your support for r.kelly means women can’t trust you

I am no longer shocked and surprised by the sight of black men flocking to defend another cisman with decades worth of sexual abuse allegations. In fact, I’ve damn near come to accept it. When it comes to violence against women, most men just aren’t on our sides.

With the latest wave of allegations of misconduct/abuse/manipulation of young women, there’s been that oh so familiar reaction from black people, but specifically black men, blaming everyone under the sun except for the only person with a history of abuse. And I’m not sure if these men understand what their commentary communicates to the women around them.

When black men defend abusers it signals to the black women around them that they are not only unfazed by allegations of abuse, they’re cool with denying the statistical evidence that supports the high probability and culture of violence against women.  

In the practical sense, your words and jokes and misplaced victim blaming in the R.Kelly situation (and others) signal to the women around you that if they were in these girl’s position, you wouldn’t be a safe person to come to. Or that you could even be capable of sexual abuse, too—since you clearly don’t recognize it when you see it.

I’m not going to run down all of R.Kelly’s, uh, controversies with sexual abuse of young and underage girls because we don’t need to continuously prove them and try to convince you. Fine. You believe Bill Cosby and R.Kelly. Not based on facts or statistics; you just think women are more likely to lie about abuse than there are cases of abuse. And that’s just sickening, really.