Byron Hurt: Are You Man Enough to Challenge Too Short?

Are You Man Enough to Challenge Too Short?

by Byron Hurt | special to NewBlackMan

Most of you know that, in addition to documentary filmmaking, I facilitate a lot of gender violence prevention and education workshops with young boys and men - across race, class, and educational levels. Over the years, I've been in the room with, literally, thousands of boys and men, creating and leading conversations about masculinity, the prevention of physical and sexual violence against girls and women, and homophobia. Most importantly, I encourage non-abusive men to work to change the male peer culture that makes physical and sexual violence against women socially acceptable. Take it from me, a long-time anti-sexist activist, educating boys and men about sexism and physical and sexual violence toward girls and women means that you are swimming upstream. The work requires prioritizing these issues as important to discuss, and constant, consistent reinforcement.

Just this past weekend, in a workshop with 8-9 year old boys in Brooklyn, NY, one young boy bragged about his girlfriend being "cute with a big butt." The other boys laughed. I stopped him in his tracks and challenged him about his comment right in front of the other boys and men in the room. The moment he made his comment, he probably did not think that a man would challenge him for making such a trite, objectifying statement. The question is, where did he learn that having a cute girlfriend with a big butt was something to brag about publicly, and that by doing so it would gain him social acceptance and approval from the other boys and men in the room? It starts with poor "fatherly" advice from men like Too Short, who felt that his recent comments in a video posted on XXL.com would go unchallenged - especially by men.

While the comments Too Short made may strike some boys and men as funny and conventional male thinking, they are not. But unfortunately, too many sexist men in positions of influence and power reinforce to young boys what acceptable masculinity looks like. Too many men are teaching boys - at home, at school, on the playground, through porn culture, sports culture, military culture, fraternity culture, police culture, and mainstream media outlets like XXL - that physical and sexual aggression toward girls and women is okay.

This has to stop. And it stops when men who care about girls and women speak up and voice our disapproval and take action when we hear misogyny out of the mouths of other men who do not represent us or our view on manhood. If you are a man who strongly disagrees with Too Short's comments and find them disturbing, then please sign this online petition and share it with your male friends.

Show your support for the girls and women in your life that you know and love, as well as to the girls and women across the country who are outraged by Too Short's comments. Show them that we do not all think and act like Too Short and other men who espouse such sexist viewpoints. And finally, question and challenge sexism and misogyny wherever you see it, because men need to hear more men who are confident enough to stand in support of girls in women's human rights.

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Byron Hurt is the New York-based producer and award-winning documentary filmmaker. Hurt is a former Northeastern University football star and long-time gender violence prevention educator. For more than five years, he was the associate director and founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention program, the leading college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for professional athletics. He is also the former associate director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps. His next film in Soul Food Junkies.

XXL Feature ‘Too Short’ on Common Sense, Long on Misogyny

A Harris Publication publication

XXL Feature ‘Too Short’ on Common Sense, Long on Misogyny

by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan

My daughters don’t know who Todd Shaw, aka Too Short is, yet he claims to know them, as he advised their males peers—provided instructions—as  to how to rape and sexually assault them.  

In a society that continues to assert its familiarity with the bodies of Black women and girls—the rhetorical groping of the Michelle Obama being only the most visible example—Too Short advising  boys to “take your finger and put a little spit on it and you stick your finger in her underwear and you rub it on there and watch what happens,”—what we all know as a “finger f*ck”—is, unfortunately, not all that surprising; seems more like the status quo for Black women and girls.

Those offended by the feature, a video that initially appeared at the XXL website, quickly responded.  As Jamilah Lemieux write at Ebony.com“This FORTY FIVE YEAR OLD MAN wants the young fellas to "get inside a girl's mind”…Coercion, perhaps even assault, is of no consequence here. Hence, no explanation of how to proceed if the target in question says "Stop! I don't want you to do that!." 

A group of scholar activists organized an on-line petition, demanding that Harris Publications, the publisher of XXL, remove the magazine’s editor-in-chief Vanessa Statten.  And Statten has to go; allowing such content to be posted, whether it crossed her desk or not, is unconscionable and bespeaks a larger crisis we face in journalistic integrity.  The feature also bespeaks, as well, our willingness to use Black girls as commercial fodder, deemed expendable, because they are perceived as lacking public voice.

XXL Magazine and Shaw, have since issued an apology, but as Akiba Solomon notes, it’s an apology that takes no ownership for statements that encourage and sanction criminal acts against girls. And this is not simply about political correctness; besides advocating rape and sexual violence against Black women and girls, diatribes like Shaw’s also further criminalizes Black boys, within institutions—our schools—in which Black boys are always, already criminalized.

Harris Publications, which also publishes King, Juicy and Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement (equipping law enforcement with the very tools to be used against Black boys), knows this dance well; it’s a blueprint for disengaging yourself from controversy, deployed brilliantly daily by shock jocks, elected officials and a host of professionals—some of them even Black—knowing that there will be little recourse to their brand. 

Fact is that few, who are regular subscribers of XXL or regular consumers of their content will feel compelled to reject the publication, no more than those offended by statements, by say Misters Whitlock or Martin (as examples of two recent controversies) will stop watching Fox Sports or CNN (or listen to Tom Joyner). 

We need some new strategies—this protest, petition, and wait for the apology, suspension, removal is getting old.  

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Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (New York University Press) and Professor of African & African-American Studies at Duke University. He is founder and managing editor of NewBlackMan and host of the weekly webcast Left of Black. Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan.