Well. What of the timing of the dismissal of charges in the Duke rape case against the backdrop of Don Imus' insult of the Rutgers women basketball players, and the quote that I caught in the elevator that the accuser “may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling?” The blogosphere has been jumping with everyone weighing in on the racism, sexism, misogyny, fault of Hip-Hop, blah blah blah, ad nauseum--I was right there with it. Hell, I live for a mainstream story about black women's representation--it's what I do! But I swear, it's ironic that when there's something that actually interests me and is relevant in the blogosphere is when I like it the least--too many opinions through which to sift, and hours-of-your-life-passed-later you realize nobody's saying much of anything even if they are drawing some rather significant circles and we're never all even going to agree to disagree. Why don't black women ever generate this much heated interest with regard to anything other than their "questionable" sexuality?

It made me sad to imagine being one of those players who were made to sit on a dais at their press conference yesterday--clearly engineered to say, "look, these aren't nappy-headed hos." I didn't get to actually hear what was said--at the gym is my only access to television, and the closed-captioning wasn't even on yesterday morning--but I couldn't help but be creeped out by this visual attempt to disavow them of both nappiness and sexuality, as though it would be understood that these things are intrinsically something that nice girls don't embody, and there's the proof. What if their hair had been wildly nappy, all over their heads, instead of neatly straightened and braided? What if they had come with some short, tight outfits with too much makeup and long nails and whatever else we stereotypically associate with sexualized women. Would that have made a difference? Should it have?

Some will say "nappy" is okay, but only when used in a different context. But with regard to women's sexuality, when are we going to stop reinforcing the very insults we're attempting to abolish? Especially now that we're all supposed to shake our heads at the new Tawana Brawley and believe that she was just delusional...another black woman with a questionable grasp on her own sexuality...I don't buy it.