Thoughts on Amber Cole....(Trigger Warning Sexual Abuse, Rape)
This is a rough draft.
If you haven't heard about Amber Cole, here's a brief synopsis. She's 14 years old and so are the boys involved. She was giving oral sex to her "boyfriend" with two of his friends watching. Those little assholes recorded without her consent, and put it up on the web for the entire world to see. People tweeted links and put it up on Facebook. People were non-chantlantly passing around child porn.
Of course, people are calling this young girl everything but a child of God since she had the "audacity" to what she did. She's fast, she's a little hoe, she's a slut, she's a skank. This bullshit reminds me how no one really gives a damn about black girls. We make one horrible mistake and it's out there for the world to see. Black women and girls don't get nearly enough protection.
I was reading this comment at WOAD and this struck me.
"The pathology just manifests differently - boys are recruited to gang violence, girls end up prostituted and sexually exploited by pimps and the porn industry. If we can't find the compassion for why girls end up in messed up situations, with messed up mentalities, and only want to sympathize with, and address "Black boy problems", then we truly are in trouble as a race.
I'm not sure if I'm phrasing this right so bear with me. Or pain and suffering is erased, rendered invisible, or coded within us. Black women are exposed to some of the highest rates of sexual violence, domestic violence, and the subtle or outright violence of racism. Yet, because sexual violence is ignored or celebrated it's glossed over. Besides, no matter what we do in most instances our default is hypersexual or asexual like its coded into our DNA.
Black women get constantly blamed for their systematic abuse. We have no real support, we're expected to be strong black women. Everyone expects everything from us doesn't give any support and if we succeed we succeed and if we fail well that's our own damn fault.
Now don't get me wrong, I know black men and boys have so much to face. However, so to black women and girls and I'm tired of our struggles being glossed over. It's like we can't find a space anywhere, not in our own communities or others like feminist communities. The responses when this was posted at Jezebel and Madame Noire.
At Jezebel, people nitpicked one fucking line and glossed over the entire issue. At Madame Noire, Im assuming these people were trolls, but some were not wrote the vilest things . Even if they were trolling plenty of people hold similar if less vitrolic sentiments. Something's got to give. At least we have people like Gina Briggs willing to take a stand and say this is not acceptable. I am adding my voice to the chorus.