a way to illustrate how some rituals and coping mechanisms are refined to get people hooked into the system. Other rituals and addictions are discussed later in Part II. A product (in this case porn) is more profitable when it keeps people stuck in a pattern of unbalanced wealth, and people need to consume more of it to cope with that imbalance. Within our society’s system, we are increasingly dependent on porn for masturbation, because of an increasingly isolating technology that instantly gratifyingly substitutes the lack of first person contact with these premade audio/visual fantasies. The system then uses these mass accessibly transmitted audio/visual symbols to further hyper-polarize gender, sexual and racial roles. The lack of promoting participation in the alternative sensual rituals of music, art and sports, which are not technologically dependent or made boring by dated Euro-centric definitions, leads most of society to become addicted and dependent on internet porn and other screen based viewing experiences. And since life imitates art, products are consumed to imitate the art presented on those screens.

Outside of working and basic communication, how many times a day do we feel we have to check our phones, the internet, and watch a clip of youtube just to be entertained? And how disoriented do we feel when we lose our phones or don’t have access to these screens? Jarring isn’t it? It’s a double-edged sword. Yes, technology makes all kinds of information instantly accessible. And while it offers us escapes from the monotony or discomfort of boring, uncomfortable surroundings but it does little to encourage us to change our situation. Rather we become reliant on a virtual fix instead of finding a realistic solution. The key to this virtuality is that it is primarily audio/visual based. For so many of us, not only do our other senses get neglected but we become isolated and lose our feminine essence to conceive and create a full satisfying sensual experience involving tasting, smelling, and most of all touching because we are caught up in chasing the quick fixes audio visual technology seduces us with.

Arguably, we are vulnerable to virtual audio/visual escapes from our boring, uncomfortable, dissatisfied real lives because of how rigidly we are often forced to choose between many sets of two-dimensional idealized categories of male/female, gay/straight, black/white, rich/poor, young/old, etc, each of these categories especially imbalanced in how potential creative energy (feminine essence) is stereotypically channeled. So it is much easier to create a more fluid virtual expression on a screen than to directly express it live in person.

“Sexuality and White Male Supremacy”

While a lot up until now has focused on how white heterosexual male identity often feels threatened by sensual rituals popularly associated with homosexuality, let me take a moment to recognize that being bi or homosexual (or any other of the mentioned groups for that matter) is as naturally beautiful as being heterosexual. Nevertheless, at times when asked if I’m gay I often find myself saying variations of the Jerry Seinfeld comedic one liner: “I’m not gay - not that there’s anything wrong with that!” When it comes to considering homosexuality, the fact that I say or think variations of “wrong” makes sense within Uncle Tim’s polarizing system.

Institutional homophobia is a useful strategy to keep a smoothly running white male dominated system. Since white heterosexual males stereotypically lack entitlement to be in touch with empathy, emotions, or creative sensuality, they tend to be more driven to define their worth by becoming financially, institutionally and reproductively dominant at any cost. Using this insecure overcompensation as a motivation, the system refines the masculine essence in white men to unemotionally get tasks done so that a consumer-based material economy can be driven without a conscience (a sensual or set ideological one). Instead, Uncle Tim’s economy is stabilized by the competitive infighting between polarized groups who interpret their entitlement to the three powers differently depending on which they lack.

In this case, homophobia encourages competition between straight and gay men, many of whom often fear their sexuality will interfere with attaining higher financial aspirations and social status in society. This is why many gay Hollywood stars wait until after they have fame to come out of the closet. Similarly, many career driven heterosexual men end up married to their jobs and money until they feel they can finally settle down when they are much older. Perhaps gay males often have less status because the feminine essence is more dominant in them. Not that all gay men are feminine and girly. There are some very masculine gay men but logically the sexual desire for other men and their masculine essence, makes a man more in touch with emotions, expressions, and rituals (like dancing, etc.) associated with the softness of women.

Similar to black men, gay white men can also be threatening to the system because they show yet other expressively sensual possibilities straight white men can have since these expressions come out of not just a male body, but a white one. So the system programs heterosexual men (especially white ones) and white culture to think that performing too many of these rituals, from dancing to emotional compassion, will make you homosexual or “gay” (low status in white male dominant society). The day when straight white males en masse are secure enough in their masculine essence to unashamedly tap into their feminine side (essence) and passionately perform these rituals, with panache and without sacrificing heterosexuality, is the day there will no longer be an Uncle Tim white supremacist system. Straight white males who take the time to gain more sensual wealth are taking time away from being ultramasculine, getting tasks done, “making babies”, and increasing consumerism and material greed that keep the system running. Additionally, it makes sense that the system helps justify and encourage people of color, women, and gays to ridicule and/or accidentally intimidate the straight white male for even trying to be more sensual.

Alternately a white straight male dominated world does not mean that other groups are unable to tap into their masculine essence and succeed in the material world. As stated earlier, the Estes analysis of the story of Bluebeard shows that it is both possible and necessary for women to tap into their masculine essence to be fully functional in this world. Tapping into this essence is especially important when climbing the white male dominant material and institutional ladder, where focus and emotional control are vital. On June 8, 2010 five of the political primaries (senate and gubernatorial) resulted in women candidates as victors which, along with the increasing number of female CEO’s of huge companies like Ursula Burns of Xerox, shows that women are more than capable. Similarly, there are more openly gay people who have climbed the material status ladder including Congressman Barney Frank, popular media personalities like Perez Hilton, Richard Simmons, Rosie O’Donnell, not to mention the majority of Hollywood and Broadway establishment. And of course plenty of black men have shown they can have the intellectual discipline to make accomplishments in the material institutional world, like Neil deGrasse Tyson in science, Russel Simmons in business, Tyler Perry in media, and our 43^rd Presdient of the United States, Barack Obama.

A Georgian middle class white housewife I know once said “women who successfully climb this material status ladder are usually bitches that act like men”. Similarly I have heard from some people that black people (people of color) who climb the ladder often act have to act white, and that gays who succeed in the material world are often said to be acting like they are in the closet. And for all of the increasing visibility of diversity over the last 20 years in politics, media, and business, a white male financially dominant society still persists. For examples, “in 2007 the top 1% of households [in America] (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)”. (Domhoff) According to a separate Brandeiss study, “while the median white family was 11 times richer than the median Black family in 1984 ($2,000 vs. $22,000) but by 2007, the white household had become 20 times richer than its Black counterpart ($5,000 vs. $100,000)”. (Ford 4/19/10). And according to the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, “single black and Hispanic women are particularly hard hit, owning only a penny of wealth for every dollar owned by their male counterparts and a fraction of a penny for every dollar owned by single white women”(Huffington Post 3/6/10 Victor Corral)

So I ask again, has this increase in visible diversity done anything to really change a straight white male dominant system? Rather it seems that many people of color, gays, and women who visibly climb the material privileged ladder must make money, sell products, etc. are only visible when they end up making the grossly rich straight white men who sign their paychecks richer. The popular arts of Black and Gay culture that end up being most profitable are sold as material objects, whether it is “urban” clothes, or metrosexual beauty products and services. However, what isn’t profitable is the equal acceptance and respect in the sensual or ideological rituals of these separate cultures.

This explains Hollywood’s and the American television audience’s open acceptance of flamboyantly gay personalities and black styles in media while the mainstream remains resistant to materially give back to poorer people of color communities, participate in their artistic and social rituals, and equally respect the power of black churches and even gay marriage. These material, sensual, and ideological levels are meant to stay unequal with whiteness within the system. It is as if what white establishment is institutionally saying, “You come to us. Be white like us because it’s easier than being black like you” without acknowledging why it is considered easier to be white when so many white people seem to want to be black (and gay) anyway. Clearly, there must be some schizophrenic trauma and insecurity with being sensually or ideologically deficient within the white privileged community that drives this dynamic, one whose origins will be explored next chapter.

Nevertheless, at the same time we need to recognize less discussed realities. For example, there are plenty of poor white people in this country. Two thirds of all welfare provided by the federal government goes to white poor people. “Still, Shaniqua Jackson, not Samantha McMullen, is the face of American poverty” (Average Bro 2/17/09). While white skin color obviously does not guarantee or predestine an entitlement to be rich, this perception has been used to turn poor white people against poor people of color, not to mention lighter skinned people against darker skinned people within other groups (Wise). Additionally, it really often seems today that being less than rich leads some white people to think they are closer to being black, and therefore rightfully earn excessive familiarity and appropriation of disenfranchised hip hop culture, etc. Other less common talked about trends are how PoC (people of color) and gays can be as conservative obeying their own cultural rules as white people who obey their stereotypical own. And though more rare, there are increasing reported cases of women and men in the workplace who sexually harass men, (7/13/10 Newsweek). Anyone who has extreme power – material, sensual, or ideological – has the potential to be as oppressive as stereotypically rich white men.

However, since the most financially rich in the world are increasingly white, male, and arguably straight (or at least promote hyper heterosexual sensual and ideological roles), it makes one wonder if focusing only on trying to change distribution of material wealth is practical to changing the hands of power. Rather it seems we need to focus on the enormous power of belief systems and creatively expressive rituals that directly and indirectly drive this material obsession. Perhaps instead of being shocked by pretty straight white girl Katy Perry “Kissing a girl and liking it” or anyone else performing any other ritual (like white guys dancing like black girls wink wink), we should examine what contributes to our shock, excitement, embarrassment, and/or anger – the dominant belief systems and sensual rituals of a male dominated society that keep groups separately entitled.

What inspires us to express ourselves, what draws people and places to our lives, like those that helped shape this chapter and book are part of a universal creative spirit. I am reminded of what Mark Shine, a great singer, activist, and friend from Jamaica calls the spirit of artistry. And in that spirit I am reminded of a more radical lyric than Perry’s hook, a lyric the rapper Q-tip said in the 90’s: “The thing that men and women need to do is stick together. Progressions can’t be made if we’re separate forever.” Progressions also can’t be made if races and sexualities are separate forever either. To make these progressions, the key is for individuals to respectfully participate and contribute to multicultural rituals, rituals that do not have to violate individual comfort, but ones that give different people opportunities to respectfully unite during the experience of the same event. The participatory rituals of art and music put us in a place to consider getting comfortable with these different choices and presences non-threateningly, because outside of art, life often threateningly goes on.