VivirLatino

I don’t follow hip/hop too closely, so I didn’t know anything at all about Kat Stacks until I read the linked post. But I know a lot of the readers of VL do–and given the Oscar Grant verdict, I felt like this was really important to highlight.

via the black youth project:

When the first video of Kat Stacks being slapped by Bow Wow’s male fans became viral on YouTube back in June, I was immediately angered by the physical act of violence and then equally angered by the misogynistic rhetorical of male honor and female “sexual” dishonor that legitimized the beating of Kat Stacks. However, when another video became viral depicting the same tragic events only this time it was with a different black male perpetrator slapping Kat Stacks, publicly, into submission, I was left speechless. How could this happen again? What in the air as my grandmother would say makes random black men think they have the right to beat a woman because she publicly touts her heterosexuality and the insufficient smallness of several male rappers’ penises—Bow Wow, Nelly, and Fabulous? What in the air allows people both women and men in the videos to stand by and cheer for her demise?

From what I can tell (and somebody please correct me in comments if I am wrong!!) Kat Stacks spread the word that she had fucked certain male hip/hop stars. And not only did she talk, she made fun of them. Said they had little penises. And as a result of her running her mouth (who knows if what she said was true or not), men feel totally justified smacking the shit out of Stacks, in public, with support and approval.

Fallon at black youth project continues:

Because all the male rappers loved Kat Stacks before she publically dissed their penises and their fake Hip Hop life styles. They loved her because she would happily have sex with them when and how they wanted to have sex. But, when she decided to air the dirty laundry she became a liability and had to be marked as Scarlett was marked with an “A” upon her chest where fans of male Hip Hop rappers have license to beat, slap, and stump the “hoe” at will.

Furthermore, Kat Stacks’ story of violence reveals, yet again, that no woman is ever totally safe in a patriarchal society because the line of proving your loyalty to heterosexual men is a thin line on its most good day. You can decide you don’t want to date him any longer and he comes into Verizon while you are working and sets you on fire. You can decide you do not want to cook to night he can beat you senseless. You can decide not to sleep with his homies even though you slept with him and they gang rape you. You can say their penises are the sizes of toothpicks and male rappers will sit by and allow their fans to beat you. And, often, not always, but often the responsibility is on the woman to prove she was victimized . . . hurt . . . raped . . . abused . . . exploited. And, of course she must not be a deviant black woman like Kat Stacks because her personhood automatically makes her guilty.

The reason I felt it was so important to bring attention to this post after the Oscar Grant verdict is because of the differences. An entire social justice community mobilized all their efforts around Oscar Grant–mobilized against the idea that just being black in a public space is justification for murder. And yet, here so many of us (and I am looking at myself first and foremost) have no idea and/or support the idea that just being a black woman who ran her mouth is justification for male aggression and violence. That a public space can and should be used to terrorize and control that woman.

It was not ok to “involuntarily” murder Oscar Grant. And it’s not ok to beat Kat Stacks. It’s not ok that we all understand and mobilize against racist violence, while ignoring and even condoning sexist violence. It’s not ok that Oscar Grant’s murder will spend *maybe* two years in jail, and it’s not ok that Kat Stacks attackers don’t face any charges at all. And that people even think what they did was funny or congratulate them.

Or, as Fallon says:

Mind you, this isn’t new, black feminist have been writing and mobilizing about these issues for a very long time. It just never fails to anger me and cause me to see how various acts of violence against black women are interrelated. For instance, the Grim Sleeper’s murders which span a 20 year period show the same characteristics of Kat Stacks’ story of public gender violence and what happens to culturally soiled black women. Each of the 10 women murdered were allegedly women who were sex workers or black women who struggled with drugs . . . women who in the eyes of the Grim Sleeper were easily missed. So, he could rape them, kill them, or do as another black man did in Cleveland bury them in the walls of his house for 20 years because no one would miss them or believe they could be victimized.

Oscar Grant is irreplaceable. We all recognize that, and make that a part of our mobilization. We value him because he is us. Well, Kat Stacks is irreplaceable too. Even if she did run her mouth. Even if she did mock and humiliate. Even if. She is us, she is ours, and she is irreplaceable.

Saying otherwise makes the violence ok.
And it’s not.