I’m gonna go ahead and ask….what’s the worst thing about being the rare flower in the garden?

Oh, are you afraid that no one is going to see your inner beauty and humanity? That men are incapable of seeing beyond fantasy and you’re nothing more than flesh?

Child, please. The world is full of many kinds of men. And yes, there are some men you need to stay away from. Men who seek weak women to abuse so they can feel powerful. Men who can only seek out women to represent a narrow and limiting fantasy, where if you don’t fulfill it they can’t “love” you.

But black women will often run away and hide in the corner somewhere because a little bird told them that “exotic” means a non-black man only wants to screw them. They run away before it ever occurs to them that it also means that they are instantly more interesting than pretty much any other woman in the room from the word, “Go.” And that this shiny spotlight and a big million dollar smile has more potential than simply being a piece of ass. You can also dare to think of yourself as a representative of black feminine beauty.

I admit that I ran away from animal print for the longest time because I was afraid that next to my skin and combined with my kinky hair it would stir up images in white people of me as some “exotic sexual being”, or that they’d think I just stepped of the Serengeti.

Finally I realized how freaking stupid I was being and now I am in danger of being a Jersey reality tv show reject – but that’s another story. And potentially an intervention, but I digress.

A link was shared with me to yet another article where a black woman’ declares she “will never be down for white guys”. A lot of these have been turning up lately. And when there is a pattern of behavior, I have to assume there is an origin. I plugged Twisted the other week, and the POC’s relationship took a turn for the…very sexy. We are starting to see more sexy black women in interracial relationships and sexual encounters popping up like popcorn. And not everyone is happy about it. So naturally, you get some black women feeling the pressure, feeling like they need to assure the community that they are still bleeding blackity blackness and that they are never going near those dastardly non-black men.

Tell me this: when IS the last time you saw a series of articles by black men, during the absolute tsunami of interracial dating that has emerged among black men, where these guys go out of their way to declare their love for black women, their need to only be with a black woman, how white women just want them for sex and they don’t appreciate them as human beings? You may grow old and bald trying to think of the last time you saw these articles. Because they simply don’t exist. If they do, I can promise, it’s not in an amount comparable to black women.

Truth be told, black women are fighting a very special war. Intersectionality is a word I like to use a lot, and it often applies to situations of privilege and power. Black male privilege means being proud of your sexuality and sexual conquests. Black female disenfranchisement means being subject to the madonna/whore complex in a way that is very ruthless and skewing of how black women see their sexuality, desirablilty, and femininity.

As a result, you have some black women who do not understand nor appreciate basic human biological functions. If they did….they wouldn’t try and racialize it.

Being physically attracted to another person is a natural and biological response. It is the most honest and pure reaction there is, and (wait for it) THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT!

Black women, do not be okey doked into thinking that every interaction you have with someone must have to do with race. You are a woman. The irony in assuming that a man is only interested in you because of your race is that YOU, and not HE is most likely the one doing the othering. When you look at non-black men and say, “They can’t desire me as a woman, they can only desire me as an exotic experience,” you are telling yourself that you are not like other women. That there’s something off about every non-black man that approaches you.

Ladies, this might come as a surprise to some of you, but men who are heterosexual ALWAYS want women for sex. It’s a thing that guys do. It’s called, “If I could get a running start and land in your vagina, I would.”

In spite of my little quip, I can promise that men are not purely sexual beings! If you properly vet out the sleezebags and the players, you’ll find that there are in fact men who are sexually attracted to you and yet also would like to know more about you as a person. What books you read. Where you went to college. Whether you learned a second language or can play a musical instrument.

Being subject to intraracial misogyny to the extreme of being directly competitive with black men means that black women associate black beauty with black men and black male masculinity. As a result, they don’t question other women in other groups being attracted to black men. They don’t question black men responding positively to this attraction. Though some black women who don’t know any better resent this because they feel they can only ever be with black men or should only be with black men for x,y,z. While black men being sexually desirable is normal in their eyes, they also don’t know how to cope with the fact that it means they have to compete with so many non-black women for black men. Or that they are expected to pursue these men rather than the other way around.

In the black community, because for so long black people have taken cues about beauty from the larger white society, this means that lighter and brighter women were what represented feminity and beauty. This meant that a black woman who was dark could not be openly desired. Instead, something was perceived as wrong with a man who found dark skin beautiful.

Desperate to put one’s finger on it, it became exoticism, it became a fetish. There was just something wrong with ANY man who wanted a dark-skinned woman who wasn’t black. Black men were not questioned for wanting to put light-skinned women on a pedestal. Black men were also not questioned and remain not questioned for dating interracially at a much higher rate than other groups of men. Wanting anyone but a black woman, especially a dark woman wasn’t wrong.

But….when a black woman is out in the world among non-black men, and they want her sexually, this type of conditioning raises her panic levels. “Something is wrong with a man who is attracted to me sexually. A man attracted to me who is not black must ONLY want me sexually.”

These are very powerful suggestions, crippling really. And for so long, some black women have built a solid foundation on this corrupt logic. And when you start to notice more and more other black women walking away from what you’ve adopted as a personal truth, it’s scary.

Has the world gone mad? Don’t these black women know that they are setting themselves up to be used? Clearly not. Which is why we’re seeing more and more of these public service announcements by these young women declaring themselves OFF LIMITS to non-black, but especially white men. They are disclaiming any positive feelings they ever had about being attracted to white men. They are making sure that black men know absolutely that their wombs are exclusive.

And that’s all it really boils down to: The need, conscious or subconscious, for black women to get on a soapbox and sing a love song for black men. Just in case these men somehow don’t know they still see them as the center of the masculine universe. Just in case they’re concerned that the indoctrination didn’t work right and these women are thinking about just being a woman. If there was ever a sliver of doubt that there wouldn’t be black women waiting in the corner faithfully, these women keep cranking these articles out. And it’s just sad.

It’s not sad to me that there are black women who prefer black men before somebody gets confused. It is actually sad to me that these women fail to realize that black men do not give one, two, three, or a room full of damns about their bleating constantly about racial loyalty. Because they have no intention of reciprocating, no matter HOW many love songs black women sing. They certainly aren’t going to explain to these confused and hurt young women that any man, regardless of his skin and race, can be attracted to a woman as just a woman and that the woman is free to appreciate the attention. Because black male privilege means viewing black women as property, and treating them as such…even as the women assume they’re “just looking out”. These poor souls honestly think it’s okay to enable one form of male privilege over the other because at least the person acting it out is “black like me”. So sad because so many black women will ignore abuse and use if the color is right.

So we come back to black women being afraid to be seen as sexy or desirable by non-black men and feeling that there’s something wrong with it. This fear is real and it is the result of a lot of concentrated attempts to undermine how black women see themselves as women and how they respond to male attention.

The old, “Nobody wants you” meme yet again.

Do not be afraid to be the beautiful black feminine rare flower with the million dollar smile that every man in the room wants because, “my God it’s the only black woman in the room and I want her for myself”! Yes, there are men who will look at your dark skin and see it as unique and beautiful and find you attractive. But don’t automatically think this is the beginning and end of it. It could be the start of his journey to the center of the amazing woman that is you.

If a man reveals himself to be seeking a fantasy where you are a pathetic doormat that he gets to stand on to feel like a man or if he admittedly only wants to sleep with a black woman to know what it’s like, you and your dignity can tell him to hit the bricks. However, by no means should a sensible woman use this as an excuse to further shut themselves off from the world of non-black men, because “all anyone sees is a sick twisted fantasy”.

You can, but you would do well to remember this: While you’re congratulating yourself for being rescued from ever assuming a non-black man could love you as a human being, black men have STAYED congratulating themselves for being everything you’re terrified of.

Ask yourself, if you fancy yourself the thinking kind, how is it that black men have no issues with being desired sexually by women the world over, even some being so extreme as to prop up the “Mandingo Myth”, but black women hear this same thing and are filled with fear, anguish, and self-loathing, as well as loathing of men who aren’t black?

Double standards are a hell of a drug.