We shouldn’t have to remind men that rape or harassment is wrong, it should be so self-evident, so crystal fucking clear that “no” means “no,” but that’s what it’s come down to given the revelations women have shared over the past several months. Sexual assault isn’t just a weirdo Hollywood problem, it isn’t just a conservative Fox News problem, nor is it a gay or straight problem— It’s a sick human problem that needs to be brought to the forefront even more than it has thus far. This shit didn’t just start happening in the 21^st century, throughout the evolutionary period that saw an Ape-like being slowly give way to today’s Homo sapiens, the animalistic nature to take from the female version of the species has always been there. Half of the population has dealt with being violated since the dawn of time, let that wash over you. Could you imagine knocking a woman over the head with a club and dragging her back to a cave or being like Genghis Khan and raping the women of conquered villages? No motherfucker, I don’t have to imagine shit because a lot of these fuck boys are still out here living like they still shit in the woods!

“Listen, when I was young, there were so many men in the neighborhood that would give you money if they could touch you. Going over to a friend’s house for a birthday party at the age of seven, there was always someone there who touched you.”

– Viola Davis

Of course there are men who have been raped and assaulted as well, and I’m not marginalizing that. The fact remains that the daily lives of women are so chalked full of unsolicited advances that it’s normal and even expected. How do we prevent a new generation from having to raise their hand with, “Me Too“? It’s not the victim who can prevent this, it’s those that assault who have to change their behavior! Why do women walk with their head down or pretend to be on the phone talking when passing by a group of guys—because men harass. Why do women who are great at their jobs tremble at the thought of going to work in the morning—because men harass. Why do single women hide away at home and use PoF instead of going out into the world to mingle—because men harass. Why do straight women dance on their girlfriends in the club? Because they came to have fun, not get their dress pulled up by some bum trying to finger them half way through Bodak Yellow! If this were Stranger Things, females would all be living in the Upside/Down, and males would be scratching our heads like, how the fuck have you managed to survive this long without going insane? There’s a new story every day because there’s multiple women who continue to be either assaulted or harassed every day! It’s not all males, but I’m going to group every guy reading this in with the rest because we’re all guilty of talking about sports in the barbershop rather than the respectful way to approach a woman or go for sex.

How Not to Be a Caveman 101: It’s fine to speak to a woman and even compliment her, but she does not owe you her phone number. If her saying “thank you” and continuing to walk hurts your pissy little ego, oh well, deal with it like a man, not a brat. Even if a girl flirts with you, that doesn’t give you the green light to grab her or touch her inappropriately. If you’re privileged enough to attain a woman’s phone number, it is never okay to send her an unsolicited picture of your dick or jump straight into sex talk, have some fucking tact! If you’re dating a woman, even if she came back to your place and allowed you to kiss on her, the moment she pulls back and says that’s enough—believe her!

The irony is that all men know this, but they don’t think the rules apply to them. It’s not just men with money or fame that think they’re above it all, it’s every young man that’s raised with this concept that women are subservient creatures only good for fucking, cleaning, and cooking. The root problem is most men grow up getting toxic advice from Neanderthals, not gentlemen. Older men, be they in your family, from the neighborhood, or older kids in school have promoted this idea of “Bitches play hard to get, but they all want the dick.” From the age of 12-18, I listened to so much bad advice on how to act when you get a girl alone that it’s amazing that I didn’t grow up grabbing the pussy of every girl I took to the movies. Yes, some girls like aggression, but even in those cases you should feel that out and tread lightly, not go around squeezing the ass of every girl that gives you a hug to see if she’s down to fuck. Right here, right now, understand that those techniques are not only outdated, but they were also wrong as fuck. “It worked for my uncle,” Yeah, okay, your Uncle probably bullied his way through a bunch of pussy in the 90’s and half those women probably didn’t want to go through with it. That’s not who you use as proof that pushing for sex works and that women are all shy whores that need to be exposed as dick addicts. Your mother is a woman! There should not be a disconnect where you look at a handful of women as saints and the rest as sluts.

Sex is a delicate dance, while the lust inside you is a primal rage, but you are a human, not an animal! You have the power to utilize patience and the maturity to accept rejection. You won’t be able to fuck every woman you take out, you can’t smash every new chick that starts working at your job, and sometimes a woman smiling at you is just a woman smiling at you, not a sign to whip your dick out! The counter from the average dude with rapey tendencies is “If I don’t try something she’ll think I’m gay or uninterested, shooting my shot isn’t the same as harassing a girl.” Stop deflecting! No one is saying stop speaking first, stop going in for kisses after a date, or not to attempt foreplay if you two start making out. This is about being extra in your attempts and overly aggressive when someone is telling you to chill. If she likes you, she will show you no matter how shy she is. If you’re not getting that response you want from her, take the hint that she most likely isn’t feeling you—fall the fuck back! It’s not shooting your shot if you’re committing a flagrant foul! This is about boundaries, know hers and most importantly respect them.

Just Get Over It

In the years I’ve been doing this site I’ve gotten more personal stories on sexual assault then should be humanly possible. I’ve always built in a hidden nod to that trauma because I know more than half of you reading this have been molested when you were a child, had a man force himself on you as an adult, or felt uncomfortable at work or school because someone crossed the line. A girl wrote on Twitter that women should “just get over it and focus on God’s plan.” Which is the most head ass shit I’ve read in a long time. Men and women, are afraid to share their stories because the finger swings back to them by those elitist assholes who feel that if something bad happened to you, then it was your fault for not living a more “godly” life. One woman told me that when she revealed to her mother that her uncle touched her as a pre-teen, her mom blamed it on her short shorts. Like Ms. Twitter Sage, the mom said: “just get over it.” If you can’t tell your mother and get sympathy, then who can you go to? Women in that boat have years of repressed memories they blocked out for fear that no one will believe them or care. Imagine having Thanksgiving with the person that violated you. Imagine going to work and sitting at lunch forced to Hee-Hee with someone that took it too far in that very same break room. These women go through life defensive, angry, and paranoid. Eventually, they get labeled as bipolar or a bitch because they are so damaged by repressing that event that they don’t know how to function normally anymore.

Fuck getting over it, fuck looking on the bright side, fuck burying your head in the sand so as not to make others uncomfortable. With any trauma, the only way to destroy it is to embrace that shit head on. When I wrote Men Don’t Love Women Like You, the entire first half (Awaken the Spartan Within) was jump started by a woman who finally shared some heart-wrenching shit that happened to her in high school. The work we did spiritually to get her out of that rut worked. To this day women tell me that they thought it was yet another book about men and was amazed that it was all about spiritual growth that makes men the least of their concerns. But there are millions of other women who don’t know how to attack trauma, reset the past, meditate properly, or push into the pain until it forges them into a Spartan. Today I wanted to do something less metaphysical that will hopefully prime those that have never read MDLWLY so they can later read and apply the more profound lessons of that book to not only heal, but evolve.

You Didn’t Do Anything Wrong

You’re all familiar with the concept of a threesome? Usually, in male fantasies, it’s all about having two bad ass chicks going to town on each other while he takes turns with them. When I was growing up the more common affair was what niggas in the hood called “a train” two or more guys taking turns with one girl. In my head, this is all consensual, right? These little teenage girls had fantasies just like boys and like the act of taking multiple dicks. Call it what you want, but it’s their right. In my neighborhood, not a month went by when I didn’t get the rundown of who ran a train on who, and even an offer once of, “come down to the house, Sherri’s going to come through, I know you like her.” Which I declined because as much as I liked Sherri, having another man in the room has never been on my bucket list.

Let me take you back to when I was 19 and home on a college break. One night I get a call from this kid I went to high school with. He didn’t have a license, so he wanted to know if I would drive him to pick up this girl he had been talking to. My first instinct was, “nigga you better call a taxi” but the backstory with this kid was that I “accidentally” smashed his girlfriend about a year earlier not knowing who she was. We cleared the air, and he didn’t blame me for hitting it, but we hadn’t been as buddy-buddy since. With this weighing on my mind, I agreed to drive him over West Baltimore to get this new girl. We pick her up and drive back to his mother’s spot which was empty for the night. While she’s walking to the door he pulls me to the side, “Yo, I think she likes you, we can both fuck.” I’m thinking, “I said all of three words to her, how the fuck does she like me?” I just laugh it off and go into the crib with the two of them. We’re drinking and carrying on. Shorty goes to the bathroom. The kid excitedly launches into some I Spit on Your Grave type plot, “I’m going to take the bitch upstairs. When you hear the music come on that means she’s naked. That’s when you come in and start hitting her from the back.” Like any teenager in an awkward situation, I laughed him off and said, “I’m good.” The girl comes out of the bathroom and the two of them make their way upstairs. At this point I’ve already made up my mind that I’m going to bounce, the only guilt coming from the idea of having to leave his door unlocked in that neighborhood. I go upstairs and check to see if the door is closed as I don’t want him to hear me leave out. It is. Just as I turn for the stairs—The music came on just like he said. Instead of rushing in, I left out the front door and never looked back. When I told another friend about this the next day he got mad at me, “Yo, I would have went in that room, dick rock hard, and blasted that bitch! You be bluffing.” Yeah, “I be bluffing” a lot because with all the sex I could have gotten on my own, it never even crossed my mind to sneak up on a woman in the fucking dark like—surprise my dick’s in you!

I hadn’t thought about that night in years, then it dawned on me that if it was my other homie and not me, what would have happened? Would that girl have pushed him off and wanted to go home? Would she have gone through with it and loved it because she was ’bout that life? Would she have suffered through it because she felt she had no choice? Let’s say that she would have just gone through the motions for fear it would have turned violent or that she would have been denied a way back home. That young girl would have lived her life thinking it was her fault for being in that situation. Imagine telling your cousin or best friend you had sex with two guys but only came to have sex with one, they wouldn’t call that assault or rape they would have pointed the finger at her for being a freak hoe. This is the conundrum when we try to discuss this topic. A woman’s choice isn’t as black and white as removing herself from a situation. Fear is as equally motivating as a gun to the head! There are countless women that didn’t want to do anything sexual but froze in the moment because they already imagined what could happen if they attempted to exit the situation. Too often we vilify a woman for being naïve, but the reality of any assault story is that it’s not what the victim did leading up to it, it’s that the other party shouldn’t have taken advantage—end of story! No matter what your incident was, the guilt society tries to lay on you is unwarranted. I don’t care if you went over someone’s house, if you were dressed half naked, if you kissed them first, no one in this world has the right to go beyond your “stop”!

You Are Wanted

Sabotaging relationships because you don’t want to have a conversation about a dark part of your past is the most obvious sign that you haven’t healed. Let’s look at what’s going on in your mind when you meet someone incredible and know that you can’t continue to bottle up that chapter of your life.

Judgement: Why did it happen to you? What did you do to start the chain of events? Why didn’t you stop it like so many other people have? Did you secretly want it?

Tainted Goods: That’s horrible, and I can’t stop thinking about it every time we’re about to have sex or having sex. I don’t think I can marry a woman that something like that happened to.

Helpless: What can I do to help? Should we talk about it some more or just never bring it up again? Do I have to walk on eggshells with the way I talk to you and censor the jokes I make?

“This is why I don’t tell anyone!” You can’t predict how anyone will respond to tragedy, but your mind goes to the darkest place—rejection and ridicule. Your boyfriend or boyfriend in the making may have the same views on sexual assault as some rock head frat boy. Others may empathize at first only to throw it back in your face later on, “You’re going to wear that outfit? I see why what happened to you went down.” One girl told me that she has only told me what happened because she’s afraid her boyfriend will pretend like it’s okay then find an excuse to break up. Why? Because she read some dumb ass message board where a few women said that every time they shared their assault story the men slowly checked out or broke up because it was too heavy. I can’t yell at you to face that fear because it’s not about the other person accepting you, this is about you finally accepting you after what happened. What does it mean to be secure in your skin? It means that you embrace the negatives that built you without bias, and constantly remind yourself that you’re still amazing. If there is even one kernel of “Who would want me after that,” then your self-esteem crumbles like a house of cards the moment you get stuck in your own head. Sure, you can fake it during the dating stage and into the honeymoon stage of a relationship, but the longer it goes on the scarier the truth becomes and you can’t hide from your own thoughts! You don’t love yourself 100% based on what someone else did to you because you still feel it’s your fault. Thus, you project that self-loathing onto the person you’re with. No matter the therapy sessions or the reminders from self-help books, that false guilt that’s swirling in your head doesn’t know how to exit.

As I said at the top, this isn’t about repressing, getting over it, and putting makeup on that black eye. It’s about aggressive confrontation. I said I wouldn’t get metaphysical but fuck it. You need a dose of True Self talk because spiritual healing is the only way to heal a broken spirit. This is your Universe, always has been and always will be! You can’t attract a love interest for your story that’s understanding of your past, and you won’t be able to manifest a life where you’re accepted until YOU are able to look in that mirror and tell yourself all those things you are waiting to hear others say in affirmation of your character. Hopeless and shameful thoughts create a daily loop which reinforce and give life to those negative ideas, which makes the only True medicine a hard reset of how you view your life going forward. It may take weeks or even months, but you must Break The Loop! Remember to Remember: It’s going to be alright. You’re still beautiful. You’re still strong. You remain a bad ass Spartan Queen that won’t let anything sabotage the power you have inside! Know that there is nothing about you that makes you undesirable. Reclaim your crown, Redesign a new Avatar, Rebuild your Universe, and get back to walking on fucking water like the Goddess you were born to be!