'I'm black, single, and insulted'

Kansas City star columnist Jeneé Osterheldt says she's sick and tired of being sick and tired about the dismal state of dating for African-American women.
"We are not sad, pathetic, desperate women. Yet these stories paint us that way.
Stop talking down to me and the women I know. We don’t need to be fixed."
Osterheldt makes a good point. This story is almost half-a-decade old, but what she misses is that the complexion of the newsroom -- the people who pushed to have the story done -- is still changing. More and more men and women of color are exploring the issue.
Is it a dead horse? I don't think so, but Osterheldt does. Yet she offers a fresh perspective that is desperately needed: Yet I feel the need to stand up for black men. The women are unfairly tinted as go-getters with impossibly high standards. But the men get labeled as underachievers, dogs, absent. The conversations end up altogether divisive.

I have more than a few single, educated black male friends who say it’s hard to meet the right woman. They want to be married, too. They want to raise children. I have a good black man like that in my life. Yes, they exist.
Check out her column here.






Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/27/1904703/im-black-single-and-insulted.html#ixzz0nerHzDX0 Share

Where all the black men are

The male-female ratio is causing social havoc and is responsible for how you dress, how you act, what car you drive, and even, how you view yourself, according to Tim Harford, a British economist and author of a book called “The Logic of Life”.
The Economist shines a light on what black women -- actually all women who want a black man -- have to go through in a startling piece.
It's no secret that incarceration rates are affecting family and communities, but the overall effect on something as simple and sacred as love -- LOVE -- remains understudied and underestimated. While there is ample evidence about this subject, Harford has a way of showing the economic side of this travesty, underlining the lost dollars that a household does without due to a jailed husband or father.
A not-too-mentioned side effect of the lack of available, eligible, educated and gainfully employed men of color is that numerous black women are -- whether they like it or not -- forced to compete for the few that are out there.
Sexual urges being what they are in society, competition is not inherently fair.
And that does something, self-esteem-wise, I think. I may not be exactly sure what it does. But the effects are pretty obvious.
What's a single black female to do?




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Gynophobia: Why he's scared of you

As a female, it's normal for you to wonder WTH is going on in his head. You've met this new guy and he's yet to call, doesn't seem to take visual hints, or read expressions.
If it weren't for your openness and bold declarations of what could happen, he'd probably still be sitting over in the corner someplace. And yet, here he is, in your life, albeit, barely.
Why hasn't he "manned up" and jumped at the chance to know you?
Maybe, because he's scared of you.
Yes, yes, afraid of you, and mostly, all women that showed even a glimmer of interest in him. See, women are'n't the only ones who get so gun shy that it cripples them.
Gynophobia (also spelled as gynephobia) is an abnormal fear of women. In the past, the Latin term was used, horror feminae, literally meaning "fear of women". The word caligynephobia is also coined to mean the fear of beautiful women. For the latter one the expression venustraphobia is also used.

It should not be confused with misogyny, which is dislike of or prejudice against women, although the term may be seen used in this meaning as well.

Gynophobia used to be considered a driving force toward homosexuality. Havelock Ellis in his 1896 Studies in the Psychology of Sex wrote:
"It is, perhaps, not difficult to account for the horror — much stronger than that normally felt toward a person of the same sex — with which the invert often regards the sexual organs of persons of the opposite sex. It cannot be said that the sexual organs of either sex under the influence of sexual excitement are esthetically pleasing; they only become emotionally desirable through the parallel excitement of the beholder. When the absence of parallel excitement is accompanied in the beholder by the sense of unfamiliarity as in childhood, or by a neurotic hypersensitiveness, the conditions are present for the production of intense horror feminae or horror masculis, as the case may be."
And it should be noted that many females are afraid of males, too, for several reasons.
Wilhelm Stekel, author of "Sadism and Masochism: The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty" discusses horror of a male masochist that many women feel.
According to Wikipedia, some authors consider the myths about Amazons evidence of gynophobia in Classical Athens.
Are you (gasp)... afraid?