 I am a bisexual woman who started out dating men, and now I'm happy to relationship with a woman. People ask me, oh, you just got tired of men? No. I found something else about myself in doing self-work, and going to therapy, and doing self-reflection, learning more about me, learning to truly love me, and understand all parts of me, understood that there's a part of me that I haven't reached yet, that I'm interested in. Listen, it's the message right here. Black boy, tell me how you really feel, because I just want to build with you. Black girl, tell me how you really feel. I want to keep it real with you. I want to live better, eat better. I want to love better, sleep better. Yeah, I want to feel so aligned. I always like to start with, in an alternate universe, you woke up tomorrow, and you were a black man, describing as much detail the type of man you would be. Ooh, I actually talk about this all the time. And my first, like, whenever I'm having a conversation, just talking around, like, I'd be one of those men that ain't shit. One of those ones that, you know, love them, leave them, do my thing, because it's easier to be a guy in my head. But if I'm putting it into real terms and thinking, like, if I woke up tomorrow, what kind of man would I want to be, I'd want to emulate the men in my life that make me remember and make me have the sense that all men aren't bad. Men like my brother, like Seth Lee, people like that, I'd want to be a man of value, integrity, someone who put family before everything else, and then work second. Because to me, a man who doesn't work doesn't eat. No, it's from the Bible, but it's a real thing, because oftentimes what I see is a bunch of men out here taking advantage of women that are my friends, people that I love and cherish and no deserve better. So I sit in one with core integrity values, one who works hard, one who gives back, because a lot of the great men that I know are ones who don't just rest on being great to themselves and the people that are closest to them. They're ones that give it back to the community. They start foundations to help other young black men in situations to mentor them, teach them, educate them. So I think I'd be one of the upstanding ones. OK, cool. And by the way, you can curse. Oh, I'll curse it, come out. It's not corporate, this is not family, love it. Cursing come out, so it's going to have to. Right on the clock, I'm cursing. OK, so let's transition into Kevin Sanders, right? So Kevin Sanders is really popular right now. He's got about 1.3 million on YouTube, about a million or one point something on Instagram. Like he's a he's a big public figure right now. So why do you think that is? Why do you think he's famous? And what do you think that means? He's famous for a couple of reasons. One, because he has a big mouth. Anyone willing to say, look at me, look at me, no matter what the situation, your automatically going to have people because there are people that just live on social media and anyone that can support their point or point of view, they're going to go towards them. So I think he's famous for that because he's loud. Also because he fits a narrative that a lot of men are more comfortable with fitting into rather than having to be upstanding, be good. You find someone who's like-minded, who speaks what you actually embody, you personify. So let me latch on to you. And then there's also women out there who need someone to give them direction because they don't have those figures in their life they can look up to. They've tried it all, it's not working. And rather than do the self-help that they need or not the self-help, do the reflection they need to do to work on themselves, they look for somebody that can give them instant gratification, that can give them a path, even if it may be wrong. Because again, they're not doing the work on their own. They're looking for somebody else, i.e. a man to tell them what they're doing wrong, how they can be better. So this little p-head is out there giving all that to him so they gravitate towards him. Again, respect the hustle because you're making your coin. You're doing what you need to do. You're fitting into that box, but he's literally just propagating his message and it's getting out there to the ones that'll latch on to it and believe in it. And our poor women are suffering because they're looking for help and he's giving it freely, although misguided. So let's dig in like, okay, so you said that men are looking for something, women are looking for something. And that's why they latched on to somebody like Kevin Samuels. What caused the lack that led them to seek out? So like, what's going on with men and what's going on with women right now? I honestly believe that we all have trauma in one form or another that we have to be able to unpack and deal with in order to become better people and to create better relationships. And if you don't take the time to work through, sort out and really confront that trauma, your behavior is going to emulate and kind of embody whatever it is you're running from. So you run towards things that will help to, I guess, keep that behavior strong in you rather than actually unpacking and dealing with it, you run to someone who can help you either foster it and make you feel good about it because you're comfortable sitting in it or you run to somebody who you can attack because of that trauma you have. So either way, whether he's being uplifted or attacked, they're still coming to him. And at the end of the day, I feel that that's his MO. He needs the people, he needs the views to stay relevant, to stay in the limelight. So whether it's the brothers that are like, yeah, yeah, this is what you're talking about. I feel this, I agree with it. Or the women who are either for it or against it, he's getting what he needs. So do you feel like our community would be better off or worse off without a Kevin Samuels? I don't even know if I could give, I don't wanna give him that much because he's a diamond dozen. He could, it could be a Ricky Bobby, it could be a Terrence Joe. Anyone who fits into those kind of boxes rather than being like the Yalla Van Zans of the world, the ones that try to break those curses, if it's not him, it'll be someone else. So I don't know if it's getting rid of him or if it was really just, well, I guess maybe getting rid of him would be a good idea because then we wouldn't suit that narrative, but again, somebody was gonna take his place. So there's a gap somewhere that he's feeling or that somebody like that. So I guess my pushback to that is like a Yalla Van Zan, she's actually changed her tune over the years. My name is Yalla Van Zan and I am a Yoruba priestess and a cultural custodian. This is not our culture. This book is anti-cultural, anti-African and anti-historic, wait a minute. Our ancestors have said that our key to our growth is love. This book contains no love. It doesn't encourage love. It doesn't support love. And it dismisses the most loving force on this earth, the African woman. Take a break. Back in 2013, I interviewed you when I worked with Madame Noir and we had a viral moment. We talked about Black women and boundaries and you said we were out of order. There's still a lot of order. I think now because we get paid to be out of order now, some of the images that we allowed to be portrayed of us, some of the ways that we behave and treat each other publicly, I wanna fully step into my role as an elder and be able to say things that you may not like, but you will at least respect. So going back to femininity, because that's where we started the conversation, I have an interesting perspective because a lot of times I hear people say, you know, in Africa women didn't fit into a stereotypical role. And in some ways it's true, in most ways it's false, right? This idea that women were hunters and men were in the house, it's not true. Not saying they just did though, but they did both, the duality of it all. Women helped, but there's no consistent reference of when women were in a traditional masculine role in Africa, other than like the Dora Milaje, who are the warriors, but they weren't taking on Shaka Zulu and his men, you know what I mean? So I think we have an over-inflated and in my opinion, a very skewed sense of our strengths, right? Because a lot of times the reason why men tend to be warriors and hunters and things like that is because biologically we're just better suited for it. Now most women aren't willing to admit that and they're more so willing to run off with the anomalies when a woman is a hunter, a woman is a warrior. Why do you think it's hard for us, especially as a community, to acknowledge each other's strengths and each other's weaknesses? I don't know, because all my ass is gonna be in the pickup of this stuff, because it's heavy, because again, I wear nails and I'm not breaking them for nobody. It's not my job. I'm not supposed to have a callousess. It's on you, so I can help you, I can assist you, but again, that came from, I was raised by a mother who had a son and a daughter, so we had to do it together. Certainly cleaning toilets, that was all the boys, just because it's man's work to clean the toilet. I can help you wash dishes and stuff, but you clean the toilets, but I feel like we have these skewed opinions because we want so bad to try, we're trying to mimic those YT people. And I hate to say it like that, but again, we were brought over, not of our own reconnaissance, it wasn't our free will. So we started being raised with the examples of men out in the field working, to raiding, I guess, and the women in the house, being pampered, and the women that work in the home were the ones that got to help them braid their hair, didn't really have to take care of their children. The women, the masters didn't take care of the children, we did, but we saw them live in this luxury life, having tea at high noon, and being just a woman, and a man being the heavy burden of having, well, weighing the burden of carrying the heavier things, those situations, it skewed us more, I guess you could say. And those parts of us that knew that there was a shared responsibility, not really finite roles, but a shared kind of got lost in it all. And honestly, at this point in day and age, I feel like we're trying so hard to assert roles or attack each other about what we're not doing, that we're not trying to ultimately work together to figure out how to better the community as a whole. So we want, people are inherently more comfortable when they can fit with a group or a genre, or they can have a place that I guess appeases them, it strokes their ego, it fits what they, in their mind, yeah, a community, that's a good word for it, they have a community, whether it be the right one or not, going back to Kevin Samuel's, it doesn't matter, it's just about what fits and what's comfortable and where you feel safe. And it's safer to fit in that box rather than to challenge it and get out of it. So one of the things Shahar Azad Ali mentions in her book, I'm gonna need to read that book. Yeah, no, I think you should, I recommend it to everybody, but she mentions that she thinks on some levels of consciously, part of the reason why black women find it hard to respect black men or to follow the authority or leadership of black men is that you resent us for not being able to protect you during slavery. Like on some deep subconscious level, the black woman has a resentment towards the man for not being able to be her protector. Is that true? Do you think there's any merit to that? What comes to mind when you hear that even? I'm honestly, so we're so far from slavery, I can't see that as being what is internally for me because I realized that hell, they starved us. So men, the way the same as women, they weren't the stronger because they could not be. And when it comes to slavery, the way they got us was mentally first. And if I can sit here and think about how certain things happened in my childhood and in my life have messed me up mentally where I had to take the time to work out that trauma, then years of that mental beating down along with physical, you can't expect a man have been your savior. At the end of the day, you have to save yourself. So maybe long ago, it could have been a thing. Not saying it's not, for me, it's never crossed my mind. There's no deep core resentment towards men for not saving us because hell, we couldn't save ourselves. No, I don't think I agree with that. I implore you to give it a lot more thought and ponder over it as friends. And I would like to bring that up again because that's something I'm really trying to dig into with people because there's something in genetic studies called epigenetics and it's really genetic memory. So trauma is part of genetic memory and it's passed down from generation to generation. So a lot of the ways we think about the world are a consequence of something that happened to great great grandma. So on a very deep level, like there's a lot of stuff that we struggle with that wasn't even our experience, you know? And especially as black people, I think that's important. Now let's transition into the LGBTQ movement. And do you consider yourself a part of that movement? Jason, what are your thoughts on that movement and not going to the next question? I think it's gotten a bit outside of the scope of what I understand these days. It started out equality, love is as we are. Somewhere along the lines, it took a turn where I don't really understand anymore. I don't, not saying I'm for against it because well, no, I'm for it because I love my LGBTQ. I am part of them, so I have to. But I don't think I'm like, I'm not gonna be out somewhere with signs, picketing and pro-ing on because sometimes, again, I don't understand what we're fighting for. Kind of, I can liken it to whenever there's a cause for like a BLM movement where it starts off wholesome, it can detour because you have those select few who are going to weather purposefully or inadvertently tame it. I think that's something that happened with the LGBTQ community. It's just becoming real fuzzy about what we're standing for. Do we want equality? Do we wanna be separated? Do we want to be appreciated as we are? Do we want equal treatment or do we just wanna be seen? I know that's controversial, but I mean sometimes it's just like that's a bit much. You're doing a bit much. Yeah, a lot of black men's critique is that it feels like black women go harder for the LGBTQ and like the feminism movement than the actual like black movement. That's, it's possible, it's not in my worldview because again, the people that I try to surround myself with are ones who are bursting it all. And at the moment that, and this is no cap, as you kids say, at the moment that I see someone doesn't support something that I intrinsically believe is a value or a core that you should have or on average you shouldn't, I'm done. Like you don't exist because I can't support you and you not support me or this cause that I believe in. It doesn't align with me. So I mean, it could be, but it's not in my direct view. Gotcha. I think you might have an interesting take on this, part, it's in the realm, but it's not LGBTQ. Have you heard of divest? Okay, so it's a movement right now. Hashtag divest, hashtag swirl life where black women are essentially fed up with black men and they're leaving for white men. So divesting is to leave and then like I'm only about white men now. So what are your thoughts on that movement? Does it have any merit? Do you empathize at all with these women or it's like what's going on? I think you're a part of the problem. If you're saying that you've had a couple of experiences and it's caused you to say all black men ain't shit, I'm completely done with you, you need to do some work. You need to call a therapist. You can't blame an entire group for outliers. I can't sit here and say, because I am a bisexual woman who started out dating men and now I'm happy to relationship with a woman. People ask me, oh, you just got tired of men? No, I found something else about myself in doing self-work and going to therapy and doing self-reflection, learning more about me, learning to truly love me and understand all parts of me, understood that there's a part of me that I haven't reached yet that I'm interested in. And when I explored it, it just so happened to be more of who I am. Doesn't make me say I hate black men, black men ain't shit, no. I've dated a white man before, didn't like it, didn't recommend it, couldn't connect with me. Could not connect with me on a level that I needed him to. And to me, it was uncomfortable. But that same token, my brother's married to a white woman and I have no problems with it because she, as well as her family, make the attempt to connect with my brother to understand what goes on in the lives of African-Americans. What they may not fully understand, they may not be capable of getting to the level of understanding we have. They empathize and they become allies, not just in a substandard. In my experience, oh boy, this was like, well, man, it doesn't make sense. I don't see color, oh, gotta go because colors exist, they do. But I would not be able to support anyone that just says, I am completely done with black men and going to black men because they're better, they treat me better because you've dealt with the wrong black men if that's how you look at it. You wanna sit here and say that all black men ain't shit, they're all no good, you're a fool. That's a childish view. You have not taken the time to do the work, to realize, again, doesn't make any sense because then how are these films out here that are thriving in African-American communities? How are there ones out here that are making positive change and positive differences, aren't having discourse? They're a regular family, they're not perfect because we all have issues and we all have situations for humans, but again, if you're out here saying that, oh, because of these two bad apples, I'm going all the way over to here, I'll never go back to this race, I'm gonna call you stupid and tell you that you need to do some work on yourself because you can't love yourself or your people if you're convinced that all of them are bad off of situation after the couple of people because again, you ain't gonna tell me you ain't had no bad situations with these white people over here. You're not gonna tell me that's never happened and all your problems are not gonna be solved by going from one race to the other. So you have a bit of a unique perspective since you have experience with black men, you have experience with black women. What have you noticed is a consistent problem or a thing that black men are doing wrong? Black men want you to be ready when they are. Black men feel, I feel like black men feel that they have to be at a certain point. Those ones that don't really know for sure and haven't really, again, taken the time to do the work, they feel they have to reach a certain level of success, have a certain amount of money in their bank account, have a certain status before they're ready to be. Committed and that's problematic for women who aren't willing to wait. I'm one that's not willing to wait. If I'm telling you it's fine, it's okay to be where you are, we can grow together. But again, you have in your mind, you have to be in this place. And whether it's truth or it's a cop out, it doesn't work for me. It never worked for me. And even when I was in my time where I didn't want anything serious with a man, I just wanted to date, chill, have fun, have those little moments and then go about your business. If I'm telling you that upfront, and you're not believing it, because where men believe they can have those situations where they just kicking it, cooling, chilling, nothing serious, they don't think women are capable of doing that. Why not? And you gotta ask, you're a man. I can't get in there, but I've experienced that multiple times where I've dated men, I was at a point where I was just wanting to chill, kick it, and instead of pretending, I'm telling you upfront. I'm not ready for anything serious. If you're cool with just kicking it, talking here and there, we can do this. If not, please understand, find someone else. They take you with like, whatever. They're like, oh, let's take it. Okay, cool, we can do this, but then they start catching feelings because I'm not just the woman that's gonna come to you, even if I just wanna kick it. We're kicking it. I cook, I keep myself up, my place is clean. I don't ask you for shit, because again, I had the whole independent thing in my head. I'm not asking you for nothing, but you start feeling, you start entertaining things in your mind. All of a sudden, you're changing up how it's going. You wanna be more territorial. You wanna start telling me when I can and can't do stuff and you're uncomfortable with this and that, hold up. What bill did you pay this month? What piece of grocery did you put in my house? What gas did you put in my car? Like, you don't have these rights and we established up front that that wasn't this type of party. But again, when you feel like you're ready for that, then all of a sudden, the woman just needs to be ready for it, because you don't want, you see, oh, this is a pretty good, this is a good woman, I can let you own it is. No. So either they're not ready or they want you to work on their terms. And again, for women these days and age, they can do it for themselves, that we have these empowerment and we know who we are, you don't get that, you can't. And if you want it to be that way, you need to speak up on it. And again, it'll never be a direct conversation. It's always subtle tease and you're trying to shift what it is. No, you don't get that privilege because again, it was set up front. What's interesting about that is I hear that a lot from dudes, right? The whole, she wants me to be ready on her time, right? I told her we were kicking it, this and that. So in this dynamic, you're kind of the dude. I told you, I told you I'm a woman, but I'm not a lady, I'm just, that's when that's where they start. I've always heard that I'm too hard, I'm too tough, I'm too independent. But I told you, because again, I don't like to have anyone thinking that they're about to be in something that's not what it is. Because I've been hurt before, I've been lied to before and I respect people enough to know I don't want to put them in that position. But I mean, that's pretty much what it is. It's like, man, you a whole nigga out here. Did you find yourself gravitating towards more feminine men? You know. So these were masculine men who started catching feelings and butterflies and stuff. That's interesting. It's the power, no, I'm just kidding. Again, I guess, because I kind of have a conversation with my mom, like I don't understand why they don't get it. But sometimes it's because even in me saying that we're not gonna do this in here, I'm gonna respect you enough to treat you like a human. If I'm cooking dinner. You think most men are used to that? No, because if a man is dealing with a woman that's claiming it's just, you know, a slide and go, they fucking leave it. That's what it is, you understand that? Or these are ones that don't really have their own to be able to put themselves in a position where they only need a man to kind of scratch that itch or to be that companionship. They need more. But those women who truly mean it and are in positions where they only need, quote unquote, need certain parts of pieces from a man. And when that man gives those, that's it, you're done. Men can't fathom that, well, some men can't fathom that. It doesn't make sense because they're used to dealing with women or girls who, they can say one thing but their behavior shows another. They're taken from. Do you think that's part of, that's a consequence of white supremacy in some type of way? And what I mean by that is, you know, men feel love through respect. Men feel valued through utility. And for all intents and purposes, as a consequence of, you know, us becoming more modern as a society, as a consequence of white supremacy, the black man in particular is made to feel unnecessary to the black woman, especially outside of what we can do in the bedroom. So do you think there's a bigger conversation there as to why it bothers men so much? Never had it put like that, but when you put it like that, yes, I think it can correlate. I think there's definitely a correlation between and kind of going back to what you were saying earlier about how there's like this deep seated resentment for not being able to be the protector and history has shown where the way to make sure that we are down is to take our men, then if you're continuously beating them down and showing that they cannot uphold us, they cannot be that strength for us. And hell yeah, hell yeah, absolutely. And now with like sexual liberation and all that stuff, we're telling men that all you're good for is dick. I think what we don't realize on some deep level, like I have this conversation with younger boys and on some deep level, they feel like that's the best thing they have to offer. Before that, they felt like the best thing they had to offer was the athleticism there, you know what I'm saying, their thugness and their pseudo masculinity. But now it's just all I am is dick. I mean, what do we go from there? I think, I mean, it has to start with us because for a portion of my life, and for a good meantime, I felt that a good part of what to give you of myself, giving of myself was the cookie, like throwing that. Like it's what I got, it's how I express. It's the best you're gonna get out of me because everything else, you know, I don't, I don't want to deal with the emotions. I don't want to deal with the entanglement of it all. I don't, I guess in my mind is just, I don't try and trust anybody enough to give them the whole mean who I really am. Yeah, I don't trust you enough with who I am as a person. But this physical, I know it's good. And I know that I can give you that and I can speak a different language with it. That I can't, sometimes I can't verbalize feelings and emotions or any type of true human interaction, but through it. So that's how you could get part of me. But beyond that, so I guess I mean, it has to come from you seeing yourself as more than that. You understanding what you truly have to give. And I know I said a lot, but it came from me having to do the work, having to figure out what trauma was inside that I had not dealt with. And it's, you know, every day is a different battle, but understanding what your triggers are and being willing to combat those truly. And if people don't, people don't want to live in their truths. I think that's a lot of what happens with us. We don't want to live in the truth because sometimes the truth is ugly. And it takes realizing that you're the problem sometimes. Everything about you is perfect. And out of all the bad that's happened to you, you have to take ownership for what parts of that bad is your fault, your doing, your actions that created this bad. And it's hard, it's hurtful, it's humbling sometimes. But until people are willing to do that, you're gonna be stuck in these places that you are. Absolutely. I think, you know, like the woke hotel people, they'd be like, black woman is God, queen, mother earth, this and that. I actually believe that, right? And I think that's why I'm so critical of women because women get to decide who gets cloned and who doesn't essentially, right? And right now, especially in 2022, the caliber of men that women are choosing to clone aren't the men that you're describing who've done the work. So make that make sense. Why are you saying, do the work be this, you know, this, this and that? And then on the other hand, those aren't the men who are being chosen. Oh, because them girls aren't done the work either. The women haven't done the work. There is a lot of women that are out here that I know of who still rest on their body being what will keep someone. Their body is what's going to make a man stay. Oh, and then if you are one to have the clone, then you've got the upper hand. You have the first one, you have the upper hand. It's power in it for some women. Personally, I don't even, I don't want to have children because the world is a terrible place. And I would be locked up the minute someone does something to anyone that belongs to me that came from me. But women use children almost like pawns or ways to cling on to something that they shouldn't be clinging on to. So I would say women make, a lot of them make terrible choices and baby daddies. Terrible choices. But it's because they're trying to hold on to something or someone that keeps them in a space where even though it may be a terrible space to be in, it's comfortable, it's familiar. It's easier than having to deal with the fact that I've got a lot of shit wrong with me. There's a lot of stuff internally I need to work out to become better. Becoming a better person is the hardest shit I've ever done in my life. And if you're not able, capable, or have the means to do so, you sit in that comfortable space at your end and you stick it out. You tough it out because it's all you know. And then there's not exposure all the time, too better. A lot of stuff that I've learned in my life, I didn't learn to 25 plus, going out on my own. Because not for anyone trying to hide it from me, but because of my situations and where I was, it just wasn't what I saw. It wasn't what I knew. Hell, when I went to college, not even my PWM, I went to an HBCU, a transfer there. It was the first time I saw African American people in an elite stature where I felt like, shit, we have power. We are capable, we are creative. And I know that sounds bad to say it like, I didn't even know about fraternities and sororities until I went to an HBCU for real, for real. PWI kind of got a glimpse of it, but my HBCU is where I found out the core values of them, where they come from. That's not seen every day. On the South side of Spartanburg, that's not what you see. It's not what you grow up with. And I didn't have access to it. Unless there's people coming into these communities where they can make an impact change, teach better, make people understand that there's other options out there, you don't really know beyond what you see on TV. And TV, I mean, it's just in the box. We don't, it's all fallacy. Even if it's real life, it's all fallacy. If you don't grow up and if you're not used to it, it's not everyday occurrence.