Tag Archives: marriage

On Putting a Ring on the Proverbial…”IT”

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Jermaine Taylor is a good friend and a Manly Man. Always straightforward, he writes on many topics with no apologies. He has had guest appearances here before, so back by popular demand:
An Open Letter to Single Men

I write to you today to speak to what I believe to be the disturbing spread of single-phobia throughout our society.  At the moment, our society seems caught in the manic throes of a frenzied push towards commitment that has an adverse effect—whether directly or indirectly—on every American man.  R& B singer Beyoncé—one of pop culture’s most virulent single-phobics, in my opinion—unashamedly chastises single men in her song “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”: “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it”; African American women are constantly cited time and again as being chronically unable to find a spouse; the book publishing industry is increasingly saturated with a seemingly inexhaustible stream of “self-help” books instructing women on what steps they should take to get their guy to “settle down” and “pop the question,” from Matt Titus and Tamsen Fadal’s Why Hasn’t He Proposed?: Go from the First Date to Setting the Date to actor-comedian cum relationship guru Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment.  Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, authors of the book He’s Just Not That Into You of —which was made into a 2009 New Line Cinema romantic comedy of the same name—plainly advise women to ditch any man who’s apparently not eager to say “I do” within a predetermined time frame.  What’s more, we single men are readily berated by the print and broadcast media for simply being ourselves.  (George Clooney, a self-admitted bachelor for life, is considered a “womanizer” by many women).  Indeed, we’re consistently portrayed negatively for no other reason than we want to hold onto our God-given and inalienable freedom and corresponding individuality.

After all, we each came into this world alone, did we not?  What’s so bad about wanting to stay that way a little while longer?

Not unlike those brave settlers who fled their native England and its religious persecution to settle the New World, not unlike those who suffered fire hoses and dogs at the volatile height of the civil rights movement, and certainly not unlike those courageous women who dared to reach for the ballot in a noble quest for equal treatment and equal opportunity as their male counterparts, we non-committal men—as we prefer to be called—are facing a very similar predicament.  However, unlike the institutionalized and oftentimes tepid and covert racism and sexism of contemporary society, our oppression seems far more manifest.  Man-bashing, as it were, seems to have gone “viral,” so to speak.  Everywhere we turn, we single men are constantly harassed for being born with a natural predilection for remaining unattached.  Still, we’re oftentimes left to fend for ourselves, without very much, if any, organizational or other philanthropic support.  For instance, the American Civil Liberties Union, or A.C.L.U. as it’s more commonly known, sponsors the LGBT Project, which “fights discrimination and moves public opinion through the courts, legislatures and public education” on behalf of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender brothers and sisters, yet there remains no such subdivision for we single men who desire nothing more than life, liberty and the benign pursuit of singlenesses tranquility.

How did we get here? I thought to myself as I stared blankly at the music video of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” being broadcast on MTV late one night.  How did we go so far afield of “the better angels of our nature?”  (After all, if God had intended for us to commit, he’d have brought us into this world in sets of two, am I right?  Surely, none of us want to boldly suggest the big guy got it wrong?)  More importantly, what now?  Where do we go from here, chaos or community? as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once famously asked.

So, my fellow single brothers, where do we go from here?  We move forward.  We carry on.  We continue to “fight the good fight” for the cause of freedom and liberty, the very same principles our great nation was constitutionally founded upon.

Let me be perfectly clear, I’m not saying any of this because I “hate women.”  (I don’t).  I’m saying this because, like Gandhi himself advised, I seek “to be the change I wish to see in the world.”  I seek to mobilize and galvanize other single brothers on behalf of this great struggle, in this great moment in which we find ourselves, at this defining point in history.  We cannot loose hope.  Despite the fact that we may no doubt face the vicious and rancorous recriminations of the commitment-partisan status quo, we must hold fast to the beliefs that have gotten us this far.

The freedom to get up and go as we please.  To do as we please.  The freedom to sleep with whomever we so choose, free from the oftentimes callous and disproportionate over-reactions of our egreged partners.  These are all meaningful liberties, my fellow single brothers.  And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  You’re neither small-minded nor shortsighted for wanting to extol, whether verbally or in your daily lives, the virtues of living life alone, on your own terms.  In fact, you should be commended for speaking out on behalf of your sadly voiceless committed brethren, for there is no charge more admirable, make no mistake, than that of speaking out on behalf of the weak and the powerless.

In the end, much like both Dr. King and Gandhi—on whom Dr. King would later base his own philosophy of non-violence—we must acknowledge that anger and resentment alone will not solve the present problems we face.  Neither violence nor any other form of coercion or abuse can successfully and lastingly stare us out of the fractious impasse in which we’re now currently enmeshed, as it is understandably froth with as much complexity as combustibility.  Indeed, only honest and open dialogue can do that, in my opinion.  To borrow from the words of President [Barack] Obama’s 2008 inaugural address, we single men will more than happily extend a hand of friendship to all you “single ladies” out there.  All we ask is that you unclench your fist of matrimony and allow us to decide when we’re ready to “put a ring on it.”

Sincerely,

A Proud Single Man

Jermaine Taylor

From Sorry Ms. Jackson to Hello, Ms. Right

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Art by e-man taati, courtenay escoffery

By J. D. Taylor

Not only is The Best Man one of my favorite films, but it also (in my opinion at least) sits atop the seemingly growing pantheon of contemporary “black cinema”—alongside such films as Love & Basketball, Brown Sugar, Love Jones, etc.—aimed at depicting on the silver screen the real world triumphs and successes, trials and tribulations of twenty and thirty-something African-Americans.

The film’s main character, Harper (Taye Diggs), comes home on the heels of the debut release of his autobiographical first novel to serve as the best man in his friend Lance’s (Morris Chestnut) wedding. Needless to say, the lines between fact and fiction are soon blurred and the very real secrets hidden in Harper’s novel threaten not only to upend the wedding but put an end to the men’s friendship altogether.

For all of us who’ve seen the film—and certainly for all of us men, I think—one of the scenes that instinctively sticks out in memory would have to be the “poker night scene,” in which all four male leads, Harper, Lance, Quentin (Terrance Howard) and Julian (Harold Perrineau), gather together to discuss their views on life, work and women. It’s during this scene that Quentin, raging against the idea of monogamy in general, and marriage more specifically, states, “If God intended for us to be with just one woman, he wouldn’t have given us all this sperm, and these bitches wouldn’t outnumber us the way they do.”

Some of us howled. Others shook their heads in astonishment. Still others recoiled in disgust. No matter your reaction, though, if you’re a guy, you’ve more than likely been privy to similar conversations; free-flowing discussions where men “let fly” about what it is we’re really thinking. Indeed, sometimes it can seem like we men are so consumed with figuring out what the opposite sex is looking for in their ideal Mr. Right, it’s all too easy for us to loose sight of what we could and/or should be looking for in our ideal Ms. Right.

So how about it, fellas? What exactly are we looking for? More important, why is it so seemingly difficult for us to find it (or her)? Here are some common pitfalls as I see it:

  • “All that glitters isn’t gold.” Sure we all know this, but we men certainly loose sight of it when looking for Ms. Right, can’t we? Where women are concerned, some of us men can’t seem to think straight. Sometimes we’re so enamored with those “Perfect 10’s” in the looks department that we loose track of the fact that some women might be sorely lacking in other categories (i.e. intelligence, personality, etc.) This is a tough one, I’ve got to admit. Trust me, I’m a guy—I know. But my advice? “Keep it in your pants” and “look before you leap” before you “put a ring on it.
  • Will our eyes always be bigger than our stomachs? If you’re wondering what category Quentin (and guys like him) would likely fall into, I’d say this one’s a safe bet. They just can’t get enough. More, more, and more is what they’re after. Sure I understand that we don’t want to be impulse buyers and “make an honest woman” out of the first woman we happen to have feelings for, but it seems that some of us guys have several women on our plate and several others waiting in the wings (i.e. “on the back burner”). Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is we’re simply not built to maintain this kind of pace. We’re ultimately destined to burn out. What’s worse, in not focusing enough attention on quality, we run the risk of sacrificing our potential Ms. Right in the name of quantity.
  • But she cooks like Big Momma. It’s said that we all want a woman that’s like our mother. Sure we can all understand this. Our mothers clothed us. They fed us. They nutured us. They’re the “apple of our eye.” But more than one guy’s fallen into the trap of picking a woman that reminds him of his mother. On the surface there might not seem like much is wrong with this. On the surface. The problem? For better or worse, a woman’s not supposed to be like our mothers. For one thing, that same attribute of taking charge and laying down the law that made our mothers the matriarch of our family, if you think about it, can soon become insufferable if it starts coming from the woman who’s supposed to be our life partner.
  • The “good girl” paradox. I don’t know why this is, but as often as we men claim to want a “nice girl,” there’s just something about those bad girls that seriously seems to get our motors running. We all know how to spot a “man eater” and/or “gold digger” when we see one, yet something in us stupidly encourages us to conquer that insurmountable mountain known as the bad girl. We know that good girls are trustworthy, dependable, caring, etc., so why do we do it? Who knows. We’re massachists, I suppose.

Ultimately, it seems that many of the reasons we men have problems finding our special someone is similar to the reasons our opposite sex counterparts experience difficulty. In short, there’s an inexplicable disconnect between what we want (or at least what we say we want) in our eventual partners and the process by which we meet them. (I mean, you wouldn’t go fishing with a shotgun, am I right?) So what’s the answer? I say we all should be more like Quentin. Why’s that, you ask? Because although he’s an unabashed misogynist, at least he’s honest about what he’s after. And disagree with him as you might (and believe me, I do) you’ve got to respect the guy’s willingness to speak his own truth.

Jermaine Taylor