Thinking and Talking about the Danger of "THOTS"

Demonstrating the cultural center role barbershops often play, I had a thought-provoking and somewhat troubling conversation with a broad range of African American men at Big Tom's barbershop on Centre Ave a couple Saturdays ago . New to me and a few of the other over 40's was this phrase used in both electronic and verbal communication among the younger set called THOTS, which stands for "that 'ho' over there".  In the course of the discussion, I remarked that the term was terrible and likely to boomerang and a young man responded  that what was terrible was that young women do the things that make them worthy of such names. Obviously, there is no mystery in what makes a young woman or girl worthy: engaging in sex with a number of partners that young men or boys determine excessive, but of course not too excessive to be a commentary on the men and boys who engage as well. It felt good that the young man later followed up his comment empathetically reflecting that there could be a reason for the young woman's behavior, but interestingly did not mention that the participating boys' behavior needed an explanation.

The young man who made the comment was by no means expressing a viewpoint unique to him or even a minority view. We live in a white supremacist, patriarchal culture (literally, rule of the father) so the image and identity of Black women and girls are under regular assault. So, I guess what really struck me about the this term was that it was even more dismissive and dehumanizing than what I normally hear, but it's important to consider it because the language of youth tells us a lot about where we stand as culture. Who did they learn it from? Also, I have to reflect on why the term might be striking to me when I'm aware of the culture we live in. There is this term, "middle class subterfuge", that a former professor of mine, Dr. Vernell Lillie, taught to explain how middle class people hide their ideas, particularly around power, with all kinds of euphemisms. So, I shouldn't be surprised at hearing a term like "THOTS" in a community that is largely working class and less prone to euphemisms, but still the dehumanizing  language literally sent a shockwave of fear through me. Fear, because we dehumanize classes of people to justify all kinds of things that are done to them, very often violent things, and so dehumanizing women and girls in language is simply a stage in a continuum of violence. And, I have seen on one occasion walking with my daughter at Kennard Field, how rape sits very present in the minds of boys not even 14 years old.

This got me to thinking about where does the desire to prevent male violence against women show up in neighborhood planning beyond well lit streets? When we talk about building on the cultural legacies we often are thinking about supporting our identities in racial and ethnic terms, but what about in gender terms? What kinds of design choices would we make if we wanted to build on a cultural legacy that challenged the thinking behind THOTS? The thinking that leaves women and girls vulnerable to rape and abuse and traps men and boys in ideas of manhood and boyhood that encourages unprotected sex with multiple partners and all of the consequences that can follow when we are still very young.

But the Hill does have a legacy that challenges the thinking behind THOTS. We have a building named after Ms. Alma Speed Fox, one of the most prominent feminists in Pittsburgh, and the home of the non-profit organization she began, Freedom Unlimited (my wife, Dr. Bonnie Young Laing, serves on that board), a professor/artist/blogger/social media magnate, Dr. Kim Ellis aka Dr. Goddess, has a national following and shares thinking that could be called Black feminism, Baba Rob Penny, love, light and progress to his spirit, who always talked about the need for a balance of women's and men's voices when talking about African American cultural legacy (thanks to Iya Valerie Adeniji Lawrence for reminding me of this a few weeks ago), and in my life there is my wife, Bonnie, who has been a strong voice for me about patriarchy and chauvinism. Still, are those voices and the thoughts behind them present in the majority of conversations men and boys have in this community? What part of Master Planning and neighborhood revitalization asks questions about the impact of the environment on the identities of men and boys and how those identities can be engaged with to prevent violence and the dehumanizing of women and girls, even if we are "only" talking about dehumanizing language? Maybe its having artists in the neighborhood who create work such as Luqmon Salaam's "Blue Color Theory" off of his album "Ancestral Connections" (will try and post a link later)

Shout out to Tom Boyd and Big Tom's Barbershop for creating a place where these conversations could be held, my nine year old could listen without my feeling he was in an inappropriate environment, learning could happen and he still got a fresh cut.

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