abbey.

🐚APHRODITE🐚

All these think pieces and opinions around the Meg/Klay situation have been frustrating me. The amount of times I’ve seen men find ways to blame Meg for being cheated on is disturbing. “She should’ve known.”, “She’s a hoe anyway.”, “Klay has more value.”

What are we even doing????

What bothers me most is how easily people excuse behavior that should be seen as a serious character flaw. Cheating isn’t some casual mistake to joke through. To betray and humiliate someone, especially someone who has already been through so much publicly, and that YOU chose to be with is cruel. And then for men to blame the person who was wronged? That’s even uglier.

And bigger than this one situation, it exposes something deeper that honestly scares me; a lot of men carry resentment toward women while still pursuing them. That contradiction is terrifying.

Women are already asked to trust men to initiate, lead, and help build relationships, all while often not knowing a man’s true intentions. Imagine how vulnerable that can feel. Then people wonder why so many women move guarded.

And I’m especially disgusted by the rhetoric aimed at Black women. The “men can be hoes but women can’t” shit, the casual devaluing, the misogyny disguised as jokes or “opinions.” But another thing that bothers me is how one-dimensional some men seem to view women.

Like women are only allowed to exist in categories men can control or understand. The good woman, the hoe, the wife, the problem. As if women aren’t as layered, funny, flawed at times, evolving, confused, brilliant, contradictory and human as men are allowed to be.

Men are given room to be complex. To mess up and grow. To be ambitious and insecure. To be serious and goofy. To be works in progress. Women deserve that same humanity!! Too often some men don’t engage women as full people they engage projections. Expectations. Fantasies. Roles.

Because when you stop seeing women as full human beings, it becomes easier to disrespect them, betray them, reduce them, or blame them.

And hold your friends accountable!!!!! Stop covering for bad behavior. Stop turning betrayal into locker room humor. Stop defending men just because they’re men. Distance yourself from men who treat women carelessly.

AND lastly…get your lust in check. I mean that.

Too many men have let unchecked desire, ego and entitlement become identity. It hurts women, it hurts relationships, and it will ultimately rob you of your own happiness and peace.

The lack of empathy I see from some men genuinely makes me scared for my friends, future daughters, family…all Black women.

Black women deserve honesty. Black women deserve safety. Black women deserve dignity. Black women deserve to be seen as fully human.

And too many men are failing that. And to be clear, I’m not saying any of this as if I’m above critique or like “those men” are the problem and I’m somehow separate from it.

I’m speaking as a man who has had to confront his own failures, and unlearn the things that were taught to me too.