On being a former "Pick-Me"

The woman I am becoming and the girl I was may look similar, but we couldn't be more different. I have come a long, long way.

From poems dedicated to and uplifting black men, to becoming so male-centered I was comfortable shaming women, I can honestly say: I was a terrible person.

There is nothing rewarding or even healthy about being a "Pick-Me" woman. It isn't a safe space. There is no reward. There is no comfort. There is no true joy. It is all a facade; a never-ending game between your innermost need, and actively working against that to yield the superficial desires of humans who rarely know what they want or how to be honest about it. It isn't even a battle to fight because when you are a "Pick-Me," you have already lost.

Being a male-centered woman who goes out of her way to create a space where men can be homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, and otherwise has never resulted in that woman being held in higher regard or being treated with more respect. I guarantee that you can not identify one woman who has won by putting the needs of men before that of what keeps women safe.

It started pretty early in my household.

Despite being a victim of sexual abuse at as young an age as 3 years old, my earliest memories of having family over is me and my sister being told to put on more clothes because a male cousin/uncle/family friend was coming by. I never understood why my parents would not think twice about having these seemingly unsafe men around, but were always proactive about making sure we were clothed enough so as not to arouse the men coming over (which was especially ironic because I was raped/molested by these men ANY way...).

That reinforced for me that, above all, what happens to me sexually is my fault for being in proximity to men and even more that the value of my presence was solely based on my sexual availability (or how easy I was to rape) for the men that my parents loved more than they cared for my and my sister's safety.

But learning to be male-centered or a "Pick-Me" doesn't only deal with being sexualized as a child, nor is it the only deciding factor in becoming a "Pick-Me." There were plenty of behaviors I observed, learned, and adopted that had me thinking of myself second or third, after the needs of men.

My father preferred men and boys and always found a reason to hate the girls and women in our family.

The running joke about my existence was that my parents thought I was a boy in my mother's womb until I had flipped forward during my mother's 7th-month pregnancy check up. My father has long held onto saying, "I would have rather had a hole in my head than find out your mother was pregnant with you!" And he'd laugh a hearty laugh about how tough times were during '88 and how they were not in the right financial position, and then "here come Joslyn" as though my birth was intentionally to inconvenience him. What's worse, they never stopped treating me like my birth was a punishment of some sort; and being a girl was the ultimate punishment. He even said he didn't want to risk having more girls, so he convinced [basically forced] my mother to have her tubes tied (so he could still have sex with her freely without risking having another child, let alone another girl). My mother probably wanted more kids, but in a home where the father is more centered than the mother and two girls, he could get away with stuff like that.

My sister was the first-born grandchild from either side of the family. She was the first grandchild to both sets of grandparents and great-grand parents. However, we had a boy cousin who was born just a year or so behind my sister who got to experience the best parts of our father.

When he would come to town, my dad would yell at us about making sure the house was clean. He would fuss at my mother about the food she had in the house and would make us go to the store to make sure we had the best snacks for football or video games. He didn't want to feel embarrassed to our male cousins, especially my sister's younger cousin (who was a few years older than I was). But I didn't understand. I thought that was how they had always done things.

My boy cousin, his dad, and my dad would bond over video games, something I had always wanted him to teach me how to play, but my mother, my sister, and I would clear the room so they could bond.

By the time my sister got older, about 17, she and this cousin attended high school together. My sister was a Junior and he, a sophomore. But nothing had changed. If we all were watching movies and an intimate scene popped on the screen, or if the conversation got too raunchy, my dad would reach over and cover not only my (12y/o) eyes, but also my sister's eyes. (And our dad had some obnoxiously big ass, ashy ass hands. So not only was it rude, but them hard ass, ashy ass, popcorn dust covered ass hands HURT!) While our boy cousin watched freely and giggled at inappropriate jokes with his and our dad.

The men were comfortable, even if we were not.

By the time I was of age to actually process having guests, I was just glad my dad was in a good mood and wasn't fussing or yelling or snatching us by the collar of our shirts and twisting them up until the neckline was loose and warped.

I was just grateful for peace. But that sliver of peace came at a price.

Occurrences like that didn't really change, they only got worse. In fact, it was almost like my mother's choice to placate my father made him feel his behaviors were appropriate and that it was okay to get mad at my mom for buying the wrong brand of food or for coming home from work (while he's at home playing video games) and making a meal that doesn't fill our very large father's stomach enough. It became normal to be annoyed that mom just can't get it together to make her man happy.

"Doesn't she want peace in the house? Why is she always fucking things up in this house? Now this man is on a rampage because she doesn't know what kind of cereal to buy." I never considered that he could have gone to get his own cereal. I never even thought about him being sufficient on his own.

The entire foundation of their relationship was her reaching down to pull him up alongside her.

When my sister and I were younger, our mother told us that her mother taught her, "Just keep him fed and keep him happy." In fact, my sister and I would find letters she had written to herself with variations of this lesson scrawled in rushed handwriting, "why can't you just do right? Why are you always fucking up?" One time, the handwriting was blurred by what I can only assume were her tears. She was never happy, but she was reared to believe in his needs more than, and before, her own.

It started early for her, too.

By 11th grade, my mother was involved in numerous on-campus activities. She led multiple organizations. She was a cheerleader. She was an aspiring model and had been attending modeling classes for years with who would go on to become Theeeee Cindy Crawford.

But then she met my Crip ass daddy: a bi-racial gang member with an obsession for his friends, video games, and with a meannnnn a sad-boy complex.

My dad was the first of four children born to his mother, who was 17 years old and recently orphaned as her mother died when she became pregnant with my dad. But she was quickly married and has been with my grandpa since she was 17 years old.

My mother was also the eldest four born to her mother. However, her mother was a single mother.

My mother worked after school to provide food and clothing to her younger siblings. My mother's mother was working at a hospital and splitting the child rearing between my great grandmother, my great aunt, and my young mom. Clearly, the duties of raising the children fell on the shoulders of the women (because there were men, they just weren't required to be present for the kids, too. They just had to provide some money. Nevermind anything else, I guess).

My father was the eldest but didn't start working until my mother helped him get a job. My mother made his resume (this is a crucial part of their love story). My mother helped him pick out his clothes. My mother prepared him for his interview. She stepped up in a way that his own mother could not [or maybe would not? But likely could not]. And we all know what happened next.

She became pregnant. And then she wasn't. And then she became pregnant again, this time, with my sister.

My aunt overheard my grandma ask my mother, "If you were going to get pregnant again, you should have just kept the first one!"

This rift would tear apart the fabric of my family; a tear that has never been repaired almost forty years later.

But I guess in realizing that my mother wasn't leaving my dad, my grandmother taught her how to cope with having a husband like my father. They were lessons in protection. My grandmother taught my mother the importance of staying silent with a man like my father. She taught her to meet his every single need. Grandma taught my mother how to neglect and deny herself in order to keep the father of her children home. So that is exactly what my mother did: she fought, with every single fiber in her being, to make sure he never left.

That taught me how to neglect myself for my father's needs, too.

When you see your mother shrink down enough times, and you begin to understand her close relationship with gravity.

Both of my parents would deny that my father was violent to my mother. But my aunt, and my uncles, and grandmothers have all attested to either seeing my father put hands on my mother, or cussing him out after seeing my mother bruised. All of which happened between the years when my sister and I were born.

I used to be curious about why he was so comfortable closing his fist to punch on me or using his hands to strangle my sister, but was so "vehemently against" hitting my mother. It never made sense, but I also never saw it for myself. I was so convinced that his violence was only targeted toward my sister and me and that his hatred for women was only directed at my sister and me, and my girl cousins, and my aunts, and my grandmothers. But never, ever, my mother. He made us believe that her docile nature is what made her different than everyone else and why she would never be harmed or talked bad about.

In my middle school years, they both had convinced me that the purple and blueish green and black (obvious) thumb bruises on her arms and legs were from sun exposure. They did such a good job of convincing me that they were "sun bruises" that I would try to shelter my mother from going outside, never realizing how many times I was likely derailing her escape.

This caused very deep trauma in the ways I interacted with men. Especially since so much of my foundation in interacting with them is to never, ever be like my mother. I was going to learn to stand up for myself, even if it killed me. I would never go silently. I would never be told to shut up or that I didn't know what I was talking about.

And I knew it had to start with dealing with my relationship with my dad.

My father shoved me down to the hardwood floor during basketball practice in front of the first boy I liked enough to ever dream about. I was mortified. It wasn't the first embarrassing moment on this all-boys basketball team (it also wasn't the first all-boys basketball team he placed me on. I actually played with more boys than girls and hadn't played with girls on a team until I was almost in high school). But it was so much more heinous to me on this day because he had been picking on me all week since I had recently started my period, and it was like he wanted to prove to his best friend (the other head coach) and to the boys that I wasn't a punk or soft and I could take a shove. It also felt like he was publicly punishing me for starting my period. This is the same man that said to me when I was 10 years old, "You're the closest thing I will ever get to a son."

We were practicing lay-up drills and the boys were getting decent and modest shoves with this big blue football pad he had purchased. When it was my turn to go up for the lay-up, he had shoved me so hard, I slammed to the ground and slid toward the sideline. Most of the boys laughed but when I locked eyes with the boy that I liked, and he wasn't laughing. He looked like he felt sorry for me. And this enraged me because, even more than being assaulted, I hated people feeling sorry for me! I stood up and stormed the fuck out.

I cried on the side of the basketball gym. It wasn't my first cry of embarrassment from my dad involving basketball, and it surely wouldn't have been the last. But something woke up in me that day. I noticed after practice that day that he brought up me storming out and rather than apologizing for embarrassing him like I would have usually done, I didn't say a word. I didn't give him anything to go off of, and he fucking hated that.

When we got home, he yelled and I ignored him. He ranted, and I stayed silent. The whole time, thinking I am winning, when all I had gained was a new traumatic coping response learned from my dear mother: be silent in the face of injustice.

It wasn't the skill I wanted, but it was the skill I needed.

Because in those quiet, brooding moments, I learned how to think ahead, and ways to placate him in order to get my way.

When he tried to embarrass me during the summer in front of some of those same teammates, I flipped it on him later that night. He told my teammates that the reason I was going to the bathroom was to, "change [my] pad or something." So, that night, I asked (very loudly) in front of his friends if I could leave to go get more pads because I was "bleeding through everything in the house." He was mortified and quickly shooed me away while I went to CVS with my sister to buy candy and ice cream and Right On! magazines.

All of this happened right in front of my mother.

All the fights where my sister had to defend herself verbally (and physically) from our father, they happened with our mother within five feet. All of the times he close-fist punched me happened within arms reach of my mother. All of the times he called us "bitches," and "hoes," and "stupid" all happened with our mother in the room. Because if it was one thing my mother was gonna do, it was stand by her man...

I had never known safety from men.

I only ever learned physical abuse, sexual assault, gaslighting, and terrorism. I was shamed for being raped at a young age, and shamed for being raped in college. I was belittled for not being as good as the boys, but when I was better, he didn't pay me any attention.

So I strived to be the best. Everything I did, I was the best at it. There was no one, especially not a fucking boy, who was better at anything I did.

I was the best basketball player in my neighborhood.

I was the best rapper out of every school I attended and every friend group I ever had, and that included the boys.

I had the best tennis shoes.

I didn't (nor was I allowed to) wear jewelry, but I wore male-centered clothing and listened to male-centered music. Whatever my dad liked, I liked. If he was listening to Scarface, so was I. If he said a woman rapper was too feminine, I wouldn't listen to her because only male-centered women got respect in our house (and there weren't a lot of them because the second their brand became feminine or sexualized, I wasn't allowed to listen to them anymore).

I didn't wear feminine clothing on too many sequential days. If I wore a skirt on the first of March, I wasn't wearing another one until mid April. Because wearing a skirt or sandals was a sign I was being a "hoe," (which was also interesting because I was sucking dick in Jordans and DaDa sweatsuits. They literally didn't care how feminine I was, which only reinforces the abuse I experienced as a child and as an adult. It doesn't matter what you wearrrrrrr.)

And when I got ready to date, I didn't ask for permission.

I grew up to give my boyfriends anything they wanted, and I also had a slick ass mouth. I was coy but naive. I didn't understand that what boys said could be a lie, because it hadn't registered to me that everything I learned growing up was a fucking lie.

I was under the impression that giving boys any and everything they wanted is how you kept a happy relationship. I didn't even consider myself at the fuck all.

I just knew my mother was married with two kids and I wanted to be married with two kids so find a man and make it happen, right?

No understanding of power and control.

No understanding of Misogyny.

No understanding of how jealousy plays a role.

No understanding of the warning signs of domestic violence.

Just young and ignorant to the many tools needed to have a healthy relationship, the most important being: HEALTHY PEOPLE ARE REQUIRED TO HAVE A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP.

I was moving in with boyfriends. I was helping boyfriends raise their kids. I was helping men get to work and find jobs. I was helping men buy clothes. I was helping men figure out their car trouble.

I was raised to believe that men were helpless little victims of mean mommies and meaner ladies who just needed a nice lady like me to do everything the fuck for them so they could feel safe in this big bad world (please read this as condescendly as possible... I am absolutely being sarcastic and mean).

It was total bullshit. And a harmful way to live for a young woman. I would get in online arguments with other women about how they weren't doing enough for their man. I would validate the hardships of men and blame women for their own misfortunes. I would victim blame rape survivors and make excuses for men because, like my mother taught me, "You can't expect to give popsicles away and not expect all the men to come and take one." Real disgustingly harmful shit that did nothing but create more violence for the women around me, and more violence for my gahdamn self.

When I was in my second year of college, I dated a guy who lied about having a girlfriend back at home. When she found out about us, she reached out to me directly and I told her I didn't want to fight over him and she could have him. She flew to town to confront him and me and he completely discarded me. The roommates I had made dinners for pretended they didn't know me and that I was a joke. They laughed at how he pretended I was just an obsessed fat girl who wouldn't leave him alone and how he'd neverrrr be interested in someone like me. I hadn't even processed that after forcing me to let him eat my pussy the week before, he'd raped me in his bedroom and told me, "You should have just let me have it. I don't know why you did all that fighting?" and I heard my father's voice telling my mother "I don't know why you make things more difficult for yourself like this..." I shamed myself the same way I shamed other women. I didn't even give anyone else a chance to shame me, I was already placing the blame of being raped by a 300lb football player on myself.

A few days after this incident, my parents would have to fly me home because this man threatened to slit my throat and kill me in front of his at-home girlfriend. He left voicemails saying he would wait for me at my dorm and kill me and my roommates or he would find me at home in LA and kill me and my entire family. I knew he couldn't do it, but it still was really scary and derailed my education and my friendships on campus.

I was ostracized by the small black community on campus. Only a handful of people wanted to hang out with me after that. Because, to them, I was "doing too much" by reporting his death threats and rape to the police. Shit, even the police thought it was me "doing too much." One officer told me that maybe I was just a "jilted girlfriend" in a "love triangle gone wrong." He laughed and asked, "Are you sure you're not just adding more to it to get this young man in trouble?"

I got calls from guys who were supposed to be my brothers in fraternity asking me to stop telling the police what happened and stop making it so hard for him to go to school (PLEASE KEEP IN MIND, this nigga didn't even successfully PLAY ON THE FOOTBALL TEAM, he was like a 3rd string piece of shit who never got playing time and never made grades.) I didn't understand how valued men were in comparison to the truth. I didn't understand how misogyny worked at ALL.

This "brother" didn't believe me until he heard the voicemails himself. And even when he did, he called back and laughed, "This nigga know better than to leave evidence like THAT." Yes. Evidence that, if I was murdered, would have been the only record of his premeditated violence against me.

I didn't understand how I went from that violent relationship, to another violent relationship that resulted in many physical altercations and more than half of my wardrobe being thrown away while I was at a scholarship retreat. I didn't understand that men could be jealous of you in relationships and will do whatever they think is within their control to minimize you, and then call their mothers for validation of their offenses.

At a certain point, I thought, "I may have something to do with the men I'm attracted to. I can't just be stumbling on violent men like this unless I am, also violent somewhere that I have to address."

So I started working on my rage. I focused on being quiet and jovial, just like my mother...

And while I never encountered another physically violent boyfriend, I did stumble upon another issue: I kept dating men who could never keep employment. But I was too focused on not being with physically violent men that I kept placating men in other ways.

Rides to work

Resume building.

Helping with housing.

I was a fucking charity to these men!

And we (the men and me) let it happen. They didn't care about standing up in their own lives, and why would they? I was giving them everything their mothers used to and more. The codependency was loud and it stole my voice.

What now?

After years of therapy and surrounding myself with empowered humans who are women-centered (and thus community centered), I have worked to become this wonderfully loud and empathetic woman with a smart ass mouth and a big ass heart. I still love deeply, but I identify when things are wrong and do the work to remove myself where I know I will not be safe. I call out rampant misogyny and I don't see discussions about gender and sexuality as an argument but an opportunity to teach (I can't say the same for the other person because they always think we're arguing, but that's just their own ignorance. Just like I was ignorant at a time).

I have learned that being male-centered is one of the most dangerous places you can live. It will drown you. It will inhibit the vision you have for yourself and the world you could create for others. When women are empowered, EVERYBODY EATS. That is just as matriarchy works. When women are in power, women ensure that everybody is taken well care of. But when women shrink for men, they hand over their power to folks who have rarely had to be held accountable for their behaviors or their language.

I think of the women rappers who made hits for male rappers in the 90s and how little they are cared for. How they still have to do small club appearances that "male legends" wouldn't even touch via email.

I think of how single mothers, just like my grandmother, are treated less than because they stayed.

I think of how women rape survivors are always questioned for the role they played in a man stealing their bodies.

I think of how women in power are often questioned about how they obtained their power and how much of their kewchies they had to give up to be where they are.

I think of the storylines in films and television that center violence around women as a necessary aspect of a woman's experience.

I think of young girls who are told that when boys hit them, it because the boy has a crush.

I think of the young men who are made fun of when they are virgins and still children (because the sexualization and rape of young boys is also connected to the ways women are viewed).

I think of the older men who lost their virginities at 12 and thought it a badge of honor, when it was actually an incredible violation of their innocence and personal space (no wonder men on dating apps just want you to come over to their houses, nigga, don't you know you can get robbed like that? and of COURSE they don't know because men are not taught to be afraid of sexual interactions like women areeeeeeeeee!)

When I think of how harmful allowing spaces to be outwardly misogynistic and dismissive of the efforts of women, I think of the many men and boys I was forced to interact with. I think of how easy it was for my parents to make space for them and invite them into our home. I think of how many of my friends I related to at 12 years old who had also been raped, like me. By family, like me. Whose rapists were invited into their homes by their mothers. Whose fathers were either absent or contributed to the shame of their daughters.

I don't understand how some people can say, "it isn't that deep."

All that tells me is that they have not listened to a woman before.