This one is very serious, guys:
I came upon these two on the sidewalk. They were having a conversation. “Excuse me,” I said, addressing the girl: “I’m sorry to interrupt, but is there anyway I can take your photo?”
“Why would you want my photo?” she asked.
“Because you look beautiful,” I said. And she did. She was Sudanese. There is a very distinct beauty among people from the Sudan, and she was filled up with it. Suddenly the man cut in:
“I was just telling her she was beautiful,” he said.Naively, I assumed I had just walked up on one stranger giving a compliment to another. I wanted to capture the moment. “Let me take your photograph together,” I said. The man seemed reluctant, he started smiling nervously and inching away. But the girl called him back.
“Come take a picture with me,” she said. Encouraged by her attention, he returned. She put her arm around him, and I took the photo.
As I examined the photos on my camera, the man started whispering to the girl. She answered him in a loud voice: “I told you! I’m not that kind of girl.” She seemed agitated now. Finally sensing that I had misread the situation, I stepped between them. The man began hurrying down the sidewalk.
When the man left, the girl’s demeanor changed completely. She seemed shaken. Her eyes were tearing up. “He just offered me five hundred dollars to go out with him,” she said. “And then when I said ‘no,’ he offered me one thousand. Why does this always happen to me?”
“It happens a lot?” I asked.
“All the time,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m getting emotional. I just can’t go out of my house without this kind of thing happening. I have a son. I’m a mother. I would never degrade myself like that. I just don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
“Do you mind if I tell this story?” I asked.
“Please,” she said. “Tell it.”Let’s hope this man, and all men, realize the emotional damage they are inflicting on the women they try to buy. In the meantime, feel free to SHARE.*
*With this man being an Orthodox Jew, I hope that all long-time followers of HONY would by now have realized the high respect I hold for the Orthodox Jewish community as a whole.
After reading some of the discussion about this photo on the HONY fb page I cannot express how absolutely disgusted and frustrated I am by the public reaction. The public outcry was so much that Brandon (the man behind HONY) took the photo down and followed it up with some positive photos of Jewish men and their opinions of the post. One photo caption chanted on about virtue and suppositions, blah, blah, blahbitty fucking blah.
To put it shortly, an overwhelming majority of the reactions are in defense of this man and harshly criticized Brandon for posting this story. Many people both inside and outside of the Jewish community have rallied behind this man, claiming that we don’t know the whole story, that this woman could be lying, that it was wrong of Brandon to expose this man.
To that I have this to say: SHUT THE FUCK UP! So one of yours got caught out there on some slimey shit? Get over it! Everyone’s so busy being worried about this man’s privacy and how this photo will affect him and his family, but very few people stopped to consider the feelings of this woman. Very few stopped to support her and think about the trials she faces, the trauma she must suffer.
When it comes to Black women’s suffering, people seldom give a fuck. Where are all the follow up pictures of Black women sharing their mantras? hmmmm?
HONY had the opportunity to take a stance, to allow this woman the platform to tell her story, and although that is what I believe he set out to do initially, by deleting the post on FB (thank God for Tumblr) Brandon effectively worked to silence her voice… yet again. Something Black woman have had to suffer with for far too long: people constantly attempting to silence our voices and our stories. I will reblog this every time I see it!