Sad But True, They Are Slaves by Kyle Phoenix

(The Italicized portions are part of an article, anonymously presented supposedly by a White man on the state of Black Americans.)

THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES

We can continue to reap profits from the Blacks without the effort of

physical slavery. Look at the current methods of containment that they

use on themselves: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS.

Their IGNORANCE is the primary weapon of containment. A great ! man once

said, "The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in

a book." We now live in the Information Age. They have gained the

opportunity to read any book on any subject through the efforts of their

fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are numerous books

readily available at Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com, not to

mention their own Black Bookstores that provide solid blueprints to

reach economic equality (which should have been their fight all along),

but few read consistently, if at all.

Sadly, while it is true that Dominant Culture people (read White/Caucasian) have continued to profit off of people of color because of the above reasoning, when I'm teaching, I often hit my students---generally 80 to 90% people of color with the statistic that for every 10 square block in America there is a public library.  Simply put, one, education, is available, now in abundance throughout America.  Two, that of the 3 Ways to Occupy Capitalism (a neutral but prevalent system)
We are disproportionately Consumer, historically have been Product but are only a micro of Producer. And lastly that my education, my advanced education, day by day is to go back and pull out, mentor out, educate out, as many from "slavery", in its newest iterations, as possible.

I estimate that if I continue with just what I'm doing now, with another 50 years, television show, You Tube, teaching, blog, writing---I can maybe touch 2 million people---of that 2 million potentially 1% to 10% will do what true education does----turn around and do what a teacher has done with and they'll liberate 1% to 10% of the totality of people they come into contact with. Imagine if 1000 more people of color did this?  A few hours a week just flooded You Tube with videos of mentoring, explaining how to dress, mentor others, educate, read a book, interview, go to school, get up when you're tired, turn off TV, stay non-addicted, stay non-destructive----imagine if 1000 of us REALLY used the internet? I mean REALLY used it?

GREED is another powerful weapon of containment. Blacks, since the

abolition of slavery, have had large amounts of money at their disposal.

Last year they spent 10 billion dollars during Christmas, out of their

450 billion dollars in total yearly income (2.22%).

Any of us can use them as our target market, for any business venture

we care to dream up, no matter how outlandish, they will buy into it.

Being primarily a consumer people, they function totally by greed. They

continually want more, with little thought for saving or investing.

They would rather buy some new sneaker than invest in starting a

business.

Some even neglect their children to have the latest Tommy or FUBU, And

they still think that having a Mercedes, and a big house gives them

"Status" or that they have achieved their Dream.

They are fools! The vast majority of their people are still in poverty

because their greed holds them back from collectively making better communities.

With the help of BET, and the rest of their black media that often

broadcasts destructive images into their own homes, we will continue to

see huge profits like those of Tommy and Nike. (Tommy Hilfiger has even

jeered them, saying he doesn't want their money, and look at how the

fools spend more with him than ever before!). They'll continue to show

off to each other while we build solid communities with the profits from

our businesses that we market to them.

Sadly, when I project forward, 100 years, 50 years, 25 years, even as America browns, I see brown Americans declining and separating. I am often talking to friends and colleagues about the Chasm----of the Haves and the Have Nots---the Going to Be OK and The Nots---there are some students/young people/older people on my Facebook Friend list right now who think being some of the above essay IS reality. And I am heartbroken and torn because I'm at the stage in my life where my abilities and skills must start to forge my own cave, my own family's future, and there's only so much I can do with two hands in my life. I struggle with the impetus and example of Harriet Tubman and the reality of my students, 22 years old who when you hand them a book---their first words are---"what's this?" They're as brown as the floor and for intents and purposes, dead. They'll see the latest iteration of Batman movies for the rest of their lives, they'll get on color coded mass transit to go back to impoverished neighborhoods to sit and watch tv that only shows people (even in fiction) who make or have $15 at the lowest end, while they go to work for $9 an hour. They'll call me and I won't be able to pick up the phone because I'll have to make the kinds of decisions lifeboat men have to make as the Titanic sinks---how many can I save before this small boat is dragged down?

I pass them by on trains and sometimes in their overpriced cars and they are so lost because they don't know that the storm is coming. That Obama as President doesn't matter a tinkers damn when you don't have a GED or a college education. That by 2014, the USA work market will demand a minimum of an Associates degree to participate as a "minimum wage worker". But they'll have IPhones and IPads and BMWs and Mercedes and drink liquors from beer to vodka, Coronoan to Hennessy---companies that don't offer GED scholarships, nor come into upper Manhattan or the Bronx---wherever in the country that may be---not with branding day but with books and food. Those companies, they'll rush, rightfully so, to Haiti, because the poorest people on Earth, brown ones, know the value of education. Which is why they walk miles a day to apply as 12 year old girls to the Oprah Leadership Academy in South Africa and I can't bribe GED students with lunch, free books and love, in their 20's to a glorious campus like Columbia to READ.

SELFISHNESS, ingrained in their minds through slavery, is one of the

major ways we can continue to contain them. One of their own, Dubois

said that there was an innate division in their culture. A "Talented

Tenth" he called it. He was correct in his deduction that there are

segments of their culture that has achieved some "form" of success.

However, that segment missed the fullness of his work. They didn't read

that the "Talented Tenth" was then responsible to aid The Non-Talented

Ninety Percent in achieving a better life.

We, as African Americans, have passed the legacy of slavery as a rape, as a loss, rather than assuring each other---we won! we beat slavery!  We are alive from a system that did everything to destroy and kill us. I think that's what the Talented 10th learn and hopefully pass on. The Talented 10th I think exist in all levels of a society---in fact I would broaden DuBois to the supposition that only about 10 to 20% of all humanity is keeping the planet moving, keeping technology growing, keeping justice balanced. When I watch the television show Through the Wormhole hosted by Morgan Freemen, I see people of color and all genders and sexualities wrestling with some mighty big concepts----and I think to myself---do the disenfranchised on the corner even know about particle colliders, about satellites, about real estate, about inventing the next Facebook---and with their fingers mind-numbingly clicking onto handheld screens,m thumbing through posts, punching in texts, who's not telling them?

Instead, that segment has created another class, a Buppie class that

looks down on their people or aids them in a condescending manner. They

will never achieve what we have. Their selfishness does not allow them

to be able to work together on any project or endeavor of substance.

When they do get together, their selfishness lets their egos get in the

way of their goal. Their so-called help organizations seem to only want

to promote their name without making any real change in their community.

They are content to sit in conferences and conventions in our hotels,

and talk about what they will do, while they award plaques to the best

speakers, not to the best doers. Is there no end to their selfishness?

They steadfastly refuse to see that TOGETHER EACH ACHIEVES MORE (TEAM)

They do not understand that they are no better than each other because

of what they own , as a matter of fact, most of those Buppies are but

one or two pay checks away from poverty. All of which is under the

control of our pens in our offices and our rooms.

Yes, we will continue to contain them as long as they refuse to read,

continue to buy anything they want, and keep thinking they are "helping"

their communities by paying dues to organizations which do little other

than hold lavish conventions in our hotels. By the way, don't worry

about any of them reading this letter, remember, 'THEY DON'T READ!!!!

(Prove them wrong NOW..Please pass this on! After Reading it..)

I walk sometimes through the streets of Manhattan, through three levels of neighborhoods everyday---Poor People, Middle Class People, Upper Class People and I see it's not simply race that drops one into those categories----it's the fundamental ability to know, to think, to process, to discern.  A people, any people, who can't think, whose thinking has been replaced by big budget films where they're never the hero or emasculated into being simply fuckable, breeding males and females, because that's the only voice, power your race has, will do two things based upon basic human survival:

1. Those who can't thrive will become neo-slaves and forever be neo-slaves and will serve me and others our basics---french fries, towels at the gym, clean the garbage I won't touch.
2. Then there are those who will know that maybe life/circumstance means you do a few shitty jobs (I've worked at Wendy's and Pathmark and done day labor on construction sites, and scrubbed walls and mopped floors) to get $100 so you can use $10 to buy a book. 

And while you're scrubbing you're thinking through Frederick Douglass or wrestling with Mozart's symphony or trying to figure out whats the difference in being the furrow in or of his brow in Toni Morrison's Paradise---and then maybe you save up and you get into some rooms where educated, knowing people like Carlene Hatcher Polite and Raymond Federman challenge you, not because of your skin, but because of the brain. The Polites and Federmans of the world will casually say go read these 15 people and come back and tell me what you think and if you're going to attempt to write creatively, why are you limiting yourself to staying literally within the lines on a page? Then years later you're at a law school, 4th best on the planet, scared, but there. Holding your books with only $2 in your pocket, having shaved your comfort to the bone to afford your ticket to slip in, to afford the books, to afford the sweatshirt that makes you feel both warm and welcomed and pushes security to giving you the blank smile they reserve for the students.

But each day when I leave the Ivy adorned walls I go to Bed Stuy, Brownsville, Washington Hgts., and Harlem, and with the group that is smart enough to gather, I sit down and open up my bag and I share the bounty I carried out.  Some days I even snuck it out, I pressed print for twenty copies when I was just standing in the office making one.  Or I sat at a desk for an extra hours pay to buy a book that a celebrated professor lauded on about.  Or I found a digital copy of the notes and class assignments from another professor who travels the world dispensing pearls of wisdom among the intelligentsia.  I think of Harriet Tubman in those moments, I think that the railroad, while still underground is in reverse that I'm sneaking into free lands to bodies held in mental bondage.

One of my students emailed me with the salient question of what happens to those who don't move along, how do I personally deal with that? I've learned, so as to not be crushed by my own heart, to think of myself and my work as a trauma surgeon does, I imagine. I go in and I do my best work---and some patients/students will die on the table; they will drop off, drop out, vanish, go back to jail, never progress, have children before they're ready, have too many children, etc.--- and just as a trauma unit surgeon knows that they have to make decisions with deep ramifications, I pray and meditate diligently or how long I can spend helping people. I rail, I push, I cajole, I challenge, I help, I assist, I champion----but I also admit when I've taken someone as far as my skills, my influence can get them and I move on to the next "patient-student" with a hope and a blessing to the past ones and a new vigor and commitment to the new.  A new patient student with me, patient teacher anew.

I keep it moving because I can't spend my lifetime second guessing myself or waiting for a cracked seed to birth fruit.  I am only one tool in the Universe's workshop, a single lampshade to reflect enlightenment. Sometimes it's me and sometimes it's something or someone else and sometimes, most of the times teaching, it's a dead patient-student on the gurney. Admitting that to myself, letting myself on the hook allows me to put myself on the hook but not lynch, as mental slavery would have me do, myself.

Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Sad But True, They Are Slaves by Kyle Phoenix

  (The Italicized portions are part of an article, anonymously presented supposedly by a White man on the state of Black Americans.)

THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES

We can continue to reap profits from the Blacks without the effort of

physical slavery. Look at the current methods of containment that they

use on themselves: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS.

Their IGNORANCE is the primary weapon of containment. A great ! man once

said, "The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in

a book." We now live in the Information Age. They have gained the

opportunity to read any book on any subject through the efforts of their

fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are numerous books

readily available at Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com, not to

mention their own Black Bookstores that provide solid blueprints to

reach economic equality (which should have been their fight all along),

but few read consistently, if at all.

Sadly, while it is true that Dominant Culture people (read White/Caucasian) have continued to profit off of people of color because of the above reasoning, when I'm teaching, I often hit my students---generally 80 to 90% people of color with the statistic that for every 10 square block in America there is a public library.  Simply put, one, education, is available, now in abundance throughout America.  Two, that of the 3 Ways to Occupy Capitalism (a neutral but prevalent system)
We are disproportionately Consumer, historically have been Product but are only a micro of Producer. And lastly that my education, my advanced education, day by day is to go back and pull out, mentor out, educate out, as many from "slavery", in its newest iterations, as possible.

I estimate that if I continue with just what I'm doing now, with another 50 years, television show, You Tube, teaching, blog, writing---I can maybe touch 2 million people---of that 2 million potentially 1% to 10% will do what true education does----turn around and do what a teacher has done with and they'll liberate 1% to 10% of the totality of people they come into contact with. Imagine if 1000 more people of color did this?  A few hours a week just flooded You Tube with videos of mentoring, explaining how to dress, mentor others, educate, read a book, interview, go to school, get up when you're tired, turn off TV, stay non-addicted, stay non-destructive----imagine if 1000 of us REALLY used the internet? I mean REALLY used it?

GREED is another powerful weapon of containment. Blacks, since the

abolition of slavery, have had large amounts of money at their disposal.

Last year they spent 10 billion dollars during Christmas, out of their

450 billion dollars in total yearly income (2.22%).

Any of us can use them as our target market, for any business venture

we care to dream up, no matter how outlandish, they will buy into it.

Being primarily a consumer people, they function totally by greed. They

continually want more, with little thought for saving or investing.

They would rather buy some new sneaker than invest in starting a

business.

Some even neglect their children to have the latest Tommy or FUBU, And

they still think that having a Mercedes, and a big house gives them

"Status" or that they have achieved their Dream.

They are fools! The vast majority of their people are still in poverty

because their greed holds them back from collectively making better communities.

With the help of BET, and the rest of their black media that often

broadcasts destructive images into their own homes, we will continue to

see huge profits like those of Tommy and Nike. (Tommy Hilfiger has even

jeered them, saying he doesn't want their money, and look at how the

fools spend more with him than ever before!). They'll continue to show

off to each other while we build solid communities with the profits from

our businesses that we market to them.

Sadly, when I project forward, 100 years, 50 years, 25 years, even as America browns, I see brown Americans declining and separating. I am often talking to friends and colleagues about the Chasm----of the Haves and the Have Nots---the Going to Be OK and The Nots---there are some students/young people/older people on my Facebook Friend list right now who think being some of the above essay IS reality. And I am heartbroken and torn because I'm at the stage in my life where my abilities and skills must start to forge my own cave, my own family's future, and there's only so much I can do with two hands in my life. I struggle with the impetus and example of Harriet Tubman and the reality of my students, 22 years old who when you hand them a book---their first words are---"what's this?" They're as brown as the floor and for intents and purposes, dead. They'll see the latest iteration of Batman movies for the rest of their lives, they'll get on color coded mass transit to go back to impoverished neighborhoods to sit and watch tv that only shows people (even in fiction) who make or have $15 at the lowest end, while they go to work for $9 an hour. They'll call me and I won't be able to pick up the phone because I'll have to make the kinds of decisions lifeboat men have to make as the Titanic sinks---how many can I save before this small boat is dragged down?

I pass them by on trains and sometimes in their overpriced cars and they are so lost because they don't know that the storm is coming. That Obama as President doesn't matter a tinkers damn when you don't have a GED or a college education. That by 2014, the USA work market will demand a minimum of an Associates degree to participate as a "minimum wage worker". But they'll have IPhones and IPads and BMWs and Mercedes and drink liquors from beer to vodka, Coronoan to Hennessy---companies that don't offer GED scholarships, nor come into upper Manhattan or the Bronx---wherever in the country that may be---not with branding day but with books and food. Those companies, they'll rush, rightfully so, to Haiti, because the poorest people on Earth, brown ones, know the value of education. Which is why they walk miles a day to apply as 12 year old girls to the Oprah Leadership Academy in South Africa and I can't bribe GED students with lunch, free books and love, in their 20's to a glorious campus like Columbia to READ.

SELFISHNESS, ingrained in their minds through slavery, is one of the

major ways we can continue to contain them. One of their own, Dubois

said that there was an innate division in their culture. A "Talented

Tenth" he called it. He was correct in his deduction that there are

segments of their culture that has achieved some "form" of success.

However, that segment missed the fullness of his work. They didn't read

that the "Talented Tenth" was then responsible to aid The Non-Talented

Ninety Percent in achieving a better life.

We, as African Americans, have passed the legacy of slavery as a rape, as a loss, rather than assuring each other---we won! we beat slavery!  We are alive from a system that did everything to destroy and kill us. I think that's what the Talented 10th learn and hopefully pass on. The Talented 10th I think exist in all levels of a society---in fact I would broaden DuBois to the supposition that only about 10 to 20% of all humanity is keeping the planet moving, keeping technology growing, keeping justice balanced. When I watch the television show Through the Wormhole hosted by Morgan Freemen, I see people of color and all genders and sexualities wrestling with some mighty big concepts----and I think to myself---do the disenfranchised on the corner even know about particle colliders, about satellites, about real estate, about inventing the next Facebook---and with their fingers mind-numbingly clicking onto handheld screens,m thumbing through posts, punching in texts, who's not telling them?

Instead, that segment has created another class, a Buppie class that

looks down on their people or aids them in a condescending manner. They

will never achieve what we have. Their selfishness does not allow them

to be able to work together on any project or endeavor of substance.

When they do get together, their selfishness lets their egos get in the

way of their goal. Their so-called help organizations seem to only want

to promote their name without making any real change in their community.

They are content to sit in conferences and conventions in our hotels,

and talk about what they will do, while they award plaques to the best

speakers, not to the best doers. Is there no end to their selfishness?

They steadfastly refuse to see that TOGETHER EACH ACHIEVES MORE (TEAM)

They do not understand that they are no better than each other because

of what they own , as a matter of fact, most of those Buppies are but

one or two pay checks away from poverty. All of which is under the

control of our pens in our offices and our rooms.

Yes, we will continue to contain them as long as they refuse to read,

continue to buy anything they want, and keep thinking they are "helping"

their communities by paying dues to organizations which do little other

than hold lavish conventions in our hotels. By the way, don't worry

about any of them reading this letter, remember, 'THEY DON'T READ!!!!

(Prove them wrong NOW..Please pass this on! After Reading it..)

I walk sometimes through the streets of Manhattan, through three levels of neighborhoods everyday---Poor People, Middle Class People, Upper Class People and I see it's not simply race that drops one into those categories----it's the fundamental ability to know, to think, to process, to discern.  A people, any people, who can't think, whose thinking has been replaced by big budget films where they're never the hero or emasculated into being simply fuckable, breeding males and females, because that's the only voice, power your race has, will do two things based upon basic human survival:

1. Those who can't thrive will become neo-slaves and forever be neo-slaves and will serve me and others our basics---french fries, towels at the gym, clean the garbage I won't touch.
2. Then there are those who will know that maybe life/circumstance means you do a few shitty jobs (I've worked at Wendy's and Pathmark and done day labor on construction sites, and scrubbed walls and mopped floors) to get $100 so you can use $10 to buy a book. 

And while you're scrubbing you're thinking through Frederick Douglass or wrestling with Mozart's symphony or trying to figure out whats the difference in being the furrow in or of his brow in Toni Morrison's Paradise---and then maybe you save up and you get into some rooms where educated, knowing people like Carlene Hatcher Polite and Raymond Federman challenge you, not because of your skin, but because of the brain. The Polites and Federmans of the world will casually say go read these 15 people and come back and tell me what you think and if you're going to attempt to write creatively, why are you limiting yourself to staying literally within the lines on a page? Then years later you're at a law school, 4th best on the planet, scared, but there. Holding your books with only $2 in your pocket, having shaved your comfort to the bone to afford your ticket to slip in, to afford the books, to afford the sweatshirt that makes you feel both warm and welcomed and pushes security to giving you the blank smile they reserve for the students.

But each day when I leave the Ivy adorned walls I go to Bed Stuy, Brownsville, Washington Hgts., and Harlem, and with the group that is smart enough to gather, I sit down and open up my bag and I share the bounty I carried out.  Some days I even snuck it out, I pressed print for twenty copies when I was just standing in the office making one.  Or I sat at a desk for an extra hours pay to buy a book that a celebrated professor lauded on about.  Or I found a digital copy of the notes and class assignments from another professor who travels the world dispensing pearls of wisdom among the intelligentsia.  I think of Harriet Tubman in those moments, I think that the railroad, while still underground is in reverse that I'm sneaking into free lands to bodies held in mental bondage.

One of my students emailed me with the salient question of what happens to those who don't move along, how do I personally deal with that? I've learned, so as to not be crushed by my own heart, to think of myself and my work as a trauma surgeon does, I imagine. I go in and I do my best work---and some patients/students will die on the table; they will drop off, drop out, vanish, go back to jail, never progress, have children before they're ready, have too many children, etc.--- and just as a trauma unit surgeon knows that they have to make decisions with deep ramifications, I pray and meditate diligently or how long I can spend helping people. I rail, I push, I cajole, I challenge, I help, I assist, I champion----but I also admit when I've taken someone as far as my skills, my influence can get them and I move on to the next "patient-student" with a hope and a blessing to the past ones and a new vigor and commitment to the new.  A new patient student with me, patient teacher anew.

I keep it moving because I can't spend my lifetime second guessing myself or waiting for a cracked seed to birth fruit.  I am only one tool in the Universe's workshop, a single lampshade to reflect enlightenment. Sometimes it's me and sometimes it's something or someone else and sometimes, most of the times teaching, it's a dead patient-student on the gurney. Admitting that to myself, letting myself on the hook allows me to put myself on the hook but not lynch, as mental slavery would have me do, myself.

Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Barebacking, Pt. 2: 5 Reasons Why Men Do It To Each Other by Kyle Phoenix

Whoooooooooo, doggie, the previous blog essay about barebacking really got me a wave of responses, emails and such.  That's a good thing because it immediately forced me into conversation with some men to discuss myself, themselves, their sexual practices mine and to bounce back and forth the reasoning for raw sex (sex without protection---condom, dental dam, female condom, etc.).  I'd previous done several episodes on this topic on The Kyle Phoenix Show but in the emails I get from that audience, their emails had included issues, comments and questions about barebacking.

The main questioning came to why do men do this?  I went back to one of my work/television sources Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches, an excellent book (purchase link on this blog--- ) to get some survey data that would specifically ask and answer that question.

Reason 1: Anger/Self Destructive/Fatalism

Universally accepted, however you choose to perceive sexualities outside of homosexuality, there is a greater chance for depression.  I have a whole series of blogs and YouTube videos and TV shows about it it's so prevalent with MSM (men who have sex with men----a proud net generalization I'll use to encompass everyone).  Shame turned inward becomes depression and self destructive behavior.  Shame turned outward can manifest itself as destructive actioning towards others.  Essentially I don't like myself, I don't agree with my lot in life, I'm assuming that my sexual identity and "normal" society will never jive together, I'm alone, I'm hurting, I feel alienated and ostracized so why practice safe sex?  The ultimate fuck it.


Reason 2: Pleasure seeking/Risk Taking/Escapism

Sex, around for hundred sof thousands of years for humans, is fun.  It can be adventurous, stimulating, relaxing, intense, intimate and the prospect of having to stop for: THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX---excuse me one second as I was nibbling your inner thigh we are at the pre-penetrative stage, let me lean over, bend down, roll over there, open the drawer, my pocket, your pocket, that box get the condom packet out, open it, get the lube, put the condom on, a little dab of lube within more lube within you anally, lube then onot the condom------okay, where were we?

Not easy, pleasant or romantic.  It's easier to be wild with this incredibly passionate hottie (known or unknown) who you've had a crush on for awhile or a night or who you've been dating for a week or a year and just be close, be free, be spontaneous!  Because passion, the passion of touching you, being touched by me, the smell of you next to me and your lips, oh, God, your lips!!!!!!!----there's no time!  Take me!  Take me!!!!  Reason be damned!!!!

Reason 3: Intimacy Needs/Rational Choice Making

Human beings, especially those who believe or are in love, want and assume this is the forever love.  Or this is the true love.  This is the good love.  Let's ratchet it back from love and say I tell you I'm negative, you promise me you are and you're trustworthy, right and so am I?  We're not like those others.  We're both employed, rational, respectable, employed, educated, loving people.  We can be close without a condom.  In fact our love, or just our humanness needs to feel closer, no barriers, no artificiality between us.  I love you.  I really, really do.  I would never intentionally hurt you.  I loves you, Porgy.  I want to feel youuuuuuuuu.  Don't you want to feel meeeeeeeeeee?

Reason 4: Erroneous perception of Risk

Look at what great shape he's in.  Look at what great shape I'm in.  You can tell when someone is infected.  Their skin seems ashen or glistens or has less collagen.  The meds do that to them.  But you, you look like the perfect specimen of health. There's no possible way you could be HIV+ at your age, you're too young.  I can tell just from sight.  I didn't think some of the things we were doing, just rubbing that against this, just a little bit of insertion, just oral was risky.

Reason 5: Erectile Related Dysfunction.

Condoms don't fit me right,  Condoms are too tight.  I'm allergic to condoms.  I can't stay hard/maintain an erection with a condom on.  I can't get hard in a condom.

Here we are---several thousand men answered surveys and I licensed it up with some fun language but those were their reported actions and reasoning.  I want to add as a caveat to this that women too roll through these 5 Reasons or hear them as well and as infection of women skyrockets, particularly women of color, we're seeing impact of such reasoning.

But I promised I would consider the information from my own perspective with you, reader and I have.  In approximately 1995 I wrote a magazine cover story on AIDS, it was a big thing getting the cover to be in color, red, the AIDS ribbon as I was spinning off of an AIDS conference that was occurring in Buffalo. A year or so later a former girlfriend of a lover came up infected.  Ok, she was a bit of a----------extremely sexually liberated, physically generous young woman with a public...reputation.  Yeah, I could've worked that out with just one word but let us not judge the past.  Around the same time my mother's close friend, Walter died of HIV related complications.  They'd known each other close to a decade and it left a deep impression on her, even surrounding funerals and death.  My mother was very vocal/engaging around safe sex, afraid that I would become infected, that I was infected, that infection was only a hairs breadth away.

Suddenly HIV wasn't simply TV and Red Hot cd compilations and free condoms in night clubs, it was really, really real.  Then I started volunteering places in, seeing death upfront---here today, gone tomorrow and I thought about the future, my future.  I thought about marriage and children.  I thought about ok, I might meet a partner who was HIV+----would I maintain the relationship longterm or just find a way to fade to black within a date or two.  Logically, statistically, even if my sexual partners had reported as negative (or thought they were) I'd been sexual with someone who was HIV+ and may've had the other multitude of STIs. Most importantly to me---children.  How would I parent children if I was sexually negligent around risk?  Biologically parent children first (yes, I know there are other options) but then what about child rearing?  How long did I want and need my own parents in my life?  How long would my children need me?  If the outside range of HIV survival is 20+ years and I were to get infected in my 20s or 30s wasn't I then also voluntarily perpetuating the usually social force of men of color dying early?  Is unsafe sex a way of men of color being removed from the community, the community that needs them during their highest wage earning/educational/potentiality fulfillment years, regardless of their sexuality?

I know, a lot to think about, right?

Here I am, brown as the floor, safe sexing it, in LTRs and not because of the future.  Because of to some degree my family, my children, not wanting to impact my parents negatively, not wanting to be in my community, giving of my skills over a shorter period of time.

When THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX moments happen for me---what flashes through my mind what makes me crack jokes and try to make what is the oddest commercial break on my personal passionate moments---are the above reasons.

How though does one negotiate that no matter how fine, how trustworthy, how in love we, you, I am that I'm taking this precaution?  That seems to be the rub.  We know how to prevent HIV.  But 30 years in, prevention strategies/tips/mandates are not working.

Next: Raw Sex/Barebacking, Pt. 3: Black, White, Puerto Rican, Is Everyone Freakin'? , Part 3


Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Raw Sex, Pt. 2: 5 Reasons Why Men Do It To Each Other by Kyle Phoenix

Whoooooooooo, doggie, the previous blog essay about barebacking really got me a wave of responses, emails and such.  That's a good thing because it immediately forced me into conversation with some men to discuss myself, themselves, their sexual practices mine and to bounce back and forth the reasoning for raw sex (sex without protection---condom, dental dam, female condom, etc.).  I'd previous done several episodes on this topic on The Kyle Phoenix Show but in the emails I get from that audience, their emails had included issues, comments and questions about barebacking.

The main questioning came to why do men do this?  I went back to one of my work/television sources Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches, an excellent book  (purchase link on this blog--- )  to get some survey data that would specifically ask and answer that question.

Reason 1: Anger/Self Destructive/Fatalism

Universally accepted, however you choose to perceive sexualities outside of homosexuality, there is a greater chance for depression.  I have a whole series of blogs and YouTube videos and TV shows about it it's so prevalent with MSM (men who have sex with men----a proud net generalization I'll use to encompass everyone).  Shame turned inward becomes depression and self destructive behavior.  Shame turned outward can manifest itself as destructive actioning towards others.  Essentially I don't like myself, I don't agree with my lot in life, I'm assuming that my sexual identity and "normal" society will never jive together, I'm alone, I'm hurting, I feel alienated and ostracized so why practice safe sex?  The ultimate fuck it.


Reason 2: Pleasure seeking/Risk Taking/Escapism

Sex, around for hundred sof thousands of years for humans, is fun.  It can be adventurous, stimulating, relaxing, intense, intimate and the prospect of having to stop for: THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX---excuse me one second as I was nibbling your inner thigh we are at the pre-penetrative stage, let me lean over, bend down, roll over there, open the drawer, my pocket, your pocket, that box get the condom packet out, open it, get the lube, put the condom on, a little dab of lube within more lube within you anally, lube then onot the condom------okay, where were we?

Not easy, pleasant or romantic.  It's easier to be wild with this incredibly passionate hottie (known or unknown) who you've had a crush on for awhile or a night or who you've been dating for a week or a year and just be close, be free, be spontaneous!  Because passion, the passion of touching you, being touched by me, the smell of you next to me and your lips, oh, God, your lips!!!!!!!----there's no time!  Take me!  Take me!!!!  Reason be damned!!!!

Reason 3: Intimacy Needs/Rational Choice Making

Human beings, especially those who believe or are in love, want and assume this is the forever love.  Or this is the true love.  This is the good love.  Let's ratchet it back from love and say I tell you I'm negative, you promise me you are and you're trustworthy, right and so am I?  We're not like those others.  We're both employed, rational, respectable, employed, educated, loving people.  We can be close without a condom.  In fact our love, or just our humanness needs to feel closer, no barriers, no artificiality between us.  I love you.  I really, really do.  I would never intentionally hurt you.  I loves you, Porgy.  I want to feel youuuuuuuuu.  Don't you want to feel meeeeeeeeeee?

Reason 4: Erroneous perception of Risk

Look at what great shape he's in.  Look at what great shape I'm in.  You can tell when someone is infected.  Their skin seems ashen or glistens or has less collagen.  The meds do that to them.  But you, you look like the perfect specimen of health. There's no possible way you could be HIV+ at your age, you're too young.  I can tell just from sight.  I didn't think some of the things we were doing, just rubbing that against this, just a little bit of insertion, just oral was risky.

Reason 5: Erectile Related Dysfunction.

Condoms don't fit me right,  Condoms are too tight.  I'm allergic to condoms.  I can't stay hard/maintain an erection with a condom on.  I can't get hard in a condom.

Here we are---several thousand men answered surveys and I licensed it up with some fun language but those were their reported actions and reasoning.  I want to add as a caveat to this that women too roll through these 5 Reasons or hear them as well and as infection of women skyrockets, particularly women of color, we're seeing impact of such reasoning.

But I promised I would consider the information from my own perspective with you, reader and I have.  In approximately 1995 I wrote a magazine cover story on AIDS, it was a big thing getting the cover to be in color, red, the AIDS ribbon as I was spinning off of an AIDS conference that was occurring in Buffalo. A year or so later a former girlfriend of a lover came up infected.  Ok, she was a bit of a----------extremely sexually liberated, physically generous young woman with a public...reputation.  Yeah, I could've worked that out with just one word but let us not judge the past.  Around the same time my mother's close friend, Walter died of HIV related complications.  They'd known each other close to a decade and it left a deep impression on her, even surrounding funerals and death.  My mother was very vocal/engaging around safe sex, afraid that I would become infected, that I was infected, that infection was only a hairs breadth away.

Suddenly HIV wasn't simply TV and Red Hot cd compilations and free condoms in night clubs, it was really, really real.  Then I started volunteering places in, seeing death upfront---here today, gone tomorrow and I thought about the future, my future.  I thought about marriage and children.  I thought about ok, I might meet a partner who was HIV+----would I maintain the relationship longterm or just find a way to fade to black within a date or two.  Logically, statistically, even if my sexual partners had reported as negative (or thought they were) I'd been sexual with someone who was HIV+ and may've had the other multitude of STIs. Most importantly to me---children.  How would I parent children if I was sexually negligent around risk?  Biologically parent children first (yes, I know there are other options) but then what about child rearing?  How long did I want and need my own parents in my life?  How long would my children need me?  If the outside range of HIV survival is 20+ years and I were to get infected in my 20s or 30s wasn't I then also voluntarily perpetuating the usually social force of men of color dying early?  Is unsafe sex a way of men of color being removed from the community, the community that needs them during their highest wage earning/educational/potentiality fulfillment years, regardless of their sexuality?

I know, a lot to think about, right?

Here I am, brown as the floor, safe sexing it, in LTRs and not because of the future.  Because of to some degree my family, my children, not wanting to impact my parents negatively, not wanting to be in my community, giving of my skills over a shorter period of time.

When THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX moments happen for me---what flashes through my mind what makes me crack jokes and try to make what is the oddest commercial break on my personal passionate moments---are the above reasons.

How though does one negotiate that no matter how fine, how trustworthy, how in love we, you, I am that I'm taking this precaution?  That seems to be the rub.  We know how to prevent HIV.  But 30 years in, prevention strategies/tips/mandates are not working.

Next: Raw Sex/Barebacking: Black, White, Puerto Rican, Is Everyone Freakin'? , Part 3



Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Raw Sex: Anything Goes, Part 1 by Kyle Phoenix

The challenge of dating in the 21st century or even working in/with groups tht involve particularly men who have sex with men is the shadow of STI---Sexually Transmitted Infections (HIV, HIV-2, HPV, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Mano, HCV, Syphilis, Herpes, etc.) because the population one is dealing with is ground zero.  The deeper, social challenge is not simply the risk but the what can feel like sheer insanity around non-protection. Unfortunately, as statistics suggest, from Black and Latino men,  Somehow, some way along the road of sexual liberation there has come the mentality that unsafe sex---exchange of bodily fluids---is cool and the gang.

As I write this I contemplate how to be both honest and at the same time sound reasonably non-judgmental but maybe it's about time that someone said: "Hey, are you out of your fucking mind?" to risky sex.  When someone calls me brother and suggests we engage in unsafe/raw sex they are literally offering to fuck me to death.  Now that may sound extreme but how else can another human being literally strip you of your immune system?  There are cases of partners unknowingly infecting one another, drugs and blood transference but to actually willingly, willfully give or take the risk with another human being---have we become sociopaths to pleasure?  Can a man of color talk to me about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Obama or hegemony or racial struggle while capitulating to infect other human beings?  Better yet, is it racially motivated?

Can we look at race, men of color, sexually involved with other men of color, and say---the weight of homophobia coupled with racism drives, otherwise, seemingly sensible men to actively, consciously try and infect or get infected?  Has oppression and disdain, violence and prejudice, driven us so insane that I'm talking about the "need for love and healing in the  Black community" in one breath and infecting with the next?  Is it such  lack of value for men of color, men of color who may be homosexual or bi-sexual (or even heterosexual---don't think your straightness excuses you from unsafe sex) by other men of color that we have to lynch each other with bodily fluids?

Or, if we expand the scope, are men (and women---gender does not excuse you from exposure) of any race so self-hating, other-hating, homo-hating that infecting another is plausible?  That "breeding" parties is normal?  That wanting to be bred (HIV infected on purpose) is acceptable?  Not just acceptable to the individual seeking but more importantly to those of us who watch them.

In this work I do, education, identity, sexuality, I frequent a lot of dating sites, for all genders and sexualities, and what I see is terrifying.  Too many men of color without a regard to being infected or infecting.  I'm often eschewing two out of three out of hand just for their risky profiles.  But now a trend I've started to notice---White men, particularly over 30 seeking Black and Latino men for raw sex---pointedly as the Caucasian, HIV+, insertive partner.  So it's a minefield---Blacks and Latinos (45% under 30) infecting one another and now White men seeking out particularly minorities to infect.  Now I could lash into a rant about racism and entitlement and the capacity of someone in dominant culture feeling oblivious to moral conventions around infecting people of color but when I see/am offered infection by people of color, I must ask: whose holding the rope and who's doing the lynching?  Has racial liberation lead us to sociopathic hatred of ourselves rather than racial love?

But I don't want to wholesale judge or condemn, in fact I write this to educate so next time I'll run down the 5 factors of why men report they bareback and more importantly, I'll search myself for where I'm at in this debate, hitting myself with some of the above questions as I hope you will too.

Coming Next: Barebacking: Top 5 Reasons Men Do It To Each Other


Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
www.kylephoenixsite.com

Killer Joe, Movie Reviews By Kyle Phoenix

 I've seen this movie twice within a few weeks.  The second time I went with a female friend and I warned her continuously that this movie was lurid.  By the time we were at the theater I had to upgrade it to vulgar.  This movie is intentionally all of that and slightly more.  But it's also a good movie.  It's virulently misogynistic and gory and each character is a sociopath in their own way, hence why this movie is NC-17. 

The plot is simple, Killer Joe played by Matthew McConaughey  is hired by Chris Smith played by Emile Hirsch to kill his mother for the insurance money that his slightly spacey sister Dottie Smith played by Juno Temple  is the beneficiary.  Their father Ansel played by Thomas Haden Church and stepmother Sharla Gina Gershon are also in on it.  But Chris lacks the money upfront to pay Joe so Joe takes Dottie as a sexual retainer.  Chris though has an incestuous flavored relationship with his sister and eventually the insurance scam unravels and the mutual chauvinistic possessiveness erupts into all out warfare within the family.

We want the characters to be simplistically "stupid" but they all act out of their motivations and even Ansel, the father who's willing to forsake everyone else stays to the side like a smart rabbit, who knows he can't beat any of the tigers but can survive if he aligns properly.  Sharla and Dottie are constantly degraded by the men around them though they have an affection and caring between the two of them that may work out in the end.  Chris, as the drug dealing, money owing, sister pimping/incestuous matricidal brother is so grimy and yet pathetically sad as he explains how his life has fallen apart.  We get to see in a brief scene with him and Killer Joe his simple humanity, his desire for a life of some value and how circumstance and happenstance robbed him and forced him back into the dysfunctional world he's grown up in.

The question the audience is left with though is how naive is Dottie.  In the end, originally a sexualized object by Joe, her father, her brother, she makes her move for liberation.  She even warns out of nowhere earlier in the film that no one should make her "mad".  She's even good with having her mother killed.  On initial viewing Dottie seems like another victim of all of these out of control people but by the end, no money in sight for any of them, Dottie takes advantage of a chaotic situation as well as uses everyone's underestimation of her to lash out at them.  The most pivotal scene is at the end when Dottie's finger goes from outside of the finger hole to within at the gun trigger, her target lined up.  Does Dottie fire?  I think she does and with that, there's a pyrrhic victory for the women.

Why pyrrhic?  Because Gina Gershon,a  good actress, a pretty woman, goes to the edge of morality and viciousness and brutality in the film.  She's forced to perform the most outlandish and graphically humiliating sexual act, which besides the constant nudity of all the major stars, garners the NC-17 rating.     

It's shocking and startling and there are only two choices: go on the roller coaster and laugh in shock or get up and walk out.  Stay, I suggest, watch the art that this film, directed by William Friedkin and written by Tracy Letts, based on his play.   With a running time of 103 minutes the rated NC-17 (for graphic disturbing content involving violence and sexuality, and a scene of brutality) isn't a date film but you'll never forget having seen it.  And McConaughey, a very good, generally likable actor will probably be a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination from this and Magic Mike.


Thanks and enjoy!  Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Barebacking: Anything Goes, Part 1 by Kyle Phoenix

The challenge of dating in the 21st century or even working in/with groups tht involve particularly men who have sex with men is the shadow of STI---Sexually Transmitted Infections (HIV, HPV, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Mano, etc.) because the population on is dealing with is ground zero.  The deeper, social challenge is not simply the risk but the what can feel like sheer insanity around non-protection. Unfortunately, as statistics suggest, from Black and Latino men,  Somehow, some way along the road of sexual liberation there has come the mentality that unsafe sex---exchange of bodily fluids---is cool and the gang.

As I write this I contemplate how to be both honest and at the same time sound reasonably non-judgmental but maybe it's about time that someone said: "Hey, are you out of your fucking mind?" to risky sex.  When someone calls me brother and suggests we engage in unsafe/raw sex they are literally offering to fuck me to death.  Now that may sound extreme but how else can another human being literally strip you of your immune system?  There are cases of partners unknowingly infecting one another, drugs and blood transference but to actually willingly, willfully give or take the risk with another human being.  Have we begun sociopaths to pleasure?  Can a man of color talk to me about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Obama or hegemony or racial struggle while capitulating to infect other human beings?  Is it racially motivated?

Can we look at race, men of color, sexually involved with other men of color, and say---the weight of homophobia coupled with racism drives otherwise, seemingly sensible men to actively, consciously try and infect or get infected?  Has oppression and disdain, violence and prejudice driven us so insane that I'm talking about the "need for love and healing in the  Black community" in one breath and infecting with the next?  Is it such  lack of value for men of color, men of color who may be homosexual or bi-sexual (or even heterosexual---don't think your straightness excuses you from unsafe sex) by other men of color that we have to lynch each other with bodily fluids?

Or, if we expand the scope, are men (and women---gender does not excuse you from exposure) of any race so self-hating, other-hating, homo-hating that infecting another is plausible?  That "breeding" parties is normal?  That wanting to be bred (HIV infected on purpose) is acceptable?  Not just acceptable to the individual seeking but more importantly to those of us who watch them.

In this work I do, education, identity, sexuality, I frequent a lot of dating sites, for all genders and sexualities, and what I see is terrifying.  Too many men of color without a regard to being infected or infecting.  I'm often eschewing two out of three out of hand just for their risky profiles.  But now a trend I've started to notice---White men, particularly over 30 seeking Black and Latino men for raw sex---pointedly as the insertive partner.  So it's a minefield---Blacks and Latinos (45% under 30) infecting one another and now White men seeking out particularly minorities to infect.  Now I could lash into a rant about racism and entitlement and the capacity of someone in dominant culture feeling oblivious to moral conventions around infecting people of color but when I see/am offered infection by people of color I must ask: whose holding the rope and who's doing the lynching?  Has racial liberation lead us to sociopathic hatred of ourselves rather than racial love?

But I don't want to wholesale judge or condemn, in fact I write this to educate so next time I'll run down the 5 factors of why men report they bareback and more importantly, I'll search myself for where I'm at in this debate, hitting myself with some of the above questions as I hope you will too.

Coming Next: Barebacking: Top 5 Reasons Men Do It To Each Other


Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
www.kylephoenixsite.com

Sparkle (2012): Reviews by Kyle Phoenix

We're all going to always attach this film to being Whitney Houston's last, we're going to be even more shocked and see it as prescient when she says in a lecture to her three daughters: "Was my life not enough of a cautionary tale for you?" There's also a scene where She as Emma, the very conservative Detroit middle-class church lady, whose current prosperity is in contrast to her daughter's memories of finding her passed out in her own vomit. The family now lives in a nice home where all three young women are ruled by mother Emma's curfews, her forced church attendance, and her rabid and stern warnings to any man who gets to close to her daughters, to their virtue. Of course there's no dramatic tension unless the bulwark that she represents isn't challenged. And it's challenged by the sisters becoming a singing group and the perils and pitfalls of the music/show business.


Sparkle, originally a 1976 American film directed by Sam O'Steen and released by Warner Bros. Pictures was inspired by The Supremes. Sparkle was a period film set in Harlem, New York during the late 1950s and early 1960s which follows the rough lives and careers of singer Sparkle Williams and her family and friends. This version is updated by the adherence to more show business dazzle and glitter and incredible musical numbers. Starring as Sparkle Jordin Sparks, Emma played by Whitney Houston, Stix is Derek Luke, Satin is Mike Epps, Sister is Carmen Ejogo, Dolores is Tika Sumpter, Levi is Omari Hardwick and as the scandalously villainous Black, Cee Lo Green.

This version is directed by Salim Akil with a screenplay by Mara Brock Akil, the married sensational production team. And it holds true to the original storyline of the medium classic original. But it's soaring delivery (not Dreamgirls level of delivery but close) is Whitney Houston's has a solo showcase in a church scene, singing "His Eye is on the Sparrow," and while we can hear and see that time has taken it's effect on her voice, her considerable presence makes the scene memorable. Jordin Sparks gets her chance to really stand out (still not Dreamgirls Jennifer Hudson level.......but really close) Sparkle/Jordin Sparks as a solo act (with backup singers, a gospel choir and a full pit orchestra) brings down the house in her fantastic spotlight piece.


It's a good movie. It's fitting tribute and swan song for Ms. Houston which her fans will not be electrified about (honestly, because it's not her movie per se, her death as simply increased the interest in watching her in the film) but it's a nice cap to her filmography. Ms. Houston was an accomplished actress probably because of it came naturally to her, easily to her. Often times the best actors are the one's from other disciplines who have a range of ability and presence to bring to a new venue. Though she only made a handful of films, in each she is substantially strong and genuine. The beautiful part of this is now the baton has been in a way passed to Jordin Sparks who's American Idol success along with Jennifer Hudson sugegsts that an Idol winner may have a range far beyond simply album sales.



Thank you, I look forward to your emails and comments. And as always check your local listings for The Kyle Phoenix Show broadcast times in NYC. You can always find more information about me, topics and tips on relationships, finance and life strategies on http://kylephoenixsite.com/